LOS ANGELES \u2014 Leave it to the Golden State to provide a rare ray of sunshine for national Democrats this election cycle.<\/p>\n

Nearly a month after Election Day, Democrats clinched their final House win of the cycle this week<\/a>, a capstone to winning four of the six most competitive California congressional races. Their strong showing, despite a statewide rightward shift that echoed national trends<\/a>, led to the party ousting three incumbent Republicans and bringing them tantalizingly close to capturing the chamber.<\/p>\n

In a cycle where very little went right for Democrats, their successes in California \u2014 and New York, another blue state bastion that delivered multiple red-to-blue flips \u2014 showed that the party\u2019s relentless coastal focus paid some dividends. Democrats lavished far more attention<\/a>, and crucially, money, on key races in those states compared to two years ago, enabling them to prevail against stiff political headwinds, sometimes by the barest of margins.<\/p>\n

That consolation prize was enough for Californian and third-ranking House Democrat Rep. Pete Aguilar<\/a> to take a victory lap Wednesday after a caucus meeting, which featured newly-minted winner Adam Gray<\/a> \u2014 who took his Central Valley race by just 187 votes \u2014 beaming in via FaceTime.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, these candidates and their stories is what broke through,\u201d Aguilar told reporters at his weekly news conference. \u201cNetting three seats was a very big deal for California, a point of pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

While precinct-level deep dives are still to come, Aguilar sketched out in broad strokes what he saw as the Democrats\u2019 successful formula in his home state: better candidates, more resources and driving a message on \u201cquality of life issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

That combination helped reverse two consecutive cycles of setbacks for California Democrats, who swelled their ranks in the 2018 blue wave, only to lose four seats two years later and fail to reclaim them in 2022.<\/p>\n

“Clearly, 2018 was the high water mark, and since then, all they’ve been able to do is claw back some of the territory that they lost,\u201d said Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan campaign almanac.<\/p>\n

In California, winning back that ground was an expensive proposition. In 2022, Democratic challengers were perpetually outgunned by cash-flush GOP incumbents. The party\u2019s House campaign arm and the affiliated outside group House Majority PAC abandoned the expensive Los Angeles media market entirely, which touches four hotly-contested districts.<\/p>\n

This time, Democratic candidates routinely posted seven-figure fundraising hauls, putting them in a position to more efficiently buy TV airtime. And they were boosted by substantial investments by the party and major super PACs, which early on oriented their funding goals in anticipation of the high cost of playing in those races.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew from the onset how important these seats would be, and so did Republicans,\u201d said Dan Gottlieb, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. \u201cUltimately, we had a better formula to win these races and defy the political headwinds blowing the GOP\u2019s way, and now these dysfunctional Republicans will have to manage through the smallest House majority in nearly a century.\u201d<\/p>\n

House Majority PAC also identified the California races early on as top priorities and set an initial spending target of $35 million. It ended up spending $50 million \u2014 almost five times more than it did two years prior.<\/p>\n

Labor unions, another essential part of the Democrats\u2019 arsenal, zeroed in on the state\u2019s congressional races in a way they hadn\u2019t since before the pandemic, said Lorena Gonzalez, who leads the California Labor Federation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we are focused and we don’t end up in 10 different places, we do much better,\u201d Gonzalez said, noting the labor movement sidestepped two major ballot initiative clashes with business groups, clearing the way for a single-minded focus on the House.<\/p>\n

Republicans on the ground felt the disparity \u2014 particularly after former Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the speakership, denying vulnerable incumbents a powerful home state patron.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got outspent by $6 million,\u201d said GOP Rep. John Duarte<\/a>, who lost by a dental-floss thin margin to Gray. He acknowledged getting support from the national party and Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC directed by Speaker Mike Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if you look at the McCarthy money and some of the other independent expenditures, it never came in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

New York Democrats similarly swelled their efforts after being stunned by the loss of four House races in 2022. House Majority PAC plowed $50 million into the state, nearly quadrupling its previous investment, and two separate efforts founded in the wake of the midterm drubbing beefed up the Dems\u2019 ground game.<\/p>\n

The New York Democratic Party launched a \u201ccoordinated campaign\u201d \u2014 led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries<\/a>, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand<\/a> and Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was blamed for some of the 2022 losses \u2014 that knocked three times more doors in battleground districts than in 2022. A coalition of labor unions and left-leaning groups called Battleground New York raised $11 million and focused on turning out three groups: \u201cdrop-off voters,\u201d voters of color and newer voters.<\/p>\n

As a result, Democrats flipped four seats between a February special election and last month\u2019s contests, reversing their midterm losses.<\/p>\n

