For Democrats hoping that the 2018 midterm elections will deliver them a majority in the House of Representatives, the state of California represents a bastion of opportunities: several vulnerable GOP incumbents will face tough reelection fights in the year ahead. But while California is largely considered a haven for liberalism, seven of its 53 seats in the House of Representatives are at least 8 percentage points more favorable to the Republican Party than the nation as a whole. Hugging the eastern border of the state, these districts are largely more rural than their Eastern counterparts, and have conservative roots that can be traced for decades.
One such district, California’s Fourth, has been held by the Republican Party since 1993. Currently represented by Congressman Tom McClintock, the district encompasses a large swath of the Sierra Nevada. And while the incumbent has won his last four reelection bids by at least 20 percentage points, Democrats are hoping to give him a tough challenge in a year unfavorable to the GOP. Yet the Democratic efforts to unseat McClintock have hit numerous obstacles over the past year. These stumbling blocks are reflective of larger issues experienced by eager Democrats across the entire state of California, and may hamper Democratic efforts to retake the House majority.
Embattled Foes
The party’s first obstacle is an embittered primary battle between the two Democrats running in the district. While McClintock received only token challengers in his past reelection bids, two serious Democratic candidates have emerged to take him on this cycle: national security strategist Jessica Morse and former consular officer Regina Bateson. Both have raised surprisingly large sums of campaign funds for such a conservative district. While incumbent McClintock raised $215,000 in the final quarter of 2017, both Bateson and Morse outraised him, with $260,000 and $292,000 respectively. Morse even led McClintock in cash-on-hand $489,000 to $462,000.
But the overflowing Democratic coffers, while impressive, will likely be depleted by what is an increasingly contentious primary fight. California’s June primary features all candidates on the same ballot regardless of party, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the November ballot. In such a conservative district, Morse and Bateson are competing for a narrow portion of the electorate to get their name on the general election ballot, and their contest has gotten nasty as the competition has heated up. Bateson jumped on a report by The Sacramento Bee concluding that Morse “stretched” her resume to inflate her national security credentials. Morse, for her part, criticized Bateson after she filed to run in the primary despite the state party endorsing Morse over Bateson. Back in January, Bateson promised she would suspend her campaign should Morse win the endorsement. The divisive primary debate means that Democrats are largely attacking each other rather than the Republican opponent they hope to defeat in November.
Democrats can at least breathe a sigh of relief that McClintock has no prominent Republican challengers. In other California districts where a handful of Republicans face intensely fractured Democratic fields, Democrats may face top-two lockouts if voters fail to consolidate behind a candidate.
Rank and Title
Even the logistics of California’s ballots present an obstacle. Every candidate on the state’s June primary ballot has a ‘ballot designation,’ a three-word-or-less title giving that person’s position. For low-information voters, this designation can be important in influencing primary election outcomes. And while Regina Bateson will appear on the ballot as a ‘military security analyst,’ she took the extra length of issuing a successful legal challenge to rival Morse’s designation. Morse, who initially sought the ballot designation of ‘national security strategist,’ will instead have no ballot designation at all after California’s Secretary of State and a judge on the Sacramento Superior Court ruled the title misleading, since she had not worked in the national security sector since 2015.
The issue of the ballot designation has manifested in other prominent races in the state. In the gubernatorial race, for example, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been out of office for five years, leaving him unable to demarcate that experience on the ballot. Instead, he will have to designate himself a ‘public policy advisor.’ These high-profile cases have left some Californian electoral reformers doubting the utilities of such designations.
Awakening Incumbents
In a development that could be especially dangerous for Democrats, they seem to have lost the element of surprise in this red district. In almost every election cycle, an incumbent member of Congress is, as termed by political commentators, ‘caught sleeping.’ In the 2016 elections, for example, 12-term Florida incumbent John Mica failed to even hire a campaign manager after court-ordered redistricting made his seat more competitive than ever. Mica, who insisted that he was in no electoral danger until the bitter end of the campaign, lost to Democrat and political newcomer Stephanie Murphy by two points on election day.
While incumbents in historically red districts like McClintock’s seemed prime targets to be caught sleeping this cycle, many seem to be waking up to the threat of a Democratic wave. With the reporting deadline for the first quarter of fundraising in 2018 swiftly approaching, McClintock has aggressively stepped up his fundraising and campaigning, all while shoring up his conservative base by voting against the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill signed by the president in late March. The California GOP has stepped up its game as well, opening new field offices in competitive districts in Southern California. Democrats can no longer rely on Republicans in the state to sleep their way through election day, and will have to fight tooth and nail to make progress in the vestiges of red California.
Democrats still have many advantages heading into the midterms; with high enthusiasm and qualified candidates, liberal energy may be hard for Republican candidates to overcome. However, the oddities of the Californian electoral system and aggressive campaigning by incumbents could prove an indomitable barrier to Democratic ambitions—especially in a district as red as McClintock’s.