After talking with a number of savvy politicos whose opinions I hold in high regard, I think it is safe to say that the expected outcome of today’s Special Election in Orange County’s 72nd Assembly District will be that Supervisor Chris Norby will win the Republican nomination, but fall well short of the outright majority of the total vote necessary to avoid a run-off election next month.
The analysis is pretty straight-forward. Chris Norby, as first a long-time Fullerton City Councilmember (the largest city in AD 72) and then as a two-time elected Supervisor, simply had too much positive name identification in the district to be defeated. Most of those to whom I spoke felt that if this election were being held on a more traditional time-line, with a much longer period of time for voters to hear from candidates and advocacy groups, that Republican National Committeewoman and Metropolitan Water District Member Linda Ackerman would have had a very good shot at winning a plurality of support from Republican voters. The short time line meant that literally only a few weeks elapsed before absentee ballots were shipped out and high-propensity AB voters started mailing their ballots back.
While Ackerman’s campaign, combined with two different Independent Expenditure efforts either on her behalf or opposing Chris Norby, will together have significantly outspent Norby, the consensus is that the effort will not have been enough. Much of the third-house money from Sacramento that made up the larger Independent Expediture suddenly came to an immediate halt after that group took a survey a few weeks ago. We can conclude that this survey showed that additional resources would not effect the outcome of the race.
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