Welcome back my reboot of “A look at CA politics” Diary series. I’ve decided to revamp the series and go back more in depth on the key elections of California.
In this diary we’ll take in-depth look at the 1992 elections in California, which was considered a Watershed moment for the Democrats. California had largely up until this election been dominated by Republicans in presidential and governor races. Specifically we’ll look at the presidential, senate and congressional races.
1992 was a monumental year in California politics. It was a presidential year that included two open senate seats. Additionally the state was set to gain a whopping 7 seats (most seats gained since 1962) via reapportionment thanks in part to massive population growth in the past 10 years.
The Presidential Race
California had long been a stronghold for the GOP, who had only lost the state twice since WW2 (Truman in 1948 and LBJ’s 1964 landslide). Despite California’s electoral votes expanding to 54 electoral votes (solidifying it’s place as the most electoral rich state in the nation), both Clinton and Bush Sr. largely avoided the state. Bush hadn’t set foot west of the Sierras since October. Clinton in the meanwhile visited only once, going to the blood red Orange County.
The main reason why Bush Sr. never set foot in the state was largely due to the fact he was down nearly 20 points statewide according to polling. Clinton, realizing Bush wasn’t even contesting the state, decided to follow suit and instead focus on campaigning in other swing states throughout the country.
GOP presidential wins in California largely were dependent on churning out votes in southern California. Previous Republican wins relied on getting strong vote tallies out of counties like Orange, San Diego, Riverside, Ventura, etc; to counter balance strong Dem turnout in Los Angeles and bay area counties.
The big problem for Bush Sr. was the fact that third party challenger, Ross Perot, seemed to be polling very well in these Republican strongholds; in fact better so than in the Democratic strongholds. How strong you ask? Well let’s look at Orange County, one of the most reliable GOP counties in the entire state. The petition effort to garner Perot on the ballot resulted in as many signatures as votes Bush Sr. received in the general election!
In the end Bush Sr. failed to get the needed voted margins in the GOP strongholds of Southern California. While he did carry Orange county, his 106K vote margin was a mere third of what he had received four years earlier. Perot managed to garner nearly one quarter of the vote in the counties of Riverside and Orange and receive modest returns in the remaining GOP turf. As a result, Bush lost the previously reliable GOP enclaves of San Diego(first GOP Presidential candidate to lose the county since 1944) , Riverside, Santa Barbara and San Bernardino. The final tally wasn’t even close as Clinton managed to win the state by a healthy 13 points 46%-32.6%. California has remained a safely blue state ever since.
US Senate
As mentioned above, California was set to have two open senate races. To differentiate between the two seats I’ll refer to the special election for the remaining two years of the senate term as the “short seat” and the regularly scheduled election for a full 6 year term in the senate as the “long seat”
The “Short Seat” US Senate
With Republican Pete Wilson’s recent elevation to governor (1990), he gained the right to appoint a successor to his now vacant seat. In early 1991, Wilson picked John Seymour, a little known former mayor of Anaheim, to fill the seat.
Dianne Feinstein, still licking her wounds from her narrow loss to Wilson in the 1990 Governor’s race, announced her intention to run for the seat just days after Seymour had been selected.
Wilson’s decision to pick Seymour angered many within his party. Social conservatives fumed that Wilson had picked a pro-choice moderate to carry the party banner. Other GOP members were disappointed Wilson didn’t pick a stronger candidate. Seymour was largely unknown to many in the state. His last serious race was running for Lt. Governor in 1990, a race where he lost to another Republican. In fact he was barely above 50% in the polls against 3 other weak primary challengers. Seymour also did little to make a name for himself in the Democratic controlled US senate.
Feinstein on the other hand, had become a well known figure in the state after her narrow 3-point loss for Governor and in a way she never stopped campaigning after 1990. Polls already had her leading by double digits.
