May 13, 2020
A huge GOP blowout in Garcia's CA-25 House race win — with a wait for the ballot harvest
By Monica Showalter
Has a mighty swing of the political pendulum finally come in California? Has political sleaze finally flipped a Democrat stronghold? Have the blue-state lockdown orders finally snapped voters to their senses?
Sure looks like it — a red shockwave, as Breitbart News put it. Former Navy fighter pilot Mike Garcia, a Republican endorsed by President Trump, looks set for a huge upset win in California's special election for House District 25. At last count, he had a 12-percentage-point margin of victory.
According to the Ventura County Star:
Republican Mike Garcia assumed a commanding lead over Democrat Christy Smith in a nationally watched special election Tuesday for a 25th Congressional District both parties see as their turf.
As of midnight, with more than 142,000 votes counted in an election conducted almost totally by mail because of COVID-19, Garcia held 56% of the vote. Smith had 44% and trailed by more than 17,000 votes.
That's in the race for the congressional seat vacated by scandal-ridden Democrat Katie Hill, who resigned in disgrace after introducing us all to the word "throuple," and getting herself under investigation for an affair with a young intern and a political operative, strictly forbidden by Congress's own laws. She also treated us to naked pictures of her tattooed self smoking a bong, which surfaced on the internet, something she said was the work of an embittered ex-husband. Seems that being that third one in the throuple is tough. The Democrat went out with a proud red dress, casting her last vote for President Trump's impeachment, and has since been ignored by other congressmembers, despite her insistence that she still matters.
So yecch, sure enough, the voters out in Reagan Country, places like Simi Valley and the Santa Clarita-Valencia Ranch in the district, went in sufficient numbers for the Republican, apparently putting Garcia not just over the top, but over by a wide margin.
He ran a stellar campaign, according to former Gov. Pete Wilson, the grand old man of once-red California (and a really nice guy) who's the emblem of what California used to be before the state turned itself into a one-party-state blue disaster. Good candidates matter. His opponent, a far leftist, actually insulted Garcia's military record:
It always helps a good candidate to have a stupid opponent.
Did it help that the stupid opponent had the hearty endorsement of nearby Rep. Adam Schiff? Gonna guess no.
The implication was dramatic:
There's also reason to think the petty tyrannies of state and county officials over the coronavirus pandemic, supposedly temporary, but in reality extending, had something to do with this, as Thomas Lifson predicted earlier might happen:
But Garcia didn't hold a victory party just yet. Here was his tweet:
We all know why. The odious prospect of ballot-harvesting, to acquire just enough ballots to flip the race, is now in the works. Ballot-harvesters working on behalf of the Democrats are going into overtime to turn in another 17,000-plus uncast ballots, and they have till Friday to "find" them. Back when Hill won her seat in 2018, extensive use of ballot-harvesting had been employed, much more than in many other races. The famous video of "Lulu," a ballot-harvester at work, happened in this very district won by Hill.
The New York Times is reporting that mail-in ballots, which had been touted by Gov. Gavin Newsom, also were likely a factor — elderly white voters tend to embrace mail-in voting, while other voters, including Hispanics, are less likely to mail theirs in. That's a golden opportunity for the harvesters, who are on the job now, "helping" such voters to fill those ballots out, maybe even now, given that nobody has to prove much of anything about when the votes were collected because the chain of custody is entirely broken.
Still, it's a huge threshold to beat, and it's made worse for them by the fact that Judicial Watch recently forced Los Angeles County (where District 25 is partly situated) to clean up its voter rolls. Though we expect they will try to make it happen, it's way tougher when the margin starts out high and the empty mailboxes full of live ballots are less plentiful. Worse still, the Democrats, still smarting from repeated failed efforts to Get Trump, and saddled with a Jurassic standard-bearer for president, have an enthusiasm gap these days anyway. Can they find enough people to "find" 17,000-plus-one extra votes? We know they are capable of anything. All the same, cheating's harder when the race isn't close, and this one sure isn't.
The Times already is trying to say it's a nothingburger, too, claiming that the seat will be held for only about a half a year before a rematch, and Democrats may try to play it down.
If the ballot-harvesters don't manage to reverse this result, though, it's not a small deal; it's a big one, proof that California may not be as blue as the pundits claim it is and, with the factors cited, likely to see some repeats in some of these other historically red districts that have fallen to ballot-harvesting in the past. Nothingburger? Rest assured that they will continue to downplay this. But let's see how small a deal this really is.
