FULLERTON, Calif. — Gil Cisneros and Andy Thorburn, two millionaire Democratic candidates for a battleground House district in Southern California, had been attacking each other so ruthlessly that party leaders encouraged them to meet at an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles last month to force a truce: Play nice, or risk forfeiting a top district to Republicans.

The armistice, brokered by California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, altered the course of one of the stranger primaries of 2018, replete with party meddling and nasty attacks but few policy differences. Looming above it all is the possibility that two Republicans will advance to the general election to replace Republican Rep. Ed Royce in a district Hillary Clinton carried in 2016.


The Orange County-based seat tops the nationwide list of Democratic targets, but it became the site of an early, multimillion-dollar rescue operation when it became clear the wide field of Democrats could split their vote enough to land a pair of Republicans atop the all-party primary on Tuesday. And Democrats also worry that the previous weeks of intraparty attacks — allegations ranging from party disloyalty to tax evasion to a threatening voicemail later decried as a fake — will send a potential nominee limping into the general election.

“This is the weirdest race in the country that’s attracted Democrats of all stripes and an unprecedented amount of money,” said candidate Sam Jammal, a former Obama administration official and one of the four Democrats running. “But all the negativity doesn’t help us because we’re still just beginning to build the Democratic brand here.”

The race is also the most expensive in the state so far, drawing about $10 million in spending. The DCCC has dropped $2 million alone, attacking Republican candidates and boosting Cisneros, a lottery winner who picked up the DCCC’s endorsement in April. Cisneros and Thorburn dumped more than $6 million of their own money into the race — among the highest self-funding efforts in 2018. On the Republican side, Assemblywoman Young Kim has separated herself from the pack in fundraising and some internal polling, followed by Orange County Supervisor Shawn Nelson and former state Sen. Bob Huff.

California Playbook newsletter Our must-read briefing on politics and government in the Golden State. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

That heavy spending has filled voters’ TVs and clogged their mailboxes — “so much freaking mail,” said Allicia Samuel, a 38-year-old restaurant manager and an undecided voter, who recently greeted Jammal at a farmers market here.

And the packed field means voters are “still shopping around for who to vote for because there are just so many of them,” said Liz Zamora, a 24-year-old voter from Fullerton, who also chatted with Jammal about immigration. “Honestly, it’s hard to figure out who is best.”

Before Royce’s retirement, the party welcomed the half-dozen candidates into the race in a district that does not have a deep Democratic bench. Cisneros, Thorburn and pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran were all invited to a DCCC candidate training session in Washington, D.C., last fall.

But Royce’s January announcement that he would not seek reelection “caused panic at the committee,” Thorburn said, given the possibility that a half-dozen Democrats in an open race would split their votes too broadly and shut them out of November.

“Ed Royce threw everyone a curveball, and it created a lot of chaos,” Cisneros said.

Ahead of the filing deadline in March, the DCCC talked with all of the candidates, urging them to run only if they had a viable path to victory, multiple candidates said. Two of them, Jay Chen and Phil Janowicz, dropped out in March. But Tran said the party took a more aggressive approach with her, with the committee and members of Congress repeatedly asking her to stop her campaign.

“They told me I’d be a ‘spoiler’ if I did continue and I should think about my long-term political career,” Tran said, adding that some of the conversations brought her to tears. “But I’m not a politician. I don’t have long-term political ambitions.”

Tran, who received an early endorsement from EMILY’s List, also said the DCCC indicated to her that if she didn’t drop out, “the funding will not be available” from outside groups like EMILY’s List.

Tran is the only one of five EMILY’s List-endorsed battleground candidates in California who hasn’t had any outside spending on her behalf from Women Vote!, the group’s super PAC arm. 314 Action, a group backing Democratic scientists for office that endorsed Tran, has also not supported her with outside spending, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The DCCC did not deny asking Tran and others to leave the race, but the committee denied threatening to cut off funding from outside groups, like EMILY’s List, according to a committee aide.

Meanwhile, tension was growing between Thorburn and Cisneros, who were pouring their millions into ads, some of which were starting to turn negative. Cisneros slammed Thorburn on evading taxes on a microsite, while Thorburn attacked Cisneros for being a former Republican in mailers and digital ads.

Thorburn released a voicemail message of someone promising to “go negative” on Thorburn, who he alleged was Cisneros. Cisneros’ campaign hired a cybersecurity firm that found that a “digital and analog analysis” showed the voice did not belong to Cisneros.

“The level of nervousness about [District] 39 had been increasing because we had two very wealthy candidates who are both very aggressively campaigning and firing at each other,” said Bauman, the state party chairman. “That negativity suppresses turnout … and it hands the other side a playbook for November.”

Bauman, along with DCCC staffers, organized a meeting, “held not without tension,” at Vitello’s, an Italian restaurant in Studio City, Bauman said. It was a “scene out of ‘The Godfather,’” Thorburn said. “We sat around a table, and Eric got to make his ‘Godfather’ speech — ‘We’re here to make peace.’”

“[There] was a lot of silliness going on, and it wasn’t something the voters wanted and we both knew that,” Cisneros said. “It was a pretty easy decision to focus on the positives.”

But the specter of a lockout still looms over the race. In early voting, Republicans are outperforming Democrats in the district, according to an analysis conducted by Paul Mitchell, a data consultant in the state. “The younger vote is tanking in the 39th,” Mitchell added, a key constituency for Democrats. But Mitchell stressed that he thinks Republicans shutting out Democrats entirely is still unlikely.

The DCCC added Cisneros to its “Red to Blue” program in April, boosting him with Spanish-language ads.

“With so many people in the race, people are asking, ‘Where’s the DCCC at? Where’s the party at?’” Cisneros said. “Now we have an answer for them. They’re with us.”

Both Tran and Jammal rejected criticisms that their campaigns might be the cause of a lockout. Instead, Tran said, “The blame is on the party — both the national party and the local party. It’s their job to get Democrats out to vote.”

“To have people come in from the outside, spend millions of dollars and then blame everyone else because they couldn’t win seems ridiculous,” Jammal said, adding that a chunk of undecided voters a week out shows that there’s “no front-runner.”

But the underdogs’ lack of campaign muscle is trickling down to voters, who are calculating how to make sure to get a Democrat through to the general election.

“I’ll probably vote for Andy [Thorburn] because we need someone to win this, even though I’d like to support Dr. Tran,” said Becky Johnson, a voter from Fullerton. “I’m hesitant to support Dr. Tran because she doesn’t seem to have as much money for ads.”



CLARIFICATION: Due to incorrect information provided to POLITICO, a previous version of this report mischaracterized the DCCC's efforts in the district. While the DCCC did not deny asking candidates to leave the race, the committee did deny threatening to cut off other outside spending help for candidates.