Lisa ran a strong campaign because people believed in her. I hate Calvert and YK, but I don't regret for one second knocking on doors for Lisa, or posting in support of her (or trolling Esther online, tbh). She's a great person and a really good candidate. Everyone in her campaign was positive and believed in her throughout. I agree that she should run for local office and keep doing good for the community.
This was a supremely strange race, and if Esther really wanted to get the others to step aside, she would have had to be magnanimous in a way that she never has been in her entire life. She would need a character transplant.
Her failures are her own. I was literally looking for an excuse to vote for her up until April, when it became clear she was both batshit crazy and mean. I was not the only one.
I hope she goes back to LA. I really don't want to run into her at Cinepolis or Target. I mean, she won't know who I am, but I will give her the stinkeye.
I think one thing Dems really must take away from this race, and the Governor's race, is that money is not the end-all. People will respond to authentic candidates and calls to action. That is why Lisa did so well despite the funding deficit.
This world needs more candidates like Lisa. She has character, she has class. I wish her well and look forward to seeing more of her around Orange County politics.
This race gets a big "A" - for Apathy. Allow me to explain. Canvassing yesterday I was DUMBFOUNDED at the number of people who had no idea it was election day. My great grandmother (a non-citizen immigrant from Ireland) used to get dressed to the nines to be taken out for the day to vote all over North Jersey for any Irish candidate back in the 1910s. AND THERE WASN'T EVEN TELEVISION TO REMIND HER. What the hell is going on??
We had a divisive, trumpy - "I don't care if you don't like me", one dimensional candidate with money that sucked the air out of the race. And, according to the numbers in the returns, three candidates that no voter could pick out of a lineup, that somehow garnered 6,000+ votes. Pardon my Irish, but WTF???
And then we had two candidates - one great hope and one longshot. Joe Kerr is a decent guy with good intentions. I would love to have a beer with him sometime. And finally, Lisa. A candidate who connected with everyone she interacted with. A candidate who was out there, all over the place, because it was important to her to know the district she wanted to represent. A candidate that could have really made a difference, if not for apathy.
Good news is, she's not done. She's just getting started. And if you are apathetic you will continue to say - CA 40 will never elect a "D". Well then, you didn't talk to the people I talked to. But again, apathy. The time is NOW to look for a cure for it. It would be nice if we could count on CADEM, but what they know about supporting long shots and winning where they shouldn't could fill a thimble with room left over.
Never say never. Even the Vikings will win a Superbowl - someday. Lisa is not the Vikings, she is the Red Sox or the Cubs...she will be back, with and she will be a formidable candidate.
PS - is someone monitoring CdC for the moving van to arrive??
Thanks for all the fun Jeff - glad you'll be sticking around.
Your point about ethnic stereotyping and voting strategy is a valid one. In Chicago, certain non-Irish candidates changed their names to classically Irish ones in order to get such votes and it worked. And locally, there's the Sagel race where the challenger (unsuccessfully) tried to force the candidate to include her ethnic Indian sounding middle name. Ethnic arguments were also cleverly used in the CA40 race, too, and when I say cleverly, I mean using code words with multiple meanings so as to still have plausible deniability against hate speech.
Your point about voter apathy is consistent with what I've observed during this election cycle, too. Apathy and low voter turnout mean that each vote has higher significance in the total. This has been a key strategy in overturning small local races such as school boards and city councils, with organized special interest groups along with physical threats against those in office who bow out to protect their families.
Would definitely like to hear more about the coded ethnic arguments in this race you're referring to. Either my antenna isn't attuned or I've got a blind spot. Also, who's been receiving threats of violence for serving on local school boards and city councils?
Hooray! You didn't relocate to Guam. Great wrap up of the CA-40 race. I do wish the Dems could have run a strong, empathetic, civic-minded candidate but I any event, bye-bye to EKV.
We had too many people on the ballot, that’s why we didn’t win. Total up democratic votes and we easily beat Calvert. Our top two (both intelligent women) did very well. Yes, one of the candidates moved into District 40, and the other lives outside of District 40. Does that truly matter at this point? The bottom line is we lost and the sad part is that we beat ourselves, again.
I have to disagree with you here Beth. Respectfully. Calvert isn’t losing that district. You could have the best Democrat imaginable, and that person probably doesn’t win. The Democrats knew what they were doing when they passed prop 50. This district was designed to be this way
Hard to believe people are still voting for f-ing Ken Calvert. If Young Kim can consolidate the non-Calvert support she could win. I hope she gives it her best try.
Just think, had EKV not "moved" to OC then the November 2 ballot would have Ken Calvert (R) vs Lisa Ramirez (D) for CA 40 (Lisa likely would've passed Young Kim by several 1000 votes in the Primary)!
The statement that Esther and her family have not moved to CA40 is a recurring piece of misinformation. She moved to CA40 along with her whole family, and enrolled her kids in public school. Also, stating that without one candidate that another candidate would win is speculation, but would apply either way for the two candidates you are mentioning. There's also a voting transfer fallacy that's involved because some voters would not switch, would vote for a third candidate, or not vote at all. Examples of this exist in this forum. It's hard to say how such arguments would scale to the general voting population, though.
