Gavin Newsom Wins Spot in California Election for Governor

LOS ANGELES — Gavin Newsom, the Democratic lieutenant governor and former mayor of San Francisco, took a major step Tuesday in his bid to become California’s next governor, capturing one of two spots on the November ballot as the state moved closer to the end of the era of Gov. Jerry Brown.

The fight for the second spot in the general election was between Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat and former Los Angeles mayor, and John Cox, a Republican business executive whose campaign was lifted by an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who reiterated his support with a tweet as voters were heading to the polls Tuesday morning.

But the results were more muddled in the most-watched races here: Seven congressional districts, carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now held by Republicans, that Democrats are aiming to capture this November — a linchpin of their strategy to take back control of the House.

In at least three of those races, Democrats were battling to avoid getting shut out from the November ballot under California’s “top two” election system: The two leading vote-getters, regardless of party, will go on to face each other in November. The races appear to be close, and provisional ballots and votes sent by mail could be critical and take days to count.

In the race for U.S. Senate, Dianne Feinstein easily won a spot on the November ballot in what by every indication looks like an easy race this fall — no matter who ends up running against her.

California may be the single most important battleground for Democrats in their drive to claim a majority in Congress. Trump is intensely unpopular in the state, and a broad backlash against his administration could help Democrats seize perhaps a third of the seats they need to regain power.

Yet California’s unusual open-primary system has become a difficult obstacle for Democrats, as a horde of candidates on the left have divided up Democratic votes and threatened to let Republicans monopolize the general election.

Republicans have raced to avert a shutout of their own in the governor’s race. Washington Republicans — including Trump and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader — had been eager to boost Cox into a fight with Newsom, to head off the possibility that no Republican would be on the top of the November ballot. That could dampen Republican turnout in a year when Democrats are making their all-out effort to capture more than half a dozen Republican-held seats.

Voting took place across the state under a cloud of confusion as voters tried to navigate their way through the top two system. And in a potentially unnerving sign for some Democrats, the Los Angeles County clerk revealed Tuesday night that a printing error had improperly left about 119,000 names off voting rosters in the area — a development that Villaraigosa called “infuriating” as he urged affected voters to cast provisional ballots.

Earlier in the day, at Laguna Beach City Hall, Aggie Dougherty had to thumb through the sample ballot packet she carried with her to remember which Democrat she had chosen after more than a dozen candidates inundated the 48th Congressional District with campaign material in their bid to unseat Dana Rohrabacher, a particularly embattled Republican.

Dougherty, 67, a bookkeeper, settled on Harley Rouda, the candidate endorsed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Still, as she went into the voting booth, she realized she had to check to remember whom she had picked off the long list of Democrats.

“Oh, right,” she said. “Harley.”

Turnout appeared light during much of the day. A June primary historically has not drawn voters to the polls in particularly high numbers — even one that has drawn this kind of national attention. About 2.5 million votes had been received by mail as of Tuesday. (California voters are permitted to vote by mail through the end of Election Day).

Which is not to say the candidates were not trying to pique voters’ interest.

“I literally could not go through my workday without getting flooded with calls,” said Tim Cain, 52, a video game developer in Orange County. “I basically said, my phone is no longer available.”

With voting in progress, Trump prodded California conservatives to support Cox again on Tuesday morning, promising on Twitter that the long-shot Republican would “make a BIG difference” as governor. And the president encouraged Republicans to turn out in the congressional elections, offering a version of the argument his party is expected to deliver across the country this fall: “Keep our country out of the hands of High Tax, High Crime Nancy Pelosi.”

But should Cox win the second spot, the election for governor will, in all likelihood, have been effectively decided Tuesday night. This state is overwhelmingly Democratic — Hillary Clinton defeated Trump here by nearly 4 million votes — and it has been more than a decade since a Republican won statewide election. Newsom, well aware of that dynamic, ran advertisements intended to boost Cox’s standing with Republican voters in hopes of running against him this fall.

By contrast, a contest against Villaraigosa could be more difficult for Newsom. Villaraigosa enjoyed significance financial backing from advocates of charter schools during the primary — including Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, and Eli Broad, the Los Angeles philanthropist — and that would likely continue through the general election campaign. And Villaraigosa has positioned himself as more of a moderate than Newsom, on issues like single-payer health care, which could help him appeal to moderate voters.

In congressional races, it has been national Democrats straining to overcome the “top two” system. In three Southern California seats — dotting the area between Los Angeles and San Diego — Democrats have been concerned that disarray on the left could allow Republicans to seize the top two slots and block Democrats from contesting districts that are among the most coveted in the country.

The national Democratic Party has spent millions in recent weeks to attack Republican candidates in television ads, aiming to drive down their support and create more space for Democratic candidates to rise.

And national Democratic leaders have moved forcefully on their own side to endorse two favored Democrats in chaotic nomination fights: They have backed Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran who won the California lottery, and Rouda, a wealthy real estate executive, for a pair of Republican-held districts in Orange County that Clinton carried in the presidential election.

But the map of important congressional races in California extends well beyond the Southern California seats where Democrats fear a “top two” fiasco. The party is also choosing candidates to oppose vulnerable Republicans in the Central Valley and elsewhere in the suburbs around Los Angeles, where Trump’s policies on immigration, taxes and health care have put sitting lawmakers in deep peril. Anneliese Gelberg, 21, wanted to vote for Jess Phoenix, one of three female Democratic candidates running for the House seat in California’s 25th Congressional District north of Los Angeles. For one, Gelberg said, she was more inclined to vote for women. She also liked Phoenix’s policies.

But rather than casting her vote for Phoenix on Tuesday, she said she voted for one of Phoenix’s competitors — Bryan Caforio.

“I knew that she didn’t have a lot of backing or support,” Gelberg said, over a lunch of grilled cheese and fries. In the end, she added, she wanted a Democrat to beat the Republican incumbent, Steve Knight, and she thought Caforio had a better chance.

In the governor’s race, Newsom, 50, had long been viewed as a leading candidate to replace Brown, a Democrat retiring at the end of the year. He has spent much of the past 15 years preparing for this moment, and that was evident in the strength of his fundraising and a broad base of support.

The contest for governor marks the end of a long chapter in California history. Brown, 80, is stepping down because of term limits. He has served two terms now — and two terms in the 1970s — and leaves office popular and generally respected. But Brown has struck a decidedly moderate note during his years in Sacramento — he was well known for pushing back at what he saw as excesses by the Legislature when it came to spending or lawmaking — at a time when energy in the Democratic Party was moving to the left.

This election is taking place at a critical time for the state, as it is enmeshed in a protracted with the Trump administration on range of different battlefields, including environmental protections, immigration and offshore oil drilling.