Two of the newly elected New York House Democrats \u2014 Laura Gillen<\/a> and Josh Riley<\/a> \u2014 won after losing by mere points in 2022, both appealing to independent and Republican voters and voicing their willingness to stand up to their fellow Democrats on border security.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrankly, I think in 2022, we, the Democrats, were surprised by some of those races, and certainly had not put a lot of money or organization or attention into those,\u201d Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. \u201cThis time around, there was no surprise. \u2026 the state party was far more involved. Certainly, we in the delegation in Congress were very actively campaigning in those districts, and you just had high-quality candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n

California Democrats also credited their candidates with being able to defy their party\u2019s gloomy national prospects, often running ahead of Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach one was able to establish a brand, a narrative that did not fit neatly into what Republicans were trying to label all Democrats as nationally,\u201d said Orrin Evans, a Democratic strategist who worked on two winning toss-up Orange County races.<\/p>\n

One client, Dave Min<\/a>, is a Korean American former state lawmaker who embodied the demographic changes<\/a> that had transformed ruby-red Orange County to a purple battleground. He was able to hold the seat left vacant by outgoing Rep. Katie Porter<\/a>, despite lacking her commanding spending advantage or national profile. He did it by running offense on public safety, overcoming his party\u2019s soft-on-crime stereotype and his own drunken driving arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cDave Min was endorsed by every law enforcement organization in the state,\u201d Evans said. A messaging war on crime \u201cwas a debate we were eager to have,\u201d particularly given Baugh\u2019s own past scrapes with campaign finance violations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a neighboring Orange County district, Derek Tran<\/a>, a Vietnamese American first-time candidate, was well-positioned to peel away support from Little Saigon and defeat incumbent GOP Rep. Michelle Steel<\/a> by roughly 650 votes.<\/p>\n

Democrats had failed in two consecutive cycles to dislodge Los Angeles-area GOP Rep. Mike Garcia<\/a>, despite their party\u2019s double-digit registration advantage. This time, the party backed George Whitesides<\/a>, the former CEO of Virgin Galactic. Whitesides\u2019 profile \u2014 his ability to self-fund, plus his business background that resonated in a district with a heavy aerospace presence \u2014 earned grudging respect, even from Republicans.<\/p>\n

\u201cGeorge Whitesides was probably the Democrats\u2019 most impressive new recruit that they got throughout the entire country,\u201d said one national GOP strategist who was granted anonymity to speak frankly. \u201cI don’t think there was a better first-time candidate for them this cycle than in that seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

A sterling candidate profile can only go so far. Will Rollins, a former prosecutor who ran for a second time against Rep. Ken Calvert<\/a>, the dean of the state\u2019s GOP delegation, was a top-notch fundraiser<\/a> and had a telegenic television presence, but it was not enough to overcome the red tilt of the Inland Empire district \u2014 though fellow Democrats don\u2019t fault him for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only wish Will Rollins would run again,\u201d said California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell<\/a>. \u201cHe was the perfect candidate for that race. It’s just that that was a really tough seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rollins was the only California Democrat to seriously challenge a GOP incumbent in a district that Donald Trump won in 2020. In the other five seats, Democrats were playing on blue-tinted territory. But even a 13-point party registration advantage was not enough to unseat Republican Rep. David Valadao<\/a>, who easily beat his Democratic challenger Rudy Salas.<\/p>\n

There are some ominous trends for the party even in its victories, such as Gray\u2019s whisper-thin win in a majority-Latino district where Democrats have a nearly 11-point registration edge. Early in the cycle, Gray cited those figures<\/a> in arguing that, in a presidential year turnout, the math favored the Democrats. That ended up being just barely true.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a warning sign that Democrats are getting from all corners of the country, which is that lower-propensity voters are no longer their friends,\u201d said Rubashkin of Inside Elections.<\/p>\n

Republicans point out that Democratic football spiking makes their wins look more impressive than they actually are.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow insane is it that the Democrats are having to spend $40 or $50 million in traditionally blue states and blue districts, which is supposed to be their territory, because they were so lackadaisical the last couple of cycles that they kind of screwed up, let those seats go and then they almost lost these seats [this time],\u201d said the national GOP strategist. \u201cI mean, 650 votes is nothing to be that proud of after you’ve spent however much money that they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, though, Democrats are accentuating the positive, choosing to bask in their net gain of one House seat, giving Republicans just a 220-215 margin and success of ousting California Republican incumbents who have bedeviled them for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cMike Garcia and Michelle Steel have been survivors since 2020 and that’s impressive,\u201d said CJ Warnke, spokesperson for House Majority PAC. \u201cTo beat people who are able to hold on in a district like that, you need to recruit the highest quality of candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dustin Gardiner contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"