There was a specter hanging over Republican Rep. Mike Garcia's town hall meeting in Santa Clarita this week: the state of California.
On stage at the College of the Canyons Performing Arts Center, Garcia spoke in front of a large screen projecting the words in red letters: “My mission is to stop America from adopting the extreme policies of California.”
Garcia criticized California's gas prices, homelessness crisis and housing costs, which are roughly double the national average. And he blamed all of this on the Democratic supermajority in Sacramento.
“I want to be very clear, because this has been misunderstood in the past: I love California,” Garcia said. “That’s why I’m here. It’s where I raised my family. It’s where I was raised. I have no intentions of leaving California, but Sacramento makes it difficult to stay in California.”
He added: “My job is to prevent the country from becoming what California has become.”
The packed auditorium erupted in applause.
The criticism of the Golden State's gas and housing prices is a powerful message in Garcia's sprawling district in northern Los Angeles County. Many residents here have to commute two hours to work in Los Angeles because they had to move to the desert to find housing they could afford.
On Tuesday night, Garcia, a three-time Republican running for reelection in one of the state’s most competitive congressional races, kept the agenda for more than three hours during his town hall. Because he was there in his official capacity as a congressman, Garcia did not speak directly about the election. His spokespeople have not responded to multiple requests from The Times to discuss the campaign.
In a lengthy question-and-answer session, forum participants made their concerns clear: public safety, cost of living, better health benefits for veterans and the culture wars in California's public schools, especially regarding gender identity issues.
Garcia, a former Navy pilot, faces a tough re-election campaign to represent the 27th Congressional District, where Democrats hold a significant advantage in voter registration.
The race between him and his Democratic opponent, George Whitesides, a former NASA chief of staff under President Obama, will be crucial in determining whether Republicans maintain their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Cook Political Report, an independent election forecaster, sees this year's race as a toss-up.
“Some of you want me to be more right-wing. Some of you want me to be more left-wing. I am who I am and I believe what I believe,” Republican Rep. Mike Garcia told a packed town hall in Santa Clarita.
(Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times)
The once staunchly conservative district stretches from Santa Clarita to the Kern County line and includes Lancaster and Palmdale. Because of its proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, it has deep ties to the military and aerospace industries.
Just over 41% of registered voters are Democrats and about 30% are Republicans. More than a fifth are independents.
Garcia, 48, first won her seat during a 2020 special election to replace former Rep. Katie Hill, a junior Democrat who resigned amid a sex scandal. It was the first time the GOP flipped a California district from Democratic to Republican in more than 20 years.
Garcia retained the seat in two subsequent elections, winning last spring’s three-candidate primary with 55 percent of the vote, while Whitesides received 33 percent, setting the stage for the top two candidates to face off in a November runoff.
Whitesides, the former chief executive of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic, is a first-time candidate who has criticized Garcia’s vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election results after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and his 2021 co-sponsorship of the Life Since Conception Act, which would have amounted to a nationwide abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or threats to the mother’s health.
On stage on Tuesday, Garcia said: “In terms of party affiliation, I am in the minority, I understand that.
“Some people want me to be more right-wing. Others want me to be more left-wing. I am who I am and I believe what I believe,” he said.
Garcia is the son of a Mexican immigrant who moved to the U.S. in 1959. He said his late father “came here legally” and “did the right thing” and that illegal immigration is one of the country’s biggest threats. In Congress, he voted against creating a path to citizenship for so-called Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children.
Garcia called for higher pay and more leave time for military members, prompting applause from a crowd packed with veterans.
“They need to be paid better, they need to be managed better and we need to invest in the military industrial complex that supports them and gives our warfighters the advantage that, frankly, they deserve abroad and at home,” said Garcia, a former executive with defense contractor Raytheon.
“As people who have a patriotic heart and love for this country,” one woman asked Garcia, “what can we do to restore patriotism in our schools?”
Garcia, a father of two, said the policy should be kept out of public schools and criticized a new state law that prohibits schools from enacting policies requiring teachers to notify parents about changes in a student’s gender identity — for example, if they ask to be called by a different name or pronoun.
“For every law like this in Sacramento, there’s an ugly twin sister in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “And my job is to make sure that twin sister doesn’t become law and that California doesn’t become the norm across the country.”
The evening included a tense exchange. Garcia had told the crowd that she had co-sponsored a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, a landmark 1994 law that provided relief to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
“It’s a great achievement. There are not many Republicans who support this Violence Against Women Act, and I am proud to be one of its sponsors,” Garcia said.
But in 2021, Garcia voted against another reauthorization measure as conservatives protested provisions that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ people and restricted gun access for people convicted of abusing or stalking a partner.
Instead, Garcia co-sponsored a failed Republican-led alternative to renew the law for one year, without the new provisions. He was not a co-sponsor of the compromise bill that passed the following year as part of a broader spending package.
Megan Johnson, an 18-year-old from Santa Clarita who will vote for the first time this fall, pointed out the discrepancy.
“You voted against renewing the law. Is this the same law you talk about being a co-sponsor of in your presentation?” he asked.
Garcia said she supported “a pure version” of the Violence Against Women Act, and that the version she voted against “ended up unintentionally depriving other people of their constitutional rights as a result of protecting women who have been victims of violence.”
Dan Gottlieb, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, described Garcia's representation of her vote as “a new low.”
“The truth that Mike Garcia apparently can’t bear to admit is that he voted to block the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2021, a measure that risked dismantling funding to improve criminal justice responses to sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking, and reducing the availability of victim and survivor services across California,” Gottlieb said.
Outside the auditorium, Johnson, a registered Democrat, said the congressman did not fully answer his question and that he would vote for Whitesides.
In addition to women’s safety and reproductive rights, she said what matters most to her in this election is gun reform, an issue that hits close to home in Santa Clarita: In 2019, a Saugus High student opened fire in a crowded courtyard, killing two classmates and wounding three others before turning the gun on himself.
“I grew up in the generation that had to participate in active training shooters… that caused me, honestly, a lot of fear,” he said. “I have nightmares about mass shootings.”
As she left the auditorium, Trish Lester, spokeswoman for the Santa Clarita Valley Republican Women, said she respected Garcia for explaining her vote to Johnson and liked everything she had to say.
Lester, wearing a T-shirt that read “My Governor is an Idiot,” said he agreed with Garcia that California has become too extreme and too expensive.
Lester and her husband, an Army veteran, “supported his campaign from day one,” she added. “It was clear he was a class man, a true patriot, with his military service and his business experience.
“I'm very happy with Mike,” she said.
