The protracted count is finally over, and it appears that Hannah-Beth Jackson’s outsize effort to defeat Phony Tony Strickland has come up just short.  With only a few hundred ballots left to count, Strickland currently maintains a 903 vote lead out of 414,587 ballots cast.  That margin is .2%: well within the margin necessary for a mandatory recount request by the Jackson campaign.  Unfortunately, as the pro-Strickland blog Policy Report correctly notes, such a recount effort would almost certainly be insufficient to net Hannah-Beth the votes she would need to overtake Strickland’s lead, even were the final votes to close the gap to 700 or 800:

According to some experts, a recount of all 400,000+ ballots might yield a variance of 150 votes in one direction or the other at great cost.  Gaining 800 votes in an election of this size is next to impossible.

Hannah-Beth has done the gracious thing and conceded the race:

With the latest totals showing Strickland hanging on to the lead by a little over 900 votes, Jackson said a victory was not mathematically possible.

“I’m disappointed, but I think that it’s pretty clear at this point in time, we’re not going to be able to catch up,” she said.

Strickland is due to be sworn in Monday in Sacramento. He will represent voters in most of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties as well as the northwest corner of Los Angeles County, including Santa Clarita and Stevenson Ranch.

The outcome has been in doubt since the Nov. 4 election, but by Wednesday both candidates agreed that Strickland had won.

Congratulations to Hannah-Beth Jackson and all her volunteers, supporters and staff who ran a courageous campaign against a less than honorable opponent, giving it everything they had to deliver quality representation to the people in SD-19.

This marks the end of two long and arduous races eked out by narrow margins in Ventura County by both Tony and Audra Strickland, who will be attempting to consolidate their power base.  Unfortunately for them, however, their electoral future does not look bright.  It was Ventura County that gave Strickland his victory, but that result is a relic of a Ventura whose demographics and electoral distribution are rapidly changing.   By 2012, there is little doubt that Ventura’s Democratic Majority will deliver a majority of votes for the Democrat.  As I said before, there are three chief reasons for this:

The first is that Ventura County flipped from red to blue earlier this year in terms of voter registrations–and those numbers have shifted even farther in our direction since. This is not just due to discontent with Bush and the Obama Effect: emigres from Los Angeles are swelling Ventura County’s ranks as more and more Angelenos come to appreciate this oft-overlooked area’s natural advantages. The path to victory for Republicans like Tony Strickland is only going to get steeper from here.

Second, Obama’s first term will likely end up going smoothly with good approval ratings, or very poorly with low approval ratings. Given the precarious, sour and moody state of the nation, we’re unlikely to see an apathetic, middling result. As a consequence, the next presidential election is unlikely to be a close contest one way or another. Our poor experiences in California this year will likely have taught us that we need to Stay for Change–especially if a Democratic Governor is elected in 2010, putting GOP legislators as the biggest remaining obstacle to real change in California.

But Tony’s third and biggest problem is that as an incumbent he will have 4-year voting record in the State Senate. Tony’s campaign this year was built entirely on lies; so much so, in fact, that I can say with all sincerity that he ran the most dishonest campaign I’ve personally had the misfortune of seeing up close. He will no longer be able to run as an “independent”, as all his yard signs and mailers deceitfully claimed. He will no longer be able to claim “green” credentials by posing as an alternative energy entrepreneur. He will simply be the incumbent: the Republican incumbent, and with a track record to boot.

So assuming that demography is destiny and the remaining ballots sort themselves out as poorly as we expect, it’s not the end of the road, but merely the beginning. The Stricklands will have earned themselves 2 to 4 years of respite through dishonest campaigning. More Democratic voters, increased intensity, and an unequivocal track record will see them on their way out of Sacramento in a few short years.

But we can’t do it without your help.  Today we begin Strickland Watch: it will be our duty to shadow every move and every vote Tony and Audra Strickland make in Sacramento.  So far, the Stricklands have made their careers by pretending to be something other than the hard right, corporate sockpuppets they are.  The only antidote to such poison is sunlight and exposure, and a full accounting of every single vote and dollar taken by each of them over the course of the next two to four years.

For his part, Tony Strickland is mouthing the right words:

“We need to definitely do whatever we can to reach across party lines to fix the problems of the state,” he said.

Unfortunately, we’ve heard this from Strickland before.  How he and his wife actually vote is another matter.  If their history is any indication, their bipartisan rhetoric will be belied by a hardline ideological stance.  Democrats in Ventura County-myself included–did an inadequate job of informing  our friends, neighbors and community of the Stricklands’ extremist record.  It’s up to us to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and to deliver to Ventura County the competent, progressive representation it has long deserved and been waiting for.

