◼ There’s a fresh bounce in the step of many California Republicans after this week’s election, and a fresh cause for optimism after decades of declining influence. - OC Register
...In the Senate District 34 race, Nguyen, an Orange County supervisor and former Garden Grove Councilwoman, was beating Democratic former Assemblyman Jose Solorio 60 percent to 40 percent, as of Wednesday’s tallies.
Kim, a longtime aide to Rep. Ed Royce, was beating incumbent Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, 56 percent to 44 percent, in Wednesday’s tallies. Both races were predicted to be key to whether Republicans blocked Democrats’ supermajority.
Other Republican Asian women winning in Orange County include Ling Ling Chang in tri-county Assembly District 55, and two candidates for county supervisor, Korean American Michelle Steel and Japanese American Lisa Bartlett.
“Republicans had some good candidates and they targeted vulnerable candidates – and they made the most of those vulnerabilities,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of CSU Los Angeles’ Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs.
Republicans were also helped by the GOP wave of popular sentiment nationwide and by record-low turnout. In Orange County, Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley estimated turnout would be 42.3 percent when the remaining mail, provision and paper polling place ballots were tallied.
That would be the lowest in the county for a general election since at least 1944. Kelley said similar trends were being seen the state.
