On Saturday, a horse named Union Rags came from behind in the home stretch to win the Belmont Stakes. The come from behind victory of Union Rags seems parallel to the vote count in the 69th Assembly race. On Friday, labor backed candidate Julio Perez began his charge to take his place in the general election to face Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly for the 69th Assembly seat.
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In Friday’s ballot counting Perez closed the gap between himself and Jose ‘Joe’ Moreno to 606 votes. In Friday’s count, Perez added 1006 votes compared to 671 votes for Moreno. We estimate that there are as many as 3,000 provisional ballots remaining to be counted in the 69th. Historically provisional ballots will lean democratic and lean heavily towards the candidate with the strongest ground campaign.
On election day, Perez had the strongest ground game of any candidate, in any race, in Orange County. The trend at this point seems to indicate that Perez is likely to close the gap and overtake Moreno for second place once all the ballots are counted. In closing that gap, Perez will set the stage for what will be the biggest battle in Orange County in the November election contests.
For his part, Jose ‘Joe’ Moreno is raising objections to the deceptive mailers sent out by JobsPAC in support of Tom Daly. In a press statement released today, Moreno called for an investigation by the Attorney General.
“Candidate Moreno believes that voters in the 69th Assembly district were deceived by the aforementioned mailers and their rights were violated and as such he will be requesting a full investigation by the Orange County District Attorney’s office, the California State Attorney General’s Office and the United States Attorney General’s office.”
In his release Moreno cites highly deceptive illegal mailers, using the following text in their mailers:
- “California’s new primary rules allow you to vote for a candidate of either party, but the only Republican running for State Assembly in our district has dropped out of the race.”
- “The only Republican candidate for the State Assembly has dropped out of the race! Don’t waste your vote on a Republican who is not running”
- “The only Republican candidate for the 69th Assembly District dropped out of the race. Don’t waste your vote on a Republican who is not running”
- “The only Republican candidate for the State Assembly has dropped out of the race! Don’t waste your vote on a Republican who is not running” “Don’t waste your vote on a Republican who is not running”
Unfortunately for Moreno, while misleading political mailers are unethical, they are not illegal.
It will be interesting however to see if Tom Daly will meet Moreno’s challenge in his release that Daly “publicly denounce and disassociate himself from any involvement in a series of campaign literature, paid for by JobsPAC.”
Yeah, that will happen.
As many as 3000? The registrar said that there were approximately 7700 ballots left to count and it seems as much as 6000 have been processed already. The amount of provisionals is probably closer to 1700, but it could still be a nailbiter at the end.
The 7,800 approximate number was released the Thursday after election day. Those numbers are subject to change. The estimate I used was based upon reports from monitors of the actual count. I do not have an official number from the Registrar at this time.
It’s probably between 1700 and 3000 for AD-69, closer to the former. Not many are being disqualified, though, and from what I’ve seen by far most of them seem to be from AD-69 and AD-72. If (as I expect) Moreno gets pretty much no votes from provisional ballots, and if there’s say 1800 provisionals left to count in the district, then Julio has to get only about 34% of the provisionals to win. That is not a gimme, but it does not seem like much of a stretch. I don’t think that many Daly voters or Moreno voters would have voted provision, and Barragan didn’t have that many voters to start with, and Julio will have far outperformed Michele on the day of the election.
my 2 cents
“Provisional ballots” are casted at the precincts (polls) or the ROV office in Santa Ana.
Maybe provisional ballots lean towards the Dem side in the past, put in this election it looks like the Santa Ana Demo’s stayed home. The polling place I worked had a slight Rep advantage 52 to 47 percent and the end of the day the vote count was Rep 2 to 1.
I checked on my polling place that is heavy Dem 70 to 28 percent and only 45 voters came in out of 1200.
The President’s shirt tails are very short this year, the Dem may find themselves losing the AD & CD on a low Demo turnout.
Pedroza keeps deleting comments when I ask how Michele Martinez could be THE LEADING candidate for AD69 when she finished 4th. C’mon Art. You don’t give a crap about free speech. It’s creepy that he takes such delight in Julio being third when Michele is fourth
Technically, only the government can censor free speech. Art is within his right to delete any comment he wants. But to suggest he is a free speech proponent is hypocritical.
320 votes added today: Julio 109 (34 %) Daly 99 (30(%) Michele 69 (20 %) Moreno 32 (10%) 8arragan 11 (3%). Julio closed the gap by 77 votes on Moreno on only 320 votes: While not in the bag, this is not looking like a longshot, either. With thousands of ballots left to count, and Julio’s percentage surging past Daly’s in daily vote percentage, my prediction is that Julio hits 40 to 45 percent of the next batch counted and posted. my guess is that we have a 50-50 chance of a recount in the 69th, and Julio is going to pull it out. Look for alot of GOP labor member/household votes from the labor GOTV to put Julio over the top and look to a BLOODY general for Daly . My 2 cents, cook.
69th AD prediction:
-There will be roughly 3,300 to 3,400 additional votes tallied for the 69th AD: This will be roughly 22.3 to 22.7 percent of the remaining votes talliedcounty wide;
-Julio will outperform Jose Moreno by between 18 to 30 percent of the remaining vote;
-Julio will win by between 75 to 262 votes;
-There will be a recount if Julio loses; there will not necessarily be a recount if Jose Moreno loses (unless it is funded by Daly’s campaign or JOBSPAC