Congress: The races to watch

From the Assembly to the state Senate to Congress, LaMalfa has been a feature of California Republican politics since 2002. He’s also a rice farmer, hailing from a family of rice farmers, and plays up his Stetson-toting rustic cred with the campaign slogan “one of us.” For years LaMalfa has served as a quietly reliable workhorse of one of California’s most rural districts, introducing bipartisan legislation on forest management and backing recent Democratic efforts to boost funding for the post office. He’s also a dependably conservative vote and ally of the president. He enjoys an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. He has said he is not convinced that human activity is responsible for climate change. And he recently introduced legislation that would ban sex reassignment surgery for minors. 

An education consultant and former agriculture lecturer at California State University, Chico, Denney made a surprisingly strong showing here in 2018, losing by less than 10 points in a seat that went for President Trump by 20. Her candidacy followed a familiar formula that seemed to work for Democrats during the midterms: she was a young, mostly-moderate woman inspired to run after the surprise win of Trump in 2016. During the midterms, she pulled heavily from the more densely populated portions of the district, while LaMalfa ran up the tally among the rural majority. Announcing her second bid in the months after the Camp Fire killed 85 people in Butte County, she’s been particularly focused on forest management and climate change. With more name recognition, more money and likely higher turnout behind her this time, she’s hoping to be this year’s sleeper win.

A California Republican Party mainstay since the age of 23, McClintock has been a state senator, member of the Assembly, county GOP chair and candidate for governor, lieutenant governor and controller. Despite his roots in Ventura County, in 2008 McClintock ran for Congress to represent the 4th district — which then ran from Roseville to the Oregon border. He’s represented the 4th ever since as one of the House’s most conservative members. From his position on the Judiciary committee, he stood out during the presidential impeachment hearings as among the more combative defenders of the president. Since the start of the pandemic, he’s made headlines as the only member of the California delegation to vote against the second federal pandemic relief bill — and for his refusal to wear a mask during hearings.

A Yale gymnast turned Wall Street investment banker turned remote working consultant who speaks Mandarin, Kennedy is now in her mid-30s and hoping to add “member of Congress” to her resume. Like McClintock’s 2018 challenger, Jessica Morse, Kennedy also represents one of the district’s fastest growing demographics: highly educated, white-collar suburbanites with middle-of-the road politics. But Kennedy has a few strengths over her predecessor: Morse was accused of exaggerating her CV, while Kennedy has no such baggage. She’s also running as Democrat in during what’s likely to be a high-turnout presidential year.

Harder was born in Turlock before attending Stanford and Harvard. After a stint as a venture capitalist, he returned to the district to unseat GOP Rep. Jeff Denham. In Washington, Harder has voted in the ideological dead center of the Democratic caucus. And with strong ties to Silicon Valley, he’s been one of the state’s most prolific fundraisers.

A veterinarian and former Turlock councilman, Howze placed second in the March primary thanks largely to name recognition: He ran for the seat in 2018 as an immigration hardliner. Better yet for the GOP, their party’s share of the vote exceeded the combined total of the Democrats. Then things went off the rails. In May, Politico unearthed a series of sexist, Islamophobic and conspiracy theory-laden social media posts from the candidate’s 2018 primary run. Soon after, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, who represents Bakersfield, pulled his endorsement.

In the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections, Cox ran a quieter primary than Democratic challengers elsewhere — most saw his challenge to Valadao as a longshot. But a massive voter mobilization effort targeted at Latino and younger voters pulled him through. 

In D.C., Cox has voted in line with the bulk of his Democratic colleagues. Outside of Congress, he hasn’t been doing his reelection campaign any favors. In three separate instances in 2019, Cox was forced to fess up to previously undisclosed business ties, including his directorship of a Canadian mining company that got into legal trouble for failing to pay its employees. Then in August, the Fresno Bee reported that Cox convinced federal park employees to give him two passes to Yosemite National Park, circumventing the standard lottery system. But it was later reported that Cox had secured the passes in order to film a video promoting federal conservation legislation.

Due to his agricultural pedigree and moderate immigration record, Valadao might just be the kind of Republican who can still win in this section of the Central Valley. And he wants his seat back.

But he has had financial troubles of his own, and must strike what could be an impossible balance: to sufficiently distance himself from Trump to entice moderate Democrats and independents, but not so much that he alienates his own party. Hence his decision to run a political ad heralding his work with President Obama, while also reassuring members of his own party that unlike in 2016, he will be supporting Trump this time. 

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee prior to 2018, Nunes protected Trump and railed against the “Deep State.” After the GOP lost its House majority in 2018, Nunes became the dismissive, trolling counterpart to Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who chaired the House’s impeachment inquiry. 

For all those reasons, Nunes is a powerhouse fundraiser with enough cash on hand to run for Senate in many states.

When not sparring with Democrats on CSPAN, Nunes has been busy filing defamation suits to silence an array of critics — against CNN, Twitter, the Fresno Bee, a retired farmer in the district, a Republican political strategist and, most notably,  two online social media users claiming via parody accounts to be Nunes’ mom and his cow. 

Phil (Felipe) Arballo, a Fresno financial advisor, has endorsements from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and local trades union groups. He also earned the backing of Andrew Janz, the prosecutor who took on Nunes in 2018. Like Janz, Arballo is a longshot in such a GOP-leaning district. But taking on what Democrats regards as one of their most loathed members of Congress tends to do wonders for a campaign’s fundraising efforts.

