California to play big role in fight for Congress. Tuesday’s primary sets the stage
California’s decision to redraw its congressional map in November to flip five House seats to Democrats is poised to play a major and potentially decisive role in the nation’s broader, bare-knuckle fight for control of Congress.
Tuesday’s primary elections, in which the top two candidates will advance to the November runoffs, will not determine which Republicans will oust in most cases, but they will offer an important first look at voter sentiment and bring the fall’s most important head-to-head battles into focus.
“There will be some real clues and signals about what to expect,” said Christian Grose, a redistricting expert and professor of political science at USC. “We’ll know how strong the Democrats’ chances will be based on who advances.”
As an example, Grose pointed to the redrawn 22nd Congressional District in the Central Valley, where incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) faces challenges from moderate Assemblywoman Jasmeet Kaur Bains (D-Delano) and progressive college professor Randy Villegas.
Grose said Bains is likely a stronger challenger than Villegas in a district that Democrats still have a reach for; “although if there is a big Democratic wave in 2026, both could probably beat Valadao.”
Grose will also be closely watching the race between incumbent Reps. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) and Ken Calvert (R-Corona) in the redrawn 40th Congressional District, which covers inner Orange County and parts of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, including Kim and Calvert’s current districts.
The district race was not designed to give Democrats a seat, but if Kim and Calvert both fail to advance, it would constitute “one of the first casualties for Republicans on the new map” months before other expected impeachments.
national picture
The redistricting battle was triggered by President Trump’s unprecedented pressure on Republican-controlled states to redraw their maps in the middle of the decade for partisan advantage to retain control of Congress, given declining approval ratings and midterm voters’ history of punishing the president’s party.
After Texas Republicans heeded Trump’s call to redraw five districts in their party’s favor, California Democrats responded with Proposition 50, a ballot measure passed by voters in November to bypass the state’s independent redistricting committee and allow Democrats to redraw five congressional districts in their favor.
The battle accelerated further following the U.S. Supreme Court decision in April that weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its longstanding protections for majority-Black areas in the South; More Republican states suddenly began considering map changes.
Republicans have now moved to redraw congressional maps in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee, with varying degrees of success; A battle in Utah could add a single Democratic seat there. Attempts in other states, including the GOP in South Carolina and the Democrats in Virginia, have failed.
Experts say the net result of the redistricting rush will likely be a gain of a handful or more seats for Republicans; but Democrats are expected to make broader gains later this year, leaving them to take control of the House of Representatives. California’s new map is “very important” because that math is so close, said David Wasserman, senior editor and election analyst for the independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“Democrats are modest favorites for House control because of the political climate and also because of California,” Wasserman said in an interview with The Times. “Taking those four or five seats is a prerequisite for Democrats to get a majority.”
California seats in play
California has 52 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, by far the most of any state. California Democrats hope to increase the 43 seats in the House of Representatives to 48 with their new map. That means only four seats represented by GOP members. Republicans make up a quarter of the state’s voters.
Congressional District 1: The district, which the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) held for 13 years until his death in January, is now a rural, conservative district that stretches from the Sacramento foothills through Redding to the Oregon border and the northeastern corner of California. According to the state’s new congressional district map, it loses some rural areas to embrace liberal coastal communities and favors a Democrat like state Sen. Mike McGuire, one of the leading candidates.
Congressional District 3: The seat is currently held by Rep. Kevin Kiley (I-Rocklin) and stretches from the Sacramento suburbs to Lake Tahoe and south along the Nevada border. According to the new map, Sacramento is leaning closer to its suburbs and favoring the Democrats.
The changes were enough to persuade incumbent Democratic Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove) to abandon her current district (Congressional District 6, which includes the city of Sacramento and suburbs of Roseville and Rocklin in Placer County) and run in the 3rd District instead.
Meanwhile, Kiley did the exact opposite. He left the Republican Party, became an independent, and announced that he would leave the 3rd District and instead run against new Democratic challengers in the 6th District, where Bera had left.
Congressional District 41. The seat is currently held by Calvert, a 17-term incumbent, who currently stretches from Corona to the Coachella Valley. The new map made the district more liberal, losing voters in Riverside County and gaining in Los Angeles County, and Calvert decided instead to run in Kim’s redrawn but still Republican-leaning 40th Congressional District just to the west.
Experts said the two toughest swings for Democrats are the 22nd Congressional District, Valadao’s predominantly Latino district in the Central Valley, followed by the 48th Congressional District in San Diego and Riverside counties, where Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall) decided to retire rather than seek re-election.
Valadao is seen as particularly vulnerable because of his recent support for Medicaid cuts, but he has proven resilient in the past. Meanwhile, his two leading Democratic rivals, Bains and Villegas, are locked in a bitter fight, with Bains gaining the support of the Democratic establishment and Villegas gaining endorsements from leading progressives.
In Issa’s district, moderate Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond is running against several clashing Democrats, including San Diego Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert and former Obama labor official Ammar Campa-Najjar.
Not new or finished
Jeff Wice, a New York Law School professor who became involved in California’s redistricting efforts in 2010, said the state “has long played hardball politics on redistricting.” Phil Burton, a powerful San Francisco Democrat, boasted: more than 40 years ago He said the complex congressional boundaries he created for Democrats were his “contribution to modern art.”
But Wice, who has studied redistricting for five decades, said he has never seen this much “politically motivated, partisan politics” happening across the country right now, which “has no roots in law, logic or justice” and is likely to continue.
“This interstate war is not over yet and could continue until 2030,” he said. “A lot of this depends on the outcome of the election in November.”
Wasserman said the country has “entered an era of borderless redistricting” while also seeing redistricting efforts continue — including in California, where those efforts would pose a distinct threat to the few remaining Republicans in the state.
Thanks to Proposition 50, California is “a big part of the story” this election cycle, said Michael Li, senior counsel at NYU Law’s Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program. “Democrats in California have proven to be very determined and resourceful and have managed to do this, and right now California is the great compensation for Republican gerrymandering across the country,” he said.
But what comes of this in California and across the country is still to be determined.
“When you gerrymander, you’re betting that you know what future politics will look like, and that’s hard to predict,” he said. “This is a high-risk, high-reward venture.”
