Control of Congress could come down to these 3 California districts. Why they’re so close
Driving down Highway 99, dust pooling with pollution and wildfire smoke in the air, most people would not realize that some of the nation’s most closely-watched upcoming congressional elections are unfolding right here among the almond orchards, dairy farms and raisin grape vineyards.
Especially not people who live there.
“Us?” asked Jose Urena when he was told that political analysts will watch his and his neighbors’ votes in the Nov. 8 midterm election. Why would political bigwigs care about them, he wondered, if the people here aren’t rich political donors.
“We’re farmers,” he said.
Urena pondered the notion while leaning on a washing machine he was fixing for a neighbor, and for much-needed cash, on a 113-degree September evening in Kerman, a farming town west of Fresno.
More than 2,785 miles away, in Washington D.C., donors, analysts and incumbents blast polls, predictions and political plays in attempts to ensure either their preferred party holds the power in the United States House of Representatives in 2023.
Valley voters wield important, particular power in that determination.
The Central Valley is often left out of California’s description: beautiful beaches, Big Tech, billionaires’ homes, Hollywood, electric cars and Democratic voters. People pay attention to San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and sometimes Sacramento, the state capital, where Gov. Gavin Newsom periodically prompts speculation about a run for president.
Fresno? Modesto? Bakersfield? Stockton? Those are California’s equivalent of flyover cities. Not that they necessarily should be. This fertile slice of America produces a quarter of the nation’s food via nuts, fruits and vegetables. Its dairy farms make California the country’s leading producer of milk.
Still, voters here often feel forgotten. Or worse.
“People here, they’re disgusted,” said Reno Lanfranco.
Lanfranco owns Reno’s Hardware, which sells sporting goods, guns and ammunition in Kerman. The Lanfrancos began their businesses there more than eight decades ago.
Lanfranco said state and federal regulations jack up prices, making buying food difficult for farmers and farmworkers. He said it’s a vicious cycle for the global food economy that hurts the people who grow and pick it.
Add inflation and “discretionary money is gone because they’re paying it all in gas.”
Thinking about politics, voting and balance of power in Washington can be hard for people just trying to make ends meet.
“All the people around here are saying, ‘well, what about us?’ As the farmers go, we go. If the farms do bad, we do bad,” he said of the Valley and nation. “If you don’t get the farmers water, what’s going to happen?”
Analysts eye Valley candidates
The redistricted nation made protected political seats — red and blue — the norm. California’s Central Valley sticks out like a severely bruised thumb. Big, purple and hurting.
The Central Valley is “a prime battleground in the race for the House,” Dave Wasserman, an editor of The Cook Political Report, said in a cold call about the elections in the 9th, 13th and 22nd Congressional Districts. “All of these seats are competitive for different reasons.”
Rep. Josh Harder, D-Tracy, faces San Joaquin County Supervisor Tom Patti, a Republican from Stockton, in the 9th. Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, is running against farmer and businessman John Duarte, a Republican from Modesto, in the 13th. Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, takes on Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, in the 22nd.
As of Sept. 23, The Cook Political Report rates the 9th as a race that leans Democrat. The 13th and 22nd are toss-ups. The report names 31 elections as toss-ups in elections for 435 House seats.
Other analysts have similar ratings. Elections Daily and Sabato’s Crystal Ball say Valadao-vs.-Salas and Duarte-vs.-Gray are toss-ups; Elections Daily has 24 in that rating and the Crystal Ball has 25. Inside Elections has the 22nd as one of their 20 toss-ups and says the 13th leans Democratic.
All four organizations also name a toss-up between Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, and former Democratic Assemblyman Christy Smith in Southern California’s 27th Congressional District, “parts of which are culturally more like the Central Valley,” Wasserman said.
Analysts revised ratings many times since candidates started announcing their bids last year.
Valley voters don’t know candidates
Despite the primary election in June, many Valley voters don’t know who the candidates are in their district, let alone what district they are in.
After the last congressional election in 2020, California, along with the rest of the country underwent redistricting: the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative boundaries based on Census population counts. California lost a congressional seat due to sluggish population growth, dropping its House delegation to 52 representatives.
