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In the Senate race, Republicans could wind up shut out of the general election. But the jungle primary means that an icon in Democratic politics, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is about to turn 85, may have to battle all the way through November to fend off a challenge from the left posed by the state Senate president, Kevin de Leon.
Even bigger ramifications could be felt in House races. California currently has seven Republican representatives serving in districts carried by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Democrats are targeting a total of at least 10 House districts as potential flips from red to blue – nearly half the number they’d need to take control of the House altogether.
But that assumes they even get a candidate running in November in all of those races. In three districts clustered in Southern California, stretching from Orange County to north of San Diego, there are so many Democrats among the 47 candidates on the ballot that they could wind up cannibalizing each other’s votes, shutting Democrats out of the final round of voting.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/dana-rohrabacher-gty-jpo-180525_hpEmbed_23x15_384.jpg\")
It’s a concern in the district House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce is retiring from, where national Democrats helped broker a non-aggression pact between two self-funded Democratic candidates, in the hopes that at least one will advance to November.
It’s a concern in the district Rep. Darrell Issa is vacating, where Clinton received 50.7 percent of the vote and Issa squeaked by into another term by a mere 1,700 votes. In that race plus the Royce district, Democrats have been spending late to damage strong GOP candidates, in the hopes that one Democrat will advance.
It’s also an urgent concern in the race to take on Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, an idiosyncratic and controversial figure who has served in Congress for nearly 30 years. His close relationship with Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia has earned him Republican as well as Democratic challengers; there’s a solid chance he’ll face only a fellow Republican in the fall, spoiling a prime pick-up opportunity for Democrats.
The wild range of possibilities have caused frustration for Democrats, who bemoan the expenses being incurred now – and the potential damage of leaving seats on the table in California, of all places.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi -- who herself is facing three Democrats and one Green Party candidate who all view her as insufficiently liberal for her San Francisco district -- has called the primary system in her home state “terrible.”
She has defended her fellow members of the California delegation for taking sides in open primaries -- generally a no-no, so as not to tamp down voter enthusiasm -- as the only way to avert electoral disaster.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/nancy-pelosi-01-as-gty-180415_hpEmbed_22x15_384.jpg\")
“They may be subjected to criticism for that, but I’d rather be criticized for winning than criticized for losing,” Pelosi said last month.
Pelosi and many in the establishment of both parties in California were never fans of this particular reform. It was mainly a Schwarzenegger-backed initiative, borne of frustrations he felt in navigating a polarized Sacramento.
The Republican Party’s long-term prospects in California remain bleak. A recent analysis revealed that there are now more independents than Republicans in the state, leading to snarky commentary about the GOP now being a “third party” in the home state of Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
But eight years after a celebrity governor championed a reform he said would “change everything,” bright-blue California might wind up with touches of red because there are too many Democrats running for too few states.
“There’s a very long history of the unintended consequences of reform,” Pitney said.
WATCH LIVE TUESDAY: You can watch livestreaming coverage of all the primary action starting Tuesday at 10 PM Eastern/7 PM Pacific on ABCNews.com or on the ABC News app available on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, Apple TV App Store, and Roku Channel Store.
Don’t forget to sign up for Midterm Elections Alerts to get more coverage of this year’s election season from our powerhouse politics team.
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