How did you spend your Tuesday night? Sara Rubin here, coming up for air after a busy election reporting cycle here at the Weekly. Our small but mighty reporting team fanned out to various election watch parties on Nov. 3, filing stories late in the evening just in time for our Wednesday morning print deadline. (Many more stories have since been posted online with the results of more local elections.)
Some stories capture the heartache of candidates who lost, others who were delighted or even shocked to see themselves winning. One thread was that even as candidates and their supporters focused on the local results, many were tuning into the statewide and national electoral landscape, waiting to see what the mood of the American electorate was.
By now, you’ve no doubt read about the “blue wave” that swept across the country. It is quite clearly a big victory for Democrats. More than that, it reflects a rejection of the destructive, harmful policies promoted by President Donald Trump, even though he is just halfway through a four-year term.
And beyond that partisan story, there is another story of minority candidates sailing to victory—first-ever Black women in their roles, a first-ever Muslim, first-ever Indigenous leaders, first-ever Latinas. Californians elected their first-ever Latino governor, Xavier Becerra, who as of the latest count this morning has 64.4 percent of the vote.
Monterey County Supervisor Chris Lopez was an early supporter of Becerra in a crowded primary field, and joined him both on election night in June and on Nov. 3 in Sacramento to watch the results come in.
“For me it's always been about who he is. He is thoughtful, and takes his time making decisions in a meaningful, engaging way,” Lopez says. “It just blew me away in terms of the results.” (He’d predicted a 63-percent win.)
Lopez says it was a joyful evening at Drake’s brewery, celebrating Becerra’s win—and also looking at the broader electoral landscape.
“The hope I am feeling, in terms of what is possible again—all the things that drove people to vote, it's significant across the nation and here as well,” Lopez says.
That applies locally, where Measure E—a countywide hotel tax increase that Lopez and his colleagues on the board decided to put on our ballots—enjoyed a landslide victory, with 71 percent of the vote in early results. And it applies nationally, with a new balance of power in Congress that may be able to curb some of the drastic cuts that are destructive in local communities (we’ve recently reported about impacts to health care from H.R. 1, aka the “One Big, Beautiful Bill”).
“I'm hopeful today more than the past few months,” Lopez says. “I am excited about the outcomes here, and the ability to right the ship a little bit.”
But mostly, it is a reminder of where power really resides in our American system of governance—that people can vote and make themselves heard.
“I am inspired by the public,” Lopez says. “They really showed up. That's the beauty of the moment.”