Raman favored to win L.A. mayor’s race; GOP reacts to ‘extinction-level’ defeats

California is about to enter the “Becerra era,” though the governor-elect who coined that phrase has dropped few hints about what will define it.

After a decisive Tuesday night victory in the race to succeed termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, Xavier Becerra will take the helm with a slate of potential economic opportunities: luring back Hollywood production, drawing international visitors to the 2028 Olympic Games, implementing voter-approved housing bonds and responsibly growing the artificial intelligence industry.

Democrat Marni von Wilpert has prevailed over Republican Jim Desmond in the race for California’s 48th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press.

Von Wilpert, 43, has served on the San Diego City Council since 2020. Before entering politics, she was an attorney who founded a legal health clinic in Mississippi to combat discrimination in housing, employment and medical care against patients living with HIV and AIDS.

She also served as counsel on the House Education and Labor Committee during the second Obama administration.

The 48th District, currently represented by retiring Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall), encompasses northern and inland areas of San Diego County, including San Marcos and Escondido. It also picked up some Riverside County cities following the passage of Proposition 50, including Murrieta, Palm Springs and Temecula.

The change gave Democrats a slight advantage in voter registration in the former Republican stronghold, but the race was still predicted to be competitive.

Issa, who served in Congress for more than 23 years, announced in March that he would not be seeking reelection, marking a major loss for California’s Republican delegation.

Democratic incumbent Rep. Dave Min (D-Irvine) is staying in Congress after fending off former Republican gubernatorial candidate Jenny Rae Le Roux to represent a swath of coastal and southern Orange County, according to the Associated Press.

The 47th District was for decades a Republican stronghold, but in recent years it has become a swing district. It became far less competitive for Republicans after being redrawn following the passage of Proposition 50, with more than 36% of registered voters identified as Democrats.

Min was elected in 2024 after a stint in the state Senate. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission as an enforcement attorney and was a professor at UC Irvine.

Min raised more than $3.8 million in the race, far more than Le Roux’s war chest of nearly $600,000.

Affordability was a cornerstone of both their campaigns, but the candidates differed on the root cause of the problem.

Min advocated for ending President Trump’s tariffs to lower the cost of goods, ending the war in Iran to lower energy prices and restoring Medicaid cuts that were part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Le Roux blamed California policies and inflationary spending in Washington for driving up costs for Orange County residents.

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman continued to inch ahead in the race to become the city’s next mayor, according to the latest results released Wednesday afternoon.

Raman continued to hold a lead over incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. The race is still considered too close to call.

Raman, who was first elected to the council in 2020, has passed significant legislation around tenants’ rights and rent stabilization during her time in office.

She was a late entry into the race for mayor, which alienated many of her council colleagues who almost unanimously endorsed Bass.

The one-time allies, both Democrats, have waged a contentious campaign — with Raman accusing Bass of being “missing in action” during the destructive Palisades fire in January 2025 and the more recent Lineage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights. Bass, on the other hand, has accused Raman of being ill-prepared to handle the duties of mayor.

The focal point of Raman’s campaign was hope, rebuilding the city and ushering in an era of Los Angeles that loved its residents back.

“We have shown Los Angeles” that it’s “a city that is worth fighting for every single day of our lives,” Raman said Tuesday at her election party outside the Greek Theatre.

On the same night, nearly 4 miles away, Bass — a veteran state and federal lawmaker before coming to City Hall — projected confidence that she would prevail in her reelection bid.

California Democrats dominated in pivotal congressional races in Tuesday’s election, soundly defeating or holding commanding leads over Republican candidates from the state’s northern redwood forests to the Mexican border.

The election marked the first test of California’s new congressional district lines approved under Proposition 50 in 2025, a counterpunch to President Trump’s push to get Republican-led states to redraw their electoral maps to prevent Democrats from gaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives — a GOP effort that flopped in spectacular fashion Tuesday.

Bobby Pulido is graduating from quinceañera gigs to the Capitol. The Tejano singer pulled off a historic victory when he flipped a Texas congressional seat back to blue during the U.S. midterm elections.

On Tuesday, the Latin Grammy-winning artist defeated Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz in Congressional District 15, a narrow geographical area that extends east of San Antonio down to Rio Grande Valley.

A day after Democrats won control of both the House and Senate, clearing the way for increased congressional oversight of the Trump administration, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin took to X to maintain that, “Deportations will continue.”

The post comes after Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote a two-word statement of his own on X on election night:

“LAWYER UP,” he wrote.

Garcia said he plans to tackle corporate corruption, abuses by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Epstein files.

WASHINGTON — Latino voters, whose swing to the right aided President Trump’s election in 2024, helped Democrats reclaim both chambers of Congress on Tuesday in a stunning reversal of support for Republicans.

The shift, which transpired nationwide but was especially pronounced in Texas, is seen as a rebuke of the president and his party by a group of Americans who have watched as their families and neighbors were detained by immigration agents while their cost of living shot up.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said on Wednesday that Michigan voters had rejected “a hateful, spiteful campaign” after months of Republican attacks on his Muslim identity in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.

In an interview with the Associated Press, El-Sayed said he was “running on adrenaline and caffeine” after his race with Republican Mike Rogers was called early Wednesday, giving Democrats another significant victory in a premier swing state as they won a substantial majority in the Senate in Tuesday’s midterms.

Democrats swept California’s statewide down-ballot races — no surprise in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a nearly two-to-one margin, and voters haven’t elected a Republican to a statewide office since 2006.

The dominance was evident in the Democratic candidates’ victories for attorney general, secretary of state, lieutenant governor, treasurer and controller.

The Democrats weren’t the only big winners in the midterm elections.

NBC News said the “Kornacki Cam” featuring the network’s chief data analyst, Steve Kornacki, ranked as the top election livestream on YouTube, with a record 29 million views across all platforms. Kornacki’s 10½ hours of continuous online coverage were woven into NBC’s election broadcast, which according to early data from Nielsen led the TV competition Tuesday night.

Donald Trump long ago promised Republicans that, with him as their leader, there’d be so many wins, they’d tire of winning. He didn’t say the wins ultimately would be Democrats’.

In the wake of a wipeout for the ages, is the Republican Party so tired of Democrats’ winning that it will finally quit Trump? Don’t count on it. Yet. But that question will define the 2028 presidential election cycle, which began the day after Republicans’ rout — and President Trump’s much-deserved rebuke — in Tuesday’s midterm elections. For Republicans, keeping the garishly gilded White House after 2028 just got a lot harder.

For more than a year, Marissa Roy has vowed to turn the Los Angeles city attorney’s office into a massive “public interest law firm.”

Now, she has a sweeping mandate to put that plan into action.

The scene at Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna’s election night party was mostly buzz cuts, dark suits and high-gloss black shoes. Deputies and politicos chatted over festive music while the local news played silently on a big screen at El Pescador Bar and Grill in Carson, which served as Luna’s campaign headquarters on Tuesday.

