California Democrats hope to stave off disaster in winnable House races

SAN FRANCISCO -- For more than a year, Democrats have talked gleefully about the prospect of flipping seven or more GOP-held House seats in California. But now they're struggling just to get candidates on the November ballot.

California is the land of the top-two primary, and this year its effect is being felt with a vengeance.

In three Orange County congressional districts, there's a real chance Republicans could finish one-two in Tuesday's primary, shutting Democrats out of the November election for what they are convinced are winnable seats.

``None of this would be an issue if we didn't have this ridiculous top-two system,'' said Katie Merrill, a Democratic consultant in Berkeley who is working with Fight Back California to flip those GOP seats. ``Now we're fighting to get a major party candidate into a wide-open election in a competitive district.''

It wasn't so long ago when everything seemed so simple for the Democrats.

In seven of California's 14 Republican-held congressional districts, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Two veteran GOP officeholders, Reps. Ed Royce of Fullerton and Darrell Issa of Vista, announced that they would retire rather than face bruising re-election battles. Dozens of enthusiastic -- and in many cases, wealthy -- Democratic candidates jumped in, anxious to show California's continuing resistance to Trump, his policies and his supporters.

Democratic leaders became so giddy that they even targeted three more Republican districts, each so deeply red that the GOP incumbents have seldom had to talk to Democrats, much less run against them.

But both the political scene and the tone have changed dramatically in recent weeks, with Democrats now looking to lower the sky-high expectations as they struggle to avoid a primary election debacle that could kill the party's hopes of winning the 23 seats nationwide it needs to take back control of the House in November.

That's welcome news for Republicans, who have been all out to defend their California seats.

``National Democrats have made California and especially Southern California the focus of their efforts, but now have spent $7 million to try and avert a disaster,'' said Jesse Hunt, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. ``They are not in a position of strength.''

Dealing with the top-two primary, where the leading vote-getters, regardless of party, move to the fall campaign, is a new experience for the national party, said Drew Godinich of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

``If Democrats don't get out to vote, there won't be Democrats on some ballots,'' he said.

And while voters in those districts might not like Trump, that doesn't mean they have a newly discovered love for Democratic politicians. The GOP still holds a registration edge in most of those districts, and plenty of Democrats there lean conservative rather than progressive.

That GOP tilt is even more dangerous in a primary, when Republicans typically vote in greater proportions than in November elections, which bring out more Democrats.

``These are districts where Democrats have never competed; they're unknown territory for us,'' Godinich said. ``Not only were these districts not in play in 2016, no one was even talking about them.''

The main struggle now is in and around the longtime GOP bastion of Orange County, where Democrats are doing everything they can to keep Republicans from sweeping Tuesday's primaries.

``We're really focused on three districts where we're concerned about being locked out,'' said Merrill, the Democratic consultant. ``We're doing a lot of stuff to knock some Republicans out and boost some Democrats up.''

While the hardball politics may be effective, is isn't always pretty.

One ad by the Democratic committee slams GOP Assemblyman Rocky Chavez of Oceanside, who is running to replace Issa in the 49th District, which straddles the line between San Diego and Orange counties.

The TV spot charges that while Chavez promised he would oppose wasteful spending, he ``voted for the biggest budget in state history'' and ``even voted to raise your gas and energy costs.''

What it doesn't say, though, is that the budget the Democrats are maligning was written by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and passed by the Democratic-controlled Legislature. The gas and energy cost hikes came when Chavez was one of the few Republicans to back Brown's effort to extend the state's landmark cap-and-trade law to combat climate change.

Republicans Diane Harkey, a member of the state Board of Equalization, and Kristin Gaspar, a San Diego County supervisor, are also running for the seat, but Democrats took on Chavez probably because they didn't like the idea of running against a retired Marine colonel in a district with thousands of retired and active-duty Marines.

Then there's the 48th District in the heart of Orange County, which Democrats -- and Republicans -- are convinced is the most likely district to put two Republicans in the general election.

While GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa has represented the district since 1988, the area's changing demographics, along with plenty of unhappiness with the idea of Trump as president, gave Clinton a narrow win there in 2016.

The House race attracted a pair of Democratic novices, Harley Rouda, an attorney working for his family's real estate business, and Hans Keirstead, a medical researcher who runs a biomedical firm. They each raised more than $1.6 million and have spent the money attacking Rohrabacher and each other. Omar Siddiqui, an attorney and engineer with nearly $1 million to spend, also joined the contest, spreading the potential Democratic vote even thinner.

But Rohrabacher's well-known eccentricities, combined with his reputation as Russian President Vladimir Putin's favorite congressman, began to wear thin with Republicans in the district. Scott Baugh, a former GOP assemblyman who had said he would never run against Rohrabacher, changed his mind and jumped into the race.

With two well-known Republicans running in a district where the GOP has a 40 percent to 30 percent registration advantage, alarm bells began to go off for the Democrats. Just last week, the Democrats' House Majority PAC put up a TV ad pointing out a nearly $50,000 fine Baugh paid in 1999 for violations of the state's Political Reform Act.

Republicans aren't responsible for all the Democrats' problems this year. Their own candidates get part of the blame.

In the 39th District, where Royce is retiring, two leading Democrats, Gil Cisneros and Andy Thorburn have raised more than $7 million between them, with Mai-Khanh Tran adding another $1.4 million. Sam Jammal is another well-financed Democrat, making what party leaders see as a worrisome surfeit of candidates.

With that sort of money already being tossed around, none of the candidates is willing to step aside. The internecine attacks became so virulent and personal that Eric Bauman, the state Democratic chairman, was forced to call Cisneros and Thorburn and get them to agree to worry more about beating the Republicans and less about battering each other.

It's a similar situation in the 49th District, where four top-tier and well-funded Democrats -- Paul Kerr, Sara Jacobs, Mike Levin and Doug Applegate, who just missed beating Issa two years ago -- are matched up against the three GOP officeholders in a race that's viewed as a toss-up.

In these and other districts, Democrats remain convinced they can oust the GOP incumbents -- if they can get past the primary.

``The key to winning in November is Democratic turnout in the primary, and there are groups working throughout the state to make sure Democrats turn out,'' Merrill said.

But the months of nasty back-and-forth have come at a cost, said Thad Kousser, a University of California at San Diego political science professor who wakes at home each day to an ever-growing stack of partisan mailers.

``The damage to democracy is already being done,'' he said. ``None of what we're hearing is about ideas, but about who's most likely to win.''