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The slow trickle of election day

Episode Summary

Who won, who lost on election day? Why are ballots taking so long to tabulate? What does this mean for 2024? Our political reporters makes sense of it all.

Episode Notes

Election day has come and gone... kinda. Many races, both local and national, are still too close to call. And while the Republican Party is expected to take Congress, it’s not by the margin many had predicted. So what does all this mean for both parties? And what about 2024?

Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: L.A. Times politics reporter Seema Mehta and L.A. Times L.A. mayoral race reporter Julia Wick

More reading:

Tapping into ‘a simmering rage’: Democrats’ emphasis on abortion stopped GOP gains

Democrats’ risky bet on GOP election deniers paid off. Should they do it again?

Why it could take weeks to get final L.A. election results. ‘We aren’t sitting on ballots’

Episode Transcription

Gustavo: On Tuesday night, candidates across 435 house races, 35 Senate contests, 36 gubernatorial elections, and thousands of other state and local campaigns all looked on anxiously as results started to trickle in for the 2022 midterm elections.

But days later, some are still waiting for those official results while others are looking around in surprise and wondering, how did we get here?

I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to The Times, essential news from the L.A. Times. It's Friday, November 11th, 2022. 

Today, we try to make sense of the midterms. 

… upsets, favorites, what happened and didn't, and what this election says about 2024. 

Gustavo: Joining me to talk about Tuesday's election results are my L.A. Times colleagues and 2022 midterm maestras. Julia Wick covered the Los Angeles mayoral election. And Seema Mehta covers national politics. Julia, Seema, welcome to The Times. 

Seema: Thanks for having me on.

Julia: Thanks for having both of us on. 

Gustavo: What an election week. So Seema, the big story from election night was that Democrats didn’t do as poorly as was expected. All we heard through the midterms was talk about a red wave that was just going to take over, not just the Capitol, but all across the United States, but didn't quite play out like that.  Republicans are expected to control the House, but by a smaller margin than they thought, and the U.S. Senate is still up for grabs. So what happened? 

Seema: I mean, the Democrats had a much better night than people were expecting and Republicans at one point you were talking about taking over the house by like, you know, maybe even like 60 seats. And I mean, that's clearly not happening. It's gonna be a much smaller margin. And we don't know all the details, but in some of the things that you we're talking about are, first of all, Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was obviously a huge thing and Democrats were hopeful that that would motivate young voters, voters of color, women, you know, potentially Republican women. So that's one of the things we're really gonna dig into once we know more about voter turnout, who ended up voting. Then also in some cases it was candidate selection. I mean, there were some candidates who, for example, in Pennsylvania, you know, John Fetterman versus Dr. Oz. Dr. Oz he just didn't, um, sort of fit the voters in the Pennsylvania and Fetterman, you know, I mean, he had a stroke during the campaign. You know, obviously that was a major issue. But he did connect with voters in a way that obviously Dr. Oz didn't. So in some cases, it was candidate selection. In some cases, you know, President Trump weighed in some of these races and the president is flirting with another presidential run. That put that it back in voters' minds. I mean, this is the first election in years where either wasn't in an office or he wasn't at the top of the ticket. So there was a question about how much he would influence things. But I think, how much he got involved in the campaigns in recent days, that also refocused some Democratic voters. 

Gustavo: So you mentioned all these stumbles that the Republicans had, but then why were Republicans predicted to do so well in these midterms? 

Seema:  So the party in power in the White House usually almost always loses seats in the House in the first midterm, during its tenure. There's very few exceptions. The one I can think of most recently was after 9/11. and then also, you know, while the abortion issue, the Supreme Court ruling, was obviously, a major development this year, there's also, you know, gas prices have been really high, groceries have cost a lot. I mean, inflation has really impacted voters in a way that, when I was out talking to voters, you know, in all different parts of the state, it was something you heard constantly from Democrats and Republicans.You know, people tend to blame the party in power, so that was something that Democrats were worried about in terms of Biden, and you could see that in his approval ratings, which, you know, I think they're basically right now about they've clicked up a little bit, still like 40, 41. I mean, they're still pretty low. Those three factors were really the key reasons that people thought Republicans would do better than they did, or they appear to have done so far.

Gustavo: What were some of the early indicators on election night that it wasn't going to turn into that big red wave so many people were expecting?

