Barring divine intervention or the West Coast falling into the sea, President Biden will easily win California in the November election.
But if he – or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump – secures a second term in the fall, the future of either party's political agenda depends largely on which party controls Congress, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority in the US House of Representatives.
And since the Golden State is home to some of the most contentious swing districts in the country, the fate of the House of Representatives will almost certainly lie with California.
The battle for partisan political control over the next two years will go door-to-door, from California's cul-de-sac beachside suburbs to small farm towns in the state's fertile Central Valley.
These battlegrounds will look like Bridge Creek Plaza, a sun-bleached shopping mall a few hundred yards from the freeway in Huntington Beach in Orange County. The mall is home to a Crystal Department Store, several insurance brokers, a dentist, and the local headquarters of the Republican Party.
It's also where about two dozen GOP followers gathered on Election Day morning, bowed their heads in a quick prayer and pledged allegiance to a carried flag before turning their attention to Jessica Milan Patterson, chair of the California Republican Party.
Patterson was in a very good mood.
When she was first elected to lead the party, in 2019, California Republicans were “essentially the third-largest party in the state,” having fallen below the share of voters who registered “no-state” under the party’s preference.
But Patterson has overseen a massive voter registration drive over the past five years, and the party is back in second place. She said people across the country loved excluding “blue California,” but they forgot that California has more registered Republicans than any other state.
“California Republicans are the reason we have a majority in the House of Representatives,” she added, amid loud cheers.
That majority was what they hoped to retain, and the group spent the morning of the March 5 primary canvassing votes for Scott Pugh, a Republican lawyer and former state Assembly member vying to push soon-to-be Democratic Rep. Katie Porter. – Congressional seat opened from blue to red.
Scott Pugh is once again trying to flip Orange County's 47th District into the red column. The seat is a key target of state and national Republican efforts to maintain control of the House.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The latest round of redistricting placed more conservative areas like Huntington Beach and Newport Beach in California's 47th Congressional District, and Pugh lost to Porter by only a narrow margin in 2022 despite spending heavily, making the coastal Orange County area one of the most competitive in the country. .
The charismatic Porter will be out of the picture in the House after failing to run for the Senate. Her seat is one of the California National Republican Congressional Committee's three attack targets and top priorities. She is similarly valued by Democrats.
In a country where animosity and mistrust separate the two major political parties on most issues, California's paramount importance in any House strategy in November is one of the few things Republicans and Democrats can agree on.
California is home to 10 races rated as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, five of which are in districts represented by Republicans but won by President Biden in 2020. In the coming months, both parties will invest significant resources in those races, as national attention shifts Definitely towards the west.
And with an expected rematch between Biden and Trump, voter turnout in 2024 is also likely to be very high compared to the 2022 midterm elections. This would give an advantage to Democrats, given the registration advantage they have in many competitive areas. Republicans picked up one House seat in California in the 2022 midterm elections, a non-presidential election when turnout was much lower than when Biden and Trump topped the polls two years ago.
“Ultimately, the path to 218 goes through California,” said Dan Gottlieb, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, referring to the number of seats needed to obtain a majority in the House of Representatives.
He will face Dave Min Pugh in a runoff in November for the District 47 seat, which will be vacated by Katie Porter. Maine's bruising primary battle for the crucial seat has already cost Democrats millions.
(Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press)
Gottlieb was optimistic about his party's chances, citing the expected high turnout in the presidential election, coupled with strong Democratic candidates and “a group of dysfunctional and out-of-touch Republicans, bringing the worst of their party to chaos, dysfunction, and extremism.”
But Gottlieb's GOP counterpart was equally bullish in his outlook, with National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ben Petersen relishing the ugly and costly primary battles that consumed Democrats in many of the state's most important swing districts.
In the OC district, where GOP volunteers fanned out in Pugh on primary morning, Democrats spent millions in a bruising primary battle between state Sen. Dave Maine and fellow Democrat Joanna Weiss. Maine ultimately emerged victorious, but only after weathering a barrage of negative advertising centered around his 2023 arrest for drunken driving — arguably a gift to Republicans ahead of his battle with Pugh in the fall.
