CA's Remaining Congressional Races Take Dramatic Turns

LOS ANGELES, CA — Three weeks after Election Day, a congressional race in California took a dramatic turn with a major impact on the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Adam Gray, the Democrat trying to unseat Republican Rep. John Duarte, took the lead in the District 13 race for the first time since election night Tuesday. Further south in the District 45 straddling Orange and Los Angeles Counties, Republican incumbent Rep. Michelle Steel conceded defeat Wednesday.

If Duarte is defeated, Republicans will hold the House by a razor-thin margin, and California will have deprived the GOP of its cushion to rule. While the GOP saw gains around the nation, the party will have suffered devastating losses in California. If Gray holds his lead in Districts 13 as the vote-counting draws to a close, the Republican Party will have lost 25 percent of its Congressional delegation in California this election.

Heading into the election, Republicans held 12 of California's 52 congressional seats. Rep. Mike Garcia already lost his seat in the 27th District to Democratic challenger George Whitesides by nearly 8,000 votes. With Steel's loss Wednesday, the only remaining race in the state and nationwide is California's District 13.

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, Gray led by 190 votes. His lead came the same day the Associated Press estimates the vote tally for the Central Valley District reached more than 99 percent, possibly giving Gray victory with some of the last ballots counted.

Still too close to call, the race is the tightest in the nation. The two faced each other in 2022 when Duarte won by less than half a percentage point. The second-closest race in the nation was District 45. The Associated Press has called the race for Tran Wednesday as Steel conceded defeat. In both districts, the Republican incumbents trail their Democratic challengers by less than 1 percent.

"From the moment I came to the United States, I knew that giving back to the country that welcomed me with open arms would be part of my future," Steel wrote in a statement. "Because of the opportunities offered by this great country, and God's great blessings, I was able to go to college, start a family, and build my own American Dream. I embarked on a mission to assist First Generation Americans, stand up to our adversaries, and defend human rights.

"The journey to work on behalf of legal immigrants and struggling families took me somewhere I never could have imagined -- and for which I will always be grateful -- the United States Congress. Everything is God's will and, like all journeys, this one is ending for a new one to begin.

"I owe a debt of gratitude to my supporters, my staff, my family, my daughters and especially my husband, Shawn, for standing by me through endless campaigns," Steel said. "To my volunteers, we would never have made it this far without your tireless efforts. And, to the voters, thank you. I will never stop fighting for you."

In the 45th District, Republican Rep. Michelle Steel trailed Derek Tran by 596 votes Wednesday evening with more than 99 percent of the vote counted.

Tran leads 158,104-157,508 50.1% to 49.9%, according to the Secretary of State's office. He declared victory Tuesday.

Tran, a consumer rights attorney and co-owner of a pharmacy, called his lead a "testament to the spirit and resilience of our community."

"Throughout this campaign, I heard from voters who wanted representation that prioritizes our community's unique challenges," he said. "From the need for affordable healthcare and housing to the importance of an economy that includes everyone, people here are looking to the future with hope and determination. I look forward to representing that optimism and working tirelessly to ensure that our communities' voices are heard in Washington."

Tran has been slowly expanding his lead as vote-counting continued from the Nov. 5 election. On Nov. 6, Tran was trailing by 11,363 votes, but he slowly cut into the lead as daily tallies were released, and he took his first lead over the two-term incumbent on Nov. 16.

It is not known how many ballots remain to be counted.

As of Wednesday, Republicans held the U.S House of Representatives with 220 seats — a three-seat majority. There remains only California's District 13 left to call.

It's not unusual for California to be the last state counting ballots weeks after an election.

As the nation’s most populous state, California is consistently among the slowest to report all its election results.
Four years ago, in California almost one-third of ballots were uncounted after election night, and the state was making almost daily updates to its count through Dec. 3, a full month after Election Day.

Lawmakers in California designed their elections to improve accessibility and increase turnout. Whether it’s automatically receiving a ballot at home, having up until Election Day to turn it in or having several days to address any problems that may arise with their ballot, Californians have a lot of time and opportunity to vote. It comes at the expense of knowing the final vote counts soon after polls close.

“Our priority is trying to maximize participation of actively registered voters,” said Democratic Assemblymember Marc Berman, who authored the 2021 bill that permanently switched the state to all-mail elections. “What that means is things are a little slower. But in a society that wants immediate gratification, I think our democracy is worth taking a little time to get it right and to create a system where everyone can participate.”

California, which has long had a culture of voting absentee, started moving toward all-mail elections last decade. All-mail systems will almost always prolong the count. Mail ballots require additional verification steps — each must be opened individually, validated and processed — so they can take longer to tabulate than ballots cast in person that are then fed into a scanner at a neighborhood polling place.

In 2016, California passed a bill allowing counties to opt in to all-mail elections before instituting it statewide on a temporary basis in 2020 and enshrining it in law in time for the 2022 elections.
Studies found that the earliest states to institute all-mail elections – Oregon and Washington – saw higher turnout. Mail ballots also increase the likelihood of a voter casting a complete ballot, according to Melissa Michelson, a political scientist and dean at California’s Menlo College who has written on voter mobilization.

In recent years, the thousands of California voters who drop off their mail ballots on Election Day created a bottleneck on election night. In the past five general elections, California has tabulated an average of 38% of its vote after Election Day. Two years ago, in the 2022 midterm elections, half the state’s votes were counted after Election Day.

Slower counts have come alongside later mail ballot deadlines. In 2015, California implemented its first postmark deadline, meaning that the state can count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as the Postal Service receives the ballot by Election Day. Berman said the postmark deadline allows the state to treat the mailbox as a drop box in order to avoid punishing voters who cast their ballots properly but are affected by postal delays.

Initially, the law said ballots that arrived within three days of the election would be considered cast in time. This year, ballots were allowed to arrive up to a week after Election Day, so California couldn't know how many ballots had been cast until Nov. 12.

The Associated Press and City News Service contributed to this report.