Under California law, all candidates for voter-nominated office (like the U.S. Senate) are listed on the same ballot and the top two placing candidates, regardless of party, proceed to the general election.
Advertisement
By most accounts, state Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove, are sitting atop the field of 34 candidates.
A Harris-Sanchez runoff is notable for another reason, too: It effectively ensures that a woman of color will be elected to the U.S. Senate for only the third time in the nation’s history. Sanchez had received 539,630, putting her in second place. A well-known progressive, Harris has taken strong stances for gun control and environmental protection, and played a large part in securing $26 billion from the National Mortgage Settlement, after tough bargaining with banks following the Great Recession. Already, Harris has raised more than $11 million during the primary, while Sanchez raised a respectable $3.5 million. If either is elected, California will have a woman of color representing the state. But factors including a recent surge in voter registration among Latinos will make her a strong competitor in the general election, analysts said.
California voters adopted the primary rule change in 2010, and this year marks the first time the state has had an open Senate seat in 24 years.
Harris is leading among early Latino voters, who are very dissimilar to the rest of the Latino voter population.
Harris, 51, has been buoyed by greater name recognition statewide, having twice won election to her current post while Sanchez has been more of a local phenomenon since upsetting Republican incumbent Bob Dornan in 1996.
The online survey of 15,000 voters – they were polled as they returned their ballots – was conducted for Capitol Weekly over the past two weeks by Sextant Strategies and Research, with data and tools from Political Data Inc., a political information marketing company with Republican and Democratic candidates. Harris is outright dominating the race with better than half of the vote among both Democrats and No Party Preference voters.
The idea of two Democrats emerging from the Senate primary on Tuesday is made more likely by the tight Democratic presidential primary also on the ballot in California.
Sanchez was born in Lynwood, a small city in L.A. County.
She went on to emphasize her American Dream background as the daughter of Mexican immigrants, her track record of working across the aisle in Washington, her focus on job creation and affordable college, and her experience on the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees. “We are totally going into uncharted territory”.
The Sanchez campaign is hoping that the presidential- year electorate, often younger and more racially diverse, will benefit her.
Sanchez, 56, steadied her campaign after a bumpy start when she had to apologize after a videotape surfaced showing her making a whooping cry in reference to Native Americans that brought her reprimands from fellow Democrats. The Democratic state attorney general bested Sanchez in all but five of California’s 58 counties and nearly beat the congresswoman in her home county, according to preliminary election returns. Sanchez can drive the storyline of the race, Merrill said, “but she is going to have to do a series of disruptive things to draw attention” and court Latinos and Republicans.
Advertisement
– Duf Sundheim, a Silicon Valley lawyer and another former chairman of the California Republican Party.
