This Latino-majority California district has never sent a Latino to the US House. Why turnout is key

California’s 22nd Congressional District — rolling with rich farmland for dairy, nuts and fruits — houses one of the most hotly-contested primary races in the state, where two Democrats and two Republicans are battling to squeeze past each other to November’s election.

Whether a Democrat makes it in this left-leaning district comes down to turnout, which is historically low.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, has represented this area for the better part of a decade. Democrats involved in national fundraising are desperately trying to flip his seat, backing former Assemblyman Rudy Salas, D-Bakersfield, who came within a 3% margin of Valadao in 2022 during another low turnout general election.

For Democrats’ plan to work, Salas must first beat out in-party challenger State Sen. Melissa Hurtado, D-Bakersfield. But low turnout and enough votes split between these Latino Democrats could send Valadao and Republican Chris Mathys, an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, to the general election on Nov. 5.

In addition to a New York district, the 22nd is the nation’s most left-leaning congressional seat held by a Republican. Voters here backed President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump by 13 percentage points in 2020. There are far more Democrats than Republicans registered to vote there. More than 60% of registered voters are Latino, though the area has never elected a Latino to the U.S. House of Representatives. Many voters here are young: 36%, the largest block.

But expected low turnout in the district suggests that older, white, conservative voters, who are historically more reliable voters in the district’s primaries, will disproportionately decide the race.

In California’s 22nd — a Central Valley district that includes most of Kings County as well as parts of Kern and Tulare counties — the Latino population “is very migratory. It’s very poor,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant in California and expert on Latino voting trends, “and all of those are indicators of very, very low turnout, which is what also characterizes that seat.”

Rural seats like this one have tended to go for a Republican, Madrid said. But in this Latino-majority voting district, “because of the turnout issue, primarily, Republicans have been able to hold on to by their fingernails.”

Could California’s jungle primary lock Democrats out?

Turnout statewide is expected to be low this year, according to early data tracked by Political Data, Inc., but especially in California’s 22nd, an area which historically has low turnout compared to other parts of the state.

While its far too early to predict turnout — and it could take weeks beyond March 5 for the ballots to be counted — polarizing presidential candidates and a lack of voter enthusiasm, particularly among Democrats, make it fair to assume turnout in the 22nd will be subpar, said Andrew Acosta, a Democratic consultant who works on California campaigns in the Central Valley. Republicans disgruntled with a Democratic-led Sacramento and Washington D.C. are likely to be more motivated to turn up, said Republican consultant Matt Rexroad, who also works on California campaigns in the Central Valley.

Analysts who rate House races based on whether or not they might select a Democrat or Republican say the 2024 race in the 22nd is a toss-up. It is one of the races that will decide which party holds the House majority, raising panic over whether a Democrat gets to run in November.

All those factors have led Democrats to make a full court press to avoid being locked out of the primary. Messages from California Democrats Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Alex Padilla asked voters to donate to Salas for fear of a Democratic lockout.

“The governor doesn’t text people about giving money to a congressional race against another Democrat unless there’s something happening,” Acosta said. “There’s there’s clearly some concerns about where Salas is going to land in all this.”

Democrats can get blocked from the general election because, unlike in most other states, California puts all candidates for an office on the primary ballot for voters to choose from. The top-two vote-getters regardless of party move on.

Still, Democratic congressional lockouts haven’t been common since California switched to these primaries in 2012, said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of national-election-analyzing Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

“I feel like every cycle, there’s some district that emerges where there’s some worry, particularly for Democrats, that they might get shut out,” Kondik said, “and this is the one this time.”

Paul Mitchell, founder and vice president of PDI, said while the odds of a lockout are low, it is human nature to brace one’s self against unlikely events. “You could essentially even see a situation where Democrats lose their House majority because they were too afraid to spend money early in a race like this,” he said. “That would be silly.”

Hurtado has an edge, Acosta said. She was just re-elected in one of the closest Legislative races in recent memory: Hurtado beat a challenger by just 13 votes in 2022. As a sitting state senator, she has great name recognition.

But she doesn’t have a lot of campaign cash — barely more than $10,000, compared to Salas’ $122,000. Salas has fundraised and spent almost 10 times what Hurtado has, according to Federal Election Committee filings as of Feb. 14. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House’s Democratic campaign arm, spent on television advertisements for Salas and named him a “Red to Blue” candidate to gather more attention and aid.

Despite the line drawn by her party, Hurtado has not backed down.

“As a woman of color, as Latina, I feel like we’re always put to the test, right?” Hurtado said. “Like we always have to work extra hard to prove ourselves.”

While there’s a low chance of a Republican lockout, it’s not impossible. “The incumbent, who’s strongest, he’s got an attack from his right. Valadao of course voted to impeach Donald Trump, which doesn’t go over well in those conservative parts,” Madrid said.

