Essential Politics: Red state, blue state, my state, your state

Nov. 2, 2016 3 AM PT

It was another wild day on the campaign trail, with President Obama heckling hecklers right back and a Texas politician’s name-calling getting off-color.

I’m Christina Bellantoni. Welcome to Essential Politics in the final stretch, as everyone recognizes they are a little cranky.

The only thing that really matters at this point is the map.

Donald Trump kicked off the final full week before the election campaigning in states that haven’t backed a Republican for president since the 1980s. Hillary Clinton will hold a rally Wednesday in Arizona, turf that last went blue 20 years ago.

Melanie Mason and Michael Memoli look at how, in the waning days of the presidential race, both candidates are encroaching on rival territory, in an effort to pull off upset wins or at least wage some psychological warfare.

Play out the Electoral College scenarios yourself.

ORANGE COUNTY TURNS BLUE? AND HOW ABOUT SOME ELECTORAL TRIVIA?

When you think Republicans and California, nowhere comes to mind faster than Orange County, a GOP stronghold for some eight decades.

Might that change next week? Seema Mehta takes a close look at how Democrats are on the verge of flipping the reddest of red counties in the Golden State to blue.

For the historic view, you can see the Republican dominance in the O.C. on The Times’ new data offering of California presidential election data by county since 1936. Not only does it show you how the state went from reliably red to believably blue in the race for the White House, it also offers a glimpse at which counties have been most reliably in one major party’s column or the other.

And we’re having a great time poking through the data ourselves. David Lauter emailed several of us to ask which county has the longest Democratic winning streak. John Myers says he “accepted the bureau chief challenge with gusto.”

Not only was he wrong, I was wrong, as were our colleagues Cathleen Decker and Mark Z. Barabak, who also came up empty-handed.

Myers’ initial guess was Sacramento County, the seat of state government. Nope. San Francisco? Nope, as it was a moderate and business-focused GOP bastion in the mid-20th century. I guessed Marin, then realized it must be Alameda.

The answer: Yolo County, home to UC Davis. The largely rural county just outside Sacramento has been won by the Democrat in every presidential cycle since 1956. Even then, Republicans have only prevailed once — during the first campaign of President Dwight D. Eisenhower — since 1936.

NEWS FROM THE TRAIL

Experts are saying it would take a true bombshell in the emails investigation to charge Clinton.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said he has cast his vote for “our nominee” and that if Clinton is elected the next few years will be full of scandals like a repeat of the 1990s.

Michael Finnegan reports from Philadelphia that many black leaders have a hard time seeing Trump’s poll monitoring plan as anything but an attempt to suppress the black vote.

Get the latest from the campaign trail on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics. Check our daily USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times tracking poll at the top of the politics page.

WORDS YOU USED TO DESCRIBE CLINTON AND TRUMP

Over the course of the year, thousands of readers have told us what they think about Trump and Clinton, and Christine Zhang, Andrea Roberson and Collen Shalby combed through your responses to find the most common words and build a visual representation. “Racist,” “ignorant,” “strong” and “corrupt” were among the words they saw again and again associated with Trump. As for Clinton, the most frequently used were “liar,” “corrupt” and “qualified.”

Have your say here.

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT JOINS THE 2018 GOVERNOR’S RACE

The field of hopefuls in the race to replace California Gov. Jerry Brown now includes a candidate who says her effort will be almost completely focused on public schools.

Delaine Eastin, who served eight years as state superintendent of public instruction from 1995 to 2003, said on Tuesday she’s throwing her hat into the ring for the 2018 race. As Myers reports, Eastin argues that education funding is too often ignored by lawmakers and that all of the state’s most critical needs come back to having good schools.

“I’m a very frustrated person who’s been watching from the sidelines for some time now,” she said in an interview.

KAMALA HARRIS RALLIES FOR A NO-SHOW CANDIDATE

U.S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris took her campaign bus tour up to Santa Barbara on Tuesday to help rally the Democratic faithful for congressional candidate Salud Carbajal in the open (and competitive) 24th Congressional District. But Carbajal couldn’t make it — even though it was held at his campaign headquarters. The candidate was stuck in a Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors meeting all day. Phil Willon reports that Harris picked up the slack, firing up the crowd with vows to ban assault weapons and protect immigrants.

Harris’ roadshow then motored south to Cal State Northridge, where both she and Senate rival Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Orange) spoke to students. They each pitched proposals for making college more affordable, but some students were skeptical about promises of free tuition.

EXPANDED TERM LIMITS HELP ATTRACT RECORD SPENDING

A flood of cash has hit California’s legislative races this year: A record $63 million has been spent by outside groups so far in an attempt to sway state Senate and Assembly races. Christine Mai-Duc reports that part of the reason is California’s recently expanded term limits law, which allows any lawmaker elected after 2012 to stay and build influence in one chamber for up to 12 years.

The prospect of having a sympathetic lawmaker in Sacramento for more than a decade — or the idea of having to wait that long for a changing of the guard — has significantly raised the stakes in this election.

“It’s playing for keeps this year,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount).

For up-to-the-minute news on California elections, keep an eye on our Essential Politics news feed.

THE COSTS OF THE DEATH PENALTY

Will repealing the death penalty in November save California more money than speeding up executions? Jazmine Ulloa reports that researchers are at odds over the answer. Independent legislative analysts, meanwhile, have found Proposition 62, which would end the death penalty in California, could save taxpayers millions of dollars, while concluding that the fiscal impact of Proposition 66’s attempt to expedite death sentences is unknown.

NEWS ON THE PROPOSITIONS

Activist billionaires Sean Parker and George Soros and companies hoping to profit from legalizing marijuana in California have helped this year’s campaign for Proposition 64 raise close to $16 million, about four times the amount spent on a failed effort in 2010. With a week left before voters go to the polls, the campaign to legalize recreational marijuana use is leading in surveys and has a massive fundraising lead over the opposition, which has brought in a little more than $1.6 million, Patrick McGreevy reports.

Don’t miss The Times’ ballot box guide to California’s 17 propositions.

You can also check out video of debates on each of the ballot measures from SeePolitical’s BallotCon event over the weekend.

TODAY’S ESSENTIALS

— Rep. Darrell Issa and his Democratic rival Doug Applegate are back to bashing each other on the airwaves.

— More than 3 million Californians have already cast ballots, which is a bigger ballot bonanza than four years ago. But there’s a catch: There are also more voters in the state than 2012, which means turnout could be sagging.

— The family of a slain Palm Springs police officer spoke out in favor of the ballot measure to speed up the death penalty.

— Yesterday was the final day to request a vote-by-mail ballot, but we’ve got the details on voting early this weekend.

— As we reported recently, “ballot selfies” will still be illegal in California when voters go to the polls next Tuesday. A new law repealing the state’s ban on sharing photos of marked ballots doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1. But the ACLU of California is suing state officials, hoping to get a judge to give voters in the Golden State the go-ahead to share ballot selfies, after all.

— Bryan Cranston sees Canada in his future if Trump becomes president.

— Trump says if elected he would call Congress into a special session on Obamacare.

— Matt Pearce details what has to be one of the most unusual lawsuits Trump was ever involved with: One of his businesses was accused of being sexist. Against men. For promoting breast cancer awareness.

LOGISTICS

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