Eye-Popping Trump Numbers in Costa Mesa

THE RESULTS ARE IN! Exactly one month after Election Day, we FINALLY have official, completed, certified results in Orange County. The official 2024 Statement of Votes, a massive document which tabulates results for all races by city, precinct, district, etc. is out via the OC Registrar of Voters and available online.

Past readers will recall that, while Orange County’s swing towards Trump from 2020 (he went from a nine-point loss to a three-point loss) is clear, it would be hard to where the swing occurred until we get the official results.

This is what we’ve been waiting to see.

One of the big, national trends from the 2024 election is the massive shift among Hispanic and Asian voters towards Trump. Orange County was not immune from that trend. The below chart compares Trump’s results in 2020 to 2024 in the six cities that make up the 47th Congressional District; the final column is the overall shift towards Trump in those cities from 2020 to 2024.

Yes, the predominantly Republican suburban beach towns of Huntington Beach and Newport Beach bounced back towards Trump, which isn’t all too surprising given the fundamentally red makeup of those cities.

👀 But check out those numbers from Costa Mesa and Irvine, two cities with large Hispanic and Asian populations that swung towards Trump by NINE points. Overall, Harris still won Costa Mesa 50% to 45% (+5) and bested Trump in Irvine 57% to 36% (+21), but the significance of that swing is undeniable.

• 🧮 Do The Math: Irvine is the largest city in the 47th District with 123,118 votes cast, so even a small percentage swing towards Trump here would have a significant impact on the overall vote totals.

This is an impressive showing for Trump and, while not the best for a Republican (Mitt Romney actually won Costa Mesa by one point in 2012 back in the days when Orange County was reliably Republican), a sign of the new coalition Trump is building.

There are dozens of cities across the county that we could crunch numbers on, but just to reaffirm the point, check out the numbers for Santa Ana and Anaheim, two of the biggest cities in Orange County that also have sizable Hispanic populations:

• Anaheim swung towards Trump by ten points (Biden won it by 19 in 2020 but Harris only won it 9 in 2024).

• Santa Ana swung towards Trump by FIFTEEN points (Biden won it by 38 in 2020 but Harris only won it by 23).

Plug all of this together and you can see how Trump built his best performance in Orange County since he first ran for office. While it wasn’t enough to get him over the finish line here, it’s the beginnings of an emerging coalition that Republicans here and across California can and should build on to regain the majority.

A GLIMMER OF HOPE IN SACRAMENTO? California Democrats seem to be internalizing something from the November election, which saw a sizable swing among California voters towards Trump. At least as far as the economy is concerned.

During his opening remarks to the newly-elected legislative session, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Central Coast) told the chamber that addressing California’s affordability crisis must be their top priority, and that they must “consider every bill” through that lens. Two notable parts of his speech pop out:

• Rivas lowered the number of bills a lawmaker can introduce from 50 to 35, reminding them that “our time and energy here are limited.”

• He also said “we will continue to lead on climate. But not on the backs of poor and working people, not with taxes or fees for programs that don’t work, and not by blocking housing and critical infrastructure projects.”

Is this a sign that Sacramento Democrats - who still hold super-majorities in both chambers - may be waking up from their radical taxing-and-spending, bureaucracy-creating, regulation-passing, cost-spiking ways?

Doubtful. It’s one thing to commit to addressing affordability. It’s quite another to realize that so much of what California has done over the past decades - particularly around the green agenda - has contributed to the crisis they now claim to want to solve.

Case in point: Just three days after last month’s election, the unelected members of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted to approve stringent updates to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) that are expected to drive up the cost of gas by $0.65 cents per gallon in the short term (and even more in subsequent years) … all in the name of achieving “climate targets.”

• Add insult to injury 👊 The executive officer of CARB is a millionaire and, according to Republican Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones, 10 of the 14 board members are “considerably wealthier than the average Californian.”

If California Democrats are truly committed to stepping away from their costly climate agenda that breaks, to borrow Speaker Rivas’ words, “the backs of poor and working people,” they could start by voting to undo or postpone CARB’s costly new fuel mandates. That would send a strong signal to Californians and the business community that Sacramento is serious about their new-found commitment to affordability.

