ANAHEIM HILLS, California — Rep. Michelle Steel’s (R-CA) reelection bid, against likely Democratic opponent Derek Tran, an attorney and U.S. Army veteran, is one of several hotly contested House races in California that could help decide the majority.
Republicans are trying to chip away at Democrats’ 40-12 edge in the House delegation California sends to Washington. That margin will become official after a May 21 special election for the deep red 20th Congressional District, covering the eastern Central Valley from the Bakersfield to Fresno areas. Ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) quit Congress at the end of last year and left the seat open.
California is emerging as a key battleground in the fight for the House majority, which Republicans hold now with a slim margin that will be 221-214 when vacant seats are filled by special elections in the coming months. (In addition to McCarthy’s old House seat, there’s a vacant, strongly red district in Ohio and an open, deeply blue one in New York.)
Not far south and west from the district Steel is defending in November, Republicans see a ripe pickup opportunity in the coastal Orange County and Irvine 47th Congressional District, which Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) is vacating for a Senate run. In 2022, Porter narrowly beat Republican rival Scott Baugh, a former California State Assembly minority leader and fixture of the Orange County Republican scene for decades.
Baugh is running again, and his Democratic fall opponent will be either state Sen. Dave Min or progressive community activist Joanna Weiss. Min suffered a self-inflicted political wound, on top of threatening public safety, when he was arrested on May 2, 2023, in Sacramento for drunken driving, near the state Capitol. (Min pleaded no contest to misdemeanor drinking and driving and was sentenced to three years’ probation.)
House Republicans also are eyeing the coastal southern Orange and northern San Diego counties 49th Congressional District seat held by Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA), which includes lots of traditionally red territory, though in 2020, President Joe Biden would have beaten former President Donald Trump there 54.6% to 43.2%.
And, a seven-hour drive north, House GOP strategists are high on their chances of beating Rep. Josh Harder (D-CA) in the Stockton area 9th Congressional District. Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln is set to emerge from the March 5 primary as Harder’s Republican opponent for the November ballot, in the fight for a district that Biden would have won by about 12 points.
House Democrats have several targets in California, too. That includes the House seat just east of Steel’s, held by Rep. Young Kim (R-CA). In 2020, Biden would have edged out Trump there 49.9% to 48%, putting the 40th Congressional District on that list of 17 House seats that went blue for president and red for Congress two years later.
Kim effectively makes up the difference with her long political experience in the area. The Incheon, South Korea, native, who departed Seoul as a teenager when her family moved from Guam to Hawaii, eventually settled in Orange County and went on to spend 21 years as a community liaison for Republican Rep. Ed Royce. Kim was a member of the California State Assembly from 2014-16. Her first House bid, in 2018 against Democratic Navy veteran and lottery winner Gil Cisneros, came up short in a political wave year for Democrats halfway through Trump’s White House term.
Two years later, though, Kim beat Cisneros in a rematch. (After a stint in the Biden administration Pentagon, Cisneros is running for the House again, in the deep-blue eastern San Gabriel Valley 31st Congressional District, a few miles north of the terrain Kim now represents along the 57 Freeway.)
Since joining Congress, Kim has been known as an active presence for events and meetings in the 40th Congressional District. The district includes Anaheim Hills and stretches south to Coto de Caza, a wealthy, guard-gated private community that was the original setting of the Bravo channel reality television show The Real Housewives of Orange County.
Two Democrats are running for a spot on the November ballot against Kim: Tustin Unified School District Board Trustee Allyson Muniz Damikolas and retired fire Capt. Joe Kerr. In the meantime, Democratic-aligned groups are trying to soften up Kim for attacks. They paint her voting as a Trump-inflected, MAGA-esque devotee of an insurrectionist former president.
Yet it may be hard to portray Kim that way successfully since she has bucked her party at times. About a month into Kim’s House career, she was the only Republican lawmaker from California to vote to remove firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) from two committees, which passed 230-199 in the chamber, then under Democratic control.
The congresswoman’s 2024 campaign said Democrats are wasting time and resources on the race, alluding to early attacks by the party’s House campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“Young Kim has established an incredible track record of breaking through political gridlock to fight inflation, jumpstart the economy, stop the flow of fentanyl, and hold the CCP accountable,” Sam Oh, general consultant to Young Kim for Congress, told Washington Examiner in a statement.
“Bottom line: Young Kim gets things done while her Democrat opponents peddle DCCC-drafted talking points and can’t articulate a single solution to address real issues at the forefront of the minds of voters in this district,” Oh said. “It’s a weird strategy, good luck with that.”
Elsewhere in California, top Democratic targets include the southern Riverside suburbs to Palm Springs 41st Congressional District, where Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), first elected to the House in 1992, is defending a redrawn seat that’s more centrist than his previous ones. Calvert’s November 2024 Democratic opponent will be former federal prosecutor Will Rollins, who lost narrowly to the GOP incumbent in 2022.
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Then there are three House Republicans representing districts where in 2020 Biden would have beaten Trump by double digits: Rep. John Duarte in the mid-Central Valley 13th Congressional District, Rep. David Valadao in the southern Central Valley and eastern Bakersfield 22nd Congressional District, and Rep. Mike Garcia in northern Los Angeles County, holding a district that includes Santa Clarita, Lancaster, and Palmdale.
Further down on House Democrats’ reach list of 2024 targets is freshman Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), in California’s 3rd Congressional Districts, stretching hundreds of miles from the northeastern Sacramento suburbs and Lake Tahoe south to Death Valley. Trump in 2020 would have beaten Biden 49.7% to 47.9% in the district, home to many fleeing the costly Bay Area and Southern California housing markets.
David Mark is managing editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.
