The latest Democrat aiming to unseat Republican Rep. David Valadao isn’t trying to do it from the center.
Randy Villegas, a Visalia, Calif. school board trustee, is hoping economic populism will resonate in a swing district that continues to be a top Democratic target. He also plans to tie Valadao to President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and GOP efforts to slash federal government.
Like other Democrats who have embraced an anti-corporate message in the aftermath of the 2024 election, his candidacy will represent a test of progressive messaging in a purple district.
“I’m running on an economic populist message,” Villegas said in a phone interview. “I think we need to have candidates who are willing to say that they’re going to stand up against corporate greed, that they are going to stand against corruption in government, and that they are going to stand against billionaires that are controlling the strings right now.”
Affiliated with the Working Families Party, Villegas could run to the left in a Democratic primary, though he said he would “hesitate to put any labels on myself.”
The majority-Latino 22nd District in California’s San Joaquin Valley has been a top Democratic target the past few cycles, though the 2024 election saw it slide toward President Donald Trump along with many other Latino-heavy districts across the country. Valadao has represented the area in Congress for all but two of the last dozen years, representing the seat since 2021 and holding a previous version of the district from 2013 to 2019. (Valadao was ousted in the 2018 midterms but won his seat back two years later even as Joe Biden carried the district.)
He’s touted his centrist creds in the House and is one of only two House Republicans remaining who impeached Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Still, Villegas is trying to hitch him to controversial moves by national Republicans that could result in cuts to federal programs.
“The reason that I got to where I was was because of programs like Medicaid, because of programs like free and reduced school lunch and WIC, and now all of those programs are under threat right now because Valadao won’t stand up to Musk, to Trump, to his Republican colleagues,” Villegas said. Raised in Bakersfield, Calif., he’s also an associate professor of political science at College of the Sequoias.
One wrinkle in the race: it’s not clear whether former California state Rep. Rudy Salas, Democrats’ nominee the last two cycles, will run again, though he’s pulled paperwork to run for the seat. Villegas, who noted he’d been an intern for Salas when he was a college student, said he had “all the respect for the work [Salas] did in the California State Assembly, but I think that voters are ready for a new face.”