When the newscast declared around 9:50 p.m. that the sheriff had won a second term, dozens of friends, family members and colleagues nursing margaritas and tacos burst into a rousing round of applause. After one of the sleepiest sheriff’s races in recent memory, Luna had again cruised to victory over his predecessor, Alex Villanueva.

Following a wave of GOP losses in the midterm elections on Tuesday, Elon Musk reportedly removed an election-day X post that urged voters to cast their ballots in favor of Republicans.

Musk posted, “Vote red today!” on Tuesday, but by Wednesday morning it was gone, Business Insider reported.

On Tuesday night after the polls had closed, with preliminary results projecting Democrats flipping the House and securing control of Congress, Musk made a snarky post on X.

“Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” the post said. That post remained up as of Wednesday afternoon.

The Times reached out to Musk for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

The trillionaire spent more then $400 million in the midterm elections for Republican-leaning causes and candidates, according to campaign finance filings.

Musk largely stayed out of the political scene during the midterm election and instead silently increased his spending in the second half of the cycle.

His focal point was the Texas Senate race, and steering money into the America PAC that Musk launched during the 2024 elections that supported President Trump.

A Democrat won the Texas Senate seat Tuesday, according to preliminary results.

The fate of multiple high-stakes California ballot propositions remained undecided Wednesday, as poll workers continued to tally votes from across the state.

Other measures have generated decisive action from voters on such issues as public funding for housing and voter identification.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed the state of the Republican Party at a news conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday.

“Let’s just be clear about what happened last night: This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last 100 years,” he said.

DeSantis, who reached his term limit as governor after serving two consecutive terms, credited Florida for maintaining Republican control after Republican Ashley Moody won the Senate race and Republican Byron Donalds won the race for governor.

He claimed Democratic campaigns were able to capitalize on multiple issues that Republicans fumbled, including the Epstein files.

“I see the ad, ‘So-and-so voted against releasing the Epstein files.’ That’s a bad vote,” DeSantis said. “We ran as Republicans on saying we need to do that. And then you actually have people in the Congress voting against release? ... It’s untenable.”

He also blamed the failure to ban congressional stock trading, which Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) pushed for this year.

“Why don’t they ban congressional stock trading? It would be a breath of fresh air for everybody if they were able to do it,” he said, saying the midterms were a rejection of what was going on in Washington, D.C.

Two propositions aimed at easing housing costs for renters and would-be homeowners in California easily passed Tuesday night, making clear that voters across the socioeconomic spectrum support any way to lower sky-high housing prices.

Propositions 1 and 37 each passed with roughly 60% of counted votes, as of Wednesday morning. The results are still preliminary.

Jose Ugarte held on to a strong lead over Estuardo Mazariegos in the race for District 9 on the Los Angeles City Council, while in District 3, Barri Worth Girvan and Tim Gaspar remained virtually tied, according to partial returns Wednesday.

The current council members in both districts — Bob Blumenfield in District 3 and Curren Price in District 9 — are leaving office because of term limits.

Just after 11 on election night, Nithya Raman took the stage in a plum-colored dress outshined only by her smile.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a narrow lead in early returns. But to Raman and her supporters who packed the plaza in front of the Greek Theatre, they had already won.

WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress gained the power Tuesday night to more forcefully investigate President Trump and rein in his agenda, setting up confrontations that are likely to define the final two years of his presidency.

As party leaders on Wednesday celebrated retaking the House and Senate, they vowed to put Trump and his administration on the defensive with subpoenas and hearings, a role that voters made clear they want them to play. But they also said the top priority would be the issue that swept them to power: making life more affordable.

Former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim held a slight lead Wednesday over state Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) in the race to be the next California insurance commissioner — a contest that remained too close to call.

Kim is a progressive candidate without insurance industry experience who was backed by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“It’s an incredible honor to have received so much support from every corner of the state,” Kim said in a statement late Tuesday. “While being vastly outspent, we reached and energized voters across the state.”

Allen, a three-term legislator who drew the California Democratic Party’s endorsement and represents the Pacific Palisades neighborhoods devastated by the January 2025 wildfires, cautioned that all the votes must be tallied before a winner is declared.

“That’s democracy working the way it should. Every vote matters, and every vote will be counted. The county election workers counting those ballots deserve our thanks and our patience,” he said in a statement Wednesday morning.

Amid insurer withdrawals from the California market due to rising wildfire risks, Kim’s platform was anchored by a novel proposal to establish a statewide insurance pool funded largely by homeowners that would handle wildfire claims. Allen focused on his legislative record of insurance industry reform bills and policyholder protections.

Veteran Democratic political consultant Steve Maviglio said that Kim had opened up a daunting lead that had cut into Allen’s chances of winning the election.

“It’s hard to make up that margin, but possible,” he said.

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Democrats scored victories in governor’s races in states long controlled by Republicans, including Texas and Georgia, riding a wave of voter discontent in Tuesday’s midterm elections to deliver a rebuke to President Trump and GOP policymaking.

The wins delivered a majority of governorships to Democrats for the first time in two decades, allowing them to put up a stronger defense against Trump’s second-term agenda.

Federal immigration agents didn’t swarm polling locations. FBI agents didn’t storm processing centers or seize ballots. A thousand federal election monitors caused little fuss. And President Trump — the nation’s election denier in chief — responded to a shellacking for his Republican Party by saying he’d work with Democrats as they take power in Congress in January.

In many ways, the unprecedented fear and months of warnings from top officials in California that the Trump administration would seek to disrupt Tuesday’s midterm elections fizzled. But that does not mean an end to the administration’s war on alleged voter fraud by noncitizens — a cornerstone of its election interference efforts in California, and one that has threatened criminal sanctions not just against individuals who illegally cast ballots, but local elections officials who counted such votes.

As of the latest vote tallies, Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman has earned a slight edge over incumbent Karen Bass in the mayoral race.

But election experts say the early lead is likely a sign that Raman has what it takes to remain ahead.

If you mailed in your ballot, here’s a handy way to check if your vote has been counted.

Head to the Where’s My Ballot website, which was developed by the California secretary of state’s office. Type in your name, date of birth and ZIP Code, and the site will tell you the status of your ballot: mailed, accepted by the Post Office, received or counted.

You can also sign up for status updates by email or text on the website.

To be counted, ballots must be postmarked on or before Nov. 3 and be received within seven days of election day. Since a large swath of Californians vote by mail, there are still millions of votes left to be counted.

Democrat Adam Gray has won reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives, fending off Republican challenger Kevin Lincoln, the former mayor of Stockton, in a race to represent California’s 13th Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley.

The Associated Press called the race on Wednesday with an estimated 57% of ballots counted.

Those results showed Gray leading with 61% of the vote. Lincoln had nearly 39% of the vote.

The perennially competitive district — which stretches from Madera through Merced and includes portions of Stockton — became more favorable to Democrats after it was redrawn following the 2025 passage of Proposition 50.

The new map added urban voters in the northern portion of the district, in Stockton and Modesto, and nixed some in rural places in the south.

In 2024, Gray ousted Republican incumbent Rep. John Duarte by just 187 votes. With the winner announced on Dec. 3 of that year, it was the final House race to be called and a bright spot for Democrats, during an election marked by a broader conservative shift.

