Last night, preliminary election results show that South County voters spoke clearly and decisively. David Alvarez finished in first place with 38.4% of the vote, with Georgette Gomez in second place with 36.9% and republican Lincoln Pickard in third place with 24.6%. These results are very surprising to Sacramento insiders. In late February, the Georgette Gomez campaign released a poll that showed her finishing first with 40% of the vote and David Alvarez finishing third with just 26% of the vote. So why did Sacramento insiders get this race so wrong?

The answer is simple: Georgette Gomez ran one of the most negative campaigns California has ever seen. Rather than run on the issues, Gomez spent her time and money attacking David Alvarez and defending the status quo in Sacramento. Every press release sent by her campaign was negative, attacking Alvarez in an attempt to skew media coverage away from the issues. Meanwhile, Gomez was extremely vague on what she would actually do if elected. The only positive message her campaign offered was a list of endorsements from Sacramento politicians and insiders.

By comparison, Alvarez’s campaign didn’t send one negative mailer or TV ad. His campaign ads were 100% positive and relentlessly focused on making the case for change. Alvarez argued that Sacramento is out of touch with the problems South County voters deal with every day: exploding gas prices, kids struggling in school, and rising homelessness and crime. He also offered specific and detailed solutions for each of these problems.

Alvarez believes that the inaction of the State Legislature on the gas price crisis is inexcusable. Gas prices have been over $6 per gallon for weeks now. While Sacramento politicians hold press conferences making empty promises for relief, Californians are suffering. Residents of the 80th Assembly District in the South Bay from Eastlake to San Ysidro have to commute hours in traffic in the morning to the job centers in the northern part of our County. They are bearing the brunt of these prices while people with the luxury of remote working in white collar jobs avoid it.

That is why Alvarez supports an emergency suspension of the state Gas Tax, it is the easiest way to grant relief immediately to Californians who are suffering the most from the Gas Price Crisis. Voters in the 80th Assembly District can’t wait months while Sacramento politicians debate how to send help. But Gomez wants to increase the cost of driving, not decrease it. In addition to refusing to offer a single proposal to reduce gas prices, Gomez also supports a new vehicle miles traveled tax to charge South County voters for every mile they drive.

Alvarez told voters that if he is elected his top priority will be education. As a father of two kids attending public school, Alvarez served as the president of the Parent Teacher Association at his kids’ school. He knows how hard it is for kids in public school right now and he has vowed to push extra funding to help kids recover from over a year of distance learning and to promote parental involvement. He will also work with the UC, CSU and Southwestern College to bring a new institution of Higher Learning to Chula Vista. Meanwhile, Gomez has barely mentioned education in any of her campaign materials and has offered no substantive proposals.

Alvarez will also bring sanity to the debate over crime and homelessness. South County voters are worried about rising crime, and Alvarez has argued for more state funding to help local police departments hire more officers. Gomez opposes hiring more police officers and supports defunding the police.

Alvarez argued that the state is spending billions on homelessness, but it simply is not working. Voters see homeless encampments lining South County freeways and people dying on the street from drug addiction and untreated mental illness. Alvarez supports more shelters and more inpatient treatment options throughout the State to address addiction and mental health. Alvarez also supports reform to state laws to require people to accept the help that they need. Gomez simply defends Sacramento’s flawed approach to homelessness and has offered no new ideas to deal with the expanding problem.

There was one final key difference between both candidates. Final election results will most likely show that Spanish speakers made up between 15% and 20% of the electorate. Alvarez conducted a truly bilingual campaign, with mailers, digital ads, media interviews, and field outreach in both English and Spanish. By contrast, Gomez campaigned almost exclusively in English. When up to one-fifth of voters in the 80th Assembly District communicate almost exclusively in Spanish, this was a grievous error for the Gomez campaign.

Sacramento insiders got the special election in the 80th wrong because they are out of touch. South County voters were not surprised by these results. They saw Alvarez running a positive campaign advocating for change and talking about the issues and concerns they care about, and they saw Gomez arguing against change and simply attacking her opponent rather than engaging on the issues. Sacramento got it wrong, but the voters got it right.

VIDEO: Special election for California's 80th Assembly District