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Democrats Gerrymandered David Valadao’s District. Did It Backfire?
He is a moderate Republican, has won California's 22nd Congressional District five times since 2012 and lost it only once in 2018, by just 800 votes. He beat former Democratic Assemblymember Rudy Salas by three percentage points in 2022 and beat him again in 2024 by 1,692 votes, on a ballot Donald Trump carried.
This year, however, the registration math got even worse for him, although he did get the opponent he wanted: Democrat Randy Villegas.
Democrats Gerrymandered the District
Proposition 50 suspended California's independent redistricting commission and gave the Democratic legislature the pen, which drew a new map designed to flip up to five Republican-held seats. The 22nd was one of them.
According to the California Target Book 2026 analysis, the new lines shed around 60,000 heavily Republican voters out of Tulare, Kings, and Kern and replaced them with Democrats from Fresno and Bakersfield.
A Trump +5.8 percent district became a Trump +1.7 percent district.
The Democratic registration advantage widened from 11.7 points to 16.2 points.
Among the territory the Democrats’ new map cut loose was Hanford, in the Central Valley, where the incumbent Congressman Valadao was raised, where his family's dairy sits, and where he lives.
According to the California Target Book, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee put the seat on both its “Districts in Play” and “Red to Blue” lists.
The Dem-on-Dem Brawl to Get on the November Ballot
The Democratic Party spent the spring at war with itself over which Democrat would make it into the top two against Valadao.
The DCCC recruited Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Bakersfield physician and moderate member of the party who is also part of the California Problem Solvers Caucus.
Bains has a very independent streak. For example, she was the only California Democrat in the Legislature to vote against Governor Gavin Newsom's Proposition 50 redistricting bill. The New York Times called her a "Valleycrat," a traditional pick whose politics were more typical for a swing district like CD22.
The California DSA voter guide, by contrast, called her a "conservadem."
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Democrat Randy Villegas, a full-time college professor, challenged Bains from the left, running on a platform of Medicare for All, refusing corporate PAC money, and carrying the endorsements of the Working Families Party, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Ro Khanna, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Dolores Huerta, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and David Hogg's group, Leaders We Deserve.
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The California DSA's 2026 primary voter guide recommended Villegas.
“This race is an easy choice for DSA members: vote for Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd Congressional District.” - California DSA Voter Guide 2026
Outside groups spent $8,669,735 across 28 committees before a single vote was counted in June, according to independent expenditure filings for the cycle. Much of it was Democrats spending against Democrats.
New Democrat Majority put $750,946 into stopping Villegas. Blue Dog's BDA PAC added $600,000, Democratic Majority for Israel's PAC another $500,000, and Health Care Saves Lives $307,315. The money ran the other direction too. The Working Families Party PAC spent $232,817 against Bains, Progressive Promise spent $375,000, and American Priorities spent $330,000.
The support side split the same way. 314 Action Fund put $1,193,600 behind Bains and Project 218 added $999,419. Villegas drew $450,169 from Leaders We Deserve, $441,035 from the Working Families Party PAC, and $200,000 from the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
Bains called Villegas "radical Randy." Republicans called him a socialist. The California Democratic Party never settled on either of them: its pre-endorsement conference sent the race to caucus with Villegas at 55 percent. The convention vote ended with Bains at 56 percent and no endorsement issued, according to California Target Book. The DCCC supported Bains, and it was controversial. Afterward, Axios reported that House Democrats supporting Villegas were threatening to withhold dues from the DCCC over the whole affair.
In the June 2nd primary, only 79,757 voters showed up to vote, just shy of 25 percent of the district’s registered voters.
Republicans Got the Opponent They Paid For
The Congressional Leadership Fund is the super PAC aligned with House Republican leadership. In the primary, it spent $131,025 supporting Valadao and $86,097 attacking Villegas, which the California Target Book describes as an effort to lift him past Bains.
The New York Times reported that a Republican super PAC had quietly spent money boosting Villegas, assuming he would be the easier opponent for Valadao.
Republicans wanted the more liberal of the two Democrats. They got him.
Since the primary, the Congressional Leadership Fund has spent $784,756 against Villegas. It is now the largest single source of spending against the candidate it paid to advance.
