Democrats failed to gain the U.S. House seat given up by disgraced former Representative "Duke" Cunningham as Republican Brian Bilbray defeated Francine Busby by a 49%-45% margin.

GOP candidate narrowly wins California race

Republicans will say that the "culture of corruption" charges aren't sticking to the party as a whole and will not matter in individual races in November.  Democrats will point out that Busby lost the seat to Cunningham by 20 points in 2004 and the closer race now shows a large shift of Republicans flipping to their side in disgust.

In either case, it probably didn't help Busby much when she made the mistake of telling a mostly Hispanic crowd just before the election that, "You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help."  Although she later claimed that she was talking about minors who wanted to help her campaign, it was taken by almost everyone that she was talking about "undocumented" immigrants.  Definitely not the right thing to say in a Republican-leaning border city.