Today, the California Democratic Party hosted a caucus to attempt to determine an endorsement in the 30th Congressional District runoff between Congressmen Brad Sherman and Howard Berman. This is a new procedure: because we no longer have Democratic nominees, revised bylaws allow for a second endorsement caucus for the November election in situations where there are two Democrats in the general election and there was either no endorsement in the primary, or the endorsed candidate did not make the runoff.

According to the offical tally, Congressman Howard Berman got 165 votes in today’s California Democratic Party endorsement caucus, compared to 66 for Brad Sherman and 51 votes for “no endorsement.” While that may seem like an overwhelming number, the result ends up being that the CDP has issued no endorsement in the race: per the bylaws, this race would have required a 60% threshold of all votes cast for either candidate to receive an endorsement. 165 out of 282 is only 58.51%, and so no endorsement will issue.

The question you should be asking yourself now is…Sherman got a similar threshold in the first endorsement conference way back in January, but the numbers flipped this time, even though Sherman came in first in the primary election by 10 points. Why? More on that whenever I get a chance to analyze the results in more detail.