WASHINGTON — Two House seats are up for grabs in special elections and the presidential primary race inched forward Tuesday, with most attention focused on a Los Angeles-area contest in which Republicans hope to win back a seat in a race overshadowed by the coronavirus.
Democrats flipped California’s 25th Congressional District in 2018 — a district Donald Trump lost by 7 points in 2016. A year later, Rep. Katie Hill resigned amid an ethics investigation into allegations of a relationship with a staffer, which Hill denies, and after nude photos of her were published online without her consent.
Now Republicans are bullish that their candidate, former Navy pilot Mike Garcia, can win the seat back for Republicans.
Garcia is running against state Assemblywoman Christy Smith to serve out the rest of Hill’s term. They will face off again in November’s general election in a bid for the subsequent two-year term starting in 2021.
The coronavirus epidemic has created more uncertainty in the race, with most voters expected to vote by mail after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the state to send ballots to every registered voter’s home.
The vote-by-mail process, one that California had been increasingly embracing even before the pandemic, hasn’t been without controversy.
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Trump raised unfounded accusations of voter fraud last month when he endorsed Garcia on Twitter and added, “Turn your Ballots in now and track them, watching for dishonesty.”
Voters will be able to cast ballots at a handful of sites if they didn’t vote by mail. But Trump and Garcia criticized the late decision to add a site in Lancaster, a city with a significant minority population. Trump called it proof that the Democrats were pushing for a “rigged election,” while Democrats pointed to the support of the city’s Republican mayor for adding a polling place.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden easily defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the Nebraska Democratic primary Tuesday, NBC News projected. With 46 percent of the vote in at 9:30 p.m. ET, Biden was leading Sanders by 78 percent to 11.8 percent and expected to net 22 delegates.
Tuesday’s other special House election took place in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, one that Trump won easily in 2016 and that Republicans are expected to hold. The seat was vacated last year when Republican Sean Duffy retired, pointing to impending health issues with his then-unborn child.
NBC News projected that Republican state Sen. Tom Tiffany will win there against Tricia Zunker, who was hoping to become Wisconsin’s first Native American member of Congress.
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One Democratic congressional primary stood out among the rest of the races Tuesday — the clash between Kara Eastman and Ann Ashford in the 2nd Congressional District around Omaha, Nebraska.
Ashford’s husband, Brad, held the seat for one term but lost to Republican Don Bacon, the current representative, in 2016. His 2018 comeback bid was foiled by Eastman, who won the Democratic primary that year but ultimately fell short to Bacon by 2 points in the general election.
Now, Ann Ashford is running against Eastman in a race that has followed the Democratic Party’s fault lines.
Eastman has the backing of prominent progressive Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and supports “Medicare for All,” while Ashford has the backing of two former Nebraska Democratic senators and has cast her plans as more “realistic.”
