It should be noted that, besides weird flukes in safe Democratic areas, the only Democratic congressman in a competitive district to run ahead of Brown was Raul Ruiz, who seems like he has a very bright future ahead of him.
Interesting that Takano in 41 and Vargas in 51 (provided, they're not in competitive districts, unlike Ruiz) ran a few points ahead of Brown. I assume it must have something to do with Takano and Vargas carrying Latinos (the ones that actually turned out) by a larger margin than Brown, but that might not be necessarily true.
Brown carried 2 House seats currently held by Republicans -- very similar, 52/48 margins in CD-10 and CD-21, which are held by Jeff Denham and David Valadao. They are the logical choices for Democratic offensives in California. Pickings are slim after that, but Democrats competed in CD-25 in 2012, which Kashkari carried 57/43. Better choices for their attention might be CDs 39 and 49, held by Ed Royce and Darrell Issa, which Kashkari carried just 55/45 -- but these are flippable only in a wave, and Royce and Issa are both very powerful Republican Congressman.
Since Dems don't have to sweat district 7 and 52 in the upcoming cycle, they should be desperately trying to unseat Denham and Valadao. However, Valadao in particular has major crossover appeal, and Republicans have been winning two deeply Democratic state Senate seats in this area recently too. At best I see one of the two of them losing.
As much as I hate to admit, I see 25 falling off the competitive map for a short while. If Democrats wanted to win 25 in 2016, they needed Strickland to win in 2014. The Knight family has been around for a few decades in this area (father and son, which is probably the main reason why Knight beat Strickland). If Strickland won, then Dems could have attacked him for moving districts, opportunist, etc. etc. Knight will be around until at least the next redistricting.
If the people of Fullerton, Diamond Bar, and Yorba Linda even hear the name Ed Royce, they shut down because they don't have the time dwell on someone so boring and inoffensive. Beyond a shadow of a doubt safe R. The Democrat who represented Fullerton in the state assembly who would have been the most credible challenger to Royce just lost too.
Issa is also pretty safe, even if he isn't liked. I know a lot of people in his district, and voting for Darrell Issa is like doing your laundry. It's a drudgery, but you have to do it, especially when Republicans are in the majority.
Any Republican offensive should start with Aguilar's and Peters' districts, which are both 52/48 Brown (same margin as Denham and Valadao), and from then go on to Raul Ruiz's district (53/47 Brown, though Ruiz outperformed him), and then onward to competing with Jim Costa and Mark Takano, neither of whom featured prominently on Republican lists in 2014, while Democrats like Ami Bera and Lois Capps, who were targeted, are probably pretty safe.
If all these guys survived 2014, they'll all be fine going forward. Brown is so popular, that his approvals are stunningly even dragging up the state legislature's approvals. Unless there is a Gray Davis-esque collapse in the state Democratic party, or there is an individual scandal with one of them, all the incumbent Democrats up and down the ballot will be fine. And they'll be given plenty of resources to defend their seats if need be.
This pattern is a big part of the explanation for why Democrats pulled off so many narrow House wins in 2014. Republicans ran top-tier candidates against less-vulnerable members of the delegation (Bera and Capps), so those won narrowly, but ran poorer candidates against more-vulnerable members like Jim Costa, leading to those barely winning as well.
The problem for Republicans wasn't people like Bera being secure and they tried to target him anyway. It's the fact that the quality of all their potential candidates range from mediocre to poor. Ose, a former Congressman was given the firepower to win, and still didn't. All things considered, Bera should have lost to Ose in 2014.
Once again, FANTASTIC work, Miles!
Agreed!