The California Target Book says Valadao is the only Republican on the ballot who is creating a "five alarm fire" for his party. The gap between votes cast for the Republican and votes cast for the two Democrats makes it difficult to argue he is not at a disadvantage in November.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported in August that state party chair Rusty Hicks acknowledged there is "some work to be done" in the Central Valley, and that Paul Mitchell, the consultant who helped draw the Prop 50 maps, named the 22nd as one of the two hardest seats his party has to win.
Half a Million in the District are on Medicaid
According to MSNOW, the district has the highest number of Medicaid recipients in the entire nation, with nearly half a million enrollees.
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Nearly One in Three Voters Belongs to No Party
More than 100,000 voters in CD 22 are not affiliated with either major political party.
According to the latest registration data from votercount.ai, party registration in California's 22nd Congressional District (327,369 total registered voters) breaks down as follows: Democrats lead with 132,719 voters (40.54 percent), followed by Republicans with 90,457 (27.63 percent) and Non-Partisan with 77,870 (23.79 percent).
The remaining 8 percent is split among American Independent (13,679), Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, Green, and other minor parties.
In 2024, Trump carried this district 49.57 percent to 47.78 percent over Kamala Harris. Steve Garvey beat Adam Schiff here in the Senate race. On the same ballot, Valadao beat Salas by 1,692 votes. Voters approved Proposition 35 on permanent Medi-Cal funding with 72.84 percent but rejected Proposition 3 on the constitutional right to marriage, against the statewide result.
David Valadao (Republican, Incumbent)
David Valadao, born April 14, 1977, served one term in the state Assembly before winning this congressional seat in 2012.
He is a managing director of his family's Hanford dairies and owns 1,000 acres of farmland where they grow almonds, corn, and wheat as dairy feedstock.
In Congress, he serves on the House Agriculture Committee and the powerful House Committee on Appropriations during the 119th Congress, where he chairs the Legislative Branch Subcommittee. He also chairs the Republican Governance Group. He and his wife, Terra, have three children.
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Valadao’s father, Eduardo, grew up in the Portuguese Azores as the youngest of eight and helped run the family dairy. CalMatters reported that Eduardo and his wife Maria bought their first cows a few years after immigrating and their own farmland several years after that in the early 1970s; that their son was expected to buck hay and feed the cows before school; and that Valadao later declared bankruptcy to clear the farm's delinquent loans.
His popularity with voters from outside the GOP rests heavily on his vote to impeach President Donald Trump after January 6, 2021.
NOTUS (now the Washington Sun) reported in January 2026 that Valadao is one of only two members of the GOP still serving after voting to impeach Trump. The President has endorsed primary challengers to other members of Congress who voted to impeach him, but never to Valadao.
Valadao told NOTUS in January 2026 that he and Trump speak regularly, keep an open line, and that the White House understands he holds a district Republicans need to win; if it does not work out, he would go back to milking cows. Asked by the Associated Press about the impeachment vote, he said he would let history decide how to interpret anything he has done.
Valadao did not back Trump in 2016, but he did in 2020. He has declined to say how he voted in 2024. His campaign literature promised to put people before political parties.
In Washington, D.C., he is an active member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, which brings together equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans to find common-ground policy solutions.
Valadao broke ranks with his fellow Republicans and voted to extend ACA health care subsidies.
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However, Dan Walters, the columnist from CalMatters, said Valadao’s vote for the Big Beautiful Bill could be his downfall. The law cut an estimated $28.4 billion from Medi-Cal and stripped insurance from an estimated 3.4 million Californians. Valadao had repeatedly promised not to vote for Medi-Cal cuts, and two-thirds of his constituents are on the program, according to Walters.
Valadao led California Republican representatives in pushing to halt the July 1, 2026, state gas excise tax increase, which raised the tax from 61.4 to 63.4 cents per gallon. He blames fuel prices on Sacramento rather than Tehran, telling a Bakersfield station in March after the war started that California has always had the highest prices in the country.
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California Farm Bureau president Shannon Douglass praised Valadao for pushing House leadership on emergency funding for specialty crop growers.
He has taken more than $30,000 this cycle from dairy, chicken, and sugar producer committees.
He opposed Proposition 50.
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On data centers, Valadao told the Sacramento Bee on September 6 that the facilities matter to the economy and national security, that Valley families already face high bills and water worries, and that the right approach listens to local input. He did not say whether he supports a moratorium. He told Politico that using the issue as a political weapon sounds irresponsible.