The district tends toward low Latino turnout

As of Friday, only 7% of the 307,000 ballots sent in the 22nd had been returned, according to the PDI tracker. Republicans were turning out in high rates compared to Democrats in the 22nd. No-party preference voters had very low turnout.

Overall, 61% of voters in the 22nd are Latino; 32% are white. Black, Asian and voters of other ethnicities make up the remainder.

Only 5% of Latino voters had returned their ballots compared to 12% of white voters. Latino and overall turnout was under-performing even compared to two years ago, when there was a gubernatorial election, Mitchell said. Low turnout has historically been more prevalent in California gubernatorial years than presidential ones.

Pablo Rodriguez, the executive director of Communities for a New California Education Fund, which works on voter engagement, said turnout now is low because the election is happening in March when few people are paying attention to politics. California primaries in non-presidential years are in June.

The tendency toward lower Latino turnout in the district comes in part from the prevalence of seasonal work in the area, which means someone registered to vote there two years ago might live in a different district now, Madrid said. Migratory work also often goes hand-in-hand with poverty-level wages, which correlates to voter disengagement, he added.

White voters tend to have higher rates of home ownership and better paying jobs, such as owning farms, which suggests higher rates of turnout. To be clear, not everyone in the 22nd works in agriculture and this dynamic does not fit all voters in the 22nd.

Latino turnout tends to be low across California. But Latinos in the state also tend to vote later, experts said, so percentages will change.

“You have a confluence or intersection of low-income and low-educational levels in that area which, for Latinos in that area, they can find themselves just more likely to be in multiple categories that predict low turnout,” said Mindy Romero, founder and director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy who is an expert in Latino voting trends.

Lacking outreach means Latino voters are left out

Because campaigns are more focused on getting likely voters, they don’t target Latino voters as much as they should, Romero said: “Despite the fact that by Valadao’s seat in some form has been competitive for a long time, campaigns don’t do a very good job of reaching out to the Latino community period, I would argue, in that area of the country.”

Campaigns need more boots on the ground to get Latino and no-party preference voters engaged, added Rodriguez, noting that women are particularly important when it comes to Democratic voter outreach.

Rodriguez thinks Salas could become the first Latino to represent the area in the House this year. But Democrats have a lot of catching up to do.

“The Democratic State Party has zero infrastructure in the Central Valley and they ceded this region to conservatives because they didn’t believe that they could win,” he said. “So they’re trying to play catch up.”

Salas, who became the first Latino on the Bakersfield City Council and spent a decade in the Assembly, has stressed health care, water, affordability and other issues that have sometimes led him to buck party. He pointed to the lack of bills the Republican-led House has passed amid GOP turmoil, including on a border bill, which he said his background would have helped with.

“When you start talking about border issues and you start talking about immigration, you need somebody at that table that actually has lived through it. With my background, for instance, I think can be very valuable,” Salas said. “I grew up in a farmworker family.”

Salas said that his campaign was working heavily on turnout, including through his work teaching at a local university: “It’s incumbent upon us to make sure that we get everybody to the polls that we can, and that’s what we’re focusing on heavily this time, is making sure that people just turn in their ballots.”

Hurtado, whose State Senate term ends in 2026, said consultants and constituents urged her to run for Congress. She stressed issues of water infrastructure and poverty.

“I’m feeling it as well. And so again, I want to see, I want to hear solutions,” Hurtado said on poverty. “Because that’s what people want right now. They don’t want candidates attacking each other.”

What would happen in a Republican runoff?

A Republican runoff could benefit Valadao, Rexroad said. Mathys got into the race in protest of the congressman’s vote to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“If he gets a runoff against that guy, I think Valadao crushes him.” Rexroad said. “Every Democrat in that district, in a close district, is going to say, ‘Well, I don’t really love David Valadao,’ or some of them will. But they’re definitely not voting for Mathys.”

Valadao, who has been in the House for the most part since 2013, regularly campaigns off of water, inflation, affordability and jobs — all important issues to the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural and oil-and-gas hub. He was briefly unseated in 2018. During a “blue wave,” former Democratic Congressman T.J. Cox ousted Valadao on a slim margin. Valadao beat Cox in 2020 by the same margin (Cox now faces federal fraud charges).

Mathys said border security was of utmost concern and that government over-regulation on issues like oil, water and agriculture have caused undo hardship on the San Joaquin Valley. In reference to a groundwater management act, he said, “To me this is onerous, excessive and creates an unfriendly environment, forcing some farmers frankly not to be able to plant. It’s just too regulatory.”

The incumbent Valadao, who is generally more moderate than Mathys, seems the most likely of the four candidates to advance.

“California’s primary system means that every candidate is competing for every vote until next Tuesday,” said Faith Mabry, a spokeswoman for the congressman. “Rep. Valadao will continue putting people, not any political party, first, to earn votes from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents across the Valley.”