Seymour waged his first attack ads on Feinstein accusing her of misappropriating campaign fund from a her 1990 governor’s race. But campaign finance was still a murky subject that most voters didn’t fully understand all that well in this period of time and much these attacks had little effect in bringing down Feinstein’s strong leads. Running out of options Seymour tried to the “Willie Horton” approach of attacking Feinstein for giving parole to murderers (Feinstein had served on parollee board in the 1960s). But these attacks largely turned off voters rather than bring up Seymour’s polling numbers.
In terms of campaign spending, the two candidates were largely evenly matched with Feinstein spending roughly $7 million to Seymour’s $6.3 Million.
In the end, Seymour was never able to make a dent to Feinstein’s insurmountable leads and lost by 16 points (38%-54%). Feinstein not only dominated counties of what we consider today Democratic strongholds (Bay area counties) but also managed to win several ancestrally Democratic Counties in the inland part of the state. Counties such as Sierra, Placer, Toulumne, Plumas, Calaveras, and Mariposa. Most of these counties are pretty much blood red today. Though one caveat to these numbers, is the fact Feinstein won most of these counties by plurality thanks in part to a strong showing of a Libertarian, an American independent, and Peace and Freedom candidates (hard to say if these were conservative protest votes or generally D-leaning voters more on that when we get to the key congressional race CA-19). Either way, she managed to get over 45% or more in these counties, something no Democratic presidential candidate has done likely since Jimmy Carter’s 1976 election.
As this was a special election for the remaining two years of this senate term, Feinstein was instantly seated upon victory, becoming the Senior senator of California, a title that she still has today.
The “Long Seat”
Longtime Democratic Senator Alan Cranston who won his first senate race in 1968 had decided to retire. Cranston had become embroiled in the Keating 5 scandal and his poor health signaled his time to move on from the senate. This open seat would lead to a race between two polar opposite candidates. One couldn’t ask for a starker difference between the two.
Republicans nominated the ultra conservative Bruce Herschensohn who favored increased defense spending despite the end of the cold war. He was vehemently pro-life and pro-gun. In fact, he even favored doing away with the EPA and the Department of Education. One key advantage for Herschensohn was that he was largely known as commentator for years in the Los Angeles area television.
Democrats in the meanwhile nominated a tried and true progressive congresswoman from Marin county, Barbara Boxer. Instantly this race looked like a cakewalk for Boxer whose views were far more in line with the state than Herschensohn. In fact initial polls had Boxer leading by over 20 points, even stronger than what Feinstein was polling.
But this was anything but easy race. Herschensohn turned out to be a very effective campaigner. Firstly he already had much higher visibility than his GOP counterpart Seymour, from his years in Los Angeles television. Secondly he was quick to attack Boxer on the house banking scandal. Boxer had indeed bounced several checks, but instead of responding to the attacks she remained silent. This led to her strong polling leads to evaporate. Boxer chose to ignore these attacks and instead focus campaign ads on Herschensohn’s extreme views but these ads more or less played into Herschensonhn’s hands. He was well known as strong conservative and thus these ads more or less gave him free publicity.
What was one a 20 point cakewalk had now turned into a dead even race. Finally Boxer did acknowledge the attacks regarding the house banking scandal. To remedy the matter she wrote a $15 check to the Deficit Reduction Fund for each of her 87 overdrafts. But the momentum seemed to be on Herschensohn's side. Seeing that her Democratic counterpart still had healthy leads for the other senate race, Boxer began to campaign along side Feinstein.
In terms of campaign finance, Boxer had a modest lead with $8.53 Million to Herschensohn’s $5.65 million.
An 11th hour attack blasting Herschensohn for visiting a strip club (with nude dancers) along with allegations that Herschensohn liked to buy pornography from a local news stand finally turned the tide ever so slightly toward Boxer. In the end, Boxer prevailed by a narrow 47.9% — 43% margin. Boxer owed her win largely on winning her home turf ( the Bay area) by a 2 to 1 margin and building over a 300,000 vote margin in Los Angeles County. Either way Boxer would now have a good 6 years to fine tune her campaign skills for the next election.