Seema: At one point there was some speculation that the Republicans might win so many House seats on the East Coast that, you know, they might be able to call control of the House that early. And then that clearly didn't happen. And then we saw certain races. I mean, I think, know, some of the governor's races, you know, in New York, people were wondering. If Kathy Hochul would be successful or if the Republican would win. And New York's a pretty blue state statewide. I mean, obviously it varies across, you know, whether you're talking about New York City or upstate. But the fact that Democrats were worried about that seat was another indicator that people thought Republicans would have a good night. Democratic governors ended up, you know, doing pretty well. And then, you know, we, I talked a little bit about Fetterman earlier, but that race was called early. I mean, you know, we're not still waiting around on that like we are some of the other races. And so when those candidates started to do well, then it sort of started to become clear that Republicans were not gonna sort of rule the board or run the table, but, you know, we're still waiting on the results in a number of races, so we don't know the full picture yet. 

Gustavo: And Julia looking at the local level, like one of the big contests in Los Angeles was for the mayor's race between Rick Caruso and Karen Bass. It got a lot of attention nationally, actually. Remind us of who they are and why were so many people tuning in.

Julia : Absolutely. So this race was really interesting for a number of reasons. One, L.A. is an inherently interesting place, you know, as California goes, so goes the nation. It’s seen as a bellwether. But we also had two candidates who are really symbolically different. Karen Bass is a Black woman, a long time politician, um, served in the state Assembly, has been in Congress. Her background is in community activism, is really seen as a coalition builder. And Rick Caruso, who is a white real estate developer billionaire who really was running on kind of a change L.A. platform, clean up L.A. And he has served on a number of city commissions. He was president of the police commissions. So he has a pretty deep background in L.A. City Hall but really was running as an outsider. And he, the other kind of biggest thing to note is that he's a former Republican and so L.A. is a deep blue city, and on one side we had a lifelong Democrat elected official, and on the other side we had a former Republican businessman. And so these are kind of stark contrasts.

Gustavo: And not only that, Caruso spent, what, over a hundred million dollars of his own money to be a factor in the race.

Julia : Exactly, and the spending in this race has been historic on a number of fronts. Not just, you know, that the numbers are so kind of bonkers and so beyond what Bass could spend by such a magnitude. But also in terms of his field campaign, he's put upwards of 13 million dollars into his field campaign. No one in a local L.A. race has done anything like that. They have had hundreds of door knockers out in parts of the city and really targeting voters who don't always vote in city elections. Particularly Latino and Asian voters. And so kind of the big gamble for Caruso, this multimillion-dollar gamble, is whether he can actually get those voters to show up and mark their ballots for him. And them showing up, I think, will be one of the key things that determines whether or not he does win.

Gustavo: Right now who's in the lead, Bass or Caruso? 

Julia : So Caruso has a slight lead right now, but the thing to make very clear about L.A. vote counting is since the shift to people using vote by mail, we really don't have results yet. The results could still swing pretty wildly. TSo the first batch of results since very late on election day, or technically early Wednesday morning, are going to be coming out today. So we'll have a much better sense of where things stand after that.

Gustavo: What about other historic or surprising results from these midterms? Any key wins that we should be recognizing, whether on a national level, local level, just anything that really caught your attention.

Seema: I mean there was actually both. On the national level and in California and then also for both parties we saw the first female governor elected in Massachusetts. She's also the first openly gay woman who's elected there, that’s Gov. Maura Healey. We saw Sarah Huckabee Sanders elected as governor of Arkansas. She's the daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, former presidential candidate, and, um, she's the first female governor of the state. And then we saw the first Black governor elected in Maryland, Wes Moore. And uh then, uh, Gen Z is starting to have an impact on politics We saw the first congressman elected from that generation from Florida it's Maxwell Frost. And in California, Alex Padilla was the first Latino senator elected in California. He was appointed to fill Kamala Harris' term when she was elected vice president, but he now is officially elected, so they broke barriers for Latino voters here and, you know, Latino voters here in Latino community organizations have long been calling for more representation of Latinos in California politics because they're such a huge part of the population of the state, I think roughly 40%. And so when he was appointed, that was obviously a big deal. But for him to be elected the first Latino senator from California is being celebrated in a lot of communities. 

Gustavo: Julia. Any elections got your attention? 

Julia: One race that's been really interesting is the race for Los Angeles city controller. Which is a seat that most people don't even know what the controller does. It's not something that normally garners attention, but this race has gotten a huge amount of attention and that's largely thanks completely thanks to one candidate, Kenneth Mejia. An activist and certified public accountant who just turned 32. He declared victory election night over longtime L.A. politician, Paul Koretz and Paul Koretz conceded Wednesday that he probably has lost the race. And this wasn't a surprise because Mejia had also finished the primary with a massive margin over Koretz. But it's still a real rebuke to the L.A. establishment to not have Koretz finish better in this race and really speaks to the strength of Mejia’s grass-roots movement. 

