There were a lot of winners in the June 7 primary election. But there were also a lot of losers.
Once-rising-stars and big-deals-in-their-own-mind ran for office and lost. Those are my favorite political stories.
Here are six Southern California pols whose campaigns went bust.
1. John Valdivia
San Bernardino Mayor John Valdivia is currently trailing challengers Helen Tran (41.52%) and James Penman (20.10%) with just 17.01% of the vote. If current trends hold, Valdivia will be justly ousted in an undeniable rebuke after of years of misconduct and overall shadiness.
Valdivia should’ve resigned two years ago amid accusations of sexual harassment and other misconduct (some of which were later independently validated). But then came the coronavirus pandemic, which swept away all other considerations. (For the record, the editorial board of this newspaper called for him to resign at the time.)
Valdivia has tried to cast himself as a populist hero, a man of the people, but he’s really just your standard corrupt local politician. Late last year, the San Bernardino City Council censured him for misuse of public funds.
If this is indeed the end of Valdivia, then all one can really say is: Good riddance.
2. Andrew Do
Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do, when he’s not making headlines for sketchiness, or complaining about records requests, is ostensibly a big deal. He’s been a politician in Orange County on and off for over a decade, first as a Garden Grove councilman and an Orange County supervisor since 2015.
Accordingly, like many Orange County Republicans with unmerited ambition, he thought it was time for a move up and so he threw his hat in the ring for state treasurer. This set up the possibility of a confrontation between Andrew Do and Treasurer Fiona Ma over who loves police unions more and who the police unions love more.
Thankfully, it appears Californians have dodged that horrible spat, as Do is currently trailing Jack Guerrero, a councilman of not-big-city Cudahy in Los Angeles County. Fiona Ma currently has 57.8% of the vote, Guerrero 21.6% and Do 17.6% of the vote. Do has continued to trail Guerrero, which is made funnier by the fact that Do raised hundreds of thousands of dollars while Guerrero basically raised nothing. Money can’t buy everything.
Accordingly, Andrew Do, will avoid the indignity of losing to Fiona Ma.
3. Lisa Bartlett
Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett tried and failed last year to cynically place a misleading measure on the ballot which would have extended term limits on the Orange County Board of Supervisors while calling the measure a “lifetime ban after three terms.”
It wasn’t surprising, then, that Bartlett decided to run for Congress.
Bartlett ran a predictably super right-wing campaign in which her campaign bizarrely tried to cast Republican Brian Maryott as a liberal RINO or whatever. And so, the campaign bombed, with Bartlett receiving just 10.6% of the vote as of this writing, compared to 18.8% for Maryott.
4. Ron Galperin
Los Angeles City Controller Ron Galperin has done a great job in his current role calling out a litany of failures in the city of Los Angeles. His reports on the city’s botching of Measure HHH money for homeless housing, for example, have been laudable.
It made perfect sense for him to run for California Controller and I don’t think anyone could argue he wouldn’t be an improvement over current Controller Betty Yee, who is best known for her involvement in a failed, sketchy no-bid mask contract. On Yee’s watch, California is also the only state which doesn’t share, line-by-line, government expenditures with the public.
Alas, Galperin’s campaign was a dud, reduced to touting endorsements from Yee and Congressmember Maxine Waters, who for years was named by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington’s most corrupt member of Congress.
Galperin finished with less than 11% of the vote.
But in some ways that’s not as bad a loss as…
5. Yvonne Yiu
Monterey Park City Council member and Democrat Yvonne Yiu also ran in the state controller’s race, ending up with 15.53%, a distant third place behind Republican Lanhee Chen (37.1%) and Democrat Malia Cohen (22.1%), but ahead of Galperin (15.52%) for now.
Here’s the part that hurts: Yiu reportedly spent nearly $6 million of her own money for this outcome. Yikes.
It seems like a just outcome, though. On May 23, George Skelton noted even that late in the game that, “it’s not clear how she’d handle the job because she hasn’t offered details.”
6. Connie Leyva
State Sen. Connie Leyva, D-Chino, fell far short of ousting San Bernardino County Supervisor Curt Hagman.
Hagman, with 57.82% of the vote as of this writing, is likely to avoid a run-off thanks to the poor performance of Leyva (35.29%) and Larry Wu (6.88%).
It’s a fair enough outcome.
Leyva has backed lots of awful legislation in her time, from supporting Assembly Bill 5 to nanny-state bills like those banning plastic straws, and has supported giveaways to the prison guards union.
Leyva was also an early supporter of the rejected split roll proposal which would have gutted Proposition 13 and raised taxes on businesses.
Clearly, a politician with that cluster of positions wasn’t going to fly.
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