Her win coupled with Feinstein resulted in Democrats holding both California senate seats for the first time since 1976, when John V Tunney lost his senate seat.
US House Congressional races
With a divided government (Republican Governor Pete Wilson and a Democratic Legislature) redistricting was thrown to the courts. Republicans couldn’t have been more excited at this turn of events as they had suffered 10 long years under the Democratic Burtonmander that allowed Democrats to win solid majorities in the CA house delegation despite Ronald Reagan and George H.B. Bush winning the state with ease in the 1980s. Best of all was the fact the California Supreme Court had now been stacked with conservative judges thanks in part to the GOP holding the Governor’s mansion since 1983 and several successful recalls of liberal justices previously appointed by former Governor Jerry Brown.
The CA GOP was looking forward to a Republican friendly court that would decide to draw the lines. In fact many CA Republicans hoped to pick up as many as 5 of the new 7 house seats and also flip of a few of the currently Dem held seats to bring an even tie to the CA house delegation.
What were the final results you may ask? Well the GOP did indeed win 5 of the 7 new CA seats and they even managed to flip one previously D-held seat. But much to their dismay the Democrats flipped 3-GOP held seats (including defeating one incumbent). The final result was that the Democrats gained 4 seats and the GOP gained 3 seats.
1992 CA House Delegation Election Results
Democrats |
REpublicans |
Description |
26 |
19 |
Before Nov 1992 election |
+2 |
+5 |
New House Seat Gains |
28 |
24 |
|
-1 |
+1 |
D->R Flips of existing seats |
+3 |
-3 |
R->D Flips of existing seats |
30 |
22 |
After Nov 1992 election
|
Now lets dive into some key races, this will include seats that changed hands, new seat gains, and close races. I’ll be including the presidential top lines and the voter registration stats for each district (but take these numbers as a grain of salt, as this will include quite a bit of old/ancestral Democrats from the inland counties that have been marching rightward since the Reagan era and suburban GOP voters who were marching in the opposite direction)
California’s 1st District (Dem Pickup)
Voter Registration: 52% D — 33% R
Presidential Vote: Clinton 46.5%; Bush 28.7%; Perot 24%
Results: Hamburg (D) 47.6% — Riggs (R-inc) 45%
This North Coast district had been previously held by 4-term Democrat Doug Bosco, but in 1990 he was narrowly unseated by GOP candidate Frank Riggs.
Freshman Congressman Riggs seemed to be largely secured for another term when the Democrats could only offer former Mendocino County Supervisor, Daniel Hamburg, who was largely unknown outside his county. Internal polls from the Hamburg campaign one month before the election had Riggs leading by 9 points.
In fact, Hamburg had worked for a print shop after his supervisor term but had been laid off (collecting unemployment benefits). But Hamburg used to this to his advantage as he could campaign full-time. Riggs tried to accuse Hamburg of wanting to close a naval shipyard in Mare Island and Travis Air Force base. But these attacks didn’t stick as Hamburg spent the last few weeks reassuring voters he had no plans to close either base. Meanwhile Riggs was hampered breaking a promise not to take a congressional pay raise ($35K) and spent the last few weeks of the campaign writing checks to various charities.
Despite Hamburg firing his own campaign manger in the final 2 weeks of the campaign, he managed to unseat Riggs (47.6-45) in an upset. Hamburg likely benefited from Clinton decisively winning this seat. Riggs was the only incumbent Republican to lose to a Democrat in CA.
California’s 4th District (Narrow GOP Hold)
Voter Registration: 42% D — 45% R
Presidential Vote: Clinton 33.7%; Bush 40.5%; Perot: 25.2%
Results: Doolittle (R-inc) 49.8% — Malberg (D) 45,7%
Don’t let those voter registration numbers fool you.This northern inland seat (Counties of: Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Mono, Placer, northeastern Sacramento, Tuolumne) was largely a safer GOP version of the previous incarnation of this seat (CA’s old 14th), which had been GOP hands since 1978 when Democratic Majority Whip John McFall lost to GOP candidate Norman Shumway after the Koreagate scandal. Shumway had little trouble holding the seat often winning by over 20 points. But when he retired in 1990, Republicans struggled to hold this seat with John Doolittle, who only managed to win by 2 points against Susan Malberg, a community college french professor. Malberg decided to give it another go in 1992.