At Turlock’s farmer’s market in early September, no one who was asked knew what district they fell in.
Turlock and Modesto were cut into the new 5th Congressional District on the east side and 13th on the west. In the 5th, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, is predicted to win over Mike Barkley, a lawyer running as a Democrat.
Not that it always matters who the candidates are. Many voters have a party allegiance that dictates their November vote. Take Marsha Wright, a Democrat who will support the Democrat on her side of Turlock, even though she doesn’t know who it is.
“I always vote Democrat,” she said.
Culturally diverse issues
In the new 9th, 44% of registered voters are Democrats and 28% are Republicans as of Sept. 9, according to data collected by the California Secretary of State office. Forty-three percent are Democrats and 28% are Republicans in the 13th. In the 22nd, 43% of registered voters are Democrats and 26% are Republicans.
Despite the voter registration, and some party allegiance, not all people are dead-set. No-party or third-party voters often lean Republican, analysts said. In California, analysts think left-leaning turnout will be low because top-of-the-ticket Democrats have easy elections.
A distaste for Sacramento lawmakers and President Joe Biden put Democrats at a disadvantage. Already, the party of the president historically does poorly in midterm elections — ones without a presidential candidate on the ticket. Biden’s sagging national approval rating doesn’t help Democrats in that trend. Though in California, 52% of voters approve of his overall performance in a recent Berkeley IGS poll conducted in late September.
While the 22nd has more Democrats registered than Republicans, Valadao has scored blue votes before. Though the 13th has more registered Democrats than Republicans, it would have voted to recall Democrat Newsom in 2021 by 1 point. Analysts note that Duarte’s legal spat with the federal government over fines for plowing over protected wetlands on his property, which was settled in 2017, appeals to voters who are fed up with lawmakers or feel forgotten.
The Central Valley is not the blue bastion like other parts of California. It is culturally and politically diverse across the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys in a 450-mile stretch.
A survey of 1,850 voters this summer by the Fresno County Civic Engagement Table, a coalition of Fresno-area stakeholders representing different cultural and ethnic groups, found that affordable housing, homelessness, and crime and gun violence were residents’ top issues.
Fresno is in the new 21st Congressional District, which is predicted to send Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, back to the House over Republican Michael Maher, a veteran, businessman and former FBI special agent.
In Mountain House, a collection of villages in the 9th Congressional District that bridges the Bay Area and San Joaquin County, a group of residents were mostly concerned about transportation, public safety and educational opportunities. Many attendees of a town hall event for Harder described themselves as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
“It’s a small community; everyone knows everything about everyone,” said Pebble Aulakh, who hosted the event in her house. She has been there for a decade, and said more and more people have started to move to the area, “but there aren’t enough jobs.”
In general, the biggest issues noted by Valley voters out and about in early September were related to money and water. Cost of living. Gas. Affordable housing. Water for farms, water to drink.
Although congressional campaign signs bearing candidate names were still few and far between in early September, throughout the 13th and 22nd districts that span from Lathrop to Merced to Bakersfield, several road signs called out Newsom and Democrats for water policies and high gas prices.
At a crossroad in Hanford, in front of a yellowed field:
“Newsom stop wasting our dam water!”
Next to:
“Newsom stop dumping our farm water in the ocean”
And:
“Dam water grows food”
In Kerman:
“Ga$ pain? Stop Pelosi, Adam Grey, Biden & Jim Costa”
(The sign misspelled “Gray.”)
Moderate candidates
All of the candidates in the 9th, 13th and 22nd have made water storage and limiting the practice of flushing water out into the ocean their major priorities.
Congressional candidates who came out on top in the Central Valley’s June primary election tend to float toward the middle on a lot of key issues. Particularly Democrats in rural California’s races.
“It’s not uncommon for candidates to move more toward the middle in swing districts,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of the Crystal Ball. “I’d say that’s probably a little more true for Democrats than Republicans, in part because there are just fewer self-identified liberals than there are conservatives nationally, meaning that Democrats are generally more reliant on winning over moderates than conservatives (although both need to do so in competitive districts).”
