The Flip Side Of Tom McKeyes' Carpetbagging

It's interesting, to say the least, that on the same day Tom McClintock packed up the station wagon and left Ventura County, we also find out that Democrats have taken the registration advantage in that same county.

In the parlance of 21st century politics, Ventura County has turned blue.

As of Monday, registered Democrats became the majority voting group in the county, surpassing Republican registration for the first time since Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

The latest numbers: 150,066 Democrats and 149,627 Republicans.

"Everybody's on cloud nine," said Laura Winchester of Thousand Oaks, vice chairwoman of the county Democratic Central Committee. "From the standpoint of momentum, this is a huge blow to Republicans."

I know a lot of these Ventura County Democratic activists, and they worked their asses off to reach this point. Ventura is the beginning of a wide-ranging red-to-blue program to recapture more than the coastal and urban regions of the state. McClintock left Ventura County because he was termed out. But he didn't exactly have a safe haven anymore in Thousand Oaks, either.

This bodes very well for SD-19 and Hannah-Beth Jackson. Now if we had a solid candidate in CA-24...