Doolittle initially was somewhat of a rising start in the GOP. In 1980 he defeated longtime Sacramento Democratic State Senator Albert Rodda, dean of the senate chamber, running on a strong gun rights platform. Democrats targeted him for defeat in 1982 but Doolittle came back to win new in a Chico-based senate seat in 1984. You may ask why Doolittle had such trouble winning this largely GOP friendly house seat in 1990. Despite Doolittle running as strong fiscal conservative (he was part of the Gang of 7 which helped expose the house banking and post office scandals), he had been fined by the fair and political practices commission for underhanded deals and loved to use his congressional perks of cars, meals, and moving expenses. In fact the National Taxpayers Association ranked him first in spending on “free mail” for the last 15 months. Doolittle even had GOP primary challenger that garnered 30% of the vote who went on to wage a write-in campaign for the general election.
Everything seemed to be the aligning into a perfect opportunity for a Democratic takeover but, Patricia Malberg refused run a professional campaign, wanting instead have a grass roots style campaign. Malberg’s TV ads were described as downright anemic, and largely did not take advantage of attacking Doolittle’s wasteful spending on congressional perks.
So even though the Republican write-in challenger siphoned close to 5,500 votes and the Libertarian on the ballot won 5% of the vote, Doolittle won by a slightly larger margin than his previous race 49.8%-45.7% (owing partly to his district getting slightly more GOP friendly in the 1992 redistricting). Doolittle wouldn’t face another close again till 2006.
California’s 10th Congressional District (GOP Gain New Seat)
Voter Registration: 42% D — 44% R
Presidential Race: 42.1% Clinton; 35.4% Bush; 21.57% Perot
Results: Baker (R) 52% — Williams(D) 48%
This east bay area seat was one of the last real bastions left for the GOP in the bay area. It included several wealthy suburbs that had long been strongholds for the GOP. Despite the California Supreme court doing its best to draw non-partisan maps, many thought the seat was tailor made for Republican Assemblyman Bill Baker who had represented much of the area since 1980. It should be noted that this newly drawn seat did have a slightly larger number of registered Democrats than Baker’s old assembly seat. Democrats nominated Wendell Williams who had previously challenged Baker for the Assembly in 1990 and garnered 45% of the vote.
As a result this was just largely a repeat of that same assembly race. Baker was attacked for calling welfare mother’s “breeders” but in the end Baker was able to narrowly win this newly drawn seat (52%-48). Though Clinton’s healthy win in this seat did foreshadow the leftward march of the bay area.
California’s 11th Congressional District (GOP Gain New Seat)
Voter Registration: 52% D — 38% R
Presidential Race: 40.3% Clinton; 38.2% Bush; 20.8% Perot
Results: Pombo (R) 47.6% — Garamendi 45.6%
Democrats were initially hopeful of winning this newly drawn seat covering San Joaquin County and parts of Sacramento County. Democrats selected Patti Garamendi, wife of the then current State Insurance Commissioner, John Garamendi. For this newly drawn seat Republicans nominated Tracy Councilman and rancher, Richard Pombo.
Garamendi was already well known in the area thanks in part to her famous husband who had previously held a state senate seat in the region and the fact that she had previously run twice in area for state legislative races. She was able to out raise Pombo more than 2 to 1, but Pombo was able to attack her by arguing the majority of her funds came from donors outside of the district. This included attacking Garemendi for taking money from the producer of musician Ice T, writer of the song “Cop Killer.” Despite Democrats holding a healthy registration advantage this race went down to the wire. Garamendi initially led by 900 votes on election day but lost her lead as the absentees were counted. Thus, Pombo narrowly won by 2 points 47.6 — 45.6%. Pombo would not face a close election until his shocking 2006 defeat.
