State Senate Candidate Blakespear Eyes Orange County Keyhole
Few voters are paying attention to the upcoming California state Senate District 38 primary election. That’s understandable because today is February 14 (Happy Valentine’s Day!), and the election is June 7. The filing deadline is March 11, so new candidates can still jump in.
Because the new district numbers and boundaries didn’t go public until late December 2021, sites like Ballotpedia and Wikipedia haven’t caught up on District 38 facts. And since county registrars of voters usually publish election data after elections, there’s not a lot to be found for 2022 on the Orange County or San Diego County registrar of voters sites.
However, our crack team of data crunchers managed to find these compelling facts:
District 38 total population — 975,288
Citizen Voting Age Population — White: 68.29%, Latino: 18.44%, Asian: 8.84%, Black: 2.86%
Note that the percentages are of voting age population, not total population or registered voters. Also note that our crack team of data crunchers searched so many websites that they lost track of where they found the statistics above. The validity of the statistics is not affected.
According to the Orange County Register, the District 38 state Senate candidates to date are
• Catherine Blakespear, D – Encinitas, mayor
• Eleanor Juanita Evans, R – Oceanside, Oceanside Unified School District board member
• Matthew Gunderson, R – Mission Viejo, former car dealership owner
• Joe Kerr, D – Coto de Caza, former fire captain
All but Evans have Senate campaign websites.
Blakespear probably figures that with her sterling record of improving people’s lives as mayor of Encinitas and chairwoman of SANDAG, she has San Diego County in the bag. That county’s portion of District 38 starts at the Orange County line and hugs the coast all the way down to Mission Beach. Its voter registrations favor Democrats by 4.9% and, as noted above, its citizen voting age population is 68.29% white. Blakespear’s mouthpiece, Mali Woods-Drake, has her work cut out for her.
But what about that weird little keyhole in Orange County?
It includes these cities: Laguna Hills, Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita and San Juan Capistrano, these census designated places: Ladera Ranch and Las Flores, and these locations that are neither cities nor cdps: Rancho Trabuco and Robinson Ranch.
Readers who want to calculate the population of those locations and others that fall within District 38 might find this website helpful:
Blakespear must be worried about Republican candidate Matt Gunderson because she’s already complaining that he raised nearly as much money as she did but in half the time. She’s out begging for donations. Interested parties, see:
She has a ton of endorsements, including Bill Walton. What could go wrong?