Gustavo: Coming up after the break, the long wait for the final results and the ballot initiatives that crossed the finish line.

Gustavo: So Seema, not all the races from Tuesday's midterm elections have been called and we're probably still in this for a few long days, maybe even weeks. So what other key contests should we continue to pay attention to? 

Seema: I mean the ones that I've been most focused on are California congressional contests because we had redistricting last year. Every state does it after the census every 10 years; all the congressional maps are redrawn. And, you know, there's a lot of jockeying for both parties to sort of try to, you know, have the maps drawn in their favor; from various communities to try to, you know, stay together or to, you know, communities of interest, that kind of thing. So these are the first elections since we have these new districts. And in California once the maps came out Democrats were really optimistic about flipping some Republican seats: Mike Garcia in north L.A. County, David Valadao in the Central Valley, Michelle Steel in Orange County, but as the year progressed they It looked like they got increasingly nervous about their ability to take those seats and then they started getting nervous about protecting their own incumbents: Katie Porter in Orange County, who's an enormous fundraiser; Mike Levin in a district that straddles Orange County and San Diego County. And so a couple weeks before the election, Julia Brownley, who is in a district in a that Biden won by 20 points, she started sending out alarm bells to leadership to get more money and to get more attention on her race because she started getting nervous about her prospects, and her race still hasn't been called. So we're still waiting on several key California congressional races that are really gonna help determine, you know, the balance of power in Congress.

Gustavo: Yeah, in Orange County you mentioned Michelle Steel and also Young Kim. They were two of the first Korean American women elected to Congress and they were both Republicans and their opponents were also Asians. So there was a lot of attention nationally paid about the power of the Asian American vote. And right now it seems both Young Kim and Michelle Steele, they're gonna come out ahead.

Seema: Right. Michelle Steel’s race was with Jay Chen, who's a former naval officer, intelligence officer, and that race got really, really nasty and it got national attention. I mean, she basically was calling him a communist sympathizer. He was saying that's insane because, you know, his grandmother fled communist China to Taiwan and, you know, he served in the military. He had like, you know, top secret clearance. So that race just got really dirty. 

Gustavo: The other race in Los Angeles that got national attention was for the sheriff of L.A. County, and right now, challenger Robert Luna has a big lead over the incumbent, Alex Villanueva. We've done episodes about this race’s importance recently, but we still don't know what's gonna be the result on that for a while either. It used to not be like that, Seema, all this waiting around. So why do election results now take so long? 

Seema: Well, um, it’s a number of reasons and it also depends on, uh, which state you're talking about. But in California, for example, every voter here gets a mail ballot and so, you know, we are overwhelmingly voting by mail as opposed to going to your polling station on election day. Those mail ballots have a week to get to the county elections officials’ offices. So, you know, in a tight race  and where you don't know what the universes of the ballots that are out there, it could take a long time to count. I mean in some places, you know, you can't start counting those mail ballots until after election day. In other places you can start counting them a little bit earlier or start verifying them at least a little bit earlier. And then also we've also really changed the way we vote. Back in the day, Republicans used to be far more likely to vote early while Democrats were much more likely to vote on election day. That got turned upside down during President Trump's administration because, you know, he created this real deep skepticism of mail ballots. And so now Democrats are more likely to use mail ballots while Republicans are more likely to vote on election day. 

Gustavo: Julia, you've also written about why election results take so long. 

Julia : Yeah, I would add two things. Even if we never had full election results on election night, pre-pandemic with much more reliance on in person voting, I think we had a much clearer picture. And since the shift to overwhelming vote by mail use, at least in California, is still relatively new, I feel like it's gonna just take a few cycles for people to psychologically get used to the kind of new normal around election night versus election season. And the other thing is the reason vote by mail ballots take so much longer to process, which isn't the actual voting page is the same tabulation time for in person or vote by mail. But every vote by mail ballot has to be signed by the voter and election officials then have to verify each of those signatures and make sure, you know, that all is good with that ballot. And the important thing to know is that it's not a bug in the system that it's taking so long. It's actually sort of a feature of the democratic process working. 

Seema: Um, but I do think, you know, that the media in part is responsible for creating this environment where people expect results Tuesday night and when we see fluctuations, for example, one person is up Tuesday and then Wednesday another person is up and, you know, the vote count fluctuates. You know, that has led to some skepticism that, you know, I think some people have taken advantage of to, you know, undermine elections, I do think both journalists, government officials, you know, really need to emphasize why it takes so long to count ballots, why the numbers change. It's not like, you know, somebody secretly discovered, you know, a bag of 400 ballots, like behind like the trash can or anything. This is happening for a reason because of the processes we have in place. 

