You might say 2018 is the year Rep. Dana Rohrabacher became notorious. Not that he wasn’t well-known before: Rohrabacher’s political life has been riven with controversy, including a check-kiting scandal and an open alliance with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. But until now, none of it seemed to matter: His coastal Orange County constituents have elected him for 15 consecutive terms through three rounds of redistricting, always by healthy-to-landslide margins.

Read More Election Coverage

Then came Trump, Russia and Robert Mueller. The special counsel’s investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election put an uncomfortable spotlight on the former Reagan speechwriter and his longstanding affection for the Kremlin. Last May, The New York Times revealed that the congressman even has a code name.

Rohrabacher’s hold over his district continued to weaken. Despite opposing the 2017 tax cuts — crafted by his Republican colleagues but unpopular in his upper-middle-class district — Rohrabacher secured less than a third of the vote in the June top-two primary. Democrats feared that their votes would be too diluted among eight candidates to grab a berth in the general election, but businessman Harley Rouda finished second, securing a spot for the Dems. Subsequent events — including a spoof documentary by Sacha Baron-Cohen in which Rohrabacher seemed to endorse arming school children — eroded the incumbent’s popularity even more.

By the time the polls closed in California Tuesday night and Rouda pulled ever so slightly ahead, the U.S. House of Representatives was firmly within the Democratic Party’s grasp for the first time since 2010. To some, Rouda’s apparent 1.4 percentage-point win (the race had not been officially called at press time) might have been anti-climactic. Not so for activist Bethany Webb, who has spent every Tuesday afternoon since January 2017 protesting on the idyllic promenade in front of Rohrabacher’s Huntington Beach office. “There are so many of us who have been on the ground working so hard for so long,” she says. “To us, it means everything.”

Even putting aside Rouda’s success, Webb says, the election of 2018 has fundamentally changed the comfortable district’s politics, engaging voters who either sat out previous elections or voted without thinking too hard. “Many, many more people know who their congressperson is, know who their assemblyperson is — their sheriff, their D.A. We think 2020 could be even better.”

Copyright Capital & Main

Last night, a national movement to create public banks had its eyes on the city of Los Angeles, where a down-ballot initiative, if passed, would have paved the way for the country’s second-largest city to explore the creation of a municipal bank, which advocates say could save taxpayers money by redirecting the interest the city pays to Wall Street bondholder to investments in infrastructure, housing and other local priorities.

Read More Election Coverage

But by a decisive 58 percent, L.A. city voted against Measure B and decided against asking the city to amend its charter to allow it to operate a municipal financial institution. The bank proposal was billed by advocates as a socially and environmentally responsible alternative to the large banks whose risky investments contributed to the financial crisis in 2008.

“Most voters vote ‘no’ on initiatives, which is not a bad instinct,” said David Jette, legislative director of Public Bank LA, the advocacy organization that has bootstrapped the campaign for Measure B. Jette, whose day job is financing tech start-ups, was sipping beer at The Old Chalet, a bar in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, where a group of millennial-age activists had gathered to wait for election results.

A long list of endorsements, including from Mayor Eric Garcetti and L.A. Council President Herb Wesson, and the $44,643 that the Yes on B campaign committee raised in support of the measure, proved inadequate to the task of convincing Angelenos to vote for the charter amendment. Still, supporters noted that victories do not always come right away and celebrated the growth in awareness of public banking since the start of the campaign in July.

Los Angeles advocates will work next with public bank supporters in Oakland, San Francisco and other California cities to pass state legislation that would pave the way for the formation of public banks, according to Trinity Tran, co-founder of Public Bank LA.

“Public banking presents a real, viable solution to Wall Street and it’s an idea that isn’t going to go away,” she wrote in an email on Wednesday morning.

Copyright Capital & Main

UPDATED November 13: Continued ballot counting by the Orange County Registrar of Voters tonight shows Democratic challenger Katie Porter passing two-term Congresswoman Mimi Walters in the race to represent the 45th District in the House. Porter currently has a 261-vote lead.

Since she emerged from the June primary as the Democratic challenger in the race to represent California’s 45th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, Katie Porter cut a careful path through the issues dividing her typically conservative inland Orange County district. She hit her opponent, incumbent Republican Rep. Mimi Walters, hard on her ties to the National Rifle Association, on her many votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, on her ties to President Trump. She played up hard Walters’ support for a new federal tax law that might end up costing many of her mostly upscale constituents money.

Read More Election Coverage

But she also supported Proposition 6, a state ballot measure that would have repealed the 12-cent gas tax levied to raise money for road repairs and transportation. Republicans had used the gas tax to cut short the state Senate tenure of at least one Orange County politician, Josh Newman. Porter, who called the tax “regressive,” knew that supporting the tax could pre-empt her political career altogether.

