This certainly isn't going to dispel the recently floated notion that always red Orange County is on its way to turning blue: California's top three Democrats (and incumbents)–Governor Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Kamala Harris–all got more votes behind the Orange Curtain than the top GOP vote-getters in their primary races.
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Neel Kashkari Keeps (Tim Donnelly) Fear Alive!
Here's how it broke down with all the votes in from Orange County's 1,856 precincts, according to the county Registrar of Voters:
Governor
EDMUND G. 'JERRY' BROWN (D) 91,138 38.90%
NEEL KASHKARI (R) 70,380 30.00%
TIM DONNELLY (R) 45,784 19.50%
ANDREW BLOUNT (R) 6,653 2.80%
GLENN CHAMP (R) 4,412 1.90%
RICHARD WILLIAM AGUIRRE (R) 2,737 1.20%
ALMA MARIE WINSTON (R) 2,494 1.10%
CINDY L. SHEEHAN (PF) 2,453 1.00%
ROBERT NEWMAN 2,151 0.90%
LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ (G) 1,851 0.80%
AKINYEMI AGBEDE (D) 1,654 0.70%
'BO' BOGDAN AMBROZEWICZ 717 0.30%
JOE LEICHT 678 0.30%
RAKESH KUMAR CHRISTIAN 640 0.30%
JANEL HYESHIA BUYCKS 475 0.20%
Lieutenant Governor
GAVIN NEWSOM (D) 79,730 35.30%
RON NEHRING (R) 73,713 32.60%
DAVID FENNELL (R) 30,201 13.40%
GEORGE YANG (R) 22,245 9.80%
ERIC KOREVAAR (D) 10,642 4.70%
JENA F. GOODMAN (G) 4,033 1.80%
ALAN REYNOLDS (AE) 3,803 1.70%
AMOS JOHNSON (PF) 1,708 0.80%
Attorney General
KAMALA D. HARRIS (D) 85,161 37.90%
PHIL WYMAN (R) 35,014 15.60%
DAVID KING (R) 33,681 15.00%
RONALD GOLD (R) 32,315 14.40%
JOHN HAGGERTY (R) 24,465 10.90%
ORLY TAITZ 7,859 3.50%
JONATHAN JAECH (L) 6,033 2.70%
There are some caveats for Republicans, however. There was very low turnout in the open primary election. And in the governor's race, if you add together the votes of Neel Kashkari, the GOP nominee in November, and Tea Party fave Tim Donnelly, you come up with 116,164 Orange County votes to Brown's 91,138. Top that off with the other four GOP candidates on the ballot, and that total is pushed up to 132,460.
It's the same in the Newsom race, which included three Republicans. Add up the votes of GOP nominee Ron Nehring and also-ran Repubs David Fennell and George Yang and you come up with 125,628 Orange County votes to Newsom's 79,730.
Harris received a commanding 50,000 more votes than the second highest OC vote-getter, Republican Phil Wyman, a longtime former legislator out of Calabasas who famously proposed public executions for lawmakers found guilty of endangering others in light of the scandals swirling around three Democratic state senators.
Prosecutor Ronald Gold, the fourth-highest vote-getting in the AG race in OC, led statewide to be the GOP nominee as this was being typed but more ballots still had not been counted. Again, if you add up the total of all four Republicans' Orange County votes, it's 101,010 to incumbent Harris' 85,161.
But a caveat to the caveat is this was an open primary, so those registered to any party could vote for any party candidate. A sizable number of Republicans and other non-Democrats statewide indicated before the polls opened that they would vote for Brown because the economy seems to be recovering in California and Gov. Moonbeam 2.0 hasn't had any major screw-ups. That more than likely helped Newsom and Harris as well.
Kashkari and the other GOP nominees now have five months to not only win back members of their own party but enough Democrats and independents, mostly especially in Los Angels County and the Bay Area, to turn the incumbents out.
Good luck with that.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.