Super Tuesday is upon us, and the golden prize up for grabs is California. Former President Donald Trump will look to burnish his credentials with a dominant delegate victory, while President Joe Biden will also aim for a dominant show. But there are plenty of intriguing down-ballot races, not least the jungle primary for former Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat, as well as several intriguing House seats. This series, Golden State Scramble, will look at all of the above and more. Part Five takes a look at five House races that could determine which party controls the lower chamber of Congress next year.
San Jose, CALIFORNIA — An ugly fight that has turned personal between two Democratic rivals in California’s Central Valley district could knock both out of contention Tuesday and send two Republicans to compete for a coveted House seat in one of the most closely watched primary races in the country. That race, in the Golden State’s 22nd Congressional District, is just one of five potential game changers.
Republicans now hold a three-seat majority in the lower chamber of Congress. Of the 16 House districts won by President Joe Biden in 2020 but are now in GOP hands, five are in California. And 10 of the 72 most competitive House races across the country are also in the state and involve several of the same districts in which races were won by razor-thin margins two years ago, according to the Cook Political Report.
House District 22
On the eve of the March 5 primary, the Golden State’s 22nd District was locked in a four-way race that could potentially flip the balance of power in the House of Representatives.
To be sure, the Republican Party in Southern California has made inroads focusing on crime, inflation, and illegal immigration. However, incumbent Rep. David Valadao’s (R-CA) vote to impeach former President Donald Trump has put him at odds with his base. He further irked his voters by describing Trump as a “driving force” behind the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Those words opened the door for the Democratic Party to offer up their own candidate in an attempt to flip a Republican stronghold. Deep-pocketed donors and political heavyweights such as Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA), and the United Farm Workers endorsed former Assemblyman Rudy Salas for the spot. Salas challenged Valadao in 2022 but lost by about 3,100 votes. This time around, the 46-year-old seemed better poised to win until another Democrat entered the race and shook things up.
State Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-CA) pitched herself as a salt-of-the-earth candidate. At a recent campaign event, she posed for pictures with Kern County firefighters, chatted about politics, and raised $36 apiece from locals who want her to beat Valadao on the ballot. Hurtado said she decided to run after abortion-rights PAC Emily’s List asked her to, but by the end of 2023, the organization had decided to go in a different direction.
“I am perfectly fine figuring this out on my own,” Hurtado said. “I did this on my own the first time I ran for state Senate in 2018. I know my district even more now than I did back in 2018.”
The same night Hurtado met with firefighters, Salas was busy handing out hats and work boots as part of a food and clothing drive at the United Farm Workers’s headquarters in Delano, California, about 30 miles from the Kern County firehouse.
“We’re out in every single community knocking and talking to voters, telling them how important it is to get out to vote to make sure that their voices are heard,” Salas said. “A lot of doors that I go to, people know who I am because of stuff that we’ve done in their community.”
Salas has become one of the state’s strongest advocates for farmworkers, partly due to his own family’s history working in the fields. He has also pushed for more access to clean water and more funding for rural school districts.
In Bakersfield, California, signs supporting him line miles of farmland. And though he has a number of high-profile people in his corner, the local support carries more weight with him.
“Those are people that live in our communities,” he said. “The people that are here are actually putting in the work and getting their family and friends to vote as well.”
Salas’s campaign has hit Hurtado for not casting a vote on abortion access legislation. She also didn’t vote on a measure to remove co-pays for abortions to make them more accessible to lower-income people and also skipped voting on a measure to protect abortion providers from prosecution.
As Salas and Hurtado jockey for Democratic votes in the district, strategists have sounded the alarm that the intraparty bickering and backbiting could lead to Salas and Hurtado canceling each other out and creating a playing field where either Valadao or far-right GOP candidate Chris Mathys end up as the only two choices in November’s general election.
“I’m scared,” Dolores Huerta, a 93-year-old iconic labor and civil rights leader, said. Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez in 1962 and has been busy supporting Salas. “We need to do a lot more work.”
House District 47
Another close House race is in the largely coastal district that encompasses a large portion of Orange County. It’s a spot vacated by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), who gave up her costly and hard-fought flip in the state’s 47th District for a shot at the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat.
A large field of Democrats have entered the race, hoping Porter’s success will rub off on them. Two years ago, Porter beat back a challenge from Republican Scott Baugh.
