The race for California's 25th Congressional District is easily one of the most watched — and chaotic — House races of the 2020 cycle. Cenk Uygur, a progressive media star, is taking on Christy Smith, a local politician with a liberal record and establishment backing, in the Democratic primary. If the party wants to hold on to the House, this is one of the key seats it must win.
Jessica Schulberg, a HuffPost senior reporter, spent weeks interviewing the candidates and people in the district. She joins Must Reads to talk about her piece on this critical race.
So there's … a lot going on here. Let's start with explaining how this seat became vacant — what happened?
In October, RedState and the Daily Mail published stories accusing Katie Hill, the Democratic congresswoman who represented CA-25 at the time, of having affairs with a campaign staffer and a congressional aide (Hill denies the latter affair). The stories included nude photos of her; Hill has accused her estranged ex-husband of circulating the explicit images without her consent, a crime referred to as revenge porn. Hill resigned soon after the photos were published.
This was a huge deal. Hill flipped the seat in 2018 running as an openly queer women with a progressive platform that included “Medicare for All” in a swing district that had long been held by Republican men. Seeing a victim of revenge porn get pushed out of her job over a consensual relationship — while several men in politics have kept their jobs despite credible sexual harassment allegations — was devastating for Hill’s supporters. Democratic Party operatives also worried that it would be harder to hang on to the seat in a special election without the momentum of the 2018 midterms.
Cenk Uygur clearly thinks he's the one true progressive in this race, and that Smith represents the establishment. But how do her supporters see it?
Smith supporters say that Uygur is ignoring Smith’s track record as an assemblywoman when she voted for progressive causes and showed up for local progressive fights. There is a lot of truth to that, which I get into in the story. But it’s undeniable that Uygur is running to her left — particularly on Medicare for All, getting money out of politics, and overall political tactics.
Smith’s fans also say that Uygur can’t be a legitimate progressive because of the offensive comments he’s made in the past about women, gay men, and religious Jews and Muslims. When I met with Uygur, I found his apology to be genuine and self-aware. I think reasonable people can reach a different conclusion — but I also think political operatives have participated in some bad-faith smearing of Cenk, taking some of the things he's said out of context or jumping to the least generous interpretation of his comments.
It's not just the Democratic side that's got big names in it — who else is running for this seat?
George Papadopoulos! He’s the former Trump campaign adviser who did 12 days in prison for lying to the FBI in the Russia investigation. He now lives in Los Angeles (but not in the 25th District) and wrote a book claiming he was the victim of a deep state effort to bring down Trump. From what I can tell, his campaign consists of tweeting things like, “We trigger more lunatics by voting me in CA-25.”
Steve Knight, the former CA-25 congressman who lost to Katie Hill in 2018, is also running. Democrats seem most concerned about Knight and Mike Garcia, a former Navy combat pilot.
Tell us how California's jungle primaries work. Is there a chance that this goes really poorly for Democrats?
In California, the top two vote recipients, regardless of political party, face off in the general election. This means you could end up with two Democrats or two Republicans competing against each other. There’s an additional quirk with special elections: If the top candidate gets more than 50% of the votes, they win outright without progressing to a runoff. Democrats were hoping Smith could pull that off, but it’s a lot harder with Uygur in the race. The worst-case scenario for Democrats is that Smith and Uygur split the party’s vote and get shut out of the runoff — although the same risk applies for Republicans.
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