Remember House Majority Leader/Speaker wannabe Kevin McCarthy’s scheme to save a bunch of House GOP seats in California by getting the “repeal the gas tax” initiative stuck on the ballot?
Well, two days after the election and it looks like the gambit may not be working after all. Apparently, a bunch of ballots remain outstanding and uncounted (potentially as many as 40 percent) in the races of Katie Porter, who challenged Rep. Mimi Walters, and Gil Cisneros, who challenged Assemblywoman Young Kim. The same situation probably applies in the race between Josh Harder and Rep. Jeff Denham.
That means that while Walters, Kim and Denham appeared to have won their races on election night, the reality is they may have lost– and in any event, McCarthy’s “repeal the gas tax to save Republicans” scheme did not really work, or all three of the Republicans would be safely across the finish line by now.
When will we have an answer in these races? It could be weeks. But the bottom line is, uncounted ballots could easily bring all three Democrats over the finish line, meaning that McCarthy’s gambit would have failed to save the six most vulnerable Republicans in the state. It already failed to save Rohrabacher, Knight and Harkey, an interesting result in itself.
