CA Democrat Adam Gray Unseats Republican Rep. John Duarte in Final House Race to be Called
On election night, Duarte was ahead of Gray by more than 3,000 votes, but as The New York Times describes it: “Mr. Gray steadily chipped away at that lead in subsequent updates until he went ahead for the first time on Tuesday.”
After one month of vote counting, Democratic challenger Adam Gray has been declared the winner in the race for California’s 13th Congressional District (California’s Central Valley), according to the Associated Press. He flipped the seat of Republican Rep. John Duarte, by 187 votes out of the more than 210,000 ballots cast.
This was the final House race to be called and it leaves Republicans ahead of Democrats by a paper-thin margin of 220 to 215. And until Republicans can fill the seats of the three representatives tapped by President-elect Donald Trump for positions in his incoming administration, Reps. Elise Stefanik, Michael Waltz and Matt Gaetz, the party will be left with only a two-seat advantage. (Gaetz, as we know, has since withdrawn his name from consideration. But he will not be returning to the House.)
Fox News reported that Gray served as a state legislator from 2012 to 2022 and he “is considered a centrist Democrat who focused on key concerns for farmers in the Central Valley like water shortages. He also campaigned on renewable energy solutions. … Duarte, a businessman and farmer, focused on issues like inflation, crime and agricultural issues during his campaign.”
This was a rematch for the two men. In 2022, Duarte narrowly defeated Gray by 564 votes.
The race was called just two days before the deadline for counties in California to certify their results.
On election night, Duarte was ahead of Gray by more than 3,000 votes, but as The New York Times describes it: “Mr. Gray steadily chipped away at that lead in subsequent updates until he went ahead for the first time on Tuesday.” At the risk of being seen as a sore loser, it almost looks like the Democrats stopped counting when they finally got a result they liked.
The Times excused the state for taking four weeks to call this race. The article said, “California notably takes longer to tabulate votes because elections officials are flooded with mail-in ballots that must be inspected and verified. The state gives county offices weeks to complete their tallies and reach out to voters whose ballots may lack a proper signature.”
The Times noted, “Democrats had eyed the seat as among the most promising potential pickups, and they helped Mr. Gray rake in millions of dollars to unseat Mr. Duarte. About 41 percent of voters in the district are registered Democrats and 29 percent are Republicans.
“Mr. Gray had raised $5.4 million and Mr. Duarte $4.1 million, according to campaign finance filings through Oct. 16. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also spent $1.7 million on the race, records showed,” according to the Times.
After the race was called on Tuesday night, Gray posted a statement on X. He wrote: “The final results confirm this district is ready for independent and accountable leadership that always puts the Valley’s people ahead of partisan politics.”
Considering the tightness of the race and the length of time it took to call, Gray’s remark seems like a non sequitur.
Thank you #CA13! Let’s get to work. pic.twitter.com/FftFIUNkei
— Adam C. Gray (@AdamGrayCA) December 4, 2024
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Fraud vitiates any contract and all that flows from it
Count until you win.
What the !@#!? Why concede to this fraud? Can’t just one CA republican show some frigging backbone and fight this?
Lara Trump, sis she just give up 11/6?
With all these so called storied lawyers…
Total bs. Scott Pressler did more
Scott, please consider California.
No point, courts won’t allow investigations into elections to find evidence of fraud. You have to have such evidence up front before they will even entertain it. Generally, however, even if you had such evidence you will not be allowed an investigation to find further evidence of more widespread fraud. At best you get to invalidate the specific ballots in question. Basically, anyone caught will be treated as a lone wolf, and any suggestion that they might be part of a larger, coordinated effort will be smacked down.
Balls …
If they run an election in a way that looks rigged, you may presume it’s rigged.
Republicans could have a 217-215 majority, when Republican Reps move to the Trump Administration, which would be the narrowest GOP majority in American history. Trump will have a hell of a time trying to pass his agenda.
Defend Commiefornia!
DEFUND….damn autocorrect!
“Republicans could have a 217-215 majority,…which would be the narrowest GOP majority in American history.”
Thanks, Captain Obvious.
Or should it be Captain Oblivious?
Its Trump’s own fault for appointing anybody in the House. Are there so few qualified people that he had to expose his agenda to such a risk? Aside from getting all Republicans to vote the same, he is also exposed to the consequences of any absences.
I agree. Trump should have been looking to add people to the MAGA bench, not shuffle their positions. He’s leaving it up to the undependable voters to replace good MAGA reps with reps just as good, when he could have appointed good MAGA appointees not otherwise engaged and removed the risk entirely.
It’s somewhat shocking how bad elections in Calofornia are run by Democrats and just how deeply the State is controlled by Democrats.
California is absolutely the poster child for failed politically managed State and this should be proclaimed long and loud at every opportunity!
We ‘ve seen this performance before… just keep counting until Democrats win.
Has any GOP member EVER come out ahead in these performances of long, painfully drawn out vote-counting theater?
Yes, they have.
The ratio would be interesting though.
No, Republicans always lose and then rarely fight
Yes..
Al Gore counted and counted, but could never come up with a result he liked.
Even then he wouldn’t have stopped except the Supremes told him to.
Only four weeks of “remediation,” and “curing,” to pull this off!
Normal for Commufornica, cheating/fraud everywhere else.
Just keep counting until the Democrat wins.
It’s absurd that so many states have voting procedures that create scenarios that are ripe for fraud
‘Motor Voter’ registration, ‘Voting Month’, ‘Universal Mail-in Ballots’, etc, etc, etc
Absurdly corrupt
Wisconsin, same day voting, registration same day as voting
What could go wrong?
Counting votes beyond the constitutionally set day of voting should be considered unconstitutional. If anything, vote counting needs to stop on the day of voting. And don’t give me the “every vote counts” nonsense.
There is no “constitutionally set day of voting”.
It’s called election day, you might have heard of it it’s like the first Tuesday after the first Monday of november.
There’s absolutely nothing in the constitution that says that.
It’s always interesting how when a racist decided quickly Republicans win, when a race is drawn out for weeks then the Communists always seem to come out ahead.
Damn it, when a race is decided
But it isn’t true.
The pattern fits quite nicely
Always seems = 55% – 99% so yes its true.
Milhouse isn’t here for facts, he’s here to demoralize the right.
It’s madness to draw nominees from House.
Of course the democrats will confirm our own-goal lunatic nominations.
I’d like to see a breakdown of the nominees and how ‘safe’ each of them are in terms of the likely outcome of the special elections to replace them.
And it only to9k 3 weeks to “find” the votes
The solution is to get rid of automatic vote by mail. It makes ballot manipulation too easy.
A robust DOJ investigation would probably find numerous ineligible votes caste in California. That would mean that legal US citizens votes were canceled.
It seems that in addition to any criminal charges for operatives gathering bogus ballots that a civil case challenging the systematic fraud could and should be pursued in Federal courts hopefully making its way to the Supreme Court.
This has to end
I live in California. I had no doubt what the outcome was going to be.
This is 2024, for crying out loud. Most of the rest of the world has the votes counted the same day.
The States should have the votes counted by 24 hours after close of voting on the election day. Recount all you want, have it done in 24 hours.
then the new crew takes office at 0800 the next day.
This crzp of having a bunch of “lame ducks” (apologies) in charge for 90 days is insane. At the federal level, we have someone (not Biden) tryingn to stir up WWIII with no accountability. All other sorts of mischief. Issuing blanket pardons.
Both sides do it, but as all things Biden it is on steroids. We effectively have no government.
In other words, the state enables election fraud.