Who is Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux, a Republican running to succeed Kevin McCarthy?
Mike Boudreaux has been connected to the Tulare County Sheriff’s office for almost his whole life, from starting as a cadet at 19 and becoming sheriff at 46 in 2013.
He’s still the sheriff, and now, he says, he wants to apply what he’s learned in his 37 years at the office to Congress.
But while he’s well known and been politically successful in his home county, winning the House seat being vacated by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, will mean duplicating that success in places where he’s largely a stranger.
With Assemblyman Vince Fong out, at least for now because of the Secretary of State’s ruling, Boudreaux starts the race as the most familiar candidate in the San Joaquin Valley district that election analysts say is likely to go to a Republican. California’s 20th contains parts of Kern, Tulare, Kings and Fresno counties in a district that stretches from north of Clovis down to Rosamond.
“Law enforcement goes over pretty well with the voters out here, especially a lot of the rural voters; they tend to like a sheriff and so it does give him a bit of a boost,” said Tom Holyoke, a professor of political science at California State University, Fresno. “On the other hand, he’s the sheriff of Tulare County, so that’s only pieces of the district.”
Boudreaux, a Republican who lives in Springville, hopped into the race last minute for California’s 20th Congressional District seat. McCarthy is retiring December 31, meaning the governor will also have to call for a special election to fill the remainder of his term, which ends in January 2025.
Other GOP contenders include business owner David Giglio, who ran in California’s 13th District last year; Matt Stoll, a fighter pilot who ran against Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, in 2022; Kyle Kirkland, the owner of Fresno’s Club One Casino; and Kelly Kulikoff, the mayor of California City in Kern County.
Where Boudreaux, who is also the president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, says he stands out from other Republicans running to succeed McCarthy is his “boots on the ground experience” confronting issues voters worry about.
“I thought, I sure would like to get into a position where I can make a global impact with the issues that we’re facing at ground level,” Boudreaux said in an interview about his campaign last week.
Boudreaux wants a border wall
Law enforcement runs deep in the family. It’s certainly a primary concern for voters, said Dan Schnur, a political science professor at the University of Southern California and former GOP political consultant.
“Voter concerns about crime and public safety have risen dramatically in recent years,” he said, “but particularly in a conservative-leaning district, that law enforcement credential carries a great deal of weight and credibility.”
Boudreaux, 56, followed his father, who was with the sheriff’s office for 30 years. Boudreaux worked in homicide and narcotics, juvenile investigations, the SWAT team and patrol as he was promoted through the ranks.
He stepped into his role leading the department in 2013 when the then-sheriff had a health problem. Boudreaux then ran for the position and was sworn in January 2015. He was re-elected last year to a third term.
A mainstay of his platform is immigration reform. Boudreaux said he has had people who are afraid to call law enforcement because they don’t want to be deported, which prevents law enforcement from helping.
“They’re victims of spousal abuse, or they’re victims of child abuse, but they don’t want to call because the husband or the boyfriend or they are or their entire family is here illegally,” he said.
Boudreaux wants a U.S.-Mexico border wall like the one proposed by former President Donald Trump and stronger staffing to curb drug trafficking, an issue he’s dealt with firsthand in law enforcement.
But he also wants to ease the process for people seeking citizenship. Right now, he says, it’s convoluted, leading some people to enter the country illegally. Instead, he would like people to fill out a single-sheet form for where they’re from and get a five-year trial period.
“My idea is that if you’re here, you’re not committing any crimes, let’s allow you for five years to be a prominent, law-abiding person,” Boudreaux said. “And at the end of five years, you got a pathway for citizenship.”
Getting Congress to agree on any sort of immigration reform has been impossible for years, and lawmakers are currently deadlocked on the issue as they negotiate a border security plan.
Congress’ last major sweeping immigration law effort came in 2013, when the Senate passed a bipartisan package that included a 13-year path to citizenship. The Republican-led House would not consider it, and there’s been no major effort to pass a comprehensive reform plan since.
Boudreaux concerned about cost of living
Kern County is California’s oil-and-gas capital, producing 70% of the state’s oil. As the state moves away from fossil fuels, among other changes, Boudreaux said, families in the San Joaquin Valley have taken an economic hit.
“Kern County should be the one of the richest, most prosperous counties based on fuel, based on oil, this side of the Mississippi,” Boudreaux claimed. “Because of over-regulation, because they’re not able to pump and drill and sell, they’re finding themselves shutting down pumps, laying off people, and people are looking for jobs when it shouldn’t be that way.”
Boudreaux wants to curb government spending in hopes of easing the rate of inflation. Economists tend to disagree over how much such spending is a major cause of inflation.
“My county is not a rich county, the district is not a rich district,” Boudreaux said. “And so you have people who have nothing and the inflation is impacting them at all levels.”
Everything, Boudreaux said, works in synergy. “Water storage is going to improve our agriculture,” he said, “and that can reduce cost to the farm-to-table aspect. And so your grocery prices are going to go down.”
As a sheriff, he said, he directly serves all people regardless of party affiliation, which he hopes to bring to Washington D.C. He would not want to stay a while long some politicians: He supports eight-to-10 year term limits. Such proposals have been floated by various Washington lawmakers for decades, and none have gone anywhere.
“The reality of it is it’s going to be very challenging to bring some sense of reason to a bunch of people who seem to have lost their minds on both sides of the aisle,” Boudreaux said. “And I just can’t help but feel that maybe I can bring some sense of balance to a small part of it.”
Can Vince Fong run in California’s 20th District?
Fong would be the frontrunner if he could run, said Holyoke.
“He goes into this with useful experience and some name recognition in parts of the district, but not so much that I would necessarily consider him the frontrunner,” the CSU Fresno professor said.
Fong, who was McCarthy’s district director for nearly a decade, got his former boss’s endorsement.
But Schnur said Boudreaux’s ballot designation alone was an advantage over Fong.
“If Fong is able to run, his support from McCarthy could certainly be just as if not even more impactful,” he said. “But it is going to require a lot of money to get that message out. The word sheriff is on the ballot, the word McCarthy isn’t.”
