533. California Special Election Results

Mr. Woods did not win. He ran a distant 5th overall and only did well in Solano County, where he ran second to Ms. Buchanan. She ran third overall to Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, now the Democratic nominee. Garamendi will now have to beat the Republican David Harmer, American Independent candidate Jerome Denham, Green candidate Jeremy Cloward, and 3rd indepedendent Mary C. McIlroy. This is a solidly Democratic district and it is likely that somewhere in Washington, stationery is already being ordered for Mr. Garamendi along with a nameplate.

Mr. Woods ran a proud campaign and I hope he stays in the political process. California's open congressional seat election laws are very different from Kentucky's, in at least three ways. Here the Party nominees would have been selected by a vote of that congressional district's resident members of the State Central Executive Committee. Further, Special Elections are notoriously low-voted here in the Commonwealth, Robin Webb's recent election being somewhat an exception. California allows early voting by mail and many of the district's voters had mailed in a ballot before the polls open. And a fluke this year, Governor Schwarzenegger by Executive Order extended the voting hours to allow firefighters battling California's wildfires time to return home to the district and vote, which was a very humane thing to do. So this was a high turnout election. Finally, under California law, everyone from all Parties run on one ticket. If no one gets 50% outright, then the Party candidates with the most votes advance to general election which is what will happen here. While Mr. Woods got only 8.48% of the overall vote, he got about 13% of the Democratic vote. Hopefully he will take a closer look at Solano County offices where he did the best. He obviously has something to offer the people of California. Still in all, it has to be pretty cool for a 29 year old running against the lieutenant governor of the state to get 8217 votes.

The election results are below:

John Garamendi (Dem) 25,329 26.15%
Mark DeSaulnier (Dem) 17,001 17.55%
Joan Buchanan (Dem) 11,625 12.00%
Anthony Woods (Dem) 8,217 8.48%
Adriel Hampton (Dem) 350 0.36%

David Harmer (Rep) 19,932 20.58%
Chris Bunch (Rep) 4,445 4.59%
Gary W. Clift (Rep) 3,862 3.99%
John Toth (Rep) 3,123 3.22%
David Peterson (Rep) 1,541 1.59%
Mark Loos (Rep) 382 0.39%

Jeremy Cloward (Grn) 506 0.52%

Jerome "Jerry" Denham (AI) 279 0.29%

Mary C. McIlroy (P&F) 259 0.27%


[Edited at 12:22pm, 09/02/2009]