Whatever Stanislaus County Republicans are doing to get out the vote, it’s working.
Democrats have a razor-thin edge in party registration here, at the moment. It goes back and forth every so often and sat at 108,114 Democrats to 107,492 Republicans a couple of weeks ago.
But with few local races in the June primary for Democrats to get excited about, they didn’t show as much enthusiasm as Stanislaus Republicans in Tuesday’s vote, according to early returns.
Turnout is less than 17% for ballots processed so far. That number will rise as elections officials continue counting tens of thousands of ballots coming in on election day and in the mail if envelopes were postmarked Tuesday or before. By law elections officials must post the number of unprocessed ballots yet to tally on Thursday.
Look at the numbers: Stanislaus County voters preferred Steve Hilton to Xavier Becerra in the governor’s race by 22 percentage points, compared to less than 2.5% statewide. And it’s the same story here in all statewide races – lieutenant governor, insurance commissioner and everything else.
So kudos to the Stanislaus GOP party and its affiliates for energizing their base.
Tuesday’s primary “environment was turbocharged by the fact that we had a number of contentious races specifically concerning Republicans here in Stanislaus County,” said Christan Santos, chairman of the Stanislaus Young Republicans.
It’s not a clean sweep, however.
Assembly District 9
Local Republicans also experienced the embarrassment of backing a losing candidate in the race for Assembly District 9 rather than longtime incumbent Heath Flora – the Assembly minority leader – after their spat with him went public.
Flora on Tuesday easily bested a crowded field of six candidates with more than 30% of the vote and likely will face Democrat Matthew Adams (24.6%) in the November midterm – not Jim Shoemaker (23.8%) of Lodi. He won party endorsements in both Stanislaus and San Joaquins counties (and still has a chance to overcome Adams to advance to November). The local Republicans felt slighted by Flora, who seemed to pay no heed.
“He wouldn’t have done what he did if he thought there was a serious possibility he would lose,” said Nathan Monroe, director of UC Merced’s Center for Analytic Political Engagement.
“When you look at the result, the proof is in the pudding – he could ignore the local party and still win the race,” Monroe said.
Senate District 4
More intriguing was the donnybrook between incumbent Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil and her District 4 challenger Alexandra Duarte, who is married to former Congressman John Duarte.
She raised more money, invoked Donald Trump at every turn, promised to make California great again, railed against tampons in boys’ bathrooms and everything transgender – and will advance to the fall election against Democrat Jaron Brandon, leaving the current senator out in the cold.
Alvarado-Gil never had an easy path, having been elected in 2022 as a Democrat because several greedy GOP candidates refused to come together behind just one. They ended up diluting the conservative vote enough so she could win.
She switched parties in summer 2024, a dicey move leaving Democrats feeling betrayed while Republicans weren’t quite sure she was one of them.
A sex scandal producing a still-ongoing civil lawsuit from her former chief of staff didn’t help either.
The undervotes in that race – or the number of people who didn’t mark a preference for a particular seat – help tell the story. Far more Stanislaus voters skipped over that race than any other local one, suggesting a general disgust, or weariness.
This explains how Brandon, a Tuolumne County supervisor, ends up in first with more than 39%. And it leaves many wondering if he has a chance in the fall in a red-leaning district, thanks to mountain counties lumped in with Stanislaus, plus a sliver of north Merced County.
“When you overperform in the primary,” Monroe said, “you’re setting yourself up for if the tide swings the right way, and you do the right pavement pounding – or forest pounding – and have that kind of retail politics you’ve built as a county supervisor, you never know. It’s not impossible.
“Is (Brandon) likely to win? No. Is he likely to (do better) than what people thought? Yeah.”
House – California District 5
If that’s the case, does Democrat Michael Masuda also have a chance at unseating longtime GOP Rep. Tom McClintock in the House’s District 5?
Most would say it’s not likely.
Even with four candidates in that race, McClintock still got an impressive 63% while Masuda received less than 23%. It would take a massive blue wave sweeping the country in the fall to overcome that, even if McClintock continues to pay little attention to Stanislaus County east of Highway 99.
House – California District 13
West of Highway 99 lies California District 13, which promises to command more nationwide attention than any of these others. Both parties know this one is crucial to the partisan balance in the House of Representatives – affecting the entire United States and beyond in coming years.
And both parties think they can win, partly because party registration is so closely balanced in the 13th. Thirty seven percent of its voters are in Merced County, 34% in Stanislaus and the rest scattered in Madera and Fresno counties – with a tiny finger poking into Stockton in San Joaquin County, thanks to last fall’s Proposition 50 and its new boundaries.
Incumbent Adam Gray, a Merced Democrat, unseated John Duarte two years ago by a mere 187 votes, a relative hair, in the nation’s closest House race. And Duarte beat Gray two years before that by 564 votes, also a nailbiter.
On Tuesday, Gray took home nearly 41% of the vote and in the fall will face former Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln, whose 29% leaves Vin Kruttiventi (16.6%) out of the running.
Lincoln drew an endorsement from Pres. Donald Trump. That may not be attractive in much of deep-blue California, but it sure didn’t hurt here in the Valley – still a bastion of purple, or mix of progressive blue and conservative red.
Other results
Stanislaus County Supervisor Mani Grewal – like Gray, a familiar name – will win easily, having received more than 76% to challenger Rally Valenzuela’s less-than 24%.
And government’s plea for more taxes from Salida, Wood Colony and Del Rio residents – to stabilize fire protection – fell flat. Needing two-thirds approval to pass, voters as of Tuesday were giving Measure J less than 47%.
Garth Stapley is the accountability reporter for The Modesto Focus, a project of the nonprofit Central Valley Journalism Collaborative. Contact him at garth@themodestofocus.org.