Representative Jimmy Gomez, a Democrat who has represented a liberal district in Los Angeles for almost a decade, is at serious risk of losing his House seat after being accused of sexual misconduct this summer.
Mr. Gomez is facing an intraparty challenge from Angela Gonzales-Torres, who has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and is running as an anti-establishment candidate.
The House Ethics Committee announced in August that it was investigating whether Mr. Gomez had engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with a House aide. Mr. Gomez, 51, denied any wrongdoing, but conceded that he had made “personal mistakes” outside of his marriage.
It was not fully clear how endangered Mr. Gomez was until the Democracy and Fair Elections Lab at the University of Southern California released an independent poll this month finding that Mr. Gomez and Ms. Gonzales-Torres were tied, with each receiving support from 34 percent of likely voters.
When undecided voters were pressed to choose a candidate, Ms. Torres moved ahead to 51 percent, compared with Mr. Gomez’s 45 percent, the poll found.
Christian Grose, a political science professor at U.S.C., said the poll suggested that the investigation had hurt Mr. Gomez. When voters were asked to describe the candidates in their own words, their language most frequently related to the sexual misconduct investigation of Mr. Gomez.
Mr. Gomez’s campaign said in a statement that the poll was conducted via email, and that the survey had likely missed voters who didn’t regularly use email. Ms. Gonzales-Torres’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Grose added that the tight race between Mr. Gomez and Ms. Gonzales-Torres was not solely a function of the sexual harassment inquiry, as it also mirrored an intraparty Democratic fight playing out elsewhere.
The heavily Latino district, which includes downtown Los Angeles, Highland Park and Boyle Heights, is one of the nation’s most liberal. And progressive politicians in Democratic bastions recently have been facing serious challenges from candidates that are further left, Mr. Grose said.
In California, candidates from the same party can compete against each other in a House general election because the state has an open primary system that advances the top two entrants regardless of their affiliation.
In the survey, the second most frequent descriptions of Mr. Gomez referred to him in some way as an “establishment politician,” whereas the top two for Ms. Gonzales-Torres were related to being a “progressive” and “fresh face.”
“It’s really a divide within progressives,” Mr. Grose said. “It’s not like a Joe Biden versus Bernie Sanders, it’s like Bernie Sanders versus AOC — it’s like which one is more of a progressive and an outsider.”
Mr. Grose said the race is particularly fluid since so many voters remain undecided, and more of them may choose Mr. Gomez based on name recognition alone, he said. “Despite that, this is very close,” he said.
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