California holds a special election to fill the vacant U.S. House seat, 34th district, on April 4. Twenty-three candidates filed to be on the ballot. Here is the list. The Secretary of State has not yet determined which candidates will be on the ballot, because each candidate needs 40 signatures, but the list will be final on February 15.
The candidates who filed are 19 Democrats, one Republican, one Green, one Libertarian, and one independent. If no one gets 50% on April 4, there will be a run-off in June.
In November 2016, only two candidates filed to be on the ballot. They were both Democrats. The seat is empty because the incumbent resigned to become Attorney General of California. UPDATE: all 23 candidates are on the ballot; they all had valid petitions.
Ricky De La Fuente would appear to be the son of Rocky.
The Democrats are going to be so split up that a Republican or a Green will have a decent chance of being the second candidate. My money, if I were a betting person, would be on Kenneth Meija, as he chose to get the over 300 signatures required (he got something like 600, with over 400 of them valid) instead of paying the filing fee. He’s been campaigning hard, and given the area, I think he stands a decent chance of outpolling both the Republican and the Libertarian and most of the Democrats. It would be epic to see a Green bust up the ridiculous Top Two and make it to the run-off election.
I find it interesting that during regularly scheduled elections, we’re lucky if more than two people decide to run (a lot of offices are even completely unopposed). But during special elections, there’s always a large crowd of people. What is so attractive about running in special elections?
Then we should find candidates and oppose those incumbents.
What is attractive in special elections is that there is no incumbent.
I am also hoping for a Green upset by Kenneth Mejia. He campaigned as a Bernie Sanders-leaning write-in candidate for that congressional seat and so he’s built up name recognition and has a history of community activism. Speaking of names, I’m wondering if Padilla and Sotomayor are related to the Secretary of State and/or the Supreme Court justice.