LOS ANGELES _ A prominent Republican congressman in California appeared to have lost his seat early Wednesday but election returns showed some of the hardest-fought House races in the state remained too close to call as votes still came in.
With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Democrat Harley Rouda held a lead over longtime Republican incumbent Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa, although the race had not been officially called. Rohrabacher was first elected to Congress in 1988.
Republicans Jeff Denham of Turlock and Mimi Walters of Laguna Beach appeared to have survived strong challenges in their districts.
Steve Knight of Palmdale, another endangered Republican, was trailing Democrat Katie Hill but the race was too close to call.
Another Republican, Young Kim, took a wider lead over Democrat Gil Cisneros in the contest to replace retiring Republican Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton in the 39th Congressional District.
At the same time, Democrat Mike Levin gained an early lead in his bid to capture the seat of outgoing Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista.
The midterm vote had given California, a blue-state afterthought in recent presidential contests, a rare shot at returning to relevance in a national election. In the end, though, television networks declared Democrats had already won control of the House by the time polls closed on the West Coast.
Republicans in California were in danger of losing a handful of House seats in a backlash against President Trump.
The first wave of returns confirmed the easy reelection of the more entrenched incumbents, Democratic and Republican. That included Republicans Devin Nunes of Tulare, who will lose his perch as House Intelligence Committee chairman when Democrats take control of the chamber, and Tom McClintock of Elk Grove.
Rep. David Valadao, one of the state's seven GOP incumbents whose districts Trump lost in the 2016 presidential race, defeated his Democratic challenger in the Central Valley's 21st Congressional District.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican under indictment on charges of misspending of campaign funds on personal expenses, held a solid lead over Democratic opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar in the 50th Congressional District in inland San Diego and Riverside counties.
Rohrabacher, who faced the toughest reelection battle of his 30 years in Congress, told supporters at Skosh Monahan's pub in Costa Mesa that it was a night of mixed messages.
"I can't say I'm pleased with the outcome in the rest of the country," he said, standing before a surfboard inscribed "Give me Liberty or Give me Surf." "We did lose control of the House. That has to be balanced by the fact we're going to be a lot stronger in the U.S. Senate."
Early returns showed Levin leading Republican Diane Harkey in the state's 49th Congressional District, once a GOP stronghold on the coast straddling northern San Diego and southern Orange counties.
Levin all but declared victory at a celebration in Del Mar.
"I am confident that, thanks to you, when all the votes are counted we will have won," he told supporters.
From the start of the campaign, Issa's increasingly diverse district looked like the toughest in California for Republicans to keep in their grasp. Issa barely squeaked to a ninth term in 2016 after years of tormenting President Obama as the House's point man for investigations.
Issa and Royce, whose districts chose Hillary Clinton over Trump, had announced their retirements in time to avoid daunting reelection fights.
Republican leaders, under pressure to steer limited resources into races that appeared winnable, gave up on Issa's district, declining to spend anything to help Harkey in a tough election climate for the party.
Levin, 40, is an environmental attorney and former executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party.
Levin was one of the nation's few Democratic congressional candidates to advertise his support for action to fight climate change. He backs single-payer healthcare, a $15 federal minimum wage, an assault-weapons ban and free tuition at community colleges.
The potential loss of Issa's district would be a substantial blow to Republicans, who before Tuesday held just 14 of California's 53 House seats.
All of California's vulnerable House incumbents in the midterm were Republicans caught in a Trump undertow to make for tougher races: Denham in the 10th Congressional District in the Modesto area; Knight in the 25th, centered on Santa Clarita; Rohrabacher in the 48th, which spans coastal Orange County; and Walters in the 45th in the Irvine area.
Walters' lead widened as midnight approached and her supporters began striking a celebratory note at her headquarters in Irvine.
"You guys, we're looking good," she told them. "I really think it's going to be tough for her to beat me at this point."
All of the Republicans were heavily outspent by Democrats, who benefited from a surge of support from donors hostile to Trump. Some were hobbled by their party's combative, racially tinged politics under Trump, which plays well in some conservative states but can destroy Republican candidacies in the moderate suburbs of California.
"The fact of the matter is the elected leaders who control Washington speak to issues that resonate in a lot of places in the country," said Jim Brulte, chairman of the California Republican Party. "They don't particularly resonate in New York or California or New Jersey or Illinois."
Republicans' declining fortunes in California, he added, are tied directly to the growing populations of Latinos and Asian Americans over the last few decades in the state that vaulted Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Just 24 percent of California voters are now Republican.
"The decline in Republican registration, which began 22 years ago, has been steady, and it's paralleled exactly the decline in the white population," Brulte said.
In the fiercely contested race to succeed Royce in a district that includes Fullerton, Yorba Linda and Diamond Bar, the GOP candidate, former state Assemblywoman Young Kim, was counting on strong support from Asian Americans.
"I don't take any community for granted, especially if this election is going to be decided by a few votes," Kim, a South Korean immigrant, said on one of her last door-knocking excursions in a heavily Korean neighborhood of Fullerton.
Nearly a third of the district's residents are Asian American; a third are Latino.
Kim's rival, Democrat Gil Cisneros, is an education philanthropist who was a manager at Frito-Lay when he and his wife hit a $266-million lottery jackpot in 2010.
Like other Democrats vying for California congressional seats held by Republicans, Cisneros tried to appeal to moderates, in his case by emphasizing his Navy service. In northern suburbs of Los Angeles, Knight's Democratic challenger, Katie Hill, called for tax cuts and tougher border security.
In a storm of attack ads, Democrats hammered some of the Republicans, most visibly Kim and Walters, for backing Trump's agenda on taxes and healthcare.
Democrats avoided talk of Trump in some districts, like Knight's in the northern L.A. suburbs, lest they offend blue-collar voters who support the president.
Republicans, in turn, warned Californians that the Democrats would back a government takeover of healthcare and pass astronomical tax hikes that could tank the economy.
Republicans tried to brave the foul election climate in California by pushing Proposition 6, which would repeal a new state tax increase on gasoline. Kim, Harkey and Walters all attended anti-gas-tax rallies over the last few days. The proposition was faltering in early returns.
(Times staff writers Christine Mai-Duc, Maya Sweedler, Jazmine Ulloa and Ralph Vartabedian contributed to this report.)
