written by Jean Myers 7/31/22
What if I were to tell you that if every registered republican in Napa County had voted in the June 7th election this year in District 3 for the GOP endorsed candidate Matt Hooper for Supervisor, he would have had 3,948 votes (republicans represent 23.4% of the 16,888 registered voters in D3). With that many votes, he would have beat Anne Cottrell, who had 3,069 votes and been in the run-off in the fall election, with a chance of winning the seat! Well, I don’t know about you, but that just makes me mad!
As precinct chair for the Republican Women Federated and the Napa GOP, I was smack dab in the middle of it. This is my election analysis and will tell you everything you wanted to know about the election, from an insiders point of view.
First, a few Napa County statistics. Napa County had approximately 136,484 residents in 2010. By 2020, the population had risen 1.12%, to around 138,019. During the same period, the U.S. population grew 6.5% and California’s population grew by 5.5%. But the growth didn’t last as the state of California (and Napa County) has lost population since the 2020 census. According to the census bureau, California’s population shrunk by 300,387 over 15 mos. from approximately 39,538k as of 4/1/20 (the last census numbers) to 39,238k (as of 7/1/21). Given that I have one friend who recently left Napa County for Texas, and my younger son and his family, who moved to Texas last summer, I would guess that it is a combination of high prices, high taxes and blue policies that have driven people from our state. My son and his family could not afford to buy a house here, while they could afford a brand new house in Texas.
So we have population loss, high taxes, high prices and blue policies. One would think that republicans would want to swarm the polls. But that is not exactly what happened. We currently have 84,249 registered voters, or approximately 62% of the population. According to the census bureau, approximately 19.7% of the County of Napa are children under 18. This means that there are approximately 26,785 people not of voting age. This means that there are about 109,180 eligible voters and 84,249 are currently registered, or 77.2%. Perhaps this isn’t so bad, if you consider that many that were counted in the census may not have been citizens!
One more dose of numbers – Of those registered to vote, we have the following categories for parties (over the entire county, District breakouts may differ).
American Independent – 3.7%
Democrat – 50.2%
Green Party – 0.6%
Independent – 0.2%
Libertarian – 1.2%
No Party Preference – 21.5%
Other/Unknowns – 1%
Peace & Freedom – 0.4%
Republican – 21.4%
Total 100%
Do you notice that there are more voters who registered ‘No Party Preference’ in Napa County than Republican? Perhaps our image has been tarnished and people are afraid to register Republican? Or perhaps people have been scared away by censorship and public shaming… More on this later.
Local results:
1. Fact – In District 1, the downtown district, only 17.7% of voters are republicans. Even so, if all of those voters had voted for Garrett Hale, the GOP endorsed candidate for Supervisor, he would have received 1,130 votes (6,386 votes were cast in District 1, but the breakout is yet to be determined), instead of the 862 votes received. And since he only received 14.1% of the vote, that means that there may have been fewer republicans that voted in this election than are represented by registrations. Precinct walking coverage in D1 was pretty thorough, except for Carneros (which could possibly have many of those republicans), which tends to have large, sometimes gated properties and unsafe walking conditions.
2. Fact – If all republicans had voted in District 3 for the GOP endorsed candidate Matt Hooper for Supervisor, he would have had 3,948 votes (republicans represent 23.4% of the 16,888 registered voters in D3). With that many votes, he would have beat Anne Cottrell, who had 3,069 votes and been in the run-off in the fall election.
3. Fact – Bryan Pritchard for State Assembly received 32.4% of the vote in Napa County (or 10,955 votes) against Cecelia Aguilar-Curry. If he had received all 18,018 registered republican votes countywide, he would have stacked up better against her 22,844 votes, but still, he had a fair outcome, considering that not much effort was put into the primary, as he was guaranteed the republican seat in the run-off (there were no other contenders).
4. Fact – 44.16% of the registered voters in Napa County voted, which beats the statewide percentage of 33.1% by 11%! But it appears that Republicans did not show up in the same numbers. Why is that?
There are two main reasons that I heard from voters as to why Republicans didn’t want to vote. I will argue each point
A. ‘My vote doesn’t count in California.’ Clearly, if all republicans had voted in District 3, Matt would have been in the fall run-off. So your vote DOES count in Napa County. Perhaps we wouldn’t have won the seat, but we would have made inroads towards getting a conservative candidate on the board of supervisors. In addition, have you considered that Democrats want you to think that your vote doesn’t count in California? By repeating this propaganda over and over on liberal news channels, Republicans are subdued into not voting. I say, if you want to watch your state crumble about you into a socialist nightmare, with high crime, uncontrolled immigration, homelessness, poor infrastructure, high taxes and woke theory taught to your grandkids, sex change operations without parental consent, etc., then do not vote. Hand the state over to the ultra liberals.
B. ‘There is no election integrity.’ Movies like 2000 Mules are having a dual effect. One effect is that people are really mad and are demanding fair elections. The problem is that the wheels of change move slowly and in states like California, the wheels may even turn backwards. The other effect is that people may decide that since they live in a liberal state, there is no reason to vote, as there is so much corruption in the voting process that they ‘can’t fight city hall’. In other words they give up. Have you ever considered that this is exactly what the democrats are banking on? There is much to be said for liberal news reporting in the state. Try finding local news that is not skewed to the left. Indeed, even our local newspaper, the Register is completely biased. They rarely print our point of view and articles are misleading at best. That is part of the reason that I decided to begin this blog – we need a place to get our local political news, other than our newspapers and online sources, which never analyze the facts in a way that allows us to see our strengths.
Prior to the election, the Napa County Republican Central Committee (NCRCC) Election Integrity chair, Terry Abblett, called for republicans in the county to watch Zuckerboxes (drop boxes that were paid for by Mark Zuckerberg) to see if ballot harvesting was taking place on a large scale in Napa County. However, since ballot harvesting is LEGAL in the state of California, it’s not clear how we would identify illegal harvesting (filling out ballots for people who don’t understand what they are voting for or buying blank signed ballots from people). We would almost need a whistle-blower to come forward. Other theories are that farm laborers in the county are threatened to give up their ballots to a union boss. Again, there is no proof for that, but it would sure be nice to have some! Dead people voting, people with alzheimers voting, out-of-staters voting, etc., all ways that could lead to voter fraud. And then there are the Dominion Voting Systems. It is still not 100% clear in my mind that they cannot be used to favor clever opponents.
Unless we, as voters, take action in some way to start the process of change, will we ever see any change? Will California be left high and dry when the red wave sweeps through the nation? Or will people like you and I decide to get involved in whatever way we can and try to make changes to our voting systems and our government representatives?