California’s 14th Congressional District (Dem Pickup)
Voter Registration: 48% D — 35% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 53%; Bush 26.5%; Perot 19.6%
Results: Eshoo (D) 56.7% — Huenning 39%
When the new district lines made this South Bay seat even more Democratic, Republican incumbent Tom Campbell decided to try his luck for a US Senate seat instead. Democrats selected San Mateo Supervisor Anna Eshoo while the GOP picked Tom Huenning, a former Airline pilot and San Mateo Supervisor. Huenning, a political moderate who was pro-choice, sensed the growing Democratic trend of this seat did his best to distance himself from the national party including turning down a campaign event with Vice President Dan Quayle.
Most political observers were already expecting this seat to easily flip as Eshoo had previously held Campbell to a 5 point win in 1988 in an earlier version of this house seat. But nearly everyone was shocked to see Eshoo win by a commanding 18 point landslide. Eshoo became the first woman and Democrat to represent the area. Her large win came about from strong voter registration efforts in the district. Democrats gained 9,295 voters while Republicans lost 1,738 voters. Both Democratic senate candidates (Boxer and Feinstein) also took the time out to campaign for Eshoo. Additionally, Eshoo benefited from Clinton beating Bush by a 2 to 1 margin.
California;s 19th District (Close Race D Hold)
Voter Registration: 47% D — 42% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 37.9%; Bush 43.28%; Perot 16.3%
Results: Lehman (D-Inc) 46.9% — Cloud (R) 46.4%
Incumbent Democrat, Richard Lehman, had long benefited from the Burtonmander map of the past decade, but the new court drawn map dramatically altered Lehman’s district making it considerably more Republican. Lehman lost Democratic parts of his old district including the city of Stockton. He also lost most of his Latino constituents. The new configuration pushed Lehman’s seat “further to the north and east, incorporating some more rural territory in the Sierra Nevada as well as the more conservative eastern portion of Fresno.” Lehman knew right a way he had a fight on his hands running for reelection.
Republicans for their part didn’t take too much notice of this district and ran political newcomer, Tal Cloud, who had only moved to the area 6 years ago from Orange County and was vice president of a paper and pulp company. Lehman was quick to blast Cloud as a carpetbagger who was not in tune to the needs of the district. Cloud also ran on pro-choice platform angering many conservatives in the district. In fact, Cloud would go on to accuse Fresno Christian Coalition write-in candidate Jim Williams who received 885 votes, of sabotaging his campaign. The race turned nasty fast with Lehman outspending Cloud 4 to 1. It’s believed that the race turned so nasty that many voters cast their ballot in protest for Peace Freedom candidate Dorothy Wells. Despite never actively campaigning and being out of town on vacation on election day, Wells garnered an impressive 6% of the vote. Lehman was able to eek out a 1000 vote lead in the end, but it became very clear he would be one of the most vulnerable Democrats going into the next election cycle. Most pundits agreed this district wouldn’t stay in Democratic hands for much longer.
California’s 36th Congressional District (New Seat Dem Gain)
Voter Registration: 42% D — 43% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 40.9%; Bush 35.3%; Perot 23%
Results: Harman (D) 48.4% Flores (R) 42.2%
This newly drawn seat in based in the Palos Verdes peninsula initially looked like an easy GOP win. In fact a total of 11 people ran in the GOP primary for this seat. But having such a large field led to a splintering of the moderate vote and conservative Los Angeles Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores emerged the winner. Flores benefited from endorsements from conservative stalwarts in the party like Bob Dornan and Dana Rohrabacher, but now her conservative stances posed an issue for the general election.
