It feels anti-climactic, but I suppose I ought to post the OC Registrar's tally from yesterday's counting:
Lou Correa 55,234 50.0%
Lynn Daucher 54,413 49.2%
Otto Bade 899 0.8%
Correa has now expanded his lead to 821 votes. By the time all is said and done, Lou Correa's margin may well exceed the number of votes garnered by Trojan Horse write-in Otto Bade.
Truth be told, it's unlikely we'll ever know for sure if Otto Bade cost Lynn Daucher victory in this race. That would involve knowing that each and every person who voted for Otto Bade would otherwise have cast his or her ballot for Lynn Daucher -- something that is impossible to know. I have no doubt the majority of Bade voters would have otherwise voted for Daucher. Daucher campaigned as an education conservative, and that is how GOP voters in the 34th SD. The Californians United/Otto Bade campaign was able to do what Lou Correa couldn't -- attack Lynn Daucher from the right and cost her conservative votes.
Which is why it is hard to calculate the impact of the Californians United assault solely via the number of write-in Bade received. Four district-wide mailers plus phone banks to pro-life and 2nd Amendment voters painting Daucher as pro-choice and anti-gun certainly caused a number of GOP voters to either skip that race altogether or vote AIP or Libertarian. Combined with the 899 votes Bade actually received and one can make a strong case the Bruce Young's evil plan cost Daucher the Senate race.
Alas, we'll never know for sure. There was nothing illegal about Otto Bade's candidacy. The law doesn't -- and shouldn't -- prohibit a citizen from launching a candidacy for petty, selfish reasons, or even from being dishonest in representing his or her reasons to the voters.
But I think it should disqualify him from consideration fro any public office. And he ought to be vigorously and overwhelmingly opposed should he ever place name on a ballot again.