Incumbent Steve Veres took the lead in the race for Seat 2 on the Los Angeles Community College District board, while Darryn Harris was ahead for Seat 4 and Randall Winston was ahead for Seat 6, according to early returns.

In all, 16 people are vying for three seats on the seven-member Board of Trustees. Seat are at large, meaning trustees do not represent a specific area. The district, spanning some 900 square miles, is the largest in the country, and the majority of its 200,000 students are low-income.

By the end of election night, many significant races were still too close to call.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data. Races can be called within minutes of polls closing on election night. Becerra was called as the winner in the governor’s race within moments of the voting deadline.

However, if a race has tight margins or a high expected volume of mail-in ballots, it can take longer to call.

Randy Villegas has captured the seat representing Congressional District 22 in California’s Central Valley, giving Democrats a much-sought-after pickup, according to the Associated Press.

Villegas was appointed to the Visalia Unified School District board in 2021 and won election in 2022 and 2024. He teaches political science at College of the Sequoias and grew up in Kern County.

The needs of working families, particularly healthcare and cost of living, were at the forefront of Villegas’ congressional campaign.

Villegas’ defeat of Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) was celebrated by Democrats who had previously attempted to flip the seat, which has long been considered one of the most competitive in the country.

The Cook Political Report listed the Central Valley seat — representing portions of Kern, Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties — as a toss up.

Valadao had persevered in past attempts to oust him from the seat, but he faced new challenges this year, including redistricting that made him even more vulnerable to his Democratic opponent.

Voters have chosen Angela Gonzales-Torres, a 31-year-old from Highland Park who was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, over incumbent Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Eagle Rock) in the race for Congressional District 34, according to the Associated Press.

The district spans significant sections of Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights, Chinatown, downtown, Eagle Rock, Lincoln Park, Little Tokyo, Pico-Union and Westlake.

Gonzales-Torres’ win marks a major career leap. She recently held two part-time jobs: one at an affordable housing project for seniors and another as an academic counselor at a college.

She was supported by the DSA, Justice Democrats and other progressive groups, but also faced sharp criticism over her leadership on the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council — with board members accusing her of picking fights and failing to shepherd through board priorities.

Overshadowing the race was a House Ethics Committee investigation into Gomez over his alleged inappropriate sexual contact with a staffer.

Gomez, 51, denied any legal or ethical wrongdoing but admitted to making mistakes outside of his marriage.

Gomez was first elected to Congress in 2017 and had successfully fended off challenges from progressives in past cycles.

WASHINGTON — As the scale of the Republican Party’s losses came into focus late Tuesday, President Trump watched from the White House and went looking for someone to blame.

First it was Fox News. Just before midnight, with Democrats projected to seize control of the House, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the network “bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.” Then it was the fact that he had not been on the ballot, otherwise, he said, “we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”

Minutes later, Trump was on the phone with the same network he had just accused of sabotaging his party. And over a 22-minute interview, conducted before the Senate had been called for Democrats, his tone shifted from grievance to something closer to acceptance, though never to the idea that the election results were a rebuke of his administration.

WASHINGTON — Democrats heralded a new era in American politics Wednesday after voters broke Republicans’ control of government and delivered a pivotal rebuke of President Trump.

Victories that handed Democrats control of the House and Senate on Tuesday night came in historic form, with margins outstripping expectations and double-digit shifts to the left by nearly every voting bloc. In some of the reddest states in the union, even Republican redistricting efforts designed to shield districts from competition were not enough to prevent Democratic inroads.

Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said he holds no grudge against the operators of SoFi Stadium, even as they apparently are helping fund a PAC working to unseat him.

“I have no animus at all,” Butts told The Times on Wednesday, as returns showed voters rejecting dueling ballot measures that have served as a dividing line between the city and the $5-billion NFL stadium.

The morning after voters delivered a blistering midterm rebuke of President Trump, with Democrats flipping both chambers of Congress and racking up victories even in deep-red bastions, Vice President JD Vance said there was one main reason for his party’s widespread losses.

“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance wrote in a lengthy post on X on Wednesday, referencing the conflict that began in February when U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top officials.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday night, Trump said the war was partly to blame for the election results.

“Iran was a piece of it,” he told the paper, adding that he believed the rise in oil prices, which skyrocketed as a result of the war, frustrated voters more than the conflict itself.

The president said of the Iran war: “I don’t think about it. I did the right thing. I would have done it again.”

Politics

‘Not a hit on me’: Trump faults candidates and Fox News, not himself, for Republican losses

Reflecting on the losses, Trump largely put the onus on the candidates, some of whom he said he only endorsed for the good of the party.

Nov. 4, 2026

In his 614-word social media post on Wednesday, Vance — who served in the U.S. Marine Corps and was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a military journalist — wrote that “any honest conversation” about how the GOP moves forward after this election must start with the war.

“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest,” Vance wrote.

Vance said he had talked to data analysts in the lead-up to the election and that, while polls showed a Democratic blowout, there was “a genuine sense of optimism on our team” because Republican voters appeared to be mobilizing.

“So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we’re going to shock the world?” Vance wrote. “‘No,’ he told me. ‘We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys.”

The vice president acknowledged that, ultimately, many 2024 Trump-Vance voters were angry and voted blue this election.

Vance wrote that one pollster he respects told him that 2024 Trump voters who switched sides listed four ways the GOP could win them back: ending the war, focusing on the cost of living and inflation, putting “America first,” and changing the country’s relationship with Israel.

While immigration is a major issue — with communities across the U.S. upended by the Trump administration’s aggressive and controversial deportation raids — the vice president wrote that focusing on amnesty for immigrants will not win more GOP votes.

“In the next few months, there’s going to be a lot of gaslighting,” Vance wrote. “Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I’m open to the idea that we should change enforcement — by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you.”

The president’s son Donald Trump Jr. shared Vance’s post on X, using three red 100 emojis to show his support for “every word.”

Colin Allred is all blue. The Democratic politician from Texas played linebacker for the powder blue-clad Tennessee Titans for four years and he rode the historic blue wave Tuesday to return to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Allred, who served three consecutive terms in Congress before making an unsuccessful bid for the Senate in 2024, is one of several prominent former athletes who ran for office in the midterm elections. He won this time in a landslide over Republican Patrick Gillespie, collecting nearly 80% of the votes in the 33rd Congressional District located in Dallas County.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson will be stepping aside from Republican Party leadership after the GOP’s wipeout in the midterm election, declining to seek support to stay on as House minority leader in the new Congress, according to two people familiar with his decision Wednesday.

Johnson is expected to retain his seat as a rank-and-file member of the House from Louisiana when Congress convenes in January. He won reelection from his Shreveport-area district for a sixth term in office.

There are still an estimated 5 million ballots in California, leaving multiple races across the state left hanging in the balance until new results are announced.

The latest results are here.

Each county is responsible for collecting and counting ballots on election night and in the following weeks. The registrars then communicate those results, in batches, to the secretary of state.

The counties with the most voters — Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange and Riverside — are prepared to process hundreds of thousands of ballots.

