BAKERSFIELD, Calif. – Early results suggest a familiar outcome in a closely watched rematch for California’s 22nd Congressional District in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Republican incumbent David Valadao was ahead by 10 percentage points with a little more than half of all votes counted. His Democratic challenger, Rudy Salas, is hopeful he can mount a comeback as more ballots are processed.
The Associated Press has yet to call the race, which is considered a toss-up.
The seat is one of a handful across the country that could determine which party controls a deeply divided House of Representatives in 2025.
The race brought national attention to a largely rural and majority Latino district that covers all of Kings County and parts of Kern and Tulare counties.
Both candidates believe the contest will ultimately be decided on local issues. Those include fighting inflation, easing homelessness and delivering water to communities and farmers in the ag-dominant region.
“I’ve always been an advocate for immigration, especially immigration reform, because we have a process that’s been broken for a long time,” Valadao said during the district’s only debate in October.
Voters like Sandy Castro were swayed by Valadao’s debate performance.
“I saw a lot of action that Valdao has taken. But I didn’t see too much action that Rudy Salas has taken,” Castro said Tuesday night as she dropped her ballot off at the Kern County Fairgrounds precinct.
That was the same place where Salas deposited his own ballot earlier that morning.
Speaking to KVPR at a crowded Bakersfield watch party Tuesday, Salas said the early vote counts were of little immediate concern.
“I feel great about where we’re at so far,” Salas said. “We knocked on over 250,000 doors and called over a million people in the district.”
Valadao spent his election night in Hanford, where he lives and his family runs a dairy farm.
Race to the middle
Both Salas and Valadao ran campaigns that brought them toward the middle – each touting their bipartisan bonafides.
Valadao was one of 10 Republicans in 2021 to vote to impeach now president-elect Donald Trump, and he’s one of just two of those who held onto his seat after the 2022 midterms.
During his race, Valadao declined to publicly endorse between Trump and his Democratic challenger for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s unclear whether that decision helped his reelection chances among voters, or if it could hurt his position in Congress with Trump soon heading back to the White House.
“I’m going to let history decide how that vote plays out,” Valadao said at last month’s debate.
Meanwhile, for his part, Salas has highlighted the way he broke with California Democrats when he voted to oppose a controversial gas tax when he was in the state Assembly. That decision cost him a key committee chairmanship.
“It’s a decision I would make again,” he said.
Congressional Democrats are more optimistic about their prospects in the neighboring 13th Congressional District, in the northern part of the Valley. Democrat Adam Gray hopes to unseat Republican incumbent John Duarte in their own rematch from 2022.
Preliminary results on Wednesday afternoon showed Duarte ahead by 3 points.
Both districts are of key importance to Democrats, who are trying to control the House and block a Republican trifecta in Washington, D.C.
