The San Joaquin Valley’s 22nd congressional district should have been a Democratic seat. A majority-Latino district, it includes most of Kings County and parts of Tulare and Kern counties, including the east side of Bakersfield. The partisan lean is D+10, one of the two bluest of any House seats held by a Republican anywhere in the country. Why is that, you might be wondering? I’ll explain it— and it’s the same exact-- and pathetic-- reason the Democrats may miss flipping the seat again in November.
Had the DCCC been tasked with finding the single worst candidate to take on Valadao, they couldn’t have done a better job than coming up with Rudy Salas, then a corrupt-beyond-belief conservative Assemblyman, best known for selling out his constituents’ interests to corporate donors, now a corrupt-beyond-belief conservative former Assemblyman desperate to get back onto the public trough. In Sacramento he was widely considered one of the 2 or 3 worst members of the legislature. You don’t get a scorecard from the Courage Campaign much worse than this:
He’s the quintessential DCCC candidate. They love his corruption and they love his conservatism. He is them; they are him. And after he flopped in 2022, they re-recruited him for this year. They’ve even gone so far as to help pay for negative ads against his Democratic primary opponent! The DCCC sucks so bad. Nothing is ever going to make it better.
Faced with two shitty candidates, CA-22 has become notorious as one of the lowest turnout districts in America. Why even bother to vote? In 2022, Valadao beat Salas 52,994 (51.5%) to 49,862 (48.5%). Valadao ran up big wins in Tulare and Kings counties, while Salas beat him narrowly in Bakersfield.
Yesterday, Max Cohen took a look at how the race is shaping up this cycle. And it’s ugly, not just for the Democrats. Last cycle, an extreme MAGAt, Chris Mathys, ran in the jungle primary— and came in third, nearly knocking Valadao out of the race:
Mathys is running again and, a rematch between Valadao and Salas, wrote Cohen, “is no sure thing. There’s a real fear among members of both parties that they may not get their favored candidate through California’s top-two primary next month. The top House GOP super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, is pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into ads protecting Valadao from a MAGA challenger. That GOP opponent, Chris Mathys, came within 1,200 votes of beating Valadao and advancing to the general election. ‘We’re taking no chances. We will do whatever it takes to ensure Rep. Valadao is successful in his primary,’ CLF President Dan Conston told us in a statement. The CLF ad accuses Mathys of being ‘soft on crime’. Mathys started running ads (below) in the district recently that sharply criticize Valadao for voting to impeach former Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Valadao, one of the more moderate members of the House GOP Conference, is seen as the only Republican who can win in the Democratic-leaning district.”
I hope someone reminds Trump that Valadao voted to impeach him andthat Mathys is a total MAGAt. Democrats hope that even if Mathys, who would be much easier to beat in the general election-- even for a terrible candidate like Salas-- doesn’t beat Valadao in the primary, he will damage him so badly that Salas will have a better chance to win. “The DCCC,” wrote Cohen, “took the unusual step of running joint ads with the Salas campaign in the primary in a sign of how highly Democrats rate the former California state legislator. Democrats view flipping the district blue as critical for winning back the majority.
This week, Salas’ campaign started running negative ads dinging Democratic California state Sen. Melissa Hurtado on abortion rights. The spot claims Hurtado— who has high name identification levels in the district— skipped key votes on this issue. Hurtado said Salas should be “ashamed” of the attack ad and touted her Planned Parenthood rating.
House Majority PAC, CLF’s Democratic counterpart, also started airing Spanish-language ads touting Salas this week. HMP is putting $850,000 into ads between now and the March 5 primary.
“With this investment, House Majority PAC is sending a strong and clear message that Democrats are committed to reclaiming the majority this November,” HMP President Mike Smith said in a statement.
By the way, just so no one gets the wrong idea, Hurtado is almost as bad as Salas— not quite as bad, but bad enough to not be worth supporting. Here's an ad Salas is running against her: