Lou Correa undisputed winner for State Senate

We’ve already blogged the heck out of the Correa win, but as additional details come in it’s hard not to post them.

I just received an email from Orange County Democratic Chairman Frank Barbaro:

If you haven’t heard, Democrats in Orange County have more exciting news to celebrate. Last night, Lou Correa expanded his lead in the 34th State Senate District to 1,302 votes. With only a handful of ballots remaining, Lou’s opponent has conceded the race. Out of respect to every single voter, Lou is waiting to declare official victory until each ballot is counted.This success belongs to the countless numbers of you who voted for Lou, walked a precinct, volunteered on a phone bank, or made a donation. To folks from across the District, from Garden Grove to Stanton to Santa Ana, this was about earning support one person at a time, one neighborhood at a time.

Make no mistake: this race was won on Election Day by a dedicated group of volunteers who left no precinct behind. These were labor leaders, local activists, small business owners, young people, and many who had never worked on a campaign but believed in Lou and his positive vision for the District.

And I’d like to ask my Republican friends that prematurely claimed victory in this race to download the following image and use it as the background of your computer desktop:

9 Comments

  1. RGW,

    If by “botched” you referring to the botched attempt to fix this election in Daucher’s favor, I’d agree.

    Otherwise, you’re nuts. Go have lunch with Stanley Fiala and talk about how it feels to lose elections.

  2. Ryan Gene-
    What evidence do you have that convinces you this election was “botched”?
    I’d really like to know.

  3. It is human nature to assign blame after suffering a loss. Ryan Gene’s comments show a common post-election day way of thinking. Being on the losing end of an election (especially a close one) is no fun, and there is temptation to blame every external factor for the loss. This is a dangerous thing for a number of reasons.
    Most importantly, these external factors rarely play a significant role in who wins and who loses. If you want to learn from the loss, you must first take complete responsibility for it and examine the decisions that would have led to a better outcome – focusing on the things that are under your own control. Playing the blame game allows you to move on to the next project without learning anything.
    Feel free to blame the Correa Campaign, or Californians United, or Otto Bade, or the clearly biased Registrar of Voters for your loss. By doing so, you do nothing to increase your chances of winning next time around.

  4. Ryan Gene, I can completely understand your feeling. After Francine Busby lost CA-50 in June, I wondered to myself, “What the heck happened?” I thought we did everything we could possibly do to win… However later on, after all the sobbing, and all the screaming, I had to realize that there were things that the campaign could have done better. I had to realize that there were things that the San Diego County activists needed to work on for the next campign. Oh, and I had to get over my bad self and move onto other endeavors… Hey, had Francine Busby won in June, none of you would be seeing me here in OC! ; )

    I know that it’s tough to lose… How do think all of us felt in 2004? Still, most of us moved on and got off to a new start. Hopefully, you and the other Daucher folks can do the same. There will be other races to work on, including Correa’s vacated seat on the BoS in just a couple of months! Now that the November 2006 election is over, perhaps we all just need to start moving on with our lives.

  5. “…and talk about how it feels to lose elections.”

    Umm, it feels like crap. But then again, I did put my name on the ballot. Let’s see you do the same thing and see how you fare :-p

    As far as the BOS is concerned, it’ll be fun to work on that campaign. As long as our Central County GOP “only hope” Carlos DOES NOT prevail I will be more then satisfied.

    Anyone wanna help on that effort? 😉

  6. Ryan Gene-
    Who are you addressing in this last comment? I can’t find the quote you include in any of the previous comments.
    And I can’t help but notice that you present no evidence that backs up your assertion that this election was “botched.” Maybe you just have a hunch.

  7. the previous comment was directed at the poster from earlier this morning.

    as far as being botched, my hunch is based off what I saw from the provisional ballots.

    i.e. people voting twice, sigs not matching up, the last two questions left blank on voter reg forms, etc.

    either way, whatev. what’s done is done. time to move on and all that kinda jazz.

    we have a special election now and it’s time to work hard and get the votes out!

  8. Let’s put this one to rest once and for all…

    Ryan Gene:

    There were many voters who had to cast provisional ballots, some of these voters were mailed an absentee ballot in October, the Registrar employees checked their system to see if these voters had sent in their absentee ballots, if they had not, then their provisional ballot counted. As far as signatures matching up, well there were plenty of voters whose sigantures might have changed over the years, many of these people registered to vote back in the 1970s. If the signature on the absentee ballot or provisional ballot did not match up with the siganture they provided when they registered to vote, guess what…their vote wasn’t counted. And lastly, regarding the people who filled out a new registration card on election day when they were casting a provisional ballot, well, if their information didn’t match up with the Registrar’s information regarding name, address, birthdate, etc., their vote wasn’t counted either. So as far as the voter goes, they probably didn’t think they needed to fill out the registration form completely since they thought they were already registered to vote. A lot of the cards I saw had missing information, to include not even filling in which political party they were a member of.

    I was at the Registrar a lot over the past few weeks, and I saw ABSOLUTELY no eveidence of any mistakes, wrongdoing, or any “botching” as some have put it.

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