What went wrong for the Democrats in #CA25 tonight?

| 1:28 am EDT May 13, 2020
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Even with Donald Trump on the ropes and the Republican Party in danger of going down with him in November, an odd thing happened in the special election in California’s 25th District tonight: the Republican candidate has (allegedly) won a seat that had been most recently held by a Democrat. So what went wrong?

To be clear, Democratic candidate Christy Smith says she’s not conceding, even though some outlets have called the race for Republican candidate Mike Garcia. California counts mail-in ballots that are postmarked on the day of the election, and we’re in unprecedented times when it comes to mail-in voting, so anything is possible. But still, how could the Democrats be looking at even the probability of letting the Republicans flip a House seat right now?

Donald Trump has been trying hard to attach himself to Garcia of late, but that’s probably only because Trump got word that Garcia had a shot at winning, and Trump wanted to be able to take credit. The reality is that Garcia was a very different kind of candidate than Trump, so there’s no reason at all to see this special election as some kind of referendum on Trump.

So what did happen in the California 25th? Although this seat was most recently occupied by a Democrat (Katie Hill), it was occupied by Republicans from 1992 to 2018. So while the 25th is very much a swing district in presidential elections, it’s a Republican district in House elections.

As always, it’s worth dissecting today’s race to see what can be learned from it. But even if the Republican candidate’s current lead in the special election does hold up, there is no basis for seeing this as being any sort of predictor for Trump in November. If anything, it’ll just mean that the Democrats get another shot at this same seat in November, when Garcia will have to run for reelection, and this time Trump’s name will be on the ballot to drag him down.