California elections will be critical in determining control of the House

Barring divine intervention or the West Coast falling into the sea, President Biden will handily win California in the November election.

But if he (or presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump) wins a second term in the fall, the future of either of them's political agenda depends largely on which party controls Congress, where Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority in the United States House of Representatives.

With the Golden State home to some of the most contested swing districts in the country, the fate of the House will almost certainly depend on California.

The battle for partisan political control over the next two years will be fought door to door, from the cul-de-sacs of California's coastal suburbs to the small farming towns of the state's fertile Central Valley.

Those battlefields will look a lot like Bridgecreek Plaza, a sun-bleached shopping center a few hundred yards from a freeway on-ramp in Huntington Beach, Orange County. The shopping center is home to a glass shop, several insurance brokers, a dentist, and the local Republican Party headquarters.

It's also where about two dozen Republican faithful gathered on the morning of Election Day, bowing their heads for a quick prayer and pledging allegiance to a portable flag before turning their attention to Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party.

Patterson was in a very good mood.

when she was the first elected to lead the party, in 2019, California Republicans were “essentially the third largest party in the state,” having dipped below the share of voters who registered “refusal to declare” under party preference.

But Patterson had presided over a massive voter registration drive over the past five years, and the party had returned to second place. People across the country liked to dismiss “blue California,” he said, but they were forgetting that California has more registered Republicans than any other state.

“California Republicans are the reason we have a majority in the House,” he added, to raucous cheers.

That majority was what they hoped to keep, and the group would spend the morning of the March 5 primary election seeking out Scott Baugh, a Republican attorney and former state Assembly member vying to boost future Democratic Rep. Katie Porter. -Open the backrest of the Congress seat from blue to red.

The latest round of redistricting placed more conservative enclaves like Huntington Beach and Newport Beach in California's 47th Congressional District, and Baugh narrowly lost to Porter in 2022 despite spending significantly more, making the coastal district the Orange County in one of the most competitive in the country. .

The charismatic Porter will be left out of the House after a failed Senate bid; his seat is one of the National Republican Congressional Committee's three offensive targets in California and one of its top priorities. And it is equally appreciated by Democrats.

In a country where enmity and mistrust separate the two major political parties on most issues, the utmost importance of California to any House strategy in November is one of the few things on which Republicans and Democrats they can agree.

California hosts 10 races classified as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report – five of them in districts represented by Republicans but that President Biden won in 2020. In the coming months, both parties will invest significant resources in those races, as national attention inevitably shifts to the West.

With an expected rematch between Biden and Trump, voter turnout in 2024 is also likely to be supercharged compared to the 2022 midterm elections. That could give Democrats an advantage, given the registration advantage they have in many of competitive districts. Republicans won a California House seat in the 2022 midterm elections, a non-presidential election in which turnout was substantially lower than when Biden and Trump led the vote two years earlier.

“At the end of the day, the path to 218 goes through California,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Dan Gottlieb, referring to the number of seats needed to win a majority in the House.

Dave Min will face Baugh in the November runoff for the District 47 seat, which Katie Porter is vacating. Min's tough primary battle for the crucial seat has already cost Democrats millions.

(Rico Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Gottlieb was optimistic about his party's chances, citing the high turnout expected for the presidential election, along with strong Democratic candidates and “a group of dysfunctional, out-of-touch Republicans who allowed the worst of their party's chaos, dysfunction and extremism.” “.

But Gottlieb's Republican counterpart was equally optimistic in his outlook, and National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ben Petersen reveled in the ugly and costly primary fights that consumed Democrats in several of the state's most crucial swing districts. .

In the OC district As GOP volunteers fanned out for Baugh on primary morning, Democrats had poured millions into a tough primary battle between state Sen. Dave Min and fellow Democrat Joanna Weiss. Min ultimately emerged victorious, but only after surviving a barrage of negative publicity centered on his 2023 arrest for drunk driving, possibly a gift to Republicans ahead of his fall battle with Baugh.

“Extremist Democrats are stumbling out of their fierce primary fights ruined and outmatched by Republicans, who saw a groundswell of support for a common-sense safety and affordability agenda,” Petersen said, adding that the primary results left clear that the Republican Party was “playing offense in California.” ” in a way that would set the stage for victories in November.

However, Baugh is not expected to emerge unscathed. In 2022, Porter advertising campaign He 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 leave Democrats out of one of the races in which they have the best chance of flipping a seat, but those concerns proved 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 put a dent in the coffers Democrats.

The November race will be a rematch of the couple's second round in 2022, when Salas lost to Valadao by several thousand votes. And Salas and Valadao will not be the only rematch on the November ticket.

In a heavily agricultural San Joaquin Valley district that includes all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Madera, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties, Republican incumbent Rep. John Duarte will once again face Democratic challenger Adam Gray. Duarte won Congressional District 13 in the midterm elections by fewer than 600 votes, one of the closest races in the country.

Several hundred miles southeast in Southern California, Democratic challenger Will Rollins will again face incumbent Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, the longest-serving member of California's delegation. The newly redrawn 41st Congressional District stretches from the Inland Empire suburb, 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 much friendlier to Democrats. They also established Rollins, who is gay, as a potent rival to Calvert, who has voted against LGBTQ+ rights in the past but who He says his views have evolved since then.

One race that will have some new blood this year, after the same pair of candidates dueled in three previous elections, is California's 27th Congressional District in northern Los Angeles County.

The once solidly Republican district has been reconfigured through redistricting and has undergone a political transition driven by younger, more diverse immigrants 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 victory in 2018, but the young Democrat very public scandals and the eventual resignation helped return the seat to the Republican Party.

Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Garcia defeated Democrat Christy Smith in a 2019 special election to fill the seat, and then twice more for full terms in 2020 and 2022. He will face George Whitesides, a new Democratic challenger, in November.

Ludovic Blain, executive director of California Donor Table, a progressive group that raises funds from donors, said his organization hopes to invest about $10 million in California's House elections in the fall, working with local nonprofits. profit in key areas to attract voters of color.

They will focus on seven key races: the three aforementioned rematches, the open Porter seat and two other Orange County races, and the Garcia-Whitesides matchup.

One point of concern Blain raised is that Republican Steve Garvey's place near the top of the ticket, facing Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank) in the Senate race, could hurt Democrats in the races. For the camera.

Schiff undertook a controversial strategy in the primary, prompting Garvey to exclude Porter and his other major Democratic rival, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), whom Blain's organization supported.

It was a tactic that some members of the Democratic establishment said would actually help Democrats in other close races, since a less competitive Senate race would siphon much less money from party coffers.

But others, like Blain, argue that Garvey's presence could hurt Democrats in down votes. Plus, having him on the ballot may appeal to moderate Republican voters and independents who remain angry at Trump.

“I think having Garvey further increases or encourages Republican voters to go to the polls and, more importantly, to reject the ballot,” Blain said.

Patterson agreed. Unlike Trump, Garvey will likely campaign statewide, giving other Republicans a boost as he does so.