Will it be enough? As of Wednesday afternoon, Walters was leading her progressive challenger by more than three points. It might also have been too much: Porter’s Medicare-for-all, common-sense gun law, anti-tax reform message may have galvanized the liberal base in the traditionally conservative district, bringing out college students and Latino voters who might otherwise have stayed home. But many voters rejected the law professor’s egalitarian agenda and stuck with Walters, a former investment banker who sounded all the GOP notes on the immigrant threat and Nancy Pelosi’s socialism. In a district Trump lost by five points, Walters’ margin looks decisive if it holds.

Decisive, but not necessarily auspicious, says Alexa Macias, a political science professor at California State University, Northridge who leads a nonpartisan research team that studies and polls the district. “In her last race Mimi won by 17 points,” Macias says. In Walters’ first race two years earlier, she won by slightly more than 30 points. “Her margin has gotten narrower and narrower in every race,” Macias says. “That’s not what you expect from an incumbent that has not had a scandal.”

Win or lose, Macias says, Porter’s candidacy has established a beachhead. In the past, Republican candidates in the region haven’t faced much of a challenge, knowing all too well the reality of the area’s political tilt. This year, Porter was one of five primary candidates to line up for the chance to challenge an incumbent. “She’s opened the field to better and better candidates,” Macias says. “Mimi can expect 2020 to be even closer.”

Capital & Main

Was the victory of Democrat Mike Levin in the 49th Congressional District race a decisive one? It seems so. Levin’s roughly seven point victory over Republican Diane Harkey might make newcomers to the district – running from southern Orange County down the coast to northern San Diego – wonder how Republicans have dominated that stretch of California for so long.

Read More Election Coverage

Demographic shifts explain part of what happened. Educated high-tech workers have moved into the area, and Levin targeted Latinos and women in this “year of the woman.” Levin was also blessed with a weak opponent plagued by her husband’s financial scandals.

But perhaps something beyond political math was also taking place. Decades ago political scientist Walter Dean Burnham worried that American political parties had deteriorated to such an extent that they could not deal with critical national and international issues. Burnham lamented the decline in voting participation, particularly among the lower classes, and trained his analytical eye on “realignment” elections that led to durable shifts in political coalitions and public policy. The results in the 49th district could be such a realignment where a general political crisis can force a breakthrough and renewal.

One sign of how much has changed in the 49th is that Levin brought Bernie Sanders to campaign with him in the final week of the campaign, a risk in what most political observers regard as a “centrist” district. Sander’s message denouncing the state of our health care system and the cost of higher education is neither scary nor politically costly when it resonates with the realities of so many people’s lives.

Harkey ended her dispirited campaign by attempting to distance herself from Trump’s personality but supporting him on “substance,” meaning the “booming” economy she said he created.

For many voters, the “substance” now is their aesthetic and existential disgust at how President Trump is attempting to re-create our country.

The current battle may lead to the rebuilding of a political force on the progressive side that is able to fight more effectively by forging broader, more sustainable coalitions. That rebuilding is certainly under way in the 49th Congressional District.

Copyright Capital & Main

UPDATE, Nov. 13: The Associated Press tonight has declared Democratic challenger Josh Harder to be the winner over GOP incumbent Jeff Denham in the hard-fought 10th District race. According to AP, “With votes continuing to be counted, Harder’s edge has grown after Denham grabbed a slim lead on Election Day. After the latest update, Harder had a 4,919-vote lead out of about 185,000 votes counted, a margin too large for the congressman to overcome with remaining votes.”

A TV ad for incumbent Republican Congressman Jeff Denham stated that his Democratic challenger Josh Harder “shares Nancy Pelosi’s liberal San Francisco values.” The ad, running in the Sacramento media market and on digital platforms throughout California’s 10th District, went on to state that Harder, if victorious, would leave residents of this Central Valley district with dramatically worse health care options.

Read More Election Coverage

It was a puzzling claim, considering Denham voted with his party to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, several times, and voted for the Republican replacement, the unpopular American Health Care Act.

As of Wednesday morning, Jeff Denham clung to a lead of 50.6 percent of the vote, with Harder claiming 49.4 percent. While 100 percent of precincts had reported, the race had not been called, pending the counting of mail-in and provisional ballots. Democratic activists said enthusiasm and campaign cash were up. Harder raised more than $7 million in this cycle to Denham’s $4.4 million.

Back in February, most of the volunteer canvassers trying to boost Democratic registration in Modesto, the heart of the district, were from the Bay Area. They said they had driven east to turn this purplish district solid blue. CA-10, which voted for Hillary Clinton by three points in 2016 while giving Denham a similar margin of victory, was one of the top Democratic targets for flipping in 2018.

Whether Denham or Harder end up winning, the trend of people relocating from the pricey Bay Area could end up re-shaping the electorate in the district. New research from BuildZoom and the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley shows a growing connection between the Bay Area and its neighbor to the east, CA-10. “More than 55 percent of Bay Area out-migrants in households earning less than $50,000 a year stayed in California, [heading to] more affordable markets, such as the Sacramento region or Central Valley metro areas, like Modesto or Fresno,” the study said.

Copyright Capital & Main