Gustavo: Yeah, we still don't know the final turnout until all the ballots are counted, which who knows how long that's gonna last. But there were a few major issues that dominated the headlines and the ballot box as well. Seema, you mentioned some of them already, abortion, but also inflation, the economy, crime,  and we've talked on this podcast recently about how Democrats put so much weight this year behind the outrage over abortion, while the Republicans really pushed on the economy. How well did those strategies work for both of the parties?

Seema: There were some early indications that young people really were turning out more than they usually do in midterms. I mean, I think I saw in Michigan, you know, students waiting in line for two hours to vote. I think Orange County's another great example of this where, you know, well, once we know how some of these congressional races turned out to see: Did women turn out in greater numbers, or did women, you know, possibly cross over to vote for some Democratic candidates because of this issue? So I think there are early indicators that the Democrats focusing on abortion did ultimately help them, but we, I think, it's too soon to tell. 

Gustavo: And Julia, here in California reproductive rights were actually on the ballot. 

Julia : Yes, they were, uh, Proposition 1, which overwhelmingly passed, uh, enshrines abortion rights in the California State Constitution, and I think it really speaks to how fundamental abortion rights are viewed in California and that it's somewhat of a crossover issue, or at least bleeds a cross party lines somewhat in California.

Gustavo: And beyond abortion, Seema, ballot initiatives in other states pretty much fell into two other camps, voting and drugs. How did those issues play out nationally?

Seema: We saw different results in different states, obviously: for marijuana Missouri voted in favor, Maryland voted in favor, Arkansas opposed. In Colorado there was, uh, magic mushrooms on the ballot. 

Gustavo: Wow. 

Seema: Voting issues were on the ballot in a couple states across the country. Connecticut voted to, uh, to expand early voting. Michigan expanded voting access, including early voting also. And, uh, but in Arizona we saw voters crack down and vote for stricter ID laws. So we saw different results in different parts of the country depending on the political tilt of the states.

Gustavo: And speaking of tilt, Julia, one of the big issues in Los Angeles was whether the progressive left might make, uh, further inroads into the L.A. City Council. And you mentioned Kenneth Mejia earlier for city controller. What other races on the City Council or even in the Board of Supervisors had that left versus liberal tilt? 

Julia: Great question. Definitely Council District 13 where Mitch O’Farrell, two-term incumbent, and that's a district that includes, you know, Hollywood, parts of Echo Park, et cetera, was facing off against Hugo Soto-Martinez, who was a longtime hotel worker organizer, DSA-backed candidate, pretty closely aligned with a Councilmember Nithya Raman, who unseated an incumbent in 2020. And so that race very much, kind of bridged that divide. And Soto-Martinez is currently slightly up over O’Farrell, but again, take every election result right now with a grain of salt. And then in CD 11, which is, Councilmember Mike Bonin’s district who was not running for reelection, and that's a coastal district that includes Venice, the Palisades, et cetera. Traci Park, uh, was running against Erin Darling. And Traci Park was the much more conservative of both Democrats, both the more conservative of those two candidates. And Erin Darling was much further to the left. And Park is currently up by about 10 points. But again, take all results right now with a grain of salt.

Gustavo:  Are we still seeing repercussions from the leaked audio in these elections?

Julia: I think absolutely. You know, I've spent a lot of time talking to voters in the past week, and it was something that a lot of people brought up as something that mattered to them. People felt really disgusted by that tape and disgusted by the way elected officials were speaking. I don't think we'll have a real sense of how it actually affected the elections until we have more results. But, you know, one thing that a lot of people have been talking about is whether the fallout surrounding the leak might help push a progressive shift on the City Council, particularly given people's frustration with the establishment and that progressive momentum was definitely already happening in the city prior to the leak, but it could be a factor that helps push it forward.

Gustavo: After the break, fraud, security and former President Trump. 

Gustavo: Seema, another big thing going into Tuesday's election was all the concerns about voting machine glitches and so-called election integrity. Did those fears materialize?

