2 Calif. Democrats Deadlocked in Bid to Unseat GOP Incumbent
*By Christian Smith*
Democrats are in a holding pattern, waiting to see who will take on California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher in one of the key districts their party needs to flip in November to retake control of the House of Representatives.
Initially, California Democrats wanted to box Rohrabacher out of the race by stacking the ballot with two of their own candidates, but they were unable to game California's "jungle primary" system, said Jon Miller, the White House correspondent for CRTV.
"We know that the Democrats, they sunk millions of dollars into the 48th District," Miller told Cheddar. "They wanted to load the ballot with two Democrats, but we know that they're not going to be able to do that because Dana Rohrabacher is a confirmed winner there."
In California, the top two vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, get spots on the November ballot.
Rohrabacher, a 30-year incumbent, received more than 30 percent of the vote Tuesday, and will face either the businessman Harley Rouda, or the biomedical researcher Hans Kierstead. Those two Democrats were separated by fewer than 100 votes as of the [New York Times' last count](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/05/us/elections/results-california-primary-elections.html).
Democrats are hoping to pick up seven Republican-held districts in California that Hillary Clinton won in 2016. California's 39th and 49th districts are at the top of the target list; two longtime Republican representatives are retiring.
Congressman Ed Royce announced in January that he would vacate his seat in the 39th district after 26 years in office, drawing 17 candidates from both major parties into the race. (Two of them bowed out before Tuesday's vote.) The Republican former assemblywoman Young Kim and a Democratic philanthropist, Gil Cisneros, appear to be the winners of the primary.
In California's 49th district, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa is stepping down from the seat he has held for 16 years. Republican State Board of Equalization member Diane Harkey has guaranteed herself a spot in the November midterms. And 29-year-old Sara Jacobs, the granddaughter of the billionaire co-founder of Qualcomm, Irwin Jacobs, is waiting to hear if she or the lawyer Mike Levin, another Democrat, will earn the right to run for Issa's seat. Levin led Jacobs by more than a thousand votes as of Wednesday afternoon.
Results won't be official for a few weeks as the state still has to count the larger-than-expected number of provisional ballots.
The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder said [in a statement](https://www.lavote.net/docs/rrcc/news-releases/06052018_E-Day-Release.pdf) that the names of 118,522 voters were omitted from poll workers' rosters of registered voters at almost a third of L.A.'s voting locations. Voters left off of the roster were given provisional ballots.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/too-early-to-call-winners-in-key-california-house-districts).
Peter Zalzal, associate vice president for clean air strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, joined Cheddar to discuss the Biden Administration's unveiling of stricter fuel-efficiency standards for new automobiles. "The administration estimated that these rules will reduce about 2.5 billion tons of climate pollution by 2050, and using less fuel also means that we have to go to the gas pump less often. And so it means we save money, thousands of dollars in avoided fuel costs each year for consumers," he noted.
The relatively robust March jobs report showed that despite the low unemployment rate, Black, Hispanic, and women job seekers are still having difficulty finding work. William M. Rodgers III, the vice president and director of the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis noted that participation rates in the labor force ticked up for minorities, adding to other positive signs of growth. He also spoke to Cheddar News to discuss further the jobs figures, the state of the labor market, and rising inflation.
U.S. markets opened higher to kick off the second quarter, despite a miss on the March Jobs Report. The economy added $431,000 in the month, slightly lower than the $490,000 analysts had expected. The unemployment rate also ticked down to 3.6% from 3.8%. Kevin Simpson, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Capital Wealth Planning joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
President Biden is going after billionaires in his 2023 budget request to congress. The proposal would establish a 20% minimum tax rate on all households worth more than $100 million, as well as raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Rhett Buttle, Small Business for America's Future Senior Advisor, Business Policy Expert & Biden Campaign Business Advisor, breaks down the proposal, what it aims to accomplish, and how small businesses might feel about it.
The Biden administration has announced the U.S. will accept up to 100,000 refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine and provide more than 1 billion dollars in new funding for the growing humanitarian crisis. The move comes as President Biden meets with his western counterparts in Europe to demonstrate a united front against Russia and show support for Ukraine. Altagracia Pierre-Outerbridge, Immigration Attorney for Outerbridge Law, explains how this is going to work.
The DOJ has endorsed an antitrust bill targeting tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Google. The legislation would ban the companies from favoring their own products and services over their competitor's, making it more difficult them to dominate the marketplace. Greg Day, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Georgia, breaks down the bill and its potential impact on anti-competition in the tech sector.
Catching you up with what you need to know on Apr 1, 2022, with Ukrainians hoping to flee the besieged city of Mariupol with a ceasefire is in place, President Biden orders the release of oil from U.S.reserves, LGBT activists suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the "Don't Say Gay" Law, U.S. passports offering an "x" option for gender, and more.
America’s employers extended a streak of robust hiring in March, adding 431,000 jobs in a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years.
