Dennis Bress smiled ear to ear as he rallied Sunday for a Democratic House candidate in this sun-bleached Republican district. Like many activists, this 55-year-old-campaign volunteer said he had invested six years of his life in trying to unseat the incumbent, Dana Rohrabacher.
This time, it might pay off. But first, Harley Rouda has to make the November ballot.
“This is a big, big concern for us right now,” Bress said while attending a Rouda get-out-the-vote rally, taking place within view of the Pacific Ocean. “We’re fighting for second place.”
Bress’s mixture of enthusiasm and worry captures the mood of many Orange County Democrats a day before the state’s primary. Over the weekend, visiting party leaders marveled at how much this area has changed from its traditional role as the Republican Party’s spiritual home — a turn to the left accelerated by Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency. (Hillary Clinton was the first Democratic presidential nominee to win the county since the Great Depression.)
Democrats are trying to win as many as three new House seats in November, including Rohrabacher’s, an effort that puts Orange County at the center of the party’s plans for the midterm election.
“I grew up in a district where, when I was 18 and eligible to register and vote, all I had on my ballot was a Republican for the United States Congress,” said Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez, who a day earlier was campaigning in another competitive Orange County House seat, the 45th District. “For many, many years, we couldn’t even find a Democrat challenger to challenge, and it was disheartening.
“Well let me tell you,” she said, “times have changed in Orange County.”
The surge of enthusiasm has come at a price. Because a plethora of evenly matched Democratic candidates are running in each district, and because of the state’s unusual election rules – the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party — Democratic officials said over the weekend they expect at least one battleground district in the county won’t have a Democrat on the ballot in November.
The concern is most acute in Rohrabacher’s district, the 48th Congressional District, where the Republican faces a stiff challenge from GOP rival Scott Baugh while Democrats divide themselves between Rouda, who has the backing of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Hans Keirstead, who has received the support of the California Democratic Party.
Party officials say they’re also worried about the 39th and 49th congressional districts, where Republican retirements should have left Democrats with a great chance to win in the fall. But an influx of Democratic candidates there, like in the 48th district, threaten the party’s status in the general election.
“I know all too well what happens when Democrats get locked out of a seat,” said Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar, who spoke at Rouda’s rally. The California congressman himself was victim of the state’s electoral rules, when he failed to make the general election ballot in 2012 in a district President Obama would go on to carry easily.
Aguilar would eventually win a seat in Congress in 2014.
Democrats — both in Washington and in the county — have scrambled for months to properly assess the trio of Orange County seats, struggling with both the sheer number of Democratic candidates running and the area’s newfound status as a political battleground. With so many candidates running, some Democratic groups have had to adopt a kind of special online poll that shows voters the entire ballot of a dozen or more candidates — a list too lengthy for polls conducted by automated telephone calls.
Still, some Democrats in Orange County say the area’s inexperienced Democratic political base is just as big a challenge as the top-two primary system.
“A lot of the folks we door knock, we are the first political campaign that has come to them,” said Katie Porter, a leading Democratic House candidate in the 45th district. “Not just a Democratic campaign, the first political campaign, period.”
It’s an odd dynamic for Porter, who lived in Iowa during the 2008 presidential caucuses when she said voters would eat and breathe politics every day. And it has created a challenge for Democrats to guess what voters will and won’t turn out on Tuesday, given that many voters don’t have a history of showing up in primaries.
“On the ground, what people will tell you is the biggest challenge is still creating a culture of political engagement,” Porter said. “We just don’t have door-knocking. Traditionally, the Republicans put up a few yard signs, they fall uphill into office, and there we go for another two years.”
Sometimes the degree of political ignorance still surprises local Democratic officials, who say they continue to meet voters who think Rohrabacher — who has served in Congress for nearly thirty years — is a woman because of his first name.
At the Rouda rally, the candidate’s supporters lined up along the Pacific Coast Highway next to a group of Trump supporters, both sets of men and women waving signs and asking passing cars to honk in support. It’s not the kind of enthusiasm Bress saw during the two previous campaigns, both of which failed to serious challenge Rohrabacher.
He was at once confident that a Democrat could win this year — saying he sensed a “perfect storm” coming for Democrats — and keenly aware a big challenge still awaited Tuesday.
“We’re fighting for our lives,” Bress said.
Alex Roarty: 202-383-6173, @Alex_Roarty
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