Democrat who lost D.C. bid in November says he’ll try for Sacramento next

Dave Min, a UC Irvine law professor who was endorsed by the California Democratic Party in his unsuccessful congressional bid last year, will challenge Orange County GOP state Sen. John Moorlach in the 2020 election.

Min finished third in the June primary for the 45th Congressional District, missing the November runoff by 4,099 votes to Katie Porter, who went on to win the seat in November by defeating Mimi Walters.

Following the loss, Min said he was unsure of his next step in politics but kept hearing from former supporters who urged him to run for public office again. Eventually, he decided to compete for the 37th Senate District.

“We built a really strong and amazing grassroots movement and had hundreds of volunteers for our campaign,” said Min, 42, who lives in Irvine with his wife and three kids.

Min said he plans to make “protecting our environment, ending the gun violence epidemic, building more affordable housing, and protecting our immigrant communities” core platforms of his campaign.

Moorlach has served in the state Senate since 2015, winning a special election that year and then earning a full term in 2016, when he beat his Democratic opponent by 14 percentage points. The former Orange County Supervisor has branded himself a fiscal conservative who has sought pension reform at all levels of government. He launched his political career when he predicted Orange County’s 1994 bankruptcy during a successful bid to become the county’s treasurer-tax collector.

In contrast to Moorlach’s 24 years of experience as an elected official, Min has never held public office. Instead, Min points to a political resume that includes time as a senior policy advisor for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and as policy director for the Center for American Progress.

The 37th Senate District runs along the coast from Huntington Beach to Laguna Beach and stretches inland through Costa Mesa, Irvine, and Tustin, and up to Orange, Villa Park and portions of Irvine. Republicans hold a 5 percentage point voter registration lead in the seat, but that’s half the of the advantage the GOP had four years ago when Moorlach one his first full term. The district also overlaps with several House seats and state assembly districts that swung Democratic in 2018, continuing a trend that has seen Republicans losing more and more federal and state seats in recent years.

If elected, Min, a first-generation Korean-American, would be the first Asian American Democrat to represent Orange County at the state level.