Baugh, who is endorsed by the state GOP and served as the Orange County GOP chairman for more than a decade, is back and hoping he’ll have better luck this time around. But Baugh has some baggage. In 1999, he agreed to pay a $47,000 fine for nine violations of the state Political Reform Act linked to misconduct allegations in his 1995 race to the state Assembly. In 2018, he unsuccessfully ran to unseat former GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher but didn’t advance past the primaries.
Baugh is running on a conservative-for-California platform. He opposes same-sex marriage and wants to restrict abortion access. He’s also campaigning on a promise to lower taxes and strengthen the border.
Hoping to stop him are nine challengers, including state Sen. Dave Min (D-CA), Democratic voting rights advocate Joanna Weiss, and Max Ukropina, a Republican businessman and political newcomer who filmed his campaign video at the U.S.-Mexico border.
House District 27
California’s Antelope Valley is also a key battleground for Republicans and Democrats.
In Los Angeles County’s 27th District, voters will decide if Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA) will go on to serve a third term or be taken out by two Democratic candidates: George Whitesides, the former CEO of Virgin Galactic, and Steve Hill, a former prison guard and a satanist.
“I’ve been in a prison riot before,” Hill, who has not filed any financial contribution reports, said. “I think I can handle Congress.”
Whitesides outraised Garcia in the last quarter of 2022, raising $771,000 compared to Garcia’s $562,000. Whitesides’s personal wealth and the ease with which he is willing to tap it for his campaign has become a line of attack for Republicans.
“George Whitesides is a radical far-left megadonor trying to purchase a congressional seat, and Santa Clarita Valley and Antelope Valley families will see right through him,” Ben Petersen, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told Roll Call in December.
House District 41
California’s 41st District race is also heating up and will headline a matchup between Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) and his Democratic challenger Will Rollins. In 2022, Rollins lost to Calvert by less than 5 percentage points. However, a new legislative map and the addition of Palm Springs, California, to the district has made it more friendly for Democrats.
“The race is pivotal because the Republicans have a very thin majority in the House,” Jack Pitney, a Claremont McKenna College politics professor, told the Mercury News. “Democrats can win control by flipping just a few seats.”
“Every close race will get enormous national attention, and this race will be one of them. The race could come down to a few thousand or even a few hundred votes,” he said.
A Cook Political Report elections analyst said redistricting and the “types of voters that are moving into Riverside County” are what make the 41st District race so competitive.
Rollins told the local paper that despite his defeat against Calvert in 2022, his campaign was able to build “a big tent coalition that included Democrats, independents, and Republicans,” which he predicted would make it to the general election Tuesday.
Calvin Moore, a Calvert campaign spokesman, said his candidate was also “building a broad coalition of Californians who are fed up with the way things are going now.”
In his campaign video, Rollins railed against Fox News and QAnon for spreading and profiting off of conspiracy theories.
“We’ve all watched as people have become angrier and more violent as they have heard similar conspiracy theories and QAnon lies ripple across social media and then echo on Fox News,” he said. “I saw the same thing when I helped prosecute people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th. This is a systemic problem. Extremists, big tech, and media outlets profiting by spreading division based on lies.”
Rollins’s campaign broke a record for off-year fundraising by a nonincumbent through grassroots donors and “not a dime from corporate PACs.”
House District 13
Two years ago, Rep. John Duarte (R-CA) won this San Joaquin Valley district by 564 votes, making it the second-closest midterm election in the nation behind Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
This year, Democrats are gearing up for a rematch, and they are ready to take down the freshman lawmaker. His chief rival is Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray.
Duarte is a fourth-generation farmer who grows almonds, pistachios, and grapes on his family’s Duarte Nursery, which is one of the largest in the country. He made headlines for fighting the federal government over claims he violated the Clean Water Act by damaging wetlands to plant wheat. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency sued him. Duarte settled the case, and instead of paying several million dollars in fines, he wrote the government a check for $1.1 million.
Gray, who was elected to the state Assembly in 2012, made a name for himself by challenging the state water board. He also called for an audit of California’s water agencies this year.
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Both men have also weighed in on the abortion issue.
During a September debate, Duarte said he believes women should have access to abortion for the first three months of their pregnancy but that he “will vote against any effort to nationalize abortion law. Gray wants to codify California’s already liberal reproductive rights and said the government shouldn’t have a say in what women should do with their bodies.