When Hill beat a Republican incumbent in 2018, the narrative for Democrats was clear: The home of the Reagan Presidential Library had rejected the politics of Donald Trump. But Garcia’s sound victory in May flipped that script. A Georgetown-educated defense contractor and former Navy fighter pilot, Garcia ran as the unabashed pro-Trump candidate. He denounced the “socialist agenda” of Democrats and outflanked former GOP Rep. Steve Knight, who had hoped to stage a comeback. Alongside his connection to the military, the thrust of Garcia’s re-election messaging has been that California under Democratic rule is on the wrong track. He’s made a particular point of hammering Smith for her vote for a new law making it harder for companies like Uber and Lyft to classify their workers as independent contractors.

A relative moderate who won election to the state Assembly in 2018, she easily nabbed second place in the March primary despite a cavalcade of other Democratic challengers, including YouTube personality Cenk Uyger. That was thanks in part to full-throated endorsements by Gov. Gavin Newsom, both of California’s U.S. senators, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the state party and Hill herself. As with many of the Democrats who flipped red seats blue in 2018, Smith is emphasizing health care above all else, vowing to protect and push to expand the Affordable Care Act if elected. 

Cisneros was an actual lottery winner. He was also lucky enough to make it past the 17-person primary and eke out a 3 point victory in one of 2018’s closest congressional races. Having those millions to spend on the race helped. A former Republican who became an education philanthropist after winning $266 million in 2010, he ran as moderate.

In Congress, Cisneros is on the Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees, bolstering his foreign policy cred. After news of Trump’s Ukraine affair broke, Cisneros joined six fellow freshmen House Democrats — all veterans of the armed services or intelligence agencies — to call for an impeachment investigation. It was a turning point in the saga.

Kim’s loss in 2018 caught many by surprise. It was hard to imagine a Republican candidate better suited to the area. She was a Korean immigrant in a district with a large Korean community, and a skilled retail politician with electoral experience and connections to the Orange County party establishment. With experience in the state Assembly and close ties to the outcoming incumbent, Kim also had a knack throughout the campaign for saying as little as humanly possible about President Trump, who lost the district by 9 points. 

Republicans evidently still see her as their best chance in 2020, with donors rushing to her financial aid. Befitting an underdog hoping to unseat an incumbent, she’s been on the offensive. The barbs she’s directed at Cisneros have been less about policy and more about the company he keeps. Kim’s attack ads have criticized Cisneros for supporting San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi for House speaker, and for taking campaign contributions from lobbyists and labor-affiliated political action committees.

Katie Porter is among the most well-known members of the 2019 freshman class. The UC Irvine bankruptcy law professor with an Elizabeth Warren-inspired left-leaning populism has a knack for dissolving bankers and presidential appointees into humiliating meme-able soundbites from her perch on the House Financial Services Committee. In fact, Sen. Warren used to be Porter’s professor at Harvard Law, and Porter was the co-chair of her presidential campaign. 

Porter’s virality has been good for fundraising — always a helpful thing inside the eye-poppingly expensive Los Angeles media market. But as a Medicare for All proponent, she is an unusual fit in a district where Republicans still outnumber Democrats.

After 30 years in the Marine Corps and a stint at the White House Military Office, Raths ran for Congress twice unsuccessfully before finally winning a seat on Mission Viejo’s city council in 2018. That regular presence on the ballot might be the reason behind Raths’ second place finish during the primary. He won 18% of the vote, splitting the GOP share with five other candidates. He wasn’t the pick of the party establishment, and given Porter’s formidable fundraising advantage, it’s not clear GOP donors are willing to put enough behind Raths to make a real go of it. 

In the lead-up to the 2018 election, nowhere was anti-Trump electoral enthusiasm as concentrated as in Orange County. Harley Rouda, a wealthy real estate executive with no political experience, was one of eight Democrats to join the race. Their target: Rep. Rohrabacher, a mainstay of Orange County GOP politics whose preference for warmer U.S.-Russia relations earned him the derisive nickname “Putin’s favorite congressman.” 

Despite a pugnacious Twitter presence, Rouda, a former Republican, has gone out of his way to convey his moderate politics to the still GOP-leaning voters in his district. In the 2020 presidential primary, he was the first California member of Congress to endorse New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The once indomitable Orange County GOP political machine is still a force to be reckoned with and Steele sits at the center of it. A county supervisor going on six years and the current chair, she previously represented the region on the state’s Board of Equalization. She’s married to former Republican National Committeeman and ex-state party chair Shawn Steel. No surprise that since the beginning of the election season, she has had the backing of the state party and every California Republican member of Congress.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Steel has also been a central figure in Orange County’s resistance to the Newsom administration’s COVID-19 public health orders. In May, Steel authored a county resolution declaring churches “essential” services — controvening more restrictive state standards — and publicly pressured the county’s public health director to relax a mandatory mask regulation.

Rep. Mike Levin seemed to come out of nowhere in 2018 — an environmental lawyer who was executive director of the Orange County Democratic Party. He won, the first Democrat to do so on this stretch of coast in at least a generation. And he did so by double digits. 

Since going to Washington, Levin’s legislative focus has been divided between veterans’ issues and clean energy. Along the way, he’s nabbed committee assignments that reflect the interests of the district: Veterans Affairs, Natural Resources and the newly formed Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.