There are at least a few other laws and regulations Sacramento could unwind to lower the cost of gas and electrical bills. But that would require Democrats to admit that the government - not the utility or gas companies - is the real culprit for high prices.

• Looking for a place to start? 🚦 Democrats could actually read the 2022 report from the California Energy Commission that they requested, which identified a series of taxes, regulations, market distortions, and environmental programs that contribute to California’s high gas prices. (Because the culprit wasn’t “greedy oil companies,” it was ignored.)

• Or they could start by updating California’s tax structure, which was just rated the third-worst in the entire country.

Like I said, I’ll believe it when I see it.

HUNTINGTON BEACH RED WAVE One big win for Orange County conservatives in last month’s elections? The last three liberal-leaning (Democrat) Huntington Beach city council members went down in defeat, meaning that Republicans now have a 7-0 lock in Huntington Beach.

Conservative candidates Don Kennedy, Butch Twining, and Chad Williams - who ran as a slate and dubbed themselves the “HB3” - unseated incumbents Dan Kalmick, Natalie Moser, and Rhonda Bolton.

• Chad Williams made a splash earlier this year when he challenged Councilmember Kalmick at a meeting over a children’s book featuring nude images of adults and children in a bathhouse that is available in the Huntington Beach Public Library system. Kalmick, one of the more outspoken liberal members, defended the book at the meeting, saying he “would absolutely read that with my four-year-old.”

Democrats first secured their short-lived majority on the Huntington Beach city council in 2021, but the 2022 midterm elections swept four new conservatives - Gracey Van Der Mark, Tony Strickland, Pat Burns, and Casey McKeon - into office. They have now been joined with William, Twining, and Kennedy, who were sworn in this week, for the 7-0 majority.

Huntington Beach has been national headline-making ground zero in Orange County for conservative policy measures at the city-level, such as removing pornographic books from libraries, banning Pride and other non-governmental flags from flying over City Hall, and enacting a voter ID law.

The liberal city council members tried to take advantage of these issues in their campaigns, attacking them as harmful, hateful, or unnecessary.

• The voters sent a strong message in the March primary elections that they were supportive of the council’s conservative direction, approving measures to keep the flag ban and voter ID law intact.

With a reinvigorated 7-0 conservative majority on the city council, here are three issues that will almost certainly keep making headlines in Huntington Beach next year:

1. 🗳️ ID WARS: A federal judge last month upheld Huntington Beach’s voter ID law in court against a lawsuit from the state of California, meaning the city will be free to proceed with the measure in upcoming elections, but don’t expect opponents to go down without more of a fight.
   

2. 📚 LIBRARY WARS: The city council voted earlier this year to create a parent-led committee to review city library books for potential pornographic material, but never actually appointed anyone to the 21-member board. The new majority will likely move forward with the board’s creation, but opponents have already submitted signatures to put the ordinance up to the voters.
   

3. 🏡 HOUSING WARS: Huntington Beach has been waging a legal battle against California over the state’s mandate requiring the city to zone over 13,000 new housing units, arguing that as a “charter city” it is immune from such requirements. The conservative majority on the city council - and the city attorney Michael Gates - have been leading the charge. Gates has said he will take their case to the Supreme Court if necessary, and with a fresh landslide win at their backs, expect them to keep the legal fight up.

These fights are worth having. Local government is not only the most effective way to make change, but exposing the radicalism of the Democrats’ support for sexually-explicit books in children’s libraries and unpopular opposition to voter ID can, as Huntington Beach just proved, be a winning message.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🥳 Weak-on-crime, progressive L.A. District Attorney George Gascon is officially out office, as newly-elected Nathan Hochman was sworn in this week.

🗳️ Huntington Beach City Councilmember Tony Strickland announced he will run for the 36th state Senate District seat, which is now vacant after it’s former holder Janet Nguyen successfully ran for Orange County Supervisor.

🤡 Los Angeles officially voted to make itself a sanctuary city this week, with the city council passing an ordinance 12-0 prohibiting city resources from being used to assist ICE in enforcing immigration laws.

🍊 The Orange County Board of Supervisors approved an external audit of county contracts in the wake of former Supervisor Andrew Do’s conviction of bribery charges.