Seema: In terms of election integrity, we really haven’t seen a ton of people questioning. Obviously, there were some problems in Arizona, for example, but by and large when you look at the polarization, when you look to the leadup to this, you know, there were a lot of questions about whether people would accept the results if they didn’t go their way. There were a number of candidates who wouldn’t say whether they would accept the results. You know, obviously this country is very polarized. We’ve seen attacks on politicians of both parties, but so far it looks like, for the large part, uh, people are accepting the results, including some election deniers, um, such as, uh, Tudor Dixon in Michigan, who lost to Gretchen Whitmer. But I don’t know, uh, long term, I don’t know what that means in terms of the polarization in this country. You know, we’ve seen attacks on politicians of both parties; we’ve also seen a number of attacks that were stopped or that didn’t make it all the way. We know people on January 6th were looking for politicians, for elected leaders from both parties. We obviously know what happened to Paul Pelosi, which is horrible. We know what happened to Steve Scalise, which is horrible. And I guess my question is, at some point is somebody gonna be successful and, you know, is that, is that the moment when people start to realize that, you know, something is very wrong here, when, you know, you have attacks on politicians? Or are we so broken that the polarization just continues? I just, I don’t know how to fix it at this point.

Gustavo: Yeah, and speaking of Trump, he already said that he has a major announcement on Nov. 15, which most people expect him to say he's gonna run for president again in 2024. What sort of shadow did he cast on this election and what lessons can we take away from that?

Seema:  I think he's gonna cast a shadow in every election that, you know, so long as he's involved in the political process in this country because of, you know, what, what's happened the last several years. He was out and about, you know, rallying up his base. I mean, he was in Ohio, I think Monday night and, you know, J.D. Vance won the Senate race there. So he had some successes, but then, you know, he also did have some failures. You know, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania and in Georgia, the Senate race is heading to a runoff. So he, uh, I mean he clearly still appeals to a part of the base, but then also he made a sort of snarky comment about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Monday night. And that actually kind of irritated some conservatives who are Trump fans but who did not like to see him doing that, because DeSantis is also considering a run for president. And the two of them, it would be quite the race if they run against each other. I found that interesting that some Republicans, conservative commentators, uh, voters were, were kind of turned off by that, because that was what President Trump was known for. I mean, you know, 2016 when he had, you know, Little Marco and, you know, all his nicknames for people, LyingTed. And so seeing Republicans’ reaction to the former president criticizing the Florida governor struck me as, you know, maybe a moment that we look back upon because it's different than what we've seen previously.

Gustavo: Yeah, we'll see what happens in 2024. Finally, for the two of you, these midterms basically started with political violence, the January 6th insurrection, and ended with political violence in the form of the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband two weeks ago. And President Biden came out after both of them to talk about the risks that democracy is underneath right now. So I'm curious for both of you, you've been covering these elections for months now. What do you think about the state of democracy? Or what are people telling you as you interviewed them?

Seema: It’s one of the things we just talked about, about how, you know, there largely have not so far been people questioning the integrity of the election, that kinda thing. That's good. But this is one small moment when you look at the polarization of this country. When you look at, you know, polls about, you know, what do people believe about institutions and, you know, whether the 2020 election was rightly called. It shows how divided this country is and how, you know, there are two groups of people with very, very different views. And so, long-term, I worry because, you know, we’ve seen attacks on politicians in both parties. And oftentimes law enforcement stop these attacks. But, you know, what happens if, when one of these is even more successful? I mean, obviously what happened to Paul Pelosi is horrible but I wonder, you know, what happens if somebody is actually successful one of these days? And I just don’t know how, how to fix the polarization that's led us to this point where we're even talking about this.  

Gustavo: Julia, on the other hand, your polarization that you cover mostly is Democrat versus Democrat in terms of liberal versus progressives. What are you feeling from the folks that you're talking to about what they think about American democracy?

Julia: You know, it's interesting, my perspective as a local reporter is so different from Seema’s as a national reporter. I mean, obviously I think people are still really worried about those broader national trends because they're scary. And really worried about the growth of political violence. But L.A. is, by and large, pretty insulated from that stuff. You know, we're not seeing, like, any kind of large-scale election deniers in L.A. We're not seeing attacks on the integrity of the ballot. These are things that if they're happening at all, they're happening in a really fringe, fringe way here.

Gustavo: And as Los Angeles goes, hopefully, so might the rest of the United States. 

Julia: Amen.

Gustavo:  Julia, Seema, thank you so much for this conversation

Seema: Thank you for having us on.

Julia : Thank you for having us.

Gustavo: Gustavo: And that’s it for this episode of The Times, essential news from the L.A. Times

David Toledo and Kasia Brousalian were the jefes on this episode, and Mario mixed and mastered it, and Heba Elorbany edited it.  

Our show is produced by Shannon Lin, Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Roberto Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen. 

I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Monday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.