CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– POLITICS
May 20, 2009 – 12:16 a.m.
Democrat Chu, Republican Chu to Face Off for Vacant California House Seat
By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff
Democrat Judy Chu , a member of California’s tax equalization board, won the crucial Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s special primary election for the state’s vacant 32nd Congressional District seat.
Chu now will be heavily favored to win the July 14 special general election for the seat that former incumbent Hilda L. Solis vacated in February to become President Barack Obama ’s Labor secretary. The 32nd District, located in east Los Angeles and some near-in suburbs, is overwhelmingly Democratic.
In fact, the biggest problem Chu is likely to face in the runoff round is name confusion. The winner of the Republican nomination is Betty Tom Chu, a Monterey Park city councilwoman, whom local news reports say is related to Judy Chu by marriage.
A dozen candidates of all parties appeared together on Tuesday’s special election ballot. None came close to achieving the majority vote needed to win the seat outright under California law governing special election primaries, thus sending the top vote-getter from each party on to that July 14 general election.
With nearly all precincts reporting in the early morning hours Wednesday, Judy Chu led all candidates with 32 percent of the vote. Democratic state Sen. Gil Cedillo, her strongest competitor in the race, had 23 percent.
Betty Chu had a bit more than 10 percent and a margin of about 2 percentage points to edge out businesswoman Teresa Hernandez for the Republican nomination. Libertarian candidate Chris Agrella drew just 1 percent of the total vote but moves on to the general election because he is the party’s only candidate in the primary.
The Democrats’ big advantage in the district was underscored by the cumulative votes for each party’s primary candidates. The Democrats combined took more than 73 percent of the vote, to 25 percent for the Republicans.
Judy Chu and Cedillo were widely regarded as the leading candidates to succeed Solis. The front-runners led all candidates in money, big-name endorsements and organization throughout the short campaign.
Hispanics make up 62 percent of district residents and 18 percent are Asian, according to the 2000 census. Another 15 percent of residents are non-Hispanic whites.
Chu is Asian-American, but has championed her crossover appeal and earned high-profile endorsements from members of the Latino community such as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
She also received endorsements from members of Congress, including Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez , who broke with fellow Hispanics in the House to support Chu. The state Democratic Party, several major union groups and the powerful political action committee EMILY’s List, which supports Democratic women candidates who favor abortion rights, also endorsed Chu.
Cedillo, though, was backed by La Opinion, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the country, along with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, additional House members and other state and local officials.
Solis was a prominent Hispanic member of Congress, and some in the district’s majority constituency contend that the district should continue Hispanic representation. But Cedillo, though a well-known political veteran, was one of several Latinos on the special election primary ballot.
Democrat Emanuel Pleitez, a Hispanic who is a former member of Barack Obama ’s presidential transition team, was running third among all candidates with 14 percent of the vote. Pleitez was the target of attacks by Cedillo, who sent out direct mail contending that the 26-year-old candidate was too inexperienced and immature to represent the district.
The Democrats’ track record in 32nd District politics suggests strongly that the party will hold this seat. District voters last November supported Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee over Republican John McCain by 68 percent to 30 percent, and Republicans failed to field a candidate against Solis in her past three House re-election contests.
Additional votes, including damaged ballots and some vote-by-mail ballots, will be processed in the following days. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk is tentatively scheduled to certify the vote May 22.
Comments
"...just 1%..." Nothing wrong with allowing winner of each PARTY to advance in the event of an outright majority win by anyone, but the runofff really ought to be further winnowed, perhaps to first-place poster of each party who also clears a decent threshold, say at least 20.5% of the total in the initial balloting.
It mattered not to me whether Judy Chu or Gil Cedillo prevailed on the Democratic side in this primary, but (as a non-Californian who has served on an elected partisan committee in my county) I always think it's a bad mistake for political parties to play favorites between members of their party during a primary election campaign. Their proper role is to stay neutral until their party's voters have selected their choice and only then, like it or not, support the winner in the general election campaign. All this playing of favorites can do is exacerbate such internal divisions as exist and make success in a general election at least a little more difficult. Since the Democrats are so predominant in California 32, that won't matter so much. Elsewhere, however, it can matter.
Good idea Nicholas! We should fix the laws to minimize voter choice so that the democratic process is as supressed as possible. If the race had been reversed, in a republican district, would you be so inclined to remove the CHANCE to run on a unified ticket? Arbitrary thresholds on candidacy only result in mathimatical fraud of the election process. In your scenario, if a Dem obtained 40% and three Republicans had 20% then the dem would win...even if all the republicans might (can't know without an election) get behind the primary winner. The real problem is that plurality voting is the least representative of the will of the people. We should move to IRV or better yet Approval Voting. We must eliminate the concept of "a wasted vote".
To: Daniel K I too have no objection to "Instant Runoff Voting" (IRV). But to contend that some bloke or sheila with a "1%" or similarly minuscule support should be permitted to advance to any runoff merely because that person is the top (or sole) vote-getter of a party is just balderdash!
Just to be clear, this is not a run-off -- it is a general election and therefore makes sense that the top vote getter of each party would advance -- even the libertarian who earned 1%.
Why isn't this election illegal? SCOTUS already declared open partisan jungle primaries that pick nominees for each party unconstitutional. This election should have been, if no one cleared 50%+1, the top 2 finishers advancing to July 14 regardless of party. Otherwise this first election should have been a closed partisan primary to pick nominees.
Judy Chu won this heavily Democratic Latino district because she cultivated enough cross-over appeal in an area where she moved up the political ladder (from school board to city council to state assembly to state board of equalization to congress). Latinos lost mainly because the candidate they all backed, state senator Gil Cedillo, had to move into an area he was not so familiar with. In a district with so many ambitious pols it is amazing that the best the Latino community could do was endorse a carpetbagging legislator who is good at running negative campaigns not not good at earning the trust of his new, wouldbe consituents. Judy Chu's long record of local service made her a known local commodity.
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