LOSANGELESBLADE.COM • JULY 27, 2018 • 07
Katie Hill pictured with West Hollywood Councilmember John Heilman.
Ammar Campa-Najjar
Los Angeles Blade Photo by Karen Ocamb
Los Angeles Blade Photo by Karen Ocamb
about a quarter of voters in these contested congressional districts, according to Politico. But Democrats just got some good news. On July 24, respected University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball poll shifted 17 House races in favor of Democrats, with several vulnerable Republican races moving from “likely Republican” to “toss-up,” according to The Hill. As of July 25, Real Clear Politics (RCP) lists seven generic congressional polls that all showed Democrats up by 6 to 12 points. In California, CA10 ( Jeff Denham vs businessman Josh Harder) is considered a toss-up, as are races in CA25, CA39, CA45, and CA48. RCP has CA49, Levin’s race, as “Leans Democrat.” CA50, Campa-Najjar v Hunter, and CA21 (David Valadao vs businessman TJ Cox, “Leans GOP.” CA22, Devin Nunes v county prosecutor Andrew Janz right now is “Likely GOP.” But Nunes is being roundly scolded for colluding with Trump over the Russian investigation, while reports have
surfaced of him spending $15,000 of political donations for Celtics tickets and $5,000 for private jet travel. Meanwhile Valadao is trying to cope with Trump’s tariffs hurting his agricultural district. A July 17 nonpartisan poll by Monmouth University specifically spells good news for Rouda in the CA48, giving him a slight 46%-43% edge over Rohrabacher. “At this early stage of the race, Rouda has more widespread support among his fellow Democrats (95% to 2% for the incumbent) than Rohrabacher has among Republicans (85% to 5% for the challenger). Independents prefer Rouda (49%) over Rohrabacher (31%) by a wide margin,” Monmouth reports. But there’s a caveat. Rohrabacher pulls his decades of support from conservative white Republican voters who did not graduate from college, just under one-third of the electorate in that district, according the Los Angeles Times. Rouda’s supporters are women, voters younger than 50 and non-
whites, who also make up about one-third of the district’s electorate. But “just over half the nonwhite voters in the poll said they were following the congressional race ‘not too closely at all,’” The Times reported. At the Stonewall meeting, Rouda underscored the importance of every vote, noting that he won his primary against Hans Keistead by 125 votes! Porter noted that the Republicans incumbents are vulnerable because they finally have good challengers—but the challengers are not known. She told a story about addressing a candidate forum and explaining why she would better represent than Mimi Walters. “And someone yelled from the back: ‘Why are you running against Maxine Waters?’” The story illustrated, she said, the dire need for voter education. While all the races are important to the LGBT community, one win would be especially savory—“Trump’s worst nightmare,” as Ammar Campa-Najjar
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describes himself, trouncing Duncan Hunter. It’s a steep climb since the conservative district apparently doesn’t care that Hunter is under investigation by the FBI for use of campaign funds for personal expenses—which he has paid back. But Campa-Najjar is looking at voter outreach as an opportunity for commonality. “I think if you come from an underrepresented community, you care that there’s an assault on our values and our way of life,” Campa-Najjar told the LA Blade. “Personally, I have a stepsister who is LGBTQ and our stepfather is a Trump supporter. So we’ve seen how Donald Trump has really enabled the worst of the worst to come out of people. And right now it’s really about bringing people back together again. Whether you’re Latino or Middle Eastern or LGBTQ or maybe both – or all three – it’s a really defining time for our country. We have to stand for our values. An assault on any one of us is an assault on all of us.”