Rep. Ken Calvert, who led district-wide throughout the final counting of the absentee and provisional ballots is now officially the winner of the 44th Congressional District election, based on the complete counts from Riverside and Orange counties.
Calvert, R-Corona, beat his Democratic rival Bill Hedrick by 6,047 votes. And as I’ve noted before, the incumbent has Orange County to thank for his victory.
Here’s the breakdown: Calvert got 94,483 in his home county of Riverside while Hedrick, also from Corona and a school board member and union official, got 103,255 in Riverside.
In Orange, Calvert got 35,454 to Hedrick’s 20,635 . That spelled the difference.
Hedrick has told me that he expected such a final result but that Calvert shouldn’t get too comfortable. In the words of our governor: Hedrick says He’ll be back. And Hedrick said the voters of southern Orange County should expect to hear a lot from him in the next two years.
Perhaps he should get comfortable (about losing). How’s he going to come back??? He got his rear-end kicked in an election year that should have been his for the taking (i.e., being a Dem). Bill, perhaps you should go back to the drawing board….or maybe the school board but then, don’t bother…)!