Rep. Devin Nunes is not going anywhere.
With his 22nd Congressional District on the verge of being blown up by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, the 10-term Republican is actively planning to run for reelection in a proposed new Central Valley seat anchored to the north, sources close to Nunes confirmed Thursday to the Washington Examiner.
The new House district is situated in the same media market as Nunes’s existing seat, making him a familiar presence in the region since long before he developed a national following as a prominent ally of former President Donald Trump. And the congressman is flush with more than enough campaign cash to finance this shift, reporting $11.8 million to spend on his 2022 reelection bid as of Sept. 30.
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Some Republicans suspect the redistricting commission is tearing up the 22nd Congressional District in a political effort to short-circuit Nunes’s career because he is an outspoken defender of Trump, who lost California to President Joe Biden by nearly 30 percentage points and remains broadly unpopular there. But Nunes is not the only Central Valley congressman bracing for impact, nor is his seat the only one in the region with boundaries poised to be significantly altered.
From Bakersfield in the south to Modesto in the north, Democrats and Republicans representing suburban and agriculture communities in California’s interior San Joaquin Valley could see their districts undergo big changes. They include Democratic Reps. Jim Costa and Josh Harder, Republican Rep. David Valadao, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is in line to be elected speaker if the GOP recaptures the majority next November.
Under the first draft of new congressional lines proposed by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, the 22nd District would be transformed from a seat that supported Trump by 5 points in 2020 to a district that would have backed Biden by 9 points.
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But the changes proposed to Nunes’s district and the other Central Valley seats are not necessarily set in stone.
Dave Wasserman, a redistricting specialist and editor of House coverage for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, noted that the final 10-year map might look much different than this initial proposal. “This draft will change, perhaps a lot,” he tweeted.