A massive voter registration drive by Democrats reduced the GOP advantage in the district from 3 points to just one. Additionally, Democrats nominated a centrist candidate, Jane Harman, who was endorsed by Emily’s list and was a former lawyer who had worked for Jimmy Carter. Harman was also personally wealthy and dipped into her own finances to run televisions ads throughout the Los Angeles Media market, a costly endeavor at the time. In the end, Harman managed to win 48.4-42.2% over Flores.
California’s 38th District (GOP Pickup)
Voter Registration: 50% D — 38% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 44.3%; Bush 33.3%; Perot 22%
Results: Horn (R) 48.6% — Braude (D) 43.7%
Incumbent Democrat Glenn Anderson decided to retire opening up this largely Democratic seat. Democrats settled on Anderson’s step son and Long Beach City councilman, Evan Braude. Republican Cal State University professor, Steve Horn, narrowly won his the primary election.
Horn campaigned as a moderate who was pro choice and refused to take PAC money. Braude tried to attack Horn by questioning why the professor had resigned from his job at CSU long beach, but those efforts proved largely moot as Horn won( 48.6-43.7).
California’s 42nd Congressional District (Narrow D Hold)
Voter Registration: 53% D — 37% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 45.5%; Bush 32.47%; Perot 21.2%
Results: Brown (D-Inc) 50.7% — Rutan (R) 44%
This swingy inland empire seat covers San Bernardino County and was represented by longtime Democrat George Brown, Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He was often referred to as the “energizer bunny of CA politics” no matter what the GOP threw at him, he always managed to keep getting narrowly reelected. Brown was a solid progressive Democrat that represented a GOP leaning seat. He often under performed the district’s voter registration numbers as a result. In fact he was “famous for running in more close elections than any other congressman in the 20th century without being defeated.” Many political observers predicted this would be the year Brown would finally lose as this newly configured seat became a touch more GOP friendly following redistricting. Brown had been to held to just 52% the previous year in a seat that was more Democratic.
Republicans selected Dick Rutan, a record-breaking aviator who piloted the Voyager aircraft around the world non-stop with co-pilot Jeana Yeager. He seemed like the perfect candidate in this aerospace-based district. But Rutan ran into some bad press when his co-pilot Yeager had decided to endorse Brown over Rutan, this despite the fact Yeager had endorse Rutan the previous 1990 cycle. Rutan began to assert that Yeager had traded an endorsement in return for Brown securing her an appointment to NASA’s astronaut training program. But the problem with that assertion is the simple fact that Brown had written his letter of recommendation to Yeager a full 8 months prior to Rutan announcing his intention to run for congress. Rutan was forced to retract the statement making him look not only silly but also signifying Rutan did not have the political chops to run for congress. To make matters worse, Yeager then released a letter saying that Rutan was unfit for public office. Brown manged to out raise Rutan by 2 to 1 margin and managed to have $100K left in his campaign coffers for the final week of the campaign while Rutan was dead broke. In the end Brown was returned to congress by a 50.7-44 margin.
California’s 43rd District (GOP Gain New Seat)
Voter Registration: 42% D — 46% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 37.6%; Bush 38%; Perot 25.8%
Results: Calvert (R) 46.7% — Takano (D) 46.4%
This newly drawn Inland Empire seat covers reliably Republican Western Riverside County and also includes my hometown. Riverside county up until this election had only cast its votes in favor of Democratic presidents just twice since 1896! In fact in 1932 it was one of only two counties in the entire Pacific coast of the United States to vote for Hoover over Roosevelt. What should have been an easy new seat for the GOP turned into one of the most competitive races in the country.
So how did this race become so close? Well lets look at the candidates. Republicans selected Ken Calvert, well known in the district from his real estate business, who largely thought he had the race in the bag an didn’t really campaign at the start. From Calvert’s point of view, he had little to worry about as he out raised his Democratic opponent, Mark Takano, 2 to 1 and private polling didn’t show any trouble for Calvert. But at the same time the economic recession was in full force in the district as Governor Pete Wilson’s budget cut defense spending and unemployment soared. Takano, the underdog, campaigned like hell and the race became tossup in the fall. Takano likely benefited from an Assembly race down ticket that ran parallel with the district. The race eventually go heated. In the 11th hour, Takano asserted Calvert was laundering campaign funds through the national GOP campaign committee and even filed a formal complaint. Takano actually led by 1,234 votes on election day. It was only when the absentee ballots came in that this race shifted in favor Calvert by a mere 500 votes (46.7-46.4). In the end, the Republican lean of the district was too much to overcome.
