{"id":506897,"date":"2026-10-24T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T21:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/506897\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T21:00:09","slug":"aoc-newsom-jeffries-swing-through-california-to-help-democrats-in-tight-races","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/506897\/","title":{"rendered":"AOC, Newsom, Jeffries swing through California to help Democrats in tight races"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BAKERSFIELD \u00a0\u2014\u00a0Top Democratic and Republican leaders are sweeping through California as the Nov. 3 election approaches, evidence of the state\u2019s pivotal role in deciding which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives and the fate of President Trump\u2019s final two years in office. <\/p>\n

Seizing on their party\u2019s momentum nationwide, Democrats rallied crowds from Orange County to the Bay Area this past week. They blamed Trump and the Republican-led Congress for rising gas and food prices, massive cuts to healthcare funding, deceitful attacks on the elections process and the vilification of immigrants. <\/p>\n

In the Central Valley, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday evening appeared alongside Randy Villegas, a Democrat challenging Republican incumbent David Valadao of Hanford in a Latino voter-heavy district in the state\u2019s agricultural heartland. The population of the district is one of the youngest in the country, Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd, and Gen Z and millennial voters are expected to play a pivotal role.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the opportunity to take the reins,\u201d said Ocasio-Cortez, one of the nation\u2019s most well-known progressive leaders. \u201cAnd to give direction to where our future will be headed. And I got to tell you, folks, the future is not with David Valadao.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recent polls show Democrats may retake control of the House <\/a>in the Nov. 3 election, and they may have a chance of taking power in the U.S. Senate. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, <\/a>who has swung through California twice within the last month to help Republican candidates, acknowledged the challenges ahead but predicted his party would fare better than many predict.<\/p>\n

Roughly two dozen House races across the country are expected to decide the House majority, including three competitive races in California:<\/a> Those of Republican Valadao, Democratic Rep. Adam Gray in the Central Valley and the open seat of retiring Republican Rep. Darrell Issa in the San Diego area.<\/p>\n

Democrats are hoping that the new congressional maps approved by California voters in 2025 will give them an edge. The reconfigured congressional districts approved by Proposition 50 were a response by California\u2019s Democratic leadership to Trump urging Republicans, notably in Texas, to shift their boundaries to help the GOP hold onto control of Congress during his final two years in office.<\/p>\n

The San Joaquin Valley district represented by Valadao, which already had a Democratic majority, added about 100,000 Fresno residents, turning it even bluer. Valadao has been a perpetual target of Democrats given their longtime voter registration edge in this area. <\/p>\n

Aside from briefly losing the seat for one term nearly a decade ago, Valadao has hung onto the seat. He comes from a dairy farming family and is well-known in the area, winning by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.<\/p>\n

This cycle, Democrats are hammering him for supporting Trump\u2019s budget cuts<\/a> that impacted healthcare programs, a critical issue since roughly two-thirds of the population in his district is covered by Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is known in the state, the most of any district in California, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.<\/p>\n

Valadao is among a handful of GOP members in California\u2019s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest of any state in the nation, and among the Republicans targeted by Democrats in response to Trump\u2019s efforts to keep his party in control of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump\u2019s gerrymandering scheme is going to fail,\u201d said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in Buena Park on Thursday. \u201cIt\u2019s going to fail in Texas. It\u2019s failing in Florida, and it\u2019s failing in North Carolina. But I\u2019m grateful to the people of California who decided to decisively respond and create the situation where we\u2019ll have a fair national map.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party in control of the White House typically loses seats in the midterm election, and Trump and the GOP face additional headwinds<\/a> because of the affordability crisis that the president promised to address when he ran for reelection in 2024. Californians face some of the highest gas and electricity prices in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe MAGA extremists are on the run because they have failed. They\u2019ve broken every promise that they\u2019ve made to the American people,\u201d Jeffries said, after stumping for Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange) at a carpenters\u2019 union hall. \u201cLife has not gotten more affordable. Life is far too expensive. Trump policies \u2026 have increased costs on everyday Americans by thousands of dollars per year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"House <\/p>\n

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries interacts with members of the audience after he delivered a speech during representative Derek Tran\u2019s \u201cTake Back the House\u201d rally for his reelection campaign in California\u2019s 45th Congressional District, at Carpenters Local Union 714 in Buena Park on Thursday. <\/p>\n

