Congressional District 25
- The District: The district leans toward more registered Democrats than Republicans. Once known for its heavy conservative ties, it’s changing. It blankets parts of two counties, L.A. and Ventura. It includes an area from Porter Ranch to Simi Valley to the Santa Clarita Valley, and to the Antelope Valley. It’s diverse in terms of its political inclinations. Notable spots in the area include the Reagan Library, Edwards Air Force Base (also in the 26th Congressional), the California Institute of the Arts, Magic Mountain. There’s also renewed enthusiasm over the area’s aerospace development, coupled with the potential for the U.S. Air Force to choose Palmdale as a home for the new U.S. Space Command.
- The Incumbent: Mike Garcia, 44, grew up in Saugus. Before politics, he’d made a living as an executive at Raytheon and in real estate. On his website, he says he found success in flipping homes and then selling them, and also offering rental properties to lower-income families since 2004. According to his bio, he is a first-generation American whose father legally immigrated to the U.S. in 1959. Garcia graduated from Saugus High School and was nominated by former Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. He’d graduate and move on to fly F/A-18s off the U.S.S. Nimitz. He flew combat missions during the war in Iraq in 2003. Garcia is married to Rebecca Garcia, the owner of the Rebecca Rollins Interiors in Santa Clarita, and has two sons.
- The Challenger: Christy Smith, 51, has lived in Santa Clarita for nearly 40 years. In more recent years, she’s represented the area in the overlapping 38th Assembly District, after serving on the Newhall School Board beginning in 2009. A graduate with honors from UCLA, Smith founded the Valencia Valley Technological Education Foundation, which worked to connect schools to the web and put computers in classrooms. She served as its first chairwoman. As an assemblywoman, Smith counts securing millions of dollars for local colleges, childcare and health care clinics, and senior centers among her accomplishments. And she also touts her efforts to pass a paid family leave for new parents and caregivers. Smith is married to Philip and and they have two daughters.
- The Race: The race is defined by traditional divides between Republicans and Democrats. Garcia is propelled by deregulation, small government and low taxes. Smith is propelled by the government’s role in expanding healthcare to more people, investments in education and affordable housing. But this year, the race is increasingly animated by the actions and policies of President Donald Trump and the local, state and federal response to COVