With Southern California in the national spotlight over the battle for control of the House of Representatives, numerous local congressional races remained too close to call Wednesday as vote-counting continued.
In Orange County’s 45th congressional district, incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel, R-Huntington Beach, held a narrow lead with 52.5% of the vote over Democrat Derek Tran. Steel had an edge of about 11,000 votes.
It was unclear how many ballots still remain to be counted in the various congressional districts.
The 45th District race featured heated exchanges, with Steel, who is Korean, at one point saying she was “more Vietnamese” than Tran, an Army veteran who said his “parents fled the Communist regime in Vietnam.”
Vietnamese voters are a key Republican bloc in the district, and Steel in the past has allied herself politically with former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do, who resigned his seat and pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge last week.
In the 47th Congressional District, Republican former Assemblyman Scott Baugh held a roughly 3,000-vote lead over Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine. Baugh had 50.6% of the vote as of Wednesday, while Min had 49.4%.
Baugh lost to Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine, in the race two years ago.
Baugh said he was feeling more confident about winning than he was two years ago.
“We’re cautiously optimistic in the sense that the vote trend from returns last night showed a clear surge toward Republicans, and all of those late ballots should favor Republicans,” Baugh told City News Service.
Baugh estimates there are about 120,000 votes still to count. His team was estimating about 83% turnout, but, he added, “We don’t know if it’ll be 75 or 83.”
Orange County Republican Chairman Fred Whitaker said, “I think we’re going to be in very good shape in all the congressional races. Scott has a little margin right now that we’re confident it will hold.”
Whitaker said Steel’s results increased after every update Tuesday night.
“We could still possibly pop” the 49th congressional district for Republican Matt Gunderson, who is challenging Rep. Mike Levin, D-Dana Point, he said.
Levin has a 5,111-vote lead in the district. Gunderson is winning in Orange County but Levin has a lead in San Diego County.
The race between Democrat Will Rollins and Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, in Riverside County’s 41st District was also being closely watched, with the incorporation of more liberal Palm Springs changing the dynamics of the district.
Calvert, who was first elected in 1992, defeated Rollins, 52.3%-47.7%, in 2022. As of early Wednesday morning, Calvert was leading with 50.5% of the vote, holding a roughly 2,100-vote lead over Rollins.
In northern Los Angeles County, the 27th District race between Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, and Democrat George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff, remained touch-and-go as returns were tallied.
But Garcia pulled ahead late, and as of midday Wednesday, he had 51.2% of the tally, and a roughly 5,000-vote lead.
The pair spent heavily on advertisements in the waning days of the campaign, with the candidates trading barbs on abortion rights, immigration and crime. The district has traditionally been a conservative stronghold, but thanks in part to the 2020 redrawing of the district boundaries, Democrats now outnumber Republicans, but the large number of independent voters could turn the tide.
In other tight races, Rep. Young Kim, R-Anaheim, defeated Democrat Joe Kerr in the 40th congressional district, with 56.8% of the vote.
UC Irvine political science professor Lou DeSipio said it was a “relatively close race in the 47th with a number of ballots still to come so that could in principal flip.”
In the 49th District, “Democrats narrowly lead, but I would expect that would hold,” DeSipio said. “It appears Michelle Steel was able to hold (her seat). It confirms Orange County’s purpleness. Either way it shows how evenly divided the county is.”
DeSipio said over the past several election cycles the mailed-in ballots tend to trend more “center to left.”
DeSipio noted there were “huge lines” for the vote center on the UCI campus Tuesday, but he credited the university for providing bus rides to students to cast a ballot at another close-by vote center.
The outcome of many of the races might not be known for several days as vote-counting continues and late ballots continue to arrive.