House CA-10: Bay Area Dumps Another $500K to Flip GOP Central Valley Seat
AGENDA 21 RADIO
BY CHRISS STREET
Bay Area kicked in another $500,000 to Democrat challenger John Harder campaign in October in an all-out effort to flip Central Valley 10th District House seat held by Republican incumbent Jeff Denham.
First-time Democrat candidate Josh Harder, whose main political pledge is “Medicare for All,” had raised a stunning $7,003,682 for his 2018 campaign for the U.S. House seat in the mostly rural Stanislaus County through Oct. 17, according to OpenSecrets.
Despite Republican Jeff Denham being a fixture of the local community as a two-term state Senator and four-term U.S. Congressman, he only raised $4,418,276, or about 60 percent of what Harder raised through Oct. 17, according to OpenSecrets.
Although Democrat Harder went to Modesto High School; he graduated from Stanford, received dual masters’ degrees from Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy, and worked for the Gates Foundation. Harder has not voted in the Central Valley’s 10th district since 2008 and was registered to vote in Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district in 2016. Harder changed his registration from San Francisco to Stanislaus County five months before filing to run for Congress.
The outsider strategy worked with San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Oakland, and Washington, DC as Harder’s top five metropolitan contribution areas. Harder only raised $130,206, or about 2.3 percent, from his home district, according to OpenSecrets.
The massive funding difference allowed Democrat Harder to spend over $6 million to Republican Denham’s less than $3.2 million through mid-October. But Republican Denham seemed to have an advantage with almost twice the cash on hand as the $840,000 for Democrat Harder to make a final three-week campaign push.
But Denham’s campaign highlighted on Saturday that Harder had pulled in over $500,000 from Bay Area donors during the October to continue spending his way to victory. The Denham campaign pointed out that that over $3.4 million, or almost half, of Harder’s cash came from the Bay Area, including over a $1 million from San Francisco.
The Denham campaign complained that Harder has been staffing his local effort with over 1,000 ‘Swing Left’ San Francisco volunteers driving over 90 miles along the 580 Interstate Freeway to sway the rural voters. ‘Swing Left’ is advertising on Facebook that they are providing busing in last days of the campaign to saturate Stanislaus County farming communities with even more urban community organizers.
Republican Jeff. Denham stated in press release that he believes urban Democrats’ effort to flip his seat is directly tied to his successful initiative to convince Republican President Donald Trump to issue an Executive Order to stop the 100 million gallon “State Water Grab” that has favored fish over farmers: “I’ve enlisted the Administration to bring water to the Valley while Bay Area liberals work to steal our water.”
Ballotopia reported that early polls revealed in lead for Harder, but race has closed to a dead heat. The Cook Report rates California’s 10th Congressional district as one of 28 Republican House seats rated a “toss-up”. Cook estimates that Democrats need to win 14 of the GOP toss-up seats to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
