LOS ANGELES _ After clinging for a week to a slim lead in her run for re-election, Republican Rep. Mimi Walters fell 261 votes behind her Democratic challenger Katie Porter as Orange County's latest ballot count Tuesday underscored the increasingly bleak fortunes of the California GOP.
Democrats have already won three of the GOP's 14 House seats in California, and Walters' is one of three others the party is also in serious danger of losing as county registrars finish counting ballots from the Nov. 6 election.
Republican Rep. Jeff Denham dropped further behind Democrat Josh Harder when San Joaquin County released its latest vote count. Denham is now 3,447 votes behind.
And Young Kim, the Republican running to succeed GOP Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton, saw her lead over Democrat Gil Cisneros shrink Tuesday to 711 votes as Orange and Los Angeles counties updated their tallies.
Voting patterns in previous California elections do not bode well for Republicans: With rare exceptions, the ballots counted last, many of them provisional or mailed relatively late, skew strongly Democratic.
