For the many political strategists who are imagining how the national balance of power might change with the fall midterm elections in November, Orange County’s first election of the new decade might give some clues. In yesterday’s special election to replace disgraced state Assemblyman and family values crusader, Republican Mike Duvall, who resigned after he was caught on tape bragging about his sexual exploits with a Sacramento lobbyist, voters declined to give the ethics issue a partisan twist. Republican County Supervisor Chris Norby was swept into the state assembly seat for the 72nd district with 62.9% of the vote.

Norby’s election will create a vacancy on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, for the Fourth District. According to Registrar of Voters Spokesman Brett Rowley, because of the timing of the special election, the vacancy will not be filled until the regular June primary election. Assuming Norby resigns his seat on the Board, the Fourth District will be unrepresented until June.

If any candidate gets more than 50% of the votes in the June election, that person will hold the seat through the November election and for a full four year term after that.
If no candidate gets more than 50% in the June election, the person who gets the most votes will serve until the regular election in November, at which time there will be a runoff for the full four year term. The Fourth District includes Anaheim (portions of), Buena Park, Fullerton, La Habra, and Placentia.

The traditionally Republican 72nd California Assembly District includes Portions of Anaheim, Yorba Linda, Orange and La Habra, all of Brea, Fullerton and Placentia.
Voters chose from Republican Chris Norby, Democrat John MacMurray, who garnered 31.0% of the votes, and Green Party Jane Rands, who got 6.1%.

Norby’s victory was not unexpected. Last week, the Los Angeles Times called Norby the “overwhelming favorite to win the seat”.
He was the top vote getter from the primary election held last November and he won decisively over the other two Republicans in the field.

Of the 218,963
Registered voters in the district, 14.8% voted in this election. This means that the district will be represented in Sacramento by a person who received votes from less than 10% of the electorate.

Compared to the November primary, the turn out declined from 18.3% to 14.8%. This means that there were 7,743 less votes cast yesterday then in the November primary. MacMurray held on to most of his votes. While Norby consolidated the votes from the other GOP candidates at the primary, in total, the GOP got 7,192 less votes yesterday than last November.