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Democrats keep House seats
Unlike the presidential race, which raged on the day after Election Day, there was very little drama in Bay Area congressional races Wednesday morning.
Incumbent Democrats ruled the day in all 12 House races involving Bay Area congressional districts. Locally, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto) won her 15th term in Congress, beating fellow Democrat Rishi Kumar in District 18 with 65.7% of the vote. Eshoo’s district covers parts of Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz counties.
Democrat Jackie Speier beat Republican Ran S. Petel in District 14, winning her fifth term in the House with 80.5% of the vote. Speier’s district covers San Mateo County and a small part of San Francisco.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi easily won her 18th term in Congress, defeating fellow Democrat Shahid Buttar with 79.2% of the vote in San Francisco’s District 12.
State Legislature races
Democrats will still hold commanding majorities in both the state Senate and Assembly. Even if Republicans were to win all of their target seats and keep the ones they’re defending — and preliminary results suggest that’s unlikely — Democrats would still hold more than 70% of seats in both chambers.
What isn’t clear is just how large next year’s Democratic supermajorities will be and what kind of Democrats they’ll include.
Another sizable blue wave would send more GOP incumbents across central and Southern California into involuntary retirement. That would bolster the chamber’s Democratic ranks, and its representation of moderate suburbia.
Locally, the race for state Senate District 13 indicates Democrat Josh Becker is set to replace Jerry Hill, who’s being termed out of office. Becker garnered 77.3% of votes (or 238,412) while Republican Alexander Glew collected 22.7% of votes (or 70,120), according to unofficial state election results available Wednesday afternoon.
Assemblyman Marc Berman, the Democrat who previously served on the Palo Alto City Council, has retained his seat. Berman had 75.8% of votes (or 105,423) while Republican Peter Ohtaki, a former Menlo Park mayor, received 24.2% of votes (or 33,716), unofficial state election results show.
