{"id":221856,"date":"2026-03-16T09:42:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T09:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221856\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T09:42:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T09:42:07","slug":"democratic-infighting-intensifies-in-california-house-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/221856\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic infighting intensifies in California House race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Democratic candidates are turning their fire at each other in a crowded primary to flip a must-win seat in Southern California.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Ammar Campa-Najjar and Vista City Councilmember Corinna Contreras are going after San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert for a polling memo they say included racist lines of attack.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">That polling had von Wilpert initially trailing Campa-Najjar but gaining support when voters were read attacks knocking Campa-Najjar, for running \u201cthree campaigns from four different addresses under two different names.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cI will never apologize for my name or my heritage,\u201d said Campa-Najjar, who has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kpbs.org\/news\/midday-edition\/2018\/09\/26\/campa-najjar-responds-rep-hunters-comments-discuss\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:talked;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;talked&quot;}\" class=\"link \">talked<\/a> about changing his last name to honor his mother. And Contreras slammed the \u201cracist attacks\u201d as \u201cdisgraceful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Dan Rottenstreich, a von Wilpert campaign consultant, said in a statement Campa-Najjar \u201chas a long, established pattern of changing who he is depending on the campaign \u2014 his politics, his district, his stances on abortion and Trump, even his name.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Democrats are hoping to flip the district after it became bluer in redistricting and incumbent GOP Rep. Darrell Issa opted to retire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">It\u2019s not the first time a campaign note has roiled the race either, with Punchbowl News <a href=\"https:\/\/punchbowl.news\/article\/campaigns\/campa-najjar-memo\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:reporting;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;reporting&quot;}\" class=\"link \">reporting<\/a> von Wilpert earlier criticized Campa-Najjar for \u201cdivisive, hateful rhetoric\u201d related to the LGBTQ+ community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democratic candidates are turning their fire at each other in a crowded primary to flip a must-win seat&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,38967,76355,1009,101384],"class_list":["post-221856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-democratic-candidates","tag-marni-von-wilpert","tag-southern-california","tag-vista-city-councilmember-corinna-contreras"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}