FRESNO, Calif. – The vacant seat in Congress left by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was not filled when voters went to the polls on Tuesday for a special election.
No candidates reached the 50% threshold needed to win outright and fill the seat immediately. Instead, the Associated Press projected the top candidates will face off again in May in a runoff.
It will mark the third election for the single congressional seat since the March 5th Primary. McCarthy ended his term early when he left Congress in December, and whoever voters pick to fill his seat in May will do so only until January 2025.
By then, either State Assemblymember Vince Fong or Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux – both Republicans who already secured spots for the November general election – will have been elected to serve a full term in Congress.
In Tuesday night’s special election, Fong and Boudreax emerged as the top vote-getters among nine competitors.
Boudreaux led with the initial results that came in just after polls closed at 8 p.m., but later in the night, Fong re-took a comfortable first-place position, which he has generally held since he jumped into the race. A Democrat, Marisa Wood, was closely behind Boudreaux.
Fong led the night with just over 40% and Boudreaux hovered at around 26%.
Fong was endorsed by McCarthy and former President Donald Trump. He’s also led in the polls. Voting precincts saw a sluggish turnout Tuesday as voters cast their ballots across the district which runs through Kern, Tulare, Kings and Fresno counties.
Bakersfield resident Sharon Haynes said she had a lot of research to do with nine candidates vying for the job.
“I wasn’t [really] familiar with any of them … I did look them up and see who they were,” she said. “I think I made the best choice.”
Her choice was Fong. At a watch party a night before, volunteers for Fong’s campaign had hoped the special election would be decided on Tuesday.
The campaign held a watch party Tuesday night at a bowling alley, with results displayed on large screens over bowling lanes.
Fong had quickly acknowledged the possibility of a runoff. He appeared ready for a third round.
“We prevailed by 17 percentage points on March 5th, and we took that same momentum,” he said Tuesday. “We’re prepared for anything.”
With the race for November already set, and Tuesday’s early results painting a similar picture, Democrats will be excluded from the ballot as the special election race continues.
It’s an uncommon result for such a high seat in such a Democratic state.
But District 20 is heavily Republican. And with two Republicans as the only options on the ballot, Fresno State professor Tom Holyoke says voters shouldn’t expect either to take centrist positions.
“I think what we're going to see is both candidates trending towards the right, each trying to argue that they are more conservative than the other and very possibly more supportive and loyal to Donald Trump than the other,” he said.
When all is settled in November, the district will have voted four times for the single seat. With mail-in votes still left to be counted, Tuesday’s special election showed a lower number of votes cast in the race compared to the March 5th Primary.
