Californians struck back at Republican redistricting efforts around the country on Tuesday, passing a new congressional map designed to flip five red districts and give Democrats a better shot at retaking the House of Representatives next year.
Now that the Proposition 50 map will officially take effect for the next three congressional elections — in 2026, 2028 and 2030 — a flurry of Democratic challengers are expected to jump into the newly competitive House race. They will join candidates who announced their entry before voters approved the districts.
Over all, the changes could result in Democrats representing nearly all of Northern California in the House, including the conservative far reaches toward the Oregon border. While Republicans will fight to protect their incumbents, they also plan to file lawsuits to challenge Proposition 50 in court.
Here’s what to know about California’s new congressional maps.
Three Republicans are particularly vulnerable
Far from the liberal bastions of San Francisco and Los Angeles, California’s rural northeast had long been reliable Republican territory. No longer, under the Proposition 50 map.
The current district of Representative Kevin Kiley, a Republican, stretches from the suburbs outside Sacramento to Lake Tahoe in the north and southward along the Nevada border. It now adds neighborhoods in Sacramento County to become a likely flip for Democrats, according to nonpartisan political analyses of the new map.
Mr. Kiley has won tough races before, but he could face a host of experienced Democratic challengers. He could square off against Dr. Richard Pan, the former state senator who has already announced a campaign against him. Local strategists said that other Democrats may be considering the same district, including Representative Ami Bera and State Senator Angelique Ashby.
The seat has become so vulnerable that Mr. Kiley could consider running in a neighboring district if he likes his chances better there. House candidates do not have to live in the district they represent.
Representative Doug LaMalfa, a Republican, faces a similar challenge in his Northern California district, which currently hugs the Oregon border and represents a large agricultural region north of Sacramento. The new map divides his current district, with one new district pulling in a heavily Democratic part of Wine Country and the other adding liberal Marin County.
Audrey Denney, an educator and consultant who lost twice before to Mr. LaMalfa, has already announced a third try against him. Some political strategists have speculated that the race could also attract Mike McGuire, the leader of the California State Senate.
In Riverside County, east of Los Angeles, Representative Ken Calvert is another Republican who has become suddenly vulnerable. In this case, his district has been carved up and folded into several neighboring districts.
“We don’t see a path for them if this map passes,” said David Wasserman, the senior elections analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said of the Republican incumbents in these three districts.
“The incumbency bonus is nowhere as big as it used to be,” Mr. Wasserman added.
Democrats are eyeing two other seats
The districts of two Republican congressmen were not reconfigured quite as radically. Still, Representative Darrell Issa, who holds a seat in the inland San Diego area, and Representative David Valadao, in the southern part of the Central Valley, will now be in races that analysts consider to be coin flips.
Mr. Issa won re-election last year by nearly 20 percentage points, but Proposition 50 added liberal Palm Springs to his district, making it more favorable to Democrats than before. Ammar Campa-Najjar, who has lost twice before to Mr. Issa, and Marni von Wilpert, a San Diego city councilwoman, are Mr. Issa’s most prominent challengers. Several others also could shift from focusing on Mr. Calvert to targeting Mr. Issa.
Mr. Valadao is no stranger to tough races because his seat has regularly been one of the nation’s most competitive. He won re-election by less than 1 percentage point in 2020. Two years before that, he was ousted by a similar margin.
But under Proposition 50, his Central Valley district will shed some of its more conservative areas, giving Democrats a greater advantage than before. At least two Democrats have already said they will challenge him: Dr. Jasmeet Bains, a state assemblywoman, and Randy Villegas, a local school board trustee.
Mr. Valadao, well aware of his district, has taken a more moderate path than his fellow Republican House members. In 2021, he was one of 10 House members to vote to impeach President Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Andrew Acosta, a California Democratic strategist, suggested that many Democrats in the state had forgotten how rough-and-tumble an ultracompetitive House race can get, especially in more conservative regions. Democratic challengers who embrace moderate political views, he argued, stood the best shot against the incumbents.
“We’ve gotten fat and happy here in California,” he said. “We think that this is a big blue state, and everyone loves everybody until you’re in a competitive race — and all of the sudden you realize that Gavin Newsom is not as popular in the district.”
Vulnerable Democrats — plus one Orange County Republican — can breathe easier
Democrats also shored up districts held by more than a half-dozen of their vulnerable incumbents, such as Representatives Derek Tran in Southern California and Adam Gray in the Central Valley. Both are first-term congressmen who each won last year by fewer than 1,000 votes.
By strengthening their grip on once-vulnerable seats, Democrats could free up time and resources to focus on ousting Republican incumbents and winning races in other states. But making some districts more favorable to Democrats came at a cost: Representative Young Kim, a Republican in a competitive Orange County seat, gained Republican regions that will likely put her once-competitive seat out of reach for Democrats.
Dan Schnur, a politics professor at the University of Southern California, said the new map — and the efforts to put competitive Democratic-held areas out of reach — would erode the power of California Republicans even further.
“After this redistricting takes place,” Mr. Schnur said, “there won’t be much red California left.”
But competitive districts that seem winnable on paper can prove elusive for either party. Mr. Acosta warned that beating Republican incumbents on their home turf might not be so easy.
“There is a consistent theme for most of them that they’ve been battle-tested,” he said. “They’ve been in races where they’ve won, they’ve lost, they’ve come back and won again.”
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
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