As much as the CA-40 situation sucks, I'm old enough to remember when most House districts in OC were red. Back then, I volunteered for the doomed Steve Young campaign and was represented by Darrell Issa, then Ed Royce 😡
::le sigh:: I'm proud of the effort both Lisa and Joe put forth. I'm *super* happy to see the slim margin between Lisa and EKV. School is done soon, hopefully people will put the focus back on their children and not on petty politics until they are grown and aren't so dependent on having a peaceful household to thrive in as school children do.
I appreciate all the comments made, especially yours Steve, but I think they’re premature. I remember when Katie Porter overtook Mimi Walters on Day Five of vote counting. And Katie was losing by several thousand votes. The jello ain’t jiggling…
The CA-40 race exhausted me. Rightly or wrongly, I spent a lot of time advocating for Democrats to consolidate behind a candidate I believed actually had a chance to win.
I was wrong about Lisa Ramirez. She polled much better than I ever thought she would, and I owe her an apology for that misread.
That said, I'm still perplexed by the refusal of some candidates to step aside when they clearly had, at best, a snowball's chance in hell of advancing. At some point, campaign managers, consultants, and party leaders need to take responsibility and have honest conversations about political reality instead of encouraging vanity campaigns that divide support and resources.
Winning elections is not about satisfying individual egos; it's about building a coalition that can actually prevail. If Democrats are serious about advancing their values, they need to become more strategic and disciplined about candidate recruitment and consolidation.
The ultimate goal isn't simply to make a statement or run a campaign—it's to win seats, take back House and Senate leadership, and put Democrats in a position to govern. Sometimes that requires candidates with little path to victory to put the bigger mission ahead of personal ambition.
I always watch the Total Ballots Left to Process reports. Right now, about 513,000 ballots have been counted but an estimated 197,350 (a number that will increase) are waiting to be processed and counted.
Lisa ran a strong campaign because people believed in her. I hate Calvert and YK, but I don't regret for one second knocking on doors for Lisa, or posting in support of her (or trolling Esther online, tbh). She's a great person and a really good candidate. Everyone in her campaign was positive and believed in her throughout. I agree that she should run for local office and keep doing good for the community.
This was a supremely strange race, and if Esther really wanted to get the others to step aside, she would have had to be magnanimous in a way that she never has been in her entire life. She would need a character transplant.
Her failures are her own. I was literally looking for an excuse to vote for her up until April, when it became clear she was both batshit crazy and mean. I was not the only one.
I hope she goes back to LA. I really don't want to run into her at Cinepolis or Target. I mean, she won't know who I am, but I will give her the stinkeye.
I think one thing Dems really must take away from this race, and the Governor's race, is that money is not the end-all. People will respond to authentic candidates and calls to action. That is why Lisa did so well despite the funding deficit.
I would say there are take-aways for Dems - Money and Meanness are not the end-alls.
This world needs more candidates like Lisa. She has character, she has class. I wish her well and look forward to seeing more of her around Orange County politics.
This race gets a big "A" - for Apathy. Allow me to explain. Canvassing yesterday I was DUMBFOUNDED at the number of people who had no idea it was election day. My great grandmother (a non-citizen immigrant from Ireland) used to get dressed to the nines to be taken out for the day to vote all over North Jersey for any Irish candidate back in the 1910s. AND THERE WASN'T EVEN TELEVISION TO REMIND HER. What the hell is going on??
We had a divisive, trumpy - "I don't care if you don't like me", one dimensional candidate with money that sucked the air out of the race. And, according to the numbers in the returns, three candidates that no voter could pick out of a lineup, that somehow garnered 6,000+ votes. Pardon my Irish, but WTF???
And then we had two candidates - one great hope and one longshot. Joe Kerr is a decent guy with good intentions. I would love to have a beer with him sometime. And finally, Lisa. A candidate who connected with everyone she interacted with. A candidate who was out there, all over the place, because it was important to her to know the district she wanted to represent. A candidate that could have really made a difference, if not for apathy.
Good news is, she's not done. She's just getting started. And if you are apathetic you will continue to say - CA 40 will never elect a "D". Well then, you didn't talk to the people I talked to. But again, apathy. The time is NOW to look for a cure for it. It would be nice if we could count on CADEM, but what they know about supporting long shots and winning where they shouldn't could fill a thimble with room left over.
Never say never. Even the Vikings will win a Superbowl - someday. Lisa is not the Vikings, she is the Red Sox or the Cubs...she will be back, with and she will be a formidable candidate.
PS - is someone monitoring CdC for the moving van to arrive??
Thanks for all the fun Jeff - glad you'll be sticking around.
Your point about ethnic stereotyping and voting strategy is a valid one. In Chicago, certain non-Irish candidates changed their names to classically Irish ones in order to get such votes and it worked. And locally, there's the Sagel race where the challenger (unsuccessfully) tried to force the candidate to include her ethnic Indian sounding middle name. Ethnic arguments were also cleverly used in the CA40 race, too, and when I say cleverly, I mean using code words with multiple meanings so as to still have plausible deniability against hate speech.
Your point about voter apathy is consistent with what I've observed during this election cycle, too. Apathy and low voter turnout mean that each vote has higher significance in the total. This has been a key strategy in overturning small local races such as school boards and city councils, with organized special interest groups along with physical threats against those in office who bow out to protect their families.
Would definitely like to hear more about the coded ethnic arguments in this race you're referring to. Either my antenna isn't attuned or I've got a blind spot. Also, who's been receiving threats of violence for serving on local school boards and city councils?
Hooray! You didn't relocate to Guam. Great wrap up of the CA-40 race. I do wish the Dems could have run a strong, empathetic, civic-minded candidate but I any event, bye-bye to EKV.
We had too many people on the ballot, that’s why we didn’t win. Total up democratic votes and we easily beat Calvert. Our top two (both intelligent women) did very well. Yes, one of the candidates moved into District 40, and the other lives outside of District 40. Does that truly matter at this point? The bottom line is we lost and the sad part is that we beat ourselves, again.
I have to disagree with you here Beth. Respectfully. Calvert isn’t losing that district. You could have the best Democrat imaginable, and that person probably doesn’t win. The Democrats knew what they were doing when they passed prop 50. This district was designed to be this way
Appreciate your comment Beth, respectful of both of the top two vote-getting Democrat candidates.
Hard to believe people are still voting for f-ing Ken Calvert. If Young Kim can consolidate the non-Calvert support she could win. I hope she gives it her best try.
Just think, had EKV not "moved" to OC then the November 2 ballot would have Ken Calvert (R) vs Lisa Ramirez (D) for CA 40 (Lisa likely would've passed Young Kim by several 1000 votes in the Primary)!
The statement that Esther and her family have not moved to CA40 is a recurring piece of misinformation. She moved to CA40 along with her whole family, and enrolled her kids in public school. Also, stating that without one candidate that another candidate would win is speculation, but would apply either way for the two candidates you are mentioning. There's also a voting transfer fallacy that's involved because some voters would not switch, would vote for a third candidate, or not vote at all. Examples of this exist in this forum. It's hard to say how such arguments would scale to the general voting population, though.
As much as the CA-40 situation sucks, I'm old enough to remember when most House districts in OC were red. Back then, I volunteered for the doomed Steve Young campaign and was represented by Darrell Issa, then Ed Royce 😡
Honestly I’m just grateful I no longer have Young Kim representing me… let this MAGA mud fight stay far away from me.
You're lucky if you fall outside this insane district now. I am still like two stoplights within it.
I’m so sorry! It’s all going to go back in a few years at least. I’m hoping Young Kim really loses steam by then and I can have a liberal rep.
Can you clarify what you mean by "It’s all going to go back in a few years at least"?
Maps expire in 2030! It’ll go back to our neutral redistricting comission
Ah, the redistricting yes. It will still be MAGA with Young Kim, just less Republican leaning.
"Like many of you, I’m learning as I go along." - Brilliant words from a brilliant writer. Thanks for all the work you do Jim.
Or Jeff. :)
::le sigh:: I'm proud of the effort both Lisa and Joe put forth. I'm *super* happy to see the slim margin between Lisa and EKV. School is done soon, hopefully people will put the focus back on their children and not on petty politics until they are grown and aren't so dependent on having a peaceful household to thrive in as school children do.
Well in the 40th we had to take one for the team. Now hopefully the Reps and spend a boatload of money on the race and neglect other races.
Lisa, we're proud of you!!
I appreciate all the comments made, especially yours Steve, but I think they’re premature. I remember when Katie Porter overtook Mimi Walters on Day Five of vote counting. And Katie was losing by several thousand votes. The jello ain’t jiggling…
The CA-40 race exhausted me. Rightly or wrongly, I spent a lot of time advocating for Democrats to consolidate behind a candidate I believed actually had a chance to win.
I was wrong about Lisa Ramirez. She polled much better than I ever thought she would, and I owe her an apology for that misread.
That said, I'm still perplexed by the refusal of some candidates to step aside when they clearly had, at best, a snowball's chance in hell of advancing. At some point, campaign managers, consultants, and party leaders need to take responsibility and have honest conversations about political reality instead of encouraging vanity campaigns that divide support and resources.
Winning elections is not about satisfying individual egos; it's about building a coalition that can actually prevail. If Democrats are serious about advancing their values, they need to become more strategic and disciplined about candidate recruitment and consolidation.
The ultimate goal isn't simply to make a statement or run a campaign—it's to win seats, take back House and Senate leadership, and put Democrats in a position to govern. Sometimes that requires candidates with little path to victory to put the bigger mission ahead of personal ambition.
Thanks for your coverage.
I always watch the Total Ballots Left to Process reports. Right now, about 513,000 ballots have been counted but an estimated 197,350 (a number that will increase) are waiting to be processed and counted.