Well that was interesting.

The ballots are still being counted and mail-in votes (and cured ballots) will be trickling in over the coming days, but it’s pretty clear that the red hurricane is here. And the storm surge is flooding every level of government.

Back in August I wrote that, absent a blow-up of either candidate, the national election wasn’t likely to affect the local election all that much. Turns out Kamala Harris underperformed in historic proportions, while Donald Trump romped to victory. And that level of shift absolutely has affected the local races.

As of this writing, Republicans are either ahead or within striking distance of all local races, including the Newport-Mesa School Board races where they ran against remarkable fundraising and organizing headwinds:

In the city itself, it looks like John Stephens will likely barely hang on as Mayor, as he faced a much tougher re-election campaign than in 2022 despite running against a much weaker opponent. Republican Mike Buley looks to have an unassailable lead over opponent Democrat Adam Ereth in District 1, so Don Harper’s seat will stay in the Republican column.

As for District 6…

In full disclosure I wrote a letter to the Daily Pilot that endorsed Jeff Harlan for re-election, and I’ll expand on why in a full election post-mortem. At the moment this one looks too close to call, but with Jeff Pettis leading Harlan by 287 votes, Pettis certainly has the advantage. Most of the ballots should have been counted by now and District 6 tends to lean Republican in terms of registration, and Republicans seem to have had a big turnout advantage this cycle both nationally and locally.

On the other hand, the late mail-in vote tends to lean a bit more Democratic. Additionally, unless a lot of voters just sat out the local elections entirely, we seem to be missing quite a number of returned ballots. The returns above log 6,155 votes, but the returned ballots tracked by the OC Registrar shows 8,201 ballots cast. So we have at least 2,000 votes just in District 6 that still to be accounted for:

Finally, one more thing to watch is the razor thin race between Scott Baugh and Dave Min for Costa Mesa’s Congressional seat. Why? Because the closer this one is, the more money each party is likely to throw at ballot curing, which could have serious down-ballot consequences.

More updates to come.