In Los Angeles County, the operation to deliver ballots to the processing center involves eight helicopters flying in ballots from Lancaster, Palmdale, Catalina and other far reaches of the county.

LONDON — World leaders who have sparred with the “America first” President Trump greeted the rout of his Republican Party in the U.S. midterm elections with a measure of relief Wednesday, allowing themselves to hope for a less combative U.S. foreign policy.

But that hope was tempered by the expectation that American voters’ rebuke would not necessarily end the U.S. conflict with Iran or change Trump’s policies on tariffs or his lukewarm-at-best support for Ukraine and Washington’s European allies.

Rep. David Valadao, a Hanford Republican who has served six terms in a perennially competitive Central Valley district, was losing to his Democratic competitor by a large margin as of Wednesday morning, according to the Associated Press.

With 57% of the ballots counted, Democrat Randy Villegas, a political science professor at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, was leading with 66% of the vote.

Valadao had 34% of the vote to represent the 22nd Congressional District.

After California’s congressional map was redrawn to favor Democrats with the 2025 passage of Proposition 50, the boundaries of the Central Valley district were adjusted to add about 100,000 Fresno residents.

The district covers swaths of Kern, Kings and Tulare counties, along with a piece of Madera County.

Endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Villegas sought during the campaign to paint Valadao as aligned with President Trump.

Valadao was first elected to Congress in 2012 and has mostly fended off highly-funded Democratic challengers in his heavily Latino, politically purple district.

In 2018, Democrat T.J. Cox unseated Valadao by just 862 votes amid the so-called anti-Trump “blue wave” when Democrats took control of the House.

In 2020, Cox lost by 1,522 votes in a rematch against Valadao, who later became one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The Dodgers lost four straight playoff games to the Milwaukee Brewers in a humiliating end to their season.

But this was worse.

When President Trump pushed Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps last year, the goal was to protect the GOP’s narrow House majority against potential backlash in the midterm election.

On Tuesday, a blue wave staved off many of those efforts.

As of early Wednesday, Democrats are projected to hold at least 11 seats targeted by Republican redistricting efforts, including four in Florida, four in Texas, and one each in Ohio, Alabama and North Carolina.

In South Texas, Republicans were betting on Latino voters to stick with Republicans after they shifted to Trump in 2024, but they did not.

Add deep-red Mississippi to the list of unlikely battleground states in this year’s midterm election because the U.S. Senate race, as of Wednesday morning, is a virtual tie.

Democrat Scott Colom was leading incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde‑Smith by 43 votes with 96% of ballots counted, the Associated Press reported.

Each candidate was sitting at 48.9% of the vote.

If Colom defeats Hyde-Smith, who has been in office since April 2018, it will be a major GOP upset in the Magnolia State.

Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982, when former Sen. John Stennis won his final term before retiring in 1989 after more than four decades in office.

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, first appointed Hyde-Smith to the office in the spring of 2018 after former GOP Sen. Thad Cochran resigned, citing health issues. Hyde-Smith won a special election that fall to complete Cochran’s term, and she was elected to a full term in 2020.

Hyde-Smith, a cattle farmer and former Mississippi agriculture and commerce commissioner, was a Democrat when she first began serving in the Mississippi state Senate in 2000 and changed her party affiliation to Republican in December 2010.

If elected, Colom, a district attorney, would be Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

According to his campaign website, Colom’s mother, retired Judge Dorothy Colom, was the first Black judge elected to her region’s Chancery Court, and his father, Wilbur Colom, is an attorney and one-time Republican who worked for Ronald Reagan.

In an overnight statement posted on X, Colom wrote: “MISSISSIPPI! Our race is too close to call. We are going to make sure every single vote has been counted, and I am confident we will ultimately flip this seat.”

Voters, he wrote, “know what’s at stake and we saw historic voter turnout in this election across Mississippi, including thousands voting for the first time.”

Before polls closed on Tuesday, Hyde-Smith wrote on Facebook: “Thank you to every Mississippian who showed up today, cast a ballot, volunteered, prayed for us, and supported our campaign. I am incredibly grateful for each and every one of you.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, said in a CNN interview Wednesday morning that voters sent a clear message in the midterms: They want a Congress that will make “their lives more affordable.” The New York Democrat said he will continue to lead Democrats in the chamber to ensure that happens.

“We ran on affordability, we won decisively on affordability, we now have a responsibility to govern on affordability and to lower the cost of all things,” Jeffries said. “This is the wealthiest country in the history of the world, clearly we have to build an economy that is actually working for everyday Americans as opposed to what we have right now which is an economy where people are drowning.”

He said that would start with the cost of healthcare, including efforts to reverse Medicaid cuts and to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired last year. When asked about the need to conduct investigation into the Trump administration, Jeffries emphasized the focus would be on economic issues.

Nithya Raman’s lead against Karen Bass continued to grow overnight.

Raman had 377,458 votes compared to 360,864 for Bass.

The council member expressed hope during a Tuesday night rally.

“Do you love Los Angeles?” a fired-up Raman asked supporters.

“Yeah!” the crowd yelled back.

“Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back?” she said, to an eruption of cheers.

“There are still a lot of ballots to count … but I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful,” she said.

Raman spent much of her speech outside the Greek Theatre around 11 p.m. describing her love for “this beautiful, weird, magical place that we get to call home.”

“In just one century, Los Angeles built itself into a global metropolis. The gateway to the Pacific. A center of ingenuity and invention. The cultural capital of the entire planet,” she said. “That ambitious Los Angeles, that joyful Los Angeles, that creative Los Angeles, that entrepreneurial Los Angeles, that inclusive Los Angeles, is the Los Angeles that this campaign was born to fight for.”

It may take weeks to know who won in the Alaska Senate race between Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan and former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, one of the most closely watched contests in the country.

Peltola is narrowly leading Sullivan in the race, but ballots are still being counted and the contest remains too close to call. Alaska accepts ballots that are postmarked by election day for up to 15 days after the election from overseas voters.

Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank up to four candidates. If no candidate wins a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated and those ballots go to each voters’ second choice, a process that repeats until someone crosses the 50% threshold. The Division of Elections will not run those tabulations until Nov. 18, and it aims to certify the results by Nov. 25.

Elon Musk, who spent nearly $500 million to boost GOP candidates in the midterm election, responded to Tuesday night’s losses with a joke. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” he wrote on X early on Wednesday.

The defeats were steepest in Texas, where Musk has moved the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX and X. Democrats in the state captured the governor’s mansion with Gina Hinojosa, who campaigned against data center expansion. Musk appeared to nod to that result in a separate post: “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”

Nithya Raman took the lead against Karen Bass in the race for Los Angeles mayor.

The race remains tight. Bass maintained a small lead for most of Tuesday night. But Raman passed her after midnight.

Raman, appearing before a boisterous audience at the Greek Theatre plaza, said her campaign was about taking on the status quo. L.A., she said, “stopped being a place where we could build things, where we could open things, where we could film things.”

“Hopelessness can be fatal for a city,” she told the crowd. “But this campaign refused to accept that. You refused to accept that. You saw hopelessness and you chose hope, because you know that Los Angeles is a city with hope in its soil.”

