Well, in the jungle primary, the four Republicans combined to get 51.6% to the two Democrats’ 48.4%, and Johnny Tacherra has a name that could fool Mexican-American voters that he was Hispanic (he’s actually Portuguese-American (Azorean, to be specific), same as Democrat incumbent Jim Costa, and same as Central Valley GOP Congressmen Devin Nunes and David Vadalao), and Costa nearly lost in 2010 under the old lines, and the district is far less Democrat than the 2012 presidential; election results would have one believe ... so, yes, it was in the outer periphery of my radar. But the GOP spent no money at all there and I thought that 5 or 6 CA seats would flip before the CA-16.
There still are some absentee votes left to count, and it’s going to be close. Remember, Costa was down about by this much in 2010, and he able to beat Vidak after they counted the absentees.
Did they conduct an exit poll in the CD? I would love to know what percentage of the Hispanic vote Tacherra won in that Hispanic-majority CD as compared to Vidak in 2010; if it was higher for Tacherra, then it was the Spanish-sounding name that put him over the top, and it would serve as evidence in favor of my hypothesis that Vidak would have won in 2010 had his surname ended in an L instead of in a K.
Valadao is Portuguese too? I didn’t know that. That’s a lot of political success for Central Valley Portuguese-Americans.