On Monday, I took a look at AD-72, and in this post, I’ll be looking at another of OC’s multi-candidate Assembly races that has now narrowed down to two: AD-69.

Conventional wisdom held that if any OC district was going to feature an intraparty battle in November (courtesy of Prop 14), it was going to be the Republicans in AD-74 between Assemblyman Allan Mansoor and Newport Beach Councilwoman Leslie Daigle or the Democrats in AD-69 between OC Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly and either labor leader Julio Perez or Santa Ana Councilwoman Michele Martinez.  (Unexpectedly, it was AD-72 that created OC’s sole intraparty battle with an all-Republican November matchup between Los Alamitos Mayor Troy Edgar and Huntington Beach Businessman Travis Allen.)

AD-69 will come down to Daly and Republican OC Eligibility Technician Jose “Joe” Moreno (not to be confused with Anaheim City School District Trustee Jose F. Moreno).

We here at OC Political predicted Daly vs. Moreno here, here, and here. (While we made several predictions that went wrong [like nearly everybody else, we failed to predict Edgar vs. Allen in AD-72], we’ve been consistent in predicting Daly 1st and Moreno 2nd in AD-69.)

This race was incredibly evenly divided.  Daly was far and away the top vote-getter, getting nearly double the number of votes of the second-place candidate.

Some readers may be wondering if Perez could still catch Moreno with the remaining uncounted ballots.   There just aren’t enough out there. 27,090 out of the 417,965 ballots counted in Orange County so far cast votes in AD-69, which equals 6.5% of the votes.  There are 9,528 uncounted ballots remaining in Orange County, which leaves approximately 619 votes remaining in AD-69.  To make up his current 403-vote deficit, Perez would need to be ahead of Moreno by 65.1%.  If Moreno captures 10% of the vote, that would require Perez get 75.1%, leaving just 14.9% to be split between Daly, Martinez, and Barragan.  Let’s say AD-69 has a disproportionate share of the outstanding ballots, and double that to 1,238 ballots remaining in AD-69, Perez would need to be ahead of Moreno by 32.6%.  That is a tough margin for Perez.  If Moreno captures 10% of the vote, that would require Perez get 42.6%, leaving just 47.4% to be split between Daly, Martinez, and Barragan.

It’s clear from the results that Martinez was Perez’s spoiler.  If just 10% of Martinez’s votes had gone to Perez, he would have surpassed Moreno and advanced to a run-off against Daly.  Martinez and Perez were clearly the liberal Democrats in the race, with Daly and Barragan the more moderate Democrats, and Moreno was the Republican.  The lion’s share of Martinez’s votes would have gone to Perez.

It’s now clear that without Michele Martinez in the race, union-backed Democrat Julio Perez would have advanced to the November run-off against business-backed Democrat Tom Daly.