California’s 49 Congressional District (Dem Gain New Seat)
Voter Registration 39% D — 43% R
Presidential Race: Clinton 43%; Bush 31.3%; Perot 24.9%
Results: Schenk (D) 51.1% — Jarvis (R) 42.7%
This seat became open when all three San Diego GOP incumbents decided to run elsewhere. In retrospect, GOP Congressman Bill Lowery might have actually won here had chose to run rather than losing in the GOP primary for a different seat. On paper this was still considered to be GOP seat. But Democrats nominated a strong candidate, Lynn Schenk, San Diego Port Commissioner and former member of the Jerry Brown Administration. Schenk had a great deal of experience experience raising money for Democratic causes and easily managed to raise the big bucks to campaign for this seat. In fact Schenk would out raise her GOP opponent 9 to 1 and out spend her opponent 7 to 1!
Republicans in the meanwhile faced a fractured field with the final nominee being political novice, Judy Jarvis. In the end, this race proved to be no contest as Schenk won by a nearly 10 points 51.1%-42.7% (12 points better than the Democratic registration).
Other Key Races
CA 25th Congressional District (GOP Gain New Seat)
Republicans had little trouble winning this new Orange County seat with Ed Royce
CA 33rd Congressional District (Dem Gain New Seat)
This downtown Los Angeles district easily sent Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard to Congress
CA 41st Congressional district (GOP Gain New Seat)
The only surprise in this safe GOP new seat was the fact that Pro-choice Republican Jay Kim managed to win the nomination over better known GOP candidates
CA 52nd Congressional district (Dem Gain)
This previously GOP held seat was now open with the 3 San Diego Republican Congressman looking elsewhere to run. This was no surprise as this seat consolidated much of the Democratic vote in San Diego making it safe for Democrats in fact Democrat Bob Fliner sailed into Congress with a 28 point landslide.
What Happened to the Once Dominant CA GOP: So let’s answer the question why the GOP lost
We often remember the catchphrase from the Clinton campaign “It’s the Economy Stupid” That phrase couldn’t be more apt of the economic downturn that happened in California. The end of the cold war and housing bubble crash brought the CA economy to it’s knees. Republican Governor Pete Wilson saw his approvals at all time low. It had taken over 50 days to pass a state budget that also implemented painful cuts throughout the budget. The end of the cold war eliminated much of defense contracting sectors in the state and sent the state into a huge recession. The economic downturn in California was worse than what any other state in the US was facing at the time. And the part of the state that felt that economic downturn the worst was in the GOP stronghold counties that had previously benefited from all the defense contract jobs brought on by the cold war.
Indeed, the state’s condition was dire. The nation remembers the recession of the early 1990s as a mild one, but in California it was the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Huge defense companies such as General Dynamics, Raytheon and others laid off hundreds of thousands of engineers and other white collar workers. Housing values fell far from their 1980s peak, and many new homeowners soon held mortgages greater than their property values. The poor endured steep service cuts and high unemployment. In 1992, in the aftermath of the verdict exonerating the LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, the city of Los Angeles exploded in the biggest civil insurrection since the Civil War.
Voters were looking for someone to blame and they settled on the GOP which had held the Governorship and the Presidency for a decade.
Also there was an epic Democratic Voter Registration Drive: Between May 1992 and October 1992 Democrats added roughly 800K new registered voters more than a 2 to 1 advantage on the GOP in terms of new registration. Additionally more Californians registered 3rd parties or declined to state than GOP in this same period.