CALIFORNIA: Dem Flips Seat Of Anti-LGBT House Rep

The Associated Press reports:

Democrat Katie Porter has seized a Republican-held U.S. House seat in the heart of Southern California’s Reagan country. Thursday’s vote count update in Orange County gave Porter, a law professor, the upset over Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in the 45th District. Porter has 51 percent and leads by 6,203 votes.

Democrats now have won five GOP seats in California, and Republicans are being threatened in another race that still is too close to call. Porter’s victory is a sign of changing times in Orange County, once known nationally as a GOP stronghold but now increasingly Democratic.

As a member of the California Assembly, Mimi Walters endorsed Prop 8 and voted against the ban on ex-gay torture. In the US House, she voted against protections for LGBT employees of federal contractors. And that’s just a start.