CA-22 is a fairly safe blue district in California’s Central Valley, parts of 3 counties— Kern, Tulare and Kings. Biden beat Trump by 13 points— 55.3% to 42.3%. Two years later, though, the Democrats ran a corrupt conservative state legislator, Rudy Salas, arguably the worst member of teh Assembly. He lost a district with a D+10 partisan lean and a D+5 PVI, even though the DCCC wasted $5,5521,046 on the race, while Pelosi’s PAC threw in another $4,577,805. This grotesque record just wasn’t something Salas could overcome-- nore did he even try; he bragged about it, hoping to attract Republican votes (which he didn't, while discouraging Democrats):
California runs open jungle primaries. Salas won all 3 counties, Kern with 52%, Tulare with 36% and Kings with 37%. That’s because they were 3 Republicans in the race. This is how the June 27 primary came out:
Rudy Salas (D)- 24,092 (45.4%)
David Valadao (R)- 13,583 (25.6%)
Chris Mathys (MAGA)- 12,273 (23.1%)
Adam Medeiros (R)- 3,150 (5.9%)
Valadao had just voted to impeach Trump, which hurt him badly with the Republican base but actually did him a lot of good with independent voters. At the time of the election, there were 312,053 registered voters in CA-22:
Democrats- 130,928 (43.35%)
Republicans- 78,525 (26.00%)
No Party Preference- 68,508 (22.68%)
Salas was unable to turn out Democratic voters, for obvious reasons. Less obvious— the hapless DCCC-- apparently eager to lose the seat again while wasting millions of dollars-- recruited him to run again this cycle.
A low turnout general election between two disliked candidates put Valadao back in office:
Valadao- 52,994 (51.5%)
Salas- 49,862 (48.5%)
What a shit show! Valadao won Kings (56%) and Tulare (60%) and Salas scraped by in Kern (53%). As early as January, Mathys made it clear he was going to take on Valadao again, although he didn’t officially launch his campaign until Friday. His raison d'être is basically that Valadao voted to impeach Trump. He never stops brings that up. “I thought President Trump did an excellent job. He was very effective. We had a strong economy, people were working, products were affordable. To me that’s what we want in a president. After four years of extremely successful administration, David Vaaldao, Republican in name only, votes to impeach a Republican president. It is betrayal not only to the people of the United States, but to the people that live in District 22.”
He’s a typical MAGAt crackpot— an anti-Choice, anti-Socialism, pro-gun, xenophobic election denier and most of all, in favor of impeaching Biden. One plank on his website sounds more like something that he took from Bernie or AOC than like anything Republicans ever vote in favor of once they get into office: “Prescription drug prices must be reduced. That's why I support innovative ideas like 'Most Favored Nations'. This requires manufacturers of prescription medication to sell to U.S. pharmacies at the best price offered to any other industrialized nation.”
His issue page, though, has just has one entry so far: “President Trump has fought on our behalf to protect our conservative, Republican values. It is unbelievable that Congressman David Valadao would vote for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. I will do everything possible to restore our conservative values and make sure America never becomes a socialist country.”
He must have been pretty disappointed last cycle when Valadao was one of the only Republicans who voted for impeachment who Trump let slide— a personal favor to McCarthy. Trump is expected to ignore Mathys again this cycle.
There’s another really horrible conservative Democrat in the primary, state Sen. Melissa Hurtado, scrambling the race even more and making it anyone’s ballgame. She's almost as bad as Salas-- who's almost as bad as Valadao. There's a reason why this is one of the lowest turnout districts in California.
