California voters choose incumbent Alex Padilla and lawyer Mark Meuser in US Senate primary
Two primaries for United States Senate were on the California ballot in Tuesday. Sen. Alex Padilla and Republican attorney Mark Meuser won both and advanced to elections in November.
Padilla, a Democrat, had to run in both a special and general election to keep the seat through January 2029. The special election is for the last two months of the current term; the general election is for a full, six-year term that starts in January 2023.
The Associated Press called both races for Padilla less than 23 minutes after polls closed on Tuesday. He had more than 53% of the vote in each contest by 8:12 a.m. Pacific Time Wednesday.
Meuser, who focuses on election and constitutional law, had 21.6% of the votes as of 8:12 a.m. in the race for the partial term. He had 14.3% in the contest for the full term. AP called both races for Meuser before 9:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Almost 49% of the votes had been counted in each race by 8:12 a.m. The next closest contenders in each had less than 8%.
“Thanks to all those who voted for me and helped end the 10 year drought of GOP not having a candidate for U.S. Senate on the November ballot. This is a huge win,” Meuser posted to Twitter. “We have a hard battle ahead of us but the harder the battle the more glorious the victory.”
The odd electoral two-step began in Jan. 2021 when Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed Padilla, the California secretary of state, to complete Vice President Kamala Harris’ senate term, which ends in Jan. 2023. Under state law, a gubernatorial appointee must face voters in the next regularly scheduled election if they wish to retain office. So Padilla is running for the balance of Harris’ term and then six years of his own.
Padilla spent his first year in office working on immigration reform, wildfire suppression and recovery, power grid infrastructure and voting rights, among other issues.
In the last year, Meuser was involved in 22 lawsuits against Newsom for over the state’s COVID-19 policies, including over prolonged remote learning. He supports theories held by former President Donald Trump.
The top two vote-getters from each contest, regardless of party, advance to the special and general elections on Nov. 8. From there, the winner of the special election will start their term almost immediately. That representative will serve until Jan. 3, 2023, when the winner of the general election will take over.
Twenty-three candidates were competing for the full term: six Democrats, 10 Republicans and seven candidates running for either a third party or without a party preference. The field included a tech billionaire running to strengthen computer systems, Dan O’Dowd; a member of the Socialist Workers Party, Eleanor García; and a hip-hop organizer with a reparations plan, Deon D. Jenkins.
Eight of the 23 candidates ran to finish the final months of this term too.
Both Padilla and Meuser beat odds set for them in a recent Berkeley IGS poll. It found that California’s first Latino U.S. senator would likely sweep both elections with more than 42% of the votes and that Meuser, his closest challenger, would likely take less than 14% in each.
This story was originally published June 7, 2022 at 8:20 PM.
