Absentee voting begins this week for California’s 15th District Senate runoff.
Once again, Republican Sam Blakeslee takes on Democrat John Laird in a race that continues to draw big money and statewide interest. Blakeslee, a San Luis Obispo assemblyman, defeated Laird, a former Santa Cruz assemblyman, in last month’s primary but failed to win the majority needed to avert a runoff.
Although the district stretches from Silicon Valley to the Santa Barbara County line, roughly a quarter of its voters live in Santa Clara County.
Those voters will go to the polls on Aug. 17, but on Monday, elections officials sent out mail ballots.
That’s how most of the voting is likely to occur, given the unconventional date of the election and the trend seen in the June primary, in which 77 percent voted by mail.
The race was called to replace former state Sen. Abel Maldonado, who was appointed lieutenant governor earlier this year.
Laird heads into the August runoff as the underdog, having lost the primary by almost 8 percentage points, or more than 11,000 votes. He says his prospects, though, remain strong.
“This isn’t about the same pool of voters going back and voting,” Laird said.
He said Blakeslee enjoyed a surge of Republican voters in June because of the other primary that took place that month, which featured several high-profile GOP contests including the gubernatorial primary.
The voters coming out for those races won’t be as likely to show this time around, Laird says.
With Democrats having a 6-percentage-point registration edge over Republicans in the district, Laird says his get-out-the-vote efforts will go further than his rival’s.
Ethan Rarick, director of UC Berkeley’s Robert T. Matsui Center of Politics and Public Service, agrees the race is hardly over. “Seven or eight points is not a huge deficit to make up,” he said.
In a low-turnout election, he said, winning comes down to who can get supporters to the polls.
Before the primary, more than $2 million was poured into the race.
The 15th District seat is highly coveted because a Democratic win would put Senate Democrats within one seat of the two-thirds supermajority needed to pass new taxes.
Independent Jim Fitzgerald and Libertarian Mark Hinkle are also on the ballot.
