California\u2019s Democratic Party is going all in on trying to get a former punter for the Minnesota Vikings into the state Assembly, potentially knocking out a Republican Huntington Beach Councilwoman in a district that stretches along Orange County\u2019s coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 72nd Assembly District is currently represented by Republican Assemblywoman Diane Dixon, who\u2019s not running for re-election as she makes a bid for county supervisor, leaving her seat that covers the coast from Seal Beach to Laguna Beach empty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Huntington Beach City Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark and Chris Kluwe<\/a>, a former punter for the Vikings turned local political activist, are both gunning for the seat.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kluwe first came on the local political scene when he was arrested at a Huntington Beach City Council meeting in February 2025 after he called the Make America Great Again movement a \u201cNazi movement\u201d and was carried out of the meeting by police officers when he stepped over a protective barrier and approached council members on the dais.<\/p>\n Kluwe was released and cited for disrupting an assembly, according to the Los Angeles Times<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n Van Der Mark was at that meeting and has served on the city council over the past four years, spearheading a controversial proposal to change how books are picked at the library<\/a> as well as voting for a series of legal battles with state leaders over local control<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Kluwe picked up the largest share of the vote in the primary with just under 44% of all the votes cast, over 54% of the votes went to Republican candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Around 39% of the district\u2019s voters are registered Republicans according to the Orange County registrar, compared to 32% Democrats and around 22% of voters having no party preference.\u00a0<\/p>\n So far, Kluwe is leading the way on fundraising, disclosing over $1.1 million of fundraising compared to Van Der Mark\u2019s $314,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kluwe\u2019s biggest financial support is coming from the Democratic Party itself, with the state party disclosing over $652,000 in donations to his campaign while other county parties in places like Santa Clara and Del Norte Counties have disclosed donations of $30,000 and $40,000, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n As of Monday, Kluwe\u2019s also faced over $158,000 in recent attack ads from the Legislative Action PAC, a group aimed at aiding Republicans in getting elected to state office funded by groups including Google, various county Republican parties and several oil companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n Most of Van Der Mark\u2019s support comes from a variety of local Republican donors, firefighter and law enforcement unions, and developers according to her campaign disclosures.\u00a0<\/p>\n So far, Van Der Mark hasn\u2019t received nearly as much financial support from the Republican Party this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n The OC Republican Party spent around $28,000 supporting Van Der Mark according to their disclosures, while the state party didn\u2019t disclose any spending as of Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org. <\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California\u2019s Democratic Party is going all in on trying to get a former punter for the Minnesota Vikings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[4933,188828,163,165,164,191893,191894,2267],"class_list":["post-492899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-2026-midterm-elections","tag-2026-oc-elections","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-chris-kluwe","tag-gracey-van-der-mark","tag-voice-of-oc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492899","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=492899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}