California to play a major role in the fight for Congress. Tuesday’s deadline opens the field
California’s decision to redraw its congressional map to flip up to five House seats to Democrats in November is poised to play a major and potentially decisive role in the state’s broader, empty battle for control of Congress.
Tuesday’s primary races — where the top two candidates will advance to November’s runoffs — won’t decide which Republicans are eliminated in most cases, but they will provide an important first look at voter sentiment and focus on the fall’s most important contests.
“There are going to be real signs and symptoms about what to expect,” said Christian Grose, a desegregationist and political science professor at USC. “We’ll know how strong the Democrats’ chances are depending on who’s advancing.”
As one example, Grose pointed to the redrawn 22nd Congressional District in the Central Valley, where Rep. Incumbent David Valadao (R-Hanford) faces challenges from moderate Assembly Member Jasmeet Kaur Bains (D-Delano) and progressive college professor Randy Villegas.
Grose said Bains may be a stronger challenger than Villegas in a district that is still within reach for Democrats — or “either one could beat Valadao if 2026 is a big Democratic wave.”
Grose will also keep a close eye on the race between incumbent Reps. Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills) and Ken Calvert (R-Corona) in the redrawn Congressional District 40, which includes most of Orange County and parts of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, including parts of Kim’s and Calvert’s current districts.
The district race was not designed to bring the seat to Democrats, but it will produce “one of the first Republican casualties on the new map” – months before the other expected expulsions – if Kim and Calvert both do not advance.
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The redistricting battle has been fueled by President Trump’s unprecedented pressure on Republican-controlled states to redraw their maps in the middle of the decade to gain in part his continued control of Congress, given his sinking approval ratings and a history of midyear voters 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 sideline the independent district committee and allow Democrats to redraw five congressional districts in their favor.
The battle intensified — with many Republican states suddenly considering redistricting — after the US Supreme Court’s ruling in April weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its long-standing protections for many black districts in the South.
Republicans have now moved to redraw congressional maps in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee, with varying degrees of success, while the battle in Utah could add another Democratic seat there. Efforts in other states have failed, including the GOP in South Carolina and the Democrats in Virginia.
Experts say the net result from the destruction of the limits will likely be a gain of a few seats or more for the Republicans – but in a year when the Democrats are expected to gain more, leaving control of the House. The new California map is “a big deal” because those numbers are so close, said David Wasserman, senior editor and election analyst for the independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“Democrats are modest favorites for control of the House based on the political landscape, but also because of California,” Wasserman said in an interview with The Times. “Taking these four or five seats is what is needed for the Democrats to get a majority.”
California seats play
California has 52 seats in the US House of Representatives, the most of any state. With their new map, California Democrats hope to increase their 43 House seats to 48. That would leave just four seats held by GOP members despite Republicans accounting for a quarter of the state’s electorate.
Congressional District 1: Managed by Rep. The late Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) for 13 years until his death in January, the district is currently rural and trailing, stretching from the outskirts of Sacramento through Redding to the Oregon border and the northeast corner of California. Under the new congressional district map of the state, it is losing some of its rural areas and picking up liberal coastal communities, and electing a Democrat like Sen. Mike McGuire, one of the leading nominees.
Congressional District 3: The seat is currently held by Rep. Kevin Kiley (Rocklin) and we travel from the suburbs of Sacramento across Lake Tahoe and south along the Nevada border. Under the new map, it’s very conservative in the Sacramento areas, favoring the Democrat.
The changes were enough to convince the incumbent Democrat, Rep. Ami Bera (D-Elk Grove), to leave his current district – Congressional District 6, which includes the city of Sacramento and the suburbs of Roseville and Rocklin in Placer County – and run in District 3 instead.
Meanwhile, Kiley did the opposite. He left the Republican Party, became an independent and announced that he would leave District 3 and instead run in District 6 – which Bera is leaving – against new Democratic incumbents.
Congressional District 41. The seat is now held by Calvert, who is in his 17th term, and currently moves from Corona to the Coachella Valley. The new map made the district more liberal, losing voters in Riverside County and gaining them in Los Angeles County, and Calvert decided to run instead of Kim’s redrawn but still dependent Congressional District 40 in the west.
The two strongest points for Democrats, experts say, are Congressional District 22, Valadao’s most Latino district in the Central Valley, followed by Congressional District 48 in San Diego and Riverside counties, where Rep.
Valadao is considered a high-risk candidate because of his recent support for Medicaid cuts, but he has shown resilience in the past. Meanwhile, his two main Democratic rivals, Bains and Villegas, are locked in a tight battle, with Bains gaining Democratic support and Villegas winning the endorsement of prominent front-runners.
In Issa’s district, moderate Republican San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond is running against several embattled Democrats, including San Diego Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert and former Obama chief of staff Ammar Campa-Najjar.
It’s not new, or it’s over
Jeff Wice, a New York Law School professor who was involved in California’s redistricting efforts in 2010, said the state “has been playing hardball politics on redistricting for a long time,” including Rep. Phil Burton, a powerful San Francisco Democrat, boasted more than 40 years ago that the complex congressional boundaries he drew up for the Democrats were “his contribution to modern art.”
But in five decades of studying desegregation, Wice said he’s never seen as “politicized, organized politics” as it is now across the country, which he said has “no root in law, reason or fairness” — and it’s likely to continue.
“This country-to-country war is far from over, and may continue until 2030,” he said. “A lot depends on the results of this November election.”
Wasserman said the country has “entered the era of redistricting,” and he sees redistricting efforts continuing — including in California, where they will present a different threat to the few remaining Republicans.
Michael Li, senior counsel for the Democratic Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said California is “a big part of the story” in this election cycle, because of Proposition 50. “Democrats in California have shown that they are very determined and smart and able to do that, and right now California is a big offset to Republican gerrymandering across the country,” he said.
But what will come of it all — in California and across the country — remains to be determined.
“If you are playing tricks, you are betting that you know what tomorrow’s politics will look like, it is difficult to predict,” he said. “It’s a high-risk, high-reward business.”
