Independent candidate Steve Poizner, running for California Insurance Commissioner, received approximately 44% of the vote, in a race that included two Democrats, a Peace & Freedom member, but no Republicans. He will run against Democratic State Senator Ricardo Lara in November. He held the same position 2006-2010, but for that term, he had been elected as a Republican. UPDDATE: here is a link to the Secretary of State’s election returns page.

If he wins in November, he will be the first non-major member to be elected to a statewide partisan post in California since 1914, when Progressive Party nominee Hiram Johnson was re-elected Governor.

The 2018 turnout is estimated to be 31.5% of the number of registered voters. Turnout for other California midterm primaries has been:

1978 68.9%
1982 52.7%
1986 40.5%
1990 41.5%
1994 35.1%
1998 42.5%
2002 34.6%
2006 33.6%
2010 33.3%
2014 25.2%

Assuming the 31.5% estimate is correct, that would make 2018 the second-lowest midterm primary in California history.

It appears that all of the U.S. House districts carried by Hillary Clinton in November 2016, but which now have Republican Representatives, will have one Republican and one Democrat on the November 2018 election.

On June 4, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in the wedding cake case, Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 16-111. As Rick Hasen points out, the decision turned on the fact that one of the members of the governmental body that had penalized the baker make comments showing bias against religion. Hasen writes here that this principle could influence the pending lawsuits on gerrymandering. Some legislators, who have voted for gerrymanders, have expressed the viewpoint that they are deliberately creating a gerrymander in order to hurt the other major party.

Similarly, when the Green and Constitution Parties were suing Tennessee over its severe rules for new political party access to the ballot, the party’s attorney tried to present evidence that the Tennessee legislators who had voted against bills easing the requirement had openly said in committee that they wanted to keep minor parties off the ballot. But the U.S. District Court Judge who was hearing the case refused to allow that information into the record. The Masterpiece Cakeshop precedent will be helpful in future ballot access cases, when there is evidence of state legislators’ intent.

Rocky De La Fuente, who was the Reform Party presidential nominee in 2016, is on the ballot in Republican primaries for U.S. Senate in five states so far, with the possibility of being on in a sixth.

He may also be on the Delaware general election ballot as the nominee of the party he created, the American Delta Party.

This story about the decline of the California Republican Party mentions these facts about De La Fuente. Scroll down. De La Fuente is relevant to the story because California is one of the states in which he is on a primary ballot for U.S. Senate.