OC Political

We move on from the U.S. Senate to the series of Congressional races. These are all pretty straight forward picks with the exception of one race which we will discuss later this week. We start off with the 38th Congressional District which has a sliver of Orange County in it (La Palma).

Thank you to the good people at Meridian-Pacific for the use of the map.

In this race we see Linda Sanchez (D) take on Benjamin Campos (D) and the results from the primary election tell the story:

United States Representative; District 38

• Linda T. Sánchez, Democratic ………. 33,223 votes 56.0%
• Benjamin Campos, Republican ………. 13,363 votes 22.5%
• Jorge Robles, Republican ………. 12,713 votes 21.4%

You have to understand that Republican turnout is generally higher in a primary election than it is in a general election. Democrats have a huge registration advantage of 49.8% to Republicans 27.4%.  The 18.8% of DTS voters in this district lean a bit more on the liberal side as well.

Registration aside, Linda Sanchez is going to have a big financial advantage in terms of fundraising capabilities and will have a huge name ID advantage based on the amount of time that she has served in Congress. The argument is always made that Congress is extremely unpopular and incumbents will easily be tossed out but people forget that voters still do generally like their own Congressional Representative.

Getting into specifics Sanchez has over $200,000 cash on hand after the primary election and Benjamin Campos has just over $5,000 cash on hand. This comparison just will not get the job done for a challenger facing a huge registration disadvantage.

The main factors at play on this campaign as stated above are fundraising, name id, and campaign experience. Linda Sanchez has the advantage in every one of these categories. However, I do believe that Benjamin Campos will beat Republican registration because in this election CPA is a strong designation to have due to the focus being budgetary issues.

Looking at all the factors at play in this district I believe that the winner will be:

Linda Sanchez