(Etienne Laurent\/For The Times)<\/p>\n

Tran narrowly unseated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in 2024, winning by just 653 votes. The recently redrawn district, which is located primarily in Orange County, could give him an edge this election.<\/p>\n

\u201cProp. 50 did help me out of the battleground districts in California,\u201d Tran said. \u201cI got the least amount of help, but better, still better.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the Republican House speaker acknowledged his party\u2019s hurdles<\/a> while stumping for congressional candidate Kevin Lincoln in Stockton in the Central Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re gonna be very sober-minded about the challenge, and I want you all to know the odds that we are facing,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Campaigning for Lincoln, a former Stockton mayor and an underdog in a congressional race against Democratic Rep. Gray of Merced, Johnson acknowledged that the congressional midterm will be a \u201cvery close election.\u201d But he argued that public polling is flawed and fought back against the notion that GOP voters are dejected.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Speaker <\/p>\n

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), center left, and Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) talk to reporters after a campaign event in Bakersfield on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n

(Jae C. Hong \/ AP)<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans are not staying home. They are not depressed,\u201d said Johnson, who also traveled to Bakersfield to campaign for Valadao just a few weeks ago. \u201cThey\u2019re coming out in huge numbers, and we\u2019re going to win because of that. You know why? Because everybody knows what\u2019s at stake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln, the grandson of an immigrant and the son of a teenage mother, talked up his experiences in the military and as a pastor. He aligned himself with the \u201chardworking\u201d people in the Valley, suggesting that D.C. leaders were failing the district.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a job to do, you show up, you roll up your sleeves and you get that job done, and that same standard should apply to the people that we choose to send to Washington, D.C.,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Two of California\u2019s most powerful Democrats, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Gov. Gavin Newsom, on Friday appeared at a San Francisco union hall to rally support for Democratic congressional candidates and warn that basic rights will be at risk if Republicans stay in power in Washington. They urged voters to reject Proposition 39, the Republican-led voter identification measure that comes amid Trump\u2019s baseless claims of widespread, illegal voting by undocumented immigrants. <\/p>\n

Pelosi, who will retire early next year after a historic 40-year run in Congress and two stints as House speaker, criticized Trump\u2019s \u201cvicious, malicious\u201d attempts to undermine elections through gerrymandering, fraud claims and attempts to mandate voter ID. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey are putting up obstacles to participation to vote. As women, if you have your husband\u2019s name in marriage, you\u2019re going to have to go find your birth certificate in order to vote,\u201d Pelosi warned of voter ID requirements. After \u201c63 years in marriage, you think I could find my birth certificate?\u201d Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, warned that Republicans \u201care ruthless\u201d in their attempts to roll back civil rights. The outgoing governor said the 2026 midterm fight began when he and state lawmakers put Proposition 50 on last year\u2019s November ballot. <\/p>\n

\"California <\/p>\n

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a rally, accompanied by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, right, members of the state\u2019s Democratic Party, organized labor and other advocates in San Francisco on Friday.<\/p>\n

(Heather Diehl \/ AP)<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we have done to get us to this point is unbelievable,\u201d he told union members in the Mission District. \u201cYou\u2019re unbelievable, but it won\u2019t mean anything unless we run through the tape.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Democrats were supporting state Sen. Mike McGuire, who is trying to flip one of Northern California\u2019s redrawn congressional districts. He faces Rep. James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who won a June special election to finish the term of the late Rep. Doug LaMalfa. \u201cProp. 50\u2019s final chapter is almost here,\u201d said McGuire, who has represented the rural North Coast in the Senate since 2014. \u201cIt is time to close the book on Donald Trump. It\u2019s time to take America back.\u201d <\/p>\n

Seema Mehta reported from Buena Park, Nicole Nixon from San Francisco and Dakota Smith from Bakersfield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD \u00a0\u2014\u00a0Top Democratic and Republican leaders are sweeping through California as the Nov. 3 election approaches, evidence of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,512,19222,14021,1751,4579,204,137090,24696,4489,195830,1748,225,1519,72],"class_list":["post-506897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-central-valley","tag-control","tag-david-valadao","tag-democrats","tag-district","tag-election","tag-open-seat","tag-party","tag-proposition","tag-republican-led-congress","tag-republicans","tag-state","tag-trump","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506897","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=506897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}