Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Janet Nguyen Loses to Tom Umberg

With most the provisional ballots counted,  California State Senator Janet Nguyen (R) has lost her seat in D34 to retired Army Colonel Tom Umberg (D).   This is quite a turn of event considering Nguyen was the favorite to win as an incumbent and a popular politician in her district.  Many people think that the result is caused by the Democratic Blue Wave movement.

The currently tally is :  128,261 - Nguyen, 129,680 - Umberg.  The race is so close that the two candidates only separate by 0.38% .   As it stands, there might be an automatic machine recount but this will not likely to change the outcome.

This race was not a priority for the Democratic Party in California.  The Democratic Party has super majority in both state houses with or without this seat; thus, Umberg received little support from the party.

Janet Nguyen was confident going into the race with her large war chest and strong name recognition.  She decided to spend considerable amount of her time and campaign money trying to bring down her political enemies during her race.  

In her cross-hair were  two people that were her mentors and campaign managers for her previous  state senatorial and supervisorial  elections -  Nick Le and Andrew Do.    She also went after Tyler Diep trying to destroy his state assembly chance.   Ultimately, he won and she lost.

Tom Umberg (D) has lost the last 3 elections he entered.  Once against Janet Nguyen in 2007 for the supervisorial race by 3%.  This is his second try to win a state senate seat. 

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