“Fringe Democrats are emerging from their fierce primary battles outgunned and outgunned by Republicans, who have seen a groundswell of support for the common-sense safety and affordability agenda,” Petersen said, adding that preliminary results made clear the GOP is “on the offensive in California.” “. “In a way that will pave the way for victories in November.
But Pugh is not expected to escape unscathed. In 2022, Porter's advertising campaign criticized the Republican for his anti-abortion stance, as well as his work as a lobbyist and the criminal charges he faced for campaign violations, for which he ultimately paid $47,000 in fines.
In the San Joaquin Valley, there were last-minute fears that a bruising primary battle would knock Democrats out of one of the races in which they had the best chance of flipping their seat, but those fears proved to be overblown.
Rudy Salas, backed by the Democratic establishment, beat fellow Democrat Melissa Hurtado to secure a spot in the fall against incumbent Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the 22nd Congressional District, but that race also weighed on Democratic coffers.
The November race will be a rematch for the pair in the 2022 runoff, when Salas lost to Valadao by several thousand votes. Salas and Valadao won't be the only rematch on the November ticket.
In the San Joaquin Valley agricultural district that includes all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, incumbent Republican Rep. John Duarte will once again face Democratic challenger Adam Gray. Duarte won the 13th Congressional District in the midterm elections by less than 600 votes, one of the closest races in the country.
Several hundred miles southeast, in Southern California, Democratic challenger Will Rollins will once again face Republican incumbent Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving member of the California delegation. The recently redrawn 41st Congressional District stretches from the Inland Empire suburbs, where Calvert has long lived, to Palm Springs, where Rollins and his partner make their home.
The district's new boundaries — which now include one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ+ voters in the country and liberal pockets of Californians in the desert — are far more friendly to Democrats. They also set up Rollins, who is gay, as a strong rival to Calvert, who has voted against LGBTQ+ rights in the past, but says his views have evolved since then.
One race that will bring some new blood this year, after the same candidates competed in three previous elections, is California's 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County.
The district, once solidly Republican, has been reshaped by redistricting and has undergone a political transition driven by smaller, more diverse transplants from Los Angeles seeking affordable housing in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley. The district briefly flipped from red to blue with former Rep. Katie Hill's win in 2018, but the young Democrat's public scandals and eventual resignation helped return the seat to the GOP.
Incumbent Republican Rep. Mike Garcia beat Democrat Christy Smith in the 2019 special election to fill the seat, then won two more full terms in 2020 and 2022. He will face George Whitesides, the new Democratic challenger, in November.
Ludovic Blain, executive director of California Donor Table, a progressive group that raises donor money, said his organization hopes to invest about $10 million in California House races in the fall, working with local nonprofits in key areas to attract voters of color.
They will focus on seven key races: the three aforementioned runoffs, Porter's open seat and two other races in Orange County, and the Garcia-Whiteside matchup.
One point of concern raised by Blaine is that Republican Steve Garvey's place is near the top of the list, facing off against Rep. Adam P. Schiff (D-Burbank), in the Senate race, may sway Democrats in House races.
Schiff engaged in a controversial strategy in the primary, empowering Garvey to unseat Porter and his other major Democratic rival, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), who was supported by Blaine's organization.
It was a maneuver that some in the Democratic establishment said would help Democrats in other competitive races, because a less competitive Senate race would draw far less money from party coffers.
But others, like Blaine, argue that Garvey's presence could hurt down-ballot Democrats. Additionally, his presence on the ballot may appeal to moderate Republican voters and independents who are still angry with Trump.
“I think Garvey’s presence increases or encourages Republican voters to turn out and, more importantly, to vote against the ticket,” Blaine said.
Patterson agreed. Unlike Trump, Garvey will likely campaign across the state, providing a boost to other Republicans while he's at it.
