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Jimmy Gomez campaign photo
State Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez won Tuesday's special election in the 34th congressional district. He will succeed Xavier Becerra as the newest House Democrat. It wasn't close. Gomez, with the backing of organized labor, Becerra, Gov. Jerry Brown and Mayor Eric Garcetti, received 60 percent of the vote. Robert Lee Ahn, vying to become the second Korean American elected to Congress, got just under 40 percent.
Becerra, the state's attorney general, tweeted his congrats.
Congratulations to @JimmyGomezCA -- he will represent the people of the 34th district incredibly well
— Xavier Becerra (@XavierBecerra) June 7, 2017
The election night turnout was 10.89 percent, said Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan. That will go up as provisional and the last mail-in ballots are counted.
So. The election of Gomez, 42, means that there has to be another special election to fill his upcoming vacancy in the 51st Assembly District, a swath that runs from Eagle Rock to East Los Angeles and leaves the Eastside to take in Chinatown, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Historic Filipinotown. "By my count, six Democratic candidates have already filed to run in #AD51," Rob Pyers of the California Target Book tweeted. Small elections with barely any voters taking part seem to be the new normal in Los Angeles, thanks mostly to Democratic incumbents taking advantage of the opportunity to move up without completing their elected terms. There have been 22 standalone special elections in California since the start of 2013, Sacramento bureau chief John Myers of the LA Times tweeted tonight.
In Compton, that city's media-genic mayor, Aja Brown, was reelected despite a challenge by former mayor Omar Bradley.