“I don’t care what party you are, I can work with anyone who wants to roll up their sleeves and get stuff done,” Gray told The Bee after teaching a class about the California Legislature at UC Merced in September.’
Both Gray and Salas were noted as moderate left in their voting records compared to other members of the Assembly by CalMatters for the 2019-2020 session.
Incumbents Harder and Valadao have notably bucked their own parties.
Harder is notorious for denouncing California’s gas tax and the Delta tunnel project, which would divert water from below Sacramento River to Southern California.
Progressive Punch ranks members of the House on how blue they are. Out of Democrats, Harder landed 133rd (out of 221) for siding with progressive votes in his tenure, and 157th for “crucial votes.” This year, he sided with their values 94.9% of the time and landed at 187th.
Valadao was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Valadao and Washington Rep. Dan Newhouse were the only so-called “impeachment Republicans” who decided to run for re-election and survived the primary.
Heritage Action for America rates representatives on how conservative they are in votes and bill co-sponsorships. This session, it said Valadao scored 77%, the lowest of any California GOP House member. The average House Republican was 90%. His lifetime score is 45%.
Turnout and abortion
Most analysts don’t take the primary too seriously, especially because California Democrats tend to do better in the fall. But it does foreshadow voter preferences.
The percent of primary voters who turned out was low, especially in parts of the Central Valley. However, Paul Mitchell, the vice president of Political Data, Inc., noted that California has registered an astounding number of new voters, which makes the percentage appear deceptively low compared to other elections.
State-wide races at the top of the ballot — for governor and U.S. Senate — were all but decided, analysts said, and might hurt turnout again in November.
Importantly, the 13th, 21st and 22nd districts have majority Hispanic voting-age populations, which could hurt Democrats if the Republican trend among those voters rings true in California. In the primary, Latino voters had the lowest turnout of any ethnic group.
(If Salas is elected, he will be the San Joaquin Valley’s first Latino representative in the House.)
Democrats nationwide hope that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, which had set federal abortion protections, encourages turnout in November. Analysts predict that might nudge voters to come out and support Gray and Salas in their districts, even though the ruling does not affect Californians the same way it affects people in states that have banned the procedure.
Newsom pledged that California was a “reproductive freedom state” long before the ruling landed. State lawmakers passed laws, and continue to introduce legislation, to reinforce access to the pregnancy-ending procedure for Californians and for people traveling from other states.
Even though this will inspire many Democratic Valley voters to mail in their ballots, in this part of California, pro-life Christian voters might also turn out for Republicans.
They are not that small of a subset: Billboards and signs across the San Joaquin Valley tell voters that “Jesus Saves.” “He’s coming.” “For a new life.” “For truth.”
Noella and husband Jorge Sousa came to Turlock from the Azores 55 years ago. She described them as, until recently, life-long Democrats. They wore matching evergreen-colored T-shirts with a yellow Rosary depiction on a September Saturday.
“We’re fearful of how far left the progressives go,” Jorge Sousa said. “Until they’re pro-life and not pro the other way — or pro-euthanasia — we’re Republican.”
Fundraising
In addition to inspiring local turnout, the candidates are fundraising — hard. And they are doing so from locals and large political action committees outside of California alike, on both sides.
Harder had a $4.5 million war chest at the end of September, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Patti had almost $454,000. Gray, over $530,000 on hand. Duarte, more than $240,000. Salas, nearly $518,000. Valadao, over $1.4 million.
That surprises Urena, the lifelong resident of Kerman. He couldn’t care less about Washington D.C. power grabs.
He just wants enough money to put food on the table. Enough clean water to drink. To have his neighbors grow and pick food. To care for the shriveled cemetery where his grandmother was just — and he plans to be — buried.
After a conversation about voting with one of the candidates, Urena said of solving issues in the Valley:
“All we can do is pray on it and hope for the best.”
This story was originally published October 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Control of Congress could come down to these 3 California districts. Why they’re so close."
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said that Rep. Tom McClintock was running in the 4th Congressional District, which he currently represents. He is running in the 5th.