California voters on Tuesday passed Proposition 3, which will permanently maintain higher tax rates on wealthier California residents.

These higher rates first took effect on a temporary basis during a financial crisis in 2012. Voters already had extended them once before. The rates were set to expire in 2031.

The Associated Press shortly after midnight declared the ballot measure was approved.

Proposition 3 was heavily backed — with at least $60 million — by the California Teachers Assn. and promoted as a schools funding effort. It was, more precisely, a general tax measure to buttress the general fund, of which about 40% is set aside for the public school system serving 4-year-olds through students in community college.

Depending on state tax revenues, which are volatile, the higher rates have brought in about $5 billion to $15 billion per year. The higher rates have affected about 2% of state taxpayers.

Proposition 3 was one of two measures on the ballot targeted toward California’s most prosperous residents. The other was Proposition 40, a proposed one-time 5% tax on a broad range of the assets of billionaires.

Backers of Proposition 3 were concerned that the huge campaign against Proposition 40, largely funded by billionaires, also would create blowback against Proposition 3. The actual anti-Proposition 3 campaign — which included anti-tax groups, the state Republican Party and some pro-business groups — was minuscule in terms of fundraising compared to pro-Proposition 3 efforts.

“Do you love Los Angeles?” a fired-up Nithya Raman asked a crowd of her supporters.

“Yeah!” the crowd yelled back.

“Are you ready for an L.A. that loves you back?” she said, to an eruption of cheers.

“There are still a lot of ballots to count … but I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful,” she added. Early returns showed her and incumbent Mayor Karen Bass locked in a tight race.

Raman, an L.A. City Councilmember, spent much of her speech outside the Greek Theatre around 11 p.m. describing her love for “this beautiful, weird, magical place that we get to call home.”

“In just one century, Los Angeles built itself into a global metropolis. The gateway to the Pacific. A center of ingenuity and invention. The cultural capital of the entire planet,” she said. “That ambitious Los Angeles, that joyful Los Angeles, that creative Los Angeles, that entrepreneurial Los Angeles, that inclusive Los Angeles, is the Los Angeles that this campaign was born to fight for.”

After a lengthy list of thank yous, Raman gathered with her family, then descended into the crowd to celebrate.

WASHINGTON — Democrats are poised to win control of the Senate with historic flips of Republican seats, according to Associated Press projections in the races in South Carolina, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Kansas and Iowa, pulling off a long-shot sweep of multiple battleground states.

The party’s win of the majority, considered nearly impossible a year ago, comes as Democratic momentum has materialized beyond expectations, sweeping House seats, governor’s mansions and lower offices along with it.

Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has won election to the U.S. Senate, the Associated Press projects, becoming the first Muslim to be elected to the chamber and defeating Republican Mike Rogers after a contentious campaign.

The win is a victory for the progressive approach championed by El-Sayed, a former public health official who embraced some democratic socialist positions — and a rejection of anti-Muslim attacks against El-Sayed put forth by Rogers and his allies, including President Trump.

It also appeared to show that a late about-face by El-Sayed’s Democratic primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, who made a surprise endorsement of Rogers over the weekend, had not swayed the electorate.

Democrats retain the seat, further bolstering their Senate majority.

Democrat Richard Pan has defeated Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Rocklin) in the race for California’s 6th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press.

The race was one Democrats had targeted to flip following voter approval of Proposition 50, which split Kiley’s district into six pieces and prompted the congressman to switch from Republican to independent in an attempt to keep the seat.

Pan, a Sacramento pediatrician and former state senator, hammered Kiley during the campaign for his support of President Trump’s agenda, including his vote in favor of drastic cuts to Medicaid. He touted his work to expand and provide healthcare, both as a physician and lawmaker.

“As a pediatrician, I devoted my career to putting the health and safety of my patients and people first,” Pan said. “Washington is not well, and in Congress, I will heal what is now broken and prioritize people, including expanding access to health care, lowering the cost of living, and keeping families safe and healthy.”

While in the state Senate, Pan authored legislation that removed personal and religious vaccine exemptions for children attending public schools. The bill was fiercely opposed by conservative parents and lawmakers, including Kiley, who was in the state Assembly at the time.

In a statement, Kiley said he had spoken with Pan and congratulated him on his victory.

“I’m proud of our campaign and grateful for the amazing support of so many people,” Kiley wrote on X. “Thank you for believing California is worth fighting for.”

America, baby! You never know what we’ll do.

Texas votes blue, Kansas, too. And Iowa. And Michigan. And Minnesota. And Ohio, and North and South Carolina and oh, so many other places. Turns out more war, more inflation and the beauty of the reflecting pool aren’t great campaign messages — and Democrats now control the Senate and the House.

The fate of a controversial ballot measure to impose a new tax on California billionaires, proposed as a lifeline for the needy and castigated as a threat to the state’s fragile economy, appeared headed for defeat in early election results Tuesday night.

California voters also rejected another hotly contested measure, Proposition 39, which would have required voters to show identification when they cast ballots and elections officials to verify that all registered voters were U.S. citizens.

Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) has won reelection, securing a Democratic hold in a largely Orange County-based district.

Tran, 45, returns to Washington, D.C., looking to provide more help for small businesses, which he has said “are the backbone of our economy.” He said he would expand access to capital, contracts and business opportunities for entrepreneurs.

About 78% percent of the district lies within Orange County and includes the cities of Garden Grove, Westminster, Buena Park, Fountain Valley and Fullerton. A smaller portion includes parts of Los Angeles County cities Cerritos and Norwalk.

The Cook Political Report shifted its race rating in July from Lean D to Likely D.

Tran also enjoyed a significant advantage in fundraising. By mid-October, his campaign had raised $6 million, partly aided by his not having to slug out a primary campaign.

In comparison, his Republican opponent — Choung Vo, 51 — emerged from a crowded field of five challengers in June to advance to the general election.

Voters in California have approved Proposition 1, which allows the state to issue up to $11.25 billion in bonds to spend on building and maintaining housing low- and middle-income residents can afford.

That money will be divvied up among several programs. The largest portion — $7.2 billion — will go toward efforts to buy, renovate and build low-income housing. This could include doling out money to local governments and private developers, likely in the form of low-cost loans, to help spur construction of new homes, as long as a portion of those homes is reserved for people earning low incomes.

The money also could be spent on supportive housing, or housing where medical and mental health services are available on-site.

The remainder of the money has been earmarked for first-time homebuyers, homes for farmworkers, infrastructure projects and loans to help veterans buy homes.

While the veterans’ housing program is self-funded, taxpayers are on the hook for funding the rest of the programs. It will cost Californians $500 million to $600 million a year, for an anticipated 25 years, to repay the bonds,according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Mayor Karen Bass projected confidence on Tuesday night that she would triumph in her reelection bid — although the initial tight results suggested an uncertain outcome.

“Let me just say it takes awhile to count the vote in our city, but pretty soon we shall know and I am confident with all the work that is done here that we will achieve victory,” she said at the L.A. County Democratic Party’s election night watch party in Hollywood.

