For years, Democrats have been hell-bent on ousting Rep. David G. Valadao, putting up a series of more mainstream candidates to break the Republican’s hold on a district that sweeps across California’s verdant San Joaquin Valley.
A State Assembly member. The son of a union icon. A Senate chief of staff. All lost — and all reflected the belief that the way to defeat the entrenched Republican was to tack to the center and appeal to the district’s swing voters.
Democrats are — reluctantly — trying something new this year.
Randy Villegas, an unabashedly progressive professor, has cast his defeat of an establishment Democrat in the primary as not only a victory for progressives but also a loss for the conventional wisdom around what it takes to win in a district long controlled by Republicans. House Democrats’ main campaign arm endorsed 18 Democrats in primary contests this year. Villegas’s primary opponent Jasmeet Bains was among them, making Villegas one of only three candidates who prevailed despite the party’s efforts to defeat him.
“There are a lot of assumptions about me, about this race, about our communities that I think have been proven wrong,” Villegas told The Washington Post in Bakersfield, California, this summer after headlining an event on cuts to the social safety net. “This isn’t a fight about left versus right. It’s really us versus them.”
Villegas’s win sets up an interesting political test of the viability of progressive politics in a district that President Donald Trump won in 2024. The test comes as the Democratic Party grapples with calls for more antiestablishment, often progressive, candidates to shake up the party’s entrenched power and defeat Republicans. But it also represents a risky bet for the party in a district that nonpartisan prognosticators rate as a pure toss-up.
One reason Valadao is seen as vulnerable is his 2025 vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill, which cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance for millions of Americans. While the vote has put scores of Republicans on the defensive, it has been particularly potent against Valadao. Sixty-four percent of the residents in his district are Medicaid recipients, a higher proportion than for any other district held by a House Republican. Twenty-six percent receive federal food assistance.
‘People say he is too progressive’
Rosie Kidwell, a voter in Valadao’s district, attended the Democrat’s event outside the Kern County Public Services Building in Bakersfield and discussed with Villegas the impact of food stamp cuts on her aging parents. She said she had previously voted for Valadao — “I believed in him,” she recalled — but now plans to support Villegas despite acknowledging concerns that he may be too progressive.
“We need to educate” voters, Kidwell said. “People say he is too progressive. They need to learn how he will change things, how he will be good for our community.”
“I believe in what he has to say. I know where he is coming from,” Kidwell said, adding that she connected with his working-class upbringing in the district.
Flanked by the Diablo Range to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east, California’s 22nd Congressional District is a valley of hundreds of farms that produce everything from fruits and tree nuts to dairy and cattle. Nicknamed the “Food Basket of the World,” the region gave rise to the American farmworkers movement and is home to some of the nation’s largest agricultural corporations. That dominance has shaped the district’s politics, making issues such as tariffs, water rights and labor laws particularly potent.
On paper, Valadao’s resilience is a political oddity. The district is one of the most Latino in the nation, and Democrats enjoy a double-digit registration advantage. But Republicans have held a foothold in the region for years, powered by a motivated base and Democratic-leaning voters willing to split their ticket. Valadao, for example, took back the area in 2020 by less than a percentage point while Joe Biden carried the district by double digits. And Democrats were equally hopeful they could defeat the Republican in 2024 before he won reelection by seven percentage points.
“What happened in 2024 was you had one party, the Democrats, who were saying the economy is great,” Villegas said. “Meanwhile, you had somebody like Trump, as much of a grifter as he is, who was talking about how the system is rigged against people, and who was speaking and tapping into some of the economic anxieties that people, including Latinos in my district, were facing.”
Establishment Democrats, he argued, own that loss.
“We can’t just offer people not Trump or not Valadao,” he said. “We actually have to offer people something to believe in and something to fight for.”
Villegas, who co-owns his family’s auto repair shop, has not shied away from his progressive politics. He supports Medicare-for-all, universal child care and has been an outspoken critic of Israel, which he labels a “genocidal regime” because of its actions in Gaza. Republicans have used these views to call him a “socialist,” and his Democratic opponent in the primary labeled him “radical Randy.” But Villegas argued that voters don’t “give a shit about these labels around progressivism or populism or moderate or conservative.”
That stridency has given Republicans confidence. The GOP-backed Congressional Leadership Fund helped elevate Villegas during the primary, reflecting a belief that they would rather run against a progressive. But in a sign that Republicans know this race could be tight, the group also plans to spend close to $8 million on ads backing Valadao.
That’s because the Republican has lost before — and his district got slightly more Democratic as part of California’s redistricting that was enacted by voters in 2025. Although the Republican first went to Congress in 2013, he lost his reelection to Democrat TJ Cox during the 2018 midterms, a wave year when Democrats swept into control of the House two years after Trump was first elected.
Though the Republican would later defeat Cox in 2020, party operatives in California and nationally know that the 2026 midterms, two years after Trump’s 2024 win, could resemble the year Valadao lost.
Villegas shrugs off labels as GOP seeks to paint him as a ‘radical’
Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Villegas is “lying to Central Valley families because he would rather protect benefits for criminal illegal immigrants than preserve Medicaid for those most in need.”
“That’s the difference,” Martinez said. “Valadao is protecting the vulnerable, while Villegas is defending the radical.”
Valadao, who declined multiple requests for comment on this article, was born and raised in Hanford, California, an agricultural hub in the district. His family owns two dairy farms, according to his congressional biography, and grows almonds, corn and wheat to feed their dairy cows — a background that has helped him connect with voters in the heavily agricultural district. He attended the College of the Sequoias, the university where Villegas teaches political science, and spent two years in the State Assembly before running to represent the Central Valley in Congress in 2012.
The Democratic establishment has come around on Villegas. House Democrats’ campaign arm added the progressive to the same program they used to try to defeat him days after the primary this summer. And data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm, finds that House Majority PAC, the primary Democratic super PAC tasked with taking control of the House, plans to spend more than $8 million on ads in the district.
The outside group told The Post it will begin its television ad campaign in the district on Tuesday. CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for the group, said its campaign will focus on how Valadao “voted to raise costs and how Randy Villegas will make their lives more affordable.”
“We’re all in to elect Randy Villegas,” said Anna Elsasser, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who hit Valadao as “vulnerable” after he voted for the Medicaid cuts.
“The contrast couldn’t be clearer,” said Elsasser, “and that’s why this must-win seat is primed to flip.”
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