A huge GOP blowout in Garcia's CA-25 House race win — with a wait for the ballot harvest
By Monica Showalter
Has a mighty swing of the political pendulum finally come in California? Has political sleaze finally flipped a Democrat stronghold? Have the blue-state lockdown orders finally snapped voters to their senses?
Sure looks like it — a red shockwave, as Breitbart News put it. Former Navy fighter pilot Mike Garcia, a Republican endorsed by President Trump, looks set for a huge upset win in California's special election for House District 25. At last count, he had a 12-percentage-point margin of victory.
According to the Ventura County Star:
Republican Mike Garcia assumed a commanding lead over Democrat Christy Smith in a nationally watched special election Tuesday for a 25th Congressional District both parties see as their turf.
As of midnight, with more than 142,000 votes counted in an election conducted almost totally by mail because of COVID-19, Garcia held 56% of the vote. Smith had 44% and trailed by more than 17,000 votes.
That's in the race for the congressional seat vacated by scandal-ridden Democrat Katie Hill, who resigned in disgrace after introducing us all to the word "throuple," and getting herself under investigation for an affair with a young intern and a political operative, strictly forbidden by Congress's own laws. She also treated us to naked pictures of her tattooed self smoking a bong, which surfaced on the internet, something she said was the work of an embittered ex-husband. Seems that being that third one in the throuple is tough. The Democrat went out with a proud red dress, casting her last vote for President Trump's impeachment, and has since been ignored by other congressmembers, despite her insistence that she still matters.
So yecch, sure enough, the voters out in Reagan Country, places like Simi Valley and the Santa Clarita-Valencia Ranch in the district, went in sufficient numbers for the Republican, apparently putting Garcia not just over the top, but over by a wide margin.
He ran a stellar campaign, according to former Gov. Pete Wilson, the grand old man of once-red California (and a really nice guy) who's the emblem of what California used to be before the state turned itself into a one-party-state blue disaster. Good candidates matter. His opponent, a far leftist, actually insulted Garcia's military record:
It always helps a good candidate to have a stupid opponent.
Did it help that the stupid opponent had the hearty endorsement of nearby Rep. Adam Schiff? Gonna guess no.
The implication was dramatic:
There's also reason to think the petty tyrannies of state and county officials over the coronavirus pandemic, supposedly temporary, but in reality extending, had something to do with this, as Thomas Lifson predicted earlier might happen:
But Garcia didn't hold a victory party just yet. Here was his tweet:
We all know why. The odious prospect of ballot-harvesting, to acquire just enough ballots to flip the race, is now in the works. Ballot-harvesters working on behalf of the Democrats are going into overtime to turn in another 17,000-plus uncast ballots, and they have till Friday to "find" them. Back when Hill won her seat in 2018, extensive use of ballot-harvesting had been employed, much more than in many other races. The famous video of "Lulu," a ballot-harvester at work, happened in this very district won by Hill.
The New York Times is reporting that mail-in ballots, which had been touted by Gov. Gavin Newsom, also were likely a factor — elderly white voters tend to embrace mail-in voting, while other voters, including Hispanics, are less likely to mail theirs in. That's a golden opportunity for the harvesters, who are on the job now, "helping" such voters to fill those ballots out, maybe even now, given that nobody has to prove much of anything about when the votes were collected because the chain of custody is entirely broken.
Still, it's a huge threshold to beat, and it's made worse for them by the fact that Judicial Watch recently forced Los Angeles County (where District 25 is partly situated) to clean up its voter rolls. Though we expect they will try to make it happen, it's way tougher when the margin starts out high and the empty mailboxes full of live ballots are less plentiful. Worse still, the Democrats, still smarting from repeated failed efforts to Get Trump, and saddled with a Jurassic standard-bearer for president, have an enthusiasm gap these days anyway. Can they find enough people to "find" 17,000-plus-one extra votes? We know they are capable of anything. All the same, cheating's harder when the race isn't close, and this one sure isn't.
The Times already is trying to say it's a nothingburger, too, claiming that the seat will be held for only about a half a year before a rematch, and Democrats may try to play it down.
If the ballot-harvesters don't manage to reverse this result, though, it's not a small deal; it's a big one, proof that California may not be as blue as the pundits claim it is and, with the factors cited, likely to see some repeats in some of these other historically red districts that have fallen to ballot-harvesting in the past. Nothingburger? Rest assured that they will continue to downplay this. But let's see how small a deal this really is.
