{"id":353275,"date":"2026-06-09T16:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/353275\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T16:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T16:02:08","slug":"republicans-california-election-conspiracy-theories-suffer-from-one-fatal-flaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/353275\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans\u2019 California election conspiracy theories suffer from one fatal flaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Los Angeles\u2019 closely watched mayoral race, it\u2019s been clear for several days that Karen Bass, the city\u2019s Democratic incumbent, received enough support in last week\u2019s primary to advance to the general election in November. The question was who she\u2019d run against.<\/p>\n

This week, the answer came into focus. MS NOW reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Los Angeles Council member Nithya Raman will advance to the November general election in the mayoral race to face the incumbent, Karen Bass, after overtaking ex-reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the primary,\u00a0The Associated Press projects.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raman has steadily trended upward in the vote count since Election Day, and she overtook Pratt on Sunday. Monday\u2019s vote update gives Raman a cushion of more than 20,000 votes, making her position in the top two safe, with an estimated 93% of the vote counted.<\/p>\n

In California\u2019s gubernatorial race, meanwhile, the vote count is still underway, though we now know that Xavier Becerra, a former Democratic congressman who served as Joe Biden\u2019s health secretary, has advanced to the general election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not yet clear who his rival will be, but with nearly 83% of the ballots tallied, Steve Hilton, a Trump-backed Republican, appears well positioned<\/a> to finish second, while Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer is (at least for now) running third.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the problem with Republican conspiracy theories about California\u2019s vote count.<\/p>\n

In recent days, a great many GOP leaders, including Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill, have invested an enormous amount of time and energy trying to convince the public the state\u2019s elections process is \u201crigged\u201d by nefarious Democratic schemers who\u2019ve secretly orchestrated the results to ensure their preferred outcome.<\/p>\n

\tRecommended<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSteve Benen<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSteve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of\u00a0MaddowBlog\u00a0and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tLatest Post\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tRepublicans\u2019 California election conspiracy theories suffer from one fatal flaw<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Los Angeles\u2019 closely watched mayoral race, it\u2019s been clear for several days that Karen Bass, the city\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-353275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}