This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Democratic party has captured another Republican-held US House seat in southern California at the weekend, capping a rout in which the party picked up six congressional seats in the state.

In what had been the last undecided House contest in California, Gil Cisneros beat the Republican Young Kim, who admitted defeat on Sunday, for the state’s 39th district seat.

What the midterms can teach the Democrats about winning in 2020 Read more

The Cisneros victory was assured on Saturday and cements a stunning political realignment after the midterm elections earlier this month that will leave a vast stretch of the Los Angeles metropolitan area under Democratic control in the House.

With Kim’s defeat, four Republican-held House districts all or partly in Orange county, once a nationally known GOP stronghold, will have shifted in just one election to the Democratic column. The change means that the county of Richard Nixon’s birthplace and site of his presidential library will have only Democrats representing its residents in Washington DC next year.

After more than a week of counting mail-in and other outstanding ballots, Democrats also recently picked up the last Republican-held House seat in Los Angeles county, when Katie Hill ousted Steve Knight. Republicans also lost a seat in the agricultural Central Valley.

With other gains, Democrats will hold a 45-8 edge in California US House seats next year. The 39th district was one of seven targeted by Democrats across California after Hillary Clinton carried them in the 2016 presidential election.

Cisneros, 47, a $266m lottery jackpot winner, had been in a close race with Kim in a district that has grown increasingly diverse. It is roughly divided between Republicans, Democrats and independents, and between Asians, Hispanics and whites.

“In one of the most diverse districts in the country I learned that for all of our differences, we all care about the same things,” said Cisneros, who will be the first Hispanic to represent the district.

“Most of all, we want to live in a world brought together by hope, not divided by hate,” he said in a statement.