Also at Ventura County Democrats

(sometimes, close recount elections don’t go our way. – promoted by Dante Atkins (hekebolos))

It is with a heavy heart that I report the news that things aren’t looking good in the Jackson-Strickland race in SD-19.  Strickland has retaken a lead in the provisional and absentee counts that he is unlikely to relinquish barring a small miracle, as favorable Santa Barbara County is nearly entirely counted, leaving pro-Strickland Ventura County and the pro-Strickland sliver of L.A. County to probably pad his lead.  The Santa Barbara Independent has more:

Tony Strickland surged to a 1,560 vote lead over Hannah-Beth Jackson Wednesday, on the strength of newly counted ballots in Ventura County. Santa Barbara county’s registrar also reported counting new ballots, which favored the Democrat, but not by nearly enough to make up for the Republican’s strength in Ventura.

It is the first significant lead for either candidate in the closely-contested 19th state senate district since Election Day, and puts Strickland in a commanding position, as counting continues in three counties with portions of the sprawling district.

The overall tally now stands at:

Strickland 187,631 (50.20)

Jackson 186,071 (49.79)

A 1,560 vote lead normally wouldn’t be insurmountable with well over 50,000 votes left to count.  Unfortunately, most of those voters are likely to accrue in Strickland’s favor:

About 1,000 vote by mail ballots remain to be counted in Santa Barbara County, the only place where she has run ahead of Strickland, in addition to about 6,000 provisional ballots; the latter are likely to favor Jackson, as many of them are believed to have been cast by late-registering UCSB students.

However, Strickland is winning handily in Ventura County, which has about 40,000 absentees and 15,000 provisionals outstanding; he has also run well ahead of Jackson in the small part of the district that is in L.A. County. There, the registrar has about 225,000 more vote by mail ballots to count, but only a small number of them are in the 19th district.

Make no mistake about it: this is a tough loss to take if all goes as it appears.  For me, it’s even tougher than Prop 8, and not just because I live in the district.  With Prop 8, there was a sense that we lost due to complacency and poor messaging; with Hannah-Beth, we made our best case and put everything we could into the fight, given the simultaneous urgency of a national election.  The idea that extremist Phony Tony Strickland will be my State Senator for the next four years is literally sickening to me.

But there is some good news for the future that should worry both of the execrable Stricklands.  Red Zone candidate Ferial Masry ran a surprisingly close race against Audra Strickland in the 37th Assembly district representing parts of Ventura and L.A. counties, coming within 3 points of victory in that tough district (and this despite numerous disadvantages in funding, candidate support and perceived “Americanness”).  There is no reason to believe that we cannot build on this success by holding Audra accountable for her votes.

As for Tony?  He’s got three big problems.  The first is that Ventura County flipped from red to blue earlier this year in terms of voter registrations–and those numbers have shifted even farther in our direction since.  This is not just due to discontent with Bush and the Obama Effect: emigres from Los Angeles are swelling Ventura County’s ranks as more and more Angelenos come to appreciate this oft-overlooked area’s natural advantages.  The path to victory for Republicans like Tony Strickland is only going to get steeper from here.

Second, Obama’s first term will likely end up going smoothly with good approval ratings, or very poorly with low approval ratings.  Given the precarious, sour  and moody state of the nation, we’re unlikely to see an apathetic, middling result.  As a consequence, the next presidential election is unlikely to be a close contest one way or another.  Our poor experiences in California this year will likely have taught us that we need to Stay for Change–especially if a Democratic Governor is elected in  2010, putting GOP legislators as the biggest remaining obstacle to real change in California.

But Tony’s third and biggest problem is that as an incumbent he will have 4-year voting record in the State Senate.  Tony’s campaign this year was built entirely on lies; so much so, in fact, that I can say with all sincerity that he ran the most dishonest campaign I’ve personally had the misfortune of seeing up close.  He will no longer be able to run as an “independent”, as all his yard signs and mailers deceitfully claimed.  He will no longer be able to claim “green” credentials by posing as an alternative energy entrepreneur.  He will simply be the incumbent: the Republican incumbent, and with a track record to boot.

So assuming that demography is destiny and the remaining ballots sort themselves out as poorly as we expect, it’s not the end of the road, but merely the beginning.  The Stricklands will have earned themselves 2 to 4 years of respite through dishonest campaigning.  More Democratic voters, increased intensity, and an unequivocal track record will see them on their way out of Sacramento in a few short years.