California midterm election recap

As soon as polls closed in California, the race for governor was immediately called for current Governor Gavin Newsom, before any of the votes were counted.

Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi also retained the House seat for her district in California.

While Pelosi may have kept her seat, it’s unlikely that she’ll retain her role as Speaker of the House. That’s because the Republican Party is predicted to win a majority in the House. California Republican Kevin McCarthy, who is currently the minority leader in the House, will most likely become the next speaker.

While the control of the Senate still hangs in the balance because of ongoing races in key battleground states, Democrats gained an advantage by flipping Pennsylvania with Democrat John Fetterman’s win against Republican Mehmet [meh-MET] Oz, also known as Dr. Oz. The senate race in Georgia between Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock proceeded to a runoff, and the races in Arizona and Nevada are still too close to call.

The Republican party had expected to win both the House and Senate with large margins, in what many predicted would be a red wave. But this wave failed to materialize. Many experts think that Donald Trump’s influence in the midterm campaigns led to the election of other Republican candidates during the primaries.

Officials say while these candidates initially had a strong following, their deeply divisive politics eventually turned away any voters who identified with more centrist values. Analysts suggest that Republicans with more centrist values performed much better in the election than Trump endorsed candidates.

Although California is still counting votes, the fate of some of the state’s ballot measures has already been decided.

Prop 1 passed with a wide margin, protecting the right to reproductive freedom and abortion by adding it to the state’s constitution. Prop 31, which bans the sale of flavored tobacco, also passed with great support. But Prop 29, which was on the ballot for a third time, and is a measure intended to increase medical staffing at dialysis centers, failed along with Proposition 30, which proposes an increase of taxes on the wealthy to fund the transition to electric vehicles.

In Los Angeles, the mayoral race between Karen Bass and Rick Caruso still remains undecided. At the time of this reporting, Caruso holds a slight lead of more than two percentage points over Bass but with more than half a million votes still uncounted, the race hasn’t yet been called.

Caruso seemed confident of a win at his election watch party last night.

Rick Caruso: “So we don’t know the outcome yet, but we’re starting out strong and we’re a couple of thousand votes ahead, and that’s a good thing.”

But Bass hasn’t given up hope either.

Karen Bass: “Forward is where we are going, and together is how we will get there. Together we will get there because we will have a new Los Angeles. When we win, we will win. We will win.”