Her speech was met by whoops and applause as the crowd of supporters chanted “four more years!”

While vibes were running high at the watch party — buoyed in part by Democrats’ victories in the House and Senate — the very small gap in votes between Bass and her rival, Councilmember Nithya Raman, is not a great sign for the mayor.

Raman is expected to secure a larger portion of the late-arriving ballots, which tend to be cast by the younger voters who serve as her base.

When asked how he felt about the extremely tight initial results, Bass supporter Alton Reed said, “I’m disappointed that people don’t recognize all of the great things she’s done.”

Reed, who works for the Communications Workers of America 9003, said he had put in more than 100 hours knocking on doors urging voters to support Bass. He said the positive response he received in the field made him feel that the incumbent had a strong chance.

He described himself as a passionate supporter and appreciates that she has credentials, strong political experience and knows what levers to pull to get things accomplished at City Hall.

“I’ve been through many close races,” he said. “So we will see what happens.”

City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez said he was “feeling good” about the election results shortly after the initial round of ballots were released.

Soto-Martínez was one of several elected city leaders who gathered alongside labor union representatives and nonprofit leaders to support Bass at the watch party.

He described the incumbent mayor as a collaborator who has a broad base of supporters backing her reelection campaign.

“I’ve been part of many elections and I think when you have a bigger coalition and more people behind you that is going to show in the results,” he said. “That’s why I remain hopeful.”

Democrats were projected to secure control of the U.S. Congress, winning a majority in the House and Senate in a stunning sea change for Washington.

Democrats secured the House majority, the Associated Press has projected. With votes still being counted, it is not yet clear how wide of a margin the Democrats may end up with. The party needed a net gain of three seats to win control and was forecast to gain at least 15; more than 30 would indicate a significant wave, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.

Democrats had been expected to take the House majority, as is historically typical for the party that does not hold the presidency in midterm elections, but their win of the Senate represents a historic flip after a series of upsets in deep-red territory.

The wave of Democratic victories gives the party commanding control of Congress, providing a powerful check on President Trump during his final two years in office. Unified control will provide Democrats with broad investigative and subpoena powers, authority over presidential appointments, control of legislation and federal spending, and the ability to pursue impeachment proceedings.

Rep. George Whitesides has won reelection in California’s 27th Congressional District, covering the Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys.

Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce) narrowly defeated a Republican incumbent in 2024, but had a much easier path to victory this election cycle after his district was redrawn under Proposition 50. The northern L.A. County seat went from being a toss-up race in 2024 to a solidly Democratic one this year, according to the Cook Political Report.

Whitesides ran on a platform of lowering the cost of living, defending Social Security and Medicare, tackling the wildfire crisis and growing local jobs in a district where residents have some of the longest commutes in the country. He was challenged by Santa Clarita City Council member Jason Gibbs, a Republican.

Prior to entering politics, Whitesides served as NASA chief of staff, chief executive of Virgin Galactic and co-founded a nonprofit focused on addressing the growing problem of massive wildfires.

Democrat Troy Jackson has defeated Republican incumbent Susan Collins to win Maine’s U.S. Senate seat, according to a projection by the Associated Press, strengthening Democrats’ freshly won majority in the chamber.

Jackson’s win follows a contentious, high-pressure campaign — and a late start for the Democrat, who stepped into the race after Graham Platner, the party’s nominee, dropped out in July following sexual assault accusations.

The Democrat’s victory ends a three-decade run for Collins, 73, Maine’s longest-serving member of Congress and a reliably moderate Republican voice in the Senate.

Nithya Raman supporters danced to a DJ set after the first batch of votes for L.A. mayor came in. Others cheered as a KTLA camera pointed into the crowd.

“We were told that Karen Bass needed to be ahead by a lot more early on to keep the lead,” said Rutik Shinglot, who is on the board of the Westside Young Democrats. “So I’m feeling good.”

Early returns showed Raman within 2 points of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. In the primary, early returns showed Raman behind Spencer Pratt before eventually overtaking him.

“The country’s ready for a change,” Shinglot said.

Joseph Fuchs, a representative for the Western States Carpenters union, was watching the returns closely.

“That’s just the beginning,” he said. “Get ready.”

Another point of data: “Kalshi says it’s a 95% win” for Raman, he said.

A little before 9:15 p.m., Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton conceded defeat at his election party inside the Hyatt Regency ballroom in Garden Grove.

“We have a new governor of California,” Hilton said to a crowd of about 800 supporters. “I know it’s not the one you wished for, but I do wish Xavier Becerra well.”

Hilton added that he hopes Becerra will govern the state “properly.”

The concession was sandwiched between a call to action to a mostly deflated Republican crowd that had to be told several times by party organizers to increase its energy and noise.

Hilton was joined on stage in defeat by fellow Republican candidates Gloria Romero, who was running for lieutenant governor; Herb Morgan, who was running for controller; and California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin.

Hilton did stir the crowd with a promise to help Republicans break up the Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature in 2028. He said that he expects a Republican to win the governorship in 2030.

He did not, however, say whether he would be interested in running again nor did he indulge the chants of “recall” from the crowd.

“We love California, and we’re going to fight for California,” Hilton said. “The fight goes on. We have a plan.”

Los Angeles County voters have reelected incumbent Robert Luna for another term as sheriff, turning away a challenge from Alex Villanueva, according to the Associated Press.

Luna, a former Long Beach police chief who came out of retirement to run for sheriff in 2021, previously unseated Villanueva in the November 2022 election.

Luna has presided over declines in homicides and violent crime during his time leading the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Luna points out that violent crime has fallen every year since he took office. The department says the number of new deputies graduating from the sheriff’s academy has also risen.

California voters on Tuesday approved Proposition 2, a ballot measure that allows the state to put more money into its rainy day fund.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers presented the measure as a solution to the state budget’s dramatic and, at times, unpredictable revenue swings from year to year.

State leaders said the measure would provide more flexibility during times of surplus to deposit money into savings accounts that lawmakers could use to prevent big cuts to programs and services during budget deficits.

Under an existing state appropriations restraint, also known as the Gann Limit, lawmakers cannot spend more in the state budget than an amount determined by a formula that takes into consideration annual tax proceeds, changes to the population and cost of living.

Existing law requires tax revenue above the limit to be divided among schools and refunds sent to taxpayers. More recent carve-outs in the law also allow leaders to direct excess funds to infrastructure and local government.

The limit applies to most other appropriations of tax revenue, including money that lawmakers tuck away into the “rainy day” fund and other reserves.

Proposition 2 exempts deposits into the rainy day fund and a short-term reserve, called the Projected Surplus Temporary Holding Account, from the state appropriations limit. The measure also raises a cap on deposits into the rainy day fund from 10% of general fund tax revenue to 20%.

California voters rejected Proposition 39, a voter ID measure backed by Republicans and megadonors to President Trump.

The measure sought to mandate that voters present government identification every time they vote in person, or cite a specific government ID number when voting by mail.

