On this election day, much will be decided across this country. The next President and Vice President will be elected. Republicans will certainly lose seats in the United States Senate, but will we be able to retain enough seats to filibuster against egregious, left-wing legislation? Pundits estimate House GOP loses in the neighborhood of 20-30 seats (some say that Tom McClintock’s bid for Congress is in peril, and that once-thought-safe incumbent Members of Congress like Dan Lungren are no longer assured reelection).
As the State Legislative level, it is unclear whether the sizable lead of Barack Obama in California will sweep Democrats into an even greater lock-hold on the Senate and Assembly, or whether, like in 2006, the Democrat wave will crash at the border (no state legislative seats changed parties that year).
In the State Senate, only one seat – the 19th District – is really in play at this point, where former GOP Assemblyman Tony Strickland and Democrat Hannah Beth Jackson are in the midst of the state’s priciest battle. Over on the Assembly side, the battle is taking place in a lot more seats than Republicans would like. AD 15, 78, and 80 (the districts of retiring legislators Guy Houston, Shirley Horton, and Bonnie Garcia, respectively) were supposed to be the only real GOP “defend” targets. But due to the bad year, a few others seats have ended up on the radar, two in the Central Valley — AD 10 and AD 26, where Alan Nakanishi and Greg Aghazarian are retiring – the latter running a quixotic campaign for State Senate, and also AD 37 in Ventura County where GOP incumbent Audra Strickland has seen the negative impacts of being up for election at the same time that millions of dollars are being spent to try and defeat her husband’s Senate candidacy. There is one opportunity for a GOP pickup in the Central Valley’s AD 30 where Democrat Nicole Parra is retiring.
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