His scorecards run along party lines. In 2024, he rated 100 percent with the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Right to Life Committee, 92 percent with the National Rifle Association, 25 percent with the National Education Association, and 19 percent with Progressive Punch.
He raised $4.93 million for the cycle and had $3.37 million cash on hand at the end of June.
Randy Villegas (Democrat)
Randy Villegas, born November 12, 1994, was elected to the Visalia Unified School District board in 2021.
He is a full-time college professor.
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He describes himself as the son of Mexican immigrants. He grew up in Bakersfield and worked as a mechanic in his family’s auto shop and at the SWAP meet every weekend from his early high school years through college. He co-sponsored both of his parents for citizenship.
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“As a family auto shop owner, I know firsthand that small businesses are the backbone of our economy.” - Randy Villegas
He is highly educated. He graduated from Golden Valley High School in 2012, earned an associate's degree from Bakersfield College, and a bachelor's in political science from CSU Bakersfield in 2017. He has a master's and a doctorate in politics from UC Santa Cruz. He served as the president of the UC Santa Cruz Graduate Student Association.
He is a member of the United Auto Workers (UAW Region 6). When he attended UC Santa Cruz from 2017 to 2022, the campus experienced a major, historic strike. The DSA voter guide says, “he was a member as a student at UC Santa Cruz, where he organized and struck for cost of living and housing equity.”
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He interned for Rep. John Garamendi and at the Dolores Huerta Foundation, taught band (percussion) in the Kern and Santa Cruz schools for seven years, and he has been a member of the faculty at the College of the Sequoias since 2020.
The California DSA's 2026 primary voter guide recommends Villegas as an “exciting candidate,” describing a platform of Medicare for All, taxing the top 1%, AI regulation, and universal childcare as aligned with the DSA.
“Oliver Ma isn’t the only exciting candidate to come out of the Central Valley this election cycle. CA-22 is one of the districts restructured by Prop 50, giving Dems the best chance to flip it in decades, and after running milquetoast candidates for years, Randy Villegas, a Visalia school board trustee and organizer, is a candidate who may be able to flip it not just for Democrats but for working people…This race is an easy choice for DSA members: vote for Randy Villegas in California’s 22nd Congressional District.” - CA-DSA Voter Guide
The National Republican Congressional Committee has published at least five releases since July calling Villegas a socialist. Valadao told the AP that many of his constituents fled countries with socialist-leaning governments and that Villegas is running on those policies.
Villegas ran in the primary against both major political parties. His ads paired images of Valadao and fellow Democrat Bains and argued that they are both beholden to the same corporations. On the night he advanced, the Modesto Bee reported his declaration that the valley is not for sale.
In August, Villegas called for a one-year moratorium on new data centers in the Valley and proposed five federal standards, including paying the full cost of electricity and infrastructure, avoiding water waste, and building with local unions.
100,000 Independents Will Decide
Valadao has won this seat five times without a Republican majority, which means he’s traditionally attracted some of the more than 100,000 voters unaffiliated with either major political party.
The average age of these unaffiliated voters is just 39.2 years — a young cohort.
About 69 percent are under 45, and just 10 percent are 65+.
Ethnicity among the independent voters skews strongly Hispanic: among those with a known ethnic background, 70.9% are Hispanic (69,403), followed by English/Welsh (13.9%), Scots (2.0%), and Indian/Hindu (2.0%).
Independent voters have a history of low turnout. In the 2024 general (presidential), only 37,424 voted — a 35.9 percent turnout rate.
In the 2022 general (midterm) only 17,446 voted — a 16.7 percent turnout rate.
Campaign Could Cost $50 Million Before All Is Said and Done
Independent expenditures across the cycle now total $10,471,243.
The Associated Press, citing AdImpact, reported on September 5 that Republicans have spent or booked more than $13 million in airtime and digital through Election Day, with Democrats at $12.6 million, making CA-22 one of the five most expensive races in the country.
Democrats Gerrymandered David Valadao’s District. Did It Backfire? is republished as part of The Fulcrum’s partnership with IVN and the Latino News Network to expand voter‑first journalism and strengthen public‑centered coverage of democracy.
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