Hillary Clinton Wins California Primary
Hillary Clinton holds a last minute rally in South Los Angeles before heading to New York for the June 7th Primaries. (September Dawn Bottoms)
Former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic nominee for president Hillary Clinton has won the California Democratic primary, according to the Associated Press. The result comes after Monday’s announcement from AP that Clinton had clinched the required number of delegates in order to earn the nomination for the presidency.
While Clinton and her campaign spent Monday night saying the remaining primaries were still essential, the former first lady didn’t make an appearance in California or any of the other five states that held primaries last night.
Instead, Clinton spoke from New York, where her tone was celebratory.
“Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone – the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee for president of the United States,” said Clinton.
While spending much of her speech celebrating her historic achievement, she also took time to acknowledge her opponents, both past and future.
“I want to congratulate Senator Sanders for the extraordinary campaign he has run,” said Clinton. “The stakes in this election are high and the choice is clear. Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander-in-chief.”
At Sanders’ rally at the Santa Monica Airport, he took stage long before the California primary was called. While he was already down 20 points early in the night, he felt that “the gap will significantly diminish” by the end.
While he was ultimately wrong about this, it likely wouldn’t have affected his message. In his brief speech, Sanders made his future very clear.
“Next Tuesday, we continue the fight at the last primary in Washington D.C.,” said Sanders.
Voter turnout is projecting to be notably lower than the comparable 2008 California Primary. According to voting results from AP, the turnout estimates to be just short of 4 million this year, where it surpassed 5 million in 2008.
On the Republican side, Trump won running basically uncontested, though former opponents Kasich, Cruz, and Carson still managed to garner 25 percent of the vote combined.