The measure’s failure marks a major victory for the state’s Democratic establishment, which aggressively campaigned against it as unnecessary and harmful to eligible voters from marginalized groups. It is a loss for Republicans, who have long pushed for stricter controls on voting in the state and promoted Proposition 39 amid a wave of efforts by the Trump administration to restrict voting in California and nationwide.

Republicans allege voter fraud is rampant, despite experts saying it is exceedingly rare.

President Trump sounded off online and in interviews with journalists amid lackluster election results for Republicans on Tuesday, saying if he were on the ballot, the GOP “would have gotten out” to vote and it would have resulted in a “landslide.”

As results indicated Democrats were taking control of the Senate and getting closer to a victory in the House of Representatives, Trump posted a red cap with the word “VETO” written on it in bold white lettering.

Trump elaborated in an interview on Fox, saying that he plans to use the president’s veto power as the balance of power shifts in the legislature.

“It’s one of the sort of powers that a president has, and they’ll send over things that are insane, and I’ll veto them. And after a couple of months of vetoes, they’ll call, and they’ll say, “How do we get this stuff done?” And we’ll work together,” he said in the interview.

He said he’s already spoken to five Democrats on Tuesday, but didn’t name names.

“They obviously want to talk, but I have the power of veto, and the power of veto is, you know, it’s impervious,” he said.

Trump added that, while he thinks part of Tuesday’s returns were the result of the war in Iran, he defended his actions in the Middle East, saying that “historically it’s going to be much more important than this evening because you can’t let the number one state sponsor of terror have a nuclear weapon.”

“Bottom line is, they were not able in many cases to get the votes,” he said of Republicans. “And I think the Democrats did a good job. I really do. I think they did a good job. They fought hard...they’ve been fighting for a long time.”

Democratic socialist Angela Gonzales-Torres took an early lead against Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles).

Gonzales-Torres walked into her own election-night party a few minutes before the polls closed with only a few people applauding.

A crowd of about 150 well-wishers at Pasaporte Records in Highland Park was paying attention instead to a television showing CNN reporting a blue takeover of the House and Senate.

“I almost forgot I was running for something,” joked the democratic socialist candidate for the 34th Congressional District seat held by Gomez, a longtime incumbent. “Hey, maybe they’ll mention me!”

She walked into a room to appear on Hasan Piker’s livestream while party attendees lined up for tacos and Modelos. A DJ spun Afrobeat songs and waited for L.A. County’s first ballot drop.

Gonzales-Torres waged a long-shot campaign during the primary, but gained momentum after the House ethics committee announced around that time that it would investigate Gomez for allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has denied. She made it into the runoff, then linked up with the Democratic Socialist of America’s Los Angeles chapter and its vaunted ground game.

A roar went up when the first results were announced. Gonzales-Torres was leading with 55% of the votes. People started to ask where she was, then gathered around a closed glass door where they could see her hugging well-wishers. One of them was city Controller Kenneth Mejia, who had previously run against Gomez.

“This district was always yearning for change away from the establishment, and I’m so happy that Angela is it,” he said.

More and more people kept gathering to peer in. “Let’s go outside, y’all!” Gonzales-Torres exclaimed, and the room emptied so they could prepare for her grand entrance as the night’s leader.

For more than a decade, Donald Trump seemed to defy all the known laws of political physics.

He was impeached, repeatedly indicted and convicted of multiple felony counts. He ranted and raged and acted more like a colicky infant than any president that anyone living today has ever seen.

Nithya Raman’s supporters flooded into the Greek Theatre plaza as polls closed in California, already riding the high of promising early results for Democrats across the country.

Initial election results released soon after the polls closed at 8 p.m. showed Raman, an L.A. City Council member, neck-and-neck with incumbent Mayor Karen Bass.

As KTLA played in the background, supporters were bullish on Raman’s odds.

“Nithya is the pro-housing voice that L.A. needs right now,” said Jed Leano, a Claremont City Council member who served with Raman on the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency board. “Housing is the defining issue of our generation, and Los Angeles has been waiting for its champion.”

Students and members of the local higher education union representing UCLA and USC sported bright pink UAW shirts.

“There’s been a lot of momentum — it feels kind of wild to be at the end of this very long journey,” said Maria Spear, a member of the union and UCLA grad student studying music who has door-knocked for Raman. “I feel confident that we’re going to pull out a win.”

For Spear, who spends more than half her paycheck on rent, affordability is top of mind.

Raman “represents the change that I think a lot of people in the city are really yearning for,” she said.

State Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) defeated incumbent Rep. James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) in the race to represent California Congressional District 1, according to the Associated Press.

The U.S. House district was among those redrawn to better favor Democratic candidates after voters approved Proposition 50.

The seat was previously held by Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale). Gallagher won a special election to serve out the remainder of LaMalfa’s term after his death in January.

The district had been rural and conservative, stretching from the Sacramento outskirts through Redding to the Oregon border and California’s northeast corner. After redistricting, it lost some of its rural stretches and picked up liberal coastal communities.

Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra issued the “battle cry” of the late labor leader Dolores Huerta after he took the stage shortly after 8 p.m., introduced by his wife, Carolina, and joined by his three adult daughters.

“Sí se puede!” said Becerra, as members of the crowd raised their fists. “Yes we can! Yes we did.”

Speaking to a packed crowd at a West Sacramento restaurant, Becerra pointed to the election night results after Democrats racked up wins in key Senate, House and governor’s races.

“These past two years have been tough. Higher prices. More wars. Corruption and lawlessness,” he said.

But the country was moving on after President Trump, and California residents deserved “freedom to walk the streets without fear of gun violence or ICE mercenaries. Freedom to hold a free election,” he said.

“As governor, my mission is straightforward, but not simple: Deliver a California we can afford. And defend a California we can’t afford to lose,” he said, adding that he’s a governor with “a law degree and a union card. If anyone wants to come after California — or any one Californian — they better be ready for a fight.”

The sounds of Bad Bunny boomed across the speakers as politicians celebrated Becerra’s win before he took the stage.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff called Becerra’s victory “uplifting for the state and for the immigrant community” following Trump’s raids on the state.

He also called the Democratic wins “really breathtaking.”

“It’s a massive repudiation of the president,” said Schiff.

“They’re just astonishing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a landslide like this.”

Minnesota voters have chosen Democrat Peggy Flanagan, the state’s lieutenant governor, as their next U.S. senator.

An Associated Press projection shows Flanagan beat out Republican nominee Michele Tafoya, a former NFL sideline reporter and conservative commentator.

Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, is the first Native American woman elected to the U.S. Senate.

She replaces Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, who chose not to run for reelection after holding the seat since 2018. No Republican has won statewide office in Minnesota since 2006, though in recent years it has become more competitive.

Flanagan trained elected officials and candidates seeking office, including state Gov. Tim Walz, while working for the progressive group Wellstone Action. She faced criticism, along with Walz, over a major scandal involving fraud in state safety net programs.

California voters have approved Proposition 37, allowing the state’s housing finance agency to raise up to $25 billion for a down-payment loan program for middle-income homebuyers.

If fully funded, the program could be among the largest down-payment assistance programs in the country. It faced little opposition in the run-up to the election, in part, because it comes at no direct cost to taxpayers.

Under the program, buyers can borrow up to 17% of a home’s price for a down payment. They will need to put down at least 3% of their own cash.

The measure is self-funded. While the state will fund the program by selling bonds to investors, the loans to homebuyers will carry interest, which will be used to pay back investors.

To qualify, homebuyers will need to be California residents and earn no more than two times the local median income; for a family of four in Los Angeles County, that equates to no more than $216,200 a year. The down payment can be used only to buy newly constructed homes, an attempt at spurring more construction in a state that, by many estimates, needs millions more homes to bring down costs.

Those skeptical of the proposition said they doubted adding thousands more buyers into the housing market was the trigger needed to ramp up construction, and instead said the state should be cutting red tape to ease the cost of building.

Voters have rejected Proposition 44, which would have required the state’s safety-net clinics to spend at least 90% of their annual revenue on “program services advancing their charitable purpose.”

The measure was opposed by multiple organizations across the political spectrum, including the California Medical Assn., the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliate, the state Democratic Party, the state Chamber of Commerce and the conservative advocacy group Reform California.

Detractors pointed out that the proposition failed to specify what expenses would qualify as program-related. The state attorney general would have been tasked with sorting that out, costing the state “in the low tens of millions of dollars” annually, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The proposition was sponsored by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which also put forth the Proposition 40 billionaire tax. SEIU-UHW represents workers in the healthcare industry and was the primary backer of the Yes on 44 campaign.

Democratic state Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin has triumphed over Republican Samuel Gallucci in the race to represent California’s 26th Congressional District.

In victory, Irwin has secured a seat with favorable reelection prospects and a base of wealthy donors. The 26th District encompasses most of Ventura County, as well as the L.A. County communities of Calabasas and Agoura Hills.

Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) has represented the district for the last 12 years, but announced her intent to retire and endorsed Irwin as her replacement. The district was ranked as solidly Democratic by the Cook Political Report.

Irwin began her career in public service in 2004 when she was elected to the Thousand Oaks City Council and served two terms as mayor. She was elected to the state Legislature in 2014 and has chaired committees on climate change, cybersecurity, veterans affairs and taxation.

President Trump took to Truth Social to blame Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for losing to Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa.

“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a [Republican in name only] in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,’ Trump wrote. “He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”

As the GOP losses continued to pile up Tuesday night, Trump told the New York Times that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results of the midterm elections and was prepared to work with Democrats.

“We’ll, you know, look forward to working with them,” he told The Times. Shortly after, Trump posted a picture of a red hat emblazoned with the word “VETO.”

Voters reelected state Controller Malia Cohen, who faced a challenge from Herb Morgan, a Republican and financial services expert from San Diego.

Cohen, a Democrat, touted her improvement of the state’s escheatment program, which returns missing funds to residents, though she faced hurdles after being elected in 2022. Among them, she declined to audit departments and spending, including on homelessness, that she campaigned on in her first run for the office.

Top Democrats endorsed her, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate Pro Tem Speaker Monique Limón.

A palpable buzz of excitement could be felt inside the Loews Hotel in Hollywood, where supporters of Mayor Karen Bass cheered as they watched races be called for Democratic candidates across the nation and hoped the same would hold true for the mayor.

Initial results released shortly after polls closed showed the two mayoral candidates neck and neck.

Los Angeles 7th District Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said she was cautiously optimistic about Bass’ chances of reelection after the latest polls showed her in close competition with Councilmember Nithya Raman. Back in September, Raman had an 11-point polling lead over Bass.

“I think the latest surge reflects the changing temperament of individuals that are paying attention to some of Nithya’s exposed inexperiences and some of the gaffes that she made,” said Rodriguez, pointing to Raman’s controversial remarks praising former L.A. Police Department Chief Daryl Gates as one such example.

Rodriguez acknowledged that Bass’s first term has not all been smooth sailing, but reiterated her belief that the incumbent mayor is best poised to prepare the city for the 2028 Olympic Games and meet challenges of affordability and homelessness.

“As much as I’ve openly and publicly disagreed with Mayor Bass many times, there have been a lot of areas where she and I have collaborated and worked together,” Rodriguez said. “I have yet to experience that with six years of Councilmember Raman.”

Rodriguez also emphasized the fact that not a single member of the City Council has endorsed Raman.

“If all the chefs in the kitchen say we don’t want her cooking,” she said, “that’s a very clear sign that perhaps there’s something wrong here.”

Chair of the L.A. County Democratic Party Mark Ramos was also feeling good about Bass’ chances of winning, despite the bumps she faced along the campaign trail.

“Voters don’t really focus on elections until a week or two before it’s actually election day,” he said. “I think there’s always a lot of noise, and social media can be effective early on, but I think when voters dig in and focus, they come home.”

Ramos defended criticisms of Bass’ leadership in office, saying that many of the challenges the city has faced are due to actions of the Trump administration — such as delays in federal wildfire relief, the immigration crackdown and increased costs of living.

Angélica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said she was extremely supportive of Bass’ candidacy because the mayor has stood by Los Angeles’ immigrant community throughout the surge in ICE raids.

“She made sure she engaged all the resources of the city to ensure that our community felt defended, supported and that they understood that she was on their side,” Salas said.

Salas said she was feeling “extremely excited” about the election and thankful to all the voters from the immigrant community who came out to make their voices heard.

Democrat Eleni Kounalakis has won the race to be California’s next treasurer, succeeding Fiona Ma.

Kounalakis defeated Republican Jennifer Hawks, a retired businesswoman who spent two decades working as an executive assistant at a Silicon Valley private Catholic school.

Kounalakis is the current lieutenant governor, a post she has held for two terms. A major Democratic donor, Kounalakis in 2023 launched a campaign to become California’s next governor before dropping out of the race and announcing in August 2025 she would run for state treasurer.

She served as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary during the Obama administration.

The treasurer is the state’s chief financial manager and responsible for overseeing public investments and issuing bonds to fund major projects such as roads, sewers, schools and affordable housing.

The treasurer also serves on the boards of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) and California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) and sits on bodies that finance projects related to healthcare, small businesses and pollution cleanup.

California voters have reelected incumbent Shirley Weber as secretary of state.

Weber was appointed to the position in 2020 by Gov. Gavin Newsom and elected to a full term in 2022. She is the first Black woman to hold the post.

The secretary of state is in charge of administering statewide elections and overseeing campaign finance, as well as providing information about ballot measures and candidates to voters. The office also handles business licensing and filings.

Weber attended UCLA and became a professor at San Diego State University, teaching Africana studies for 40 years. She was born to sharecroppers in Arkansas during the segregationist Jim Crow era, and her father couldn’t vote until he was in his 30s.

Weber served as chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus while in the state Assembly.

Weber previously told The Times, “I think because of my experience, not only academically and legislatively but personally, the passion that I have for elections and for voting is critically important, so that those who want to vote need to have a person who’s unafraid and who will fight for them and who stands up for them.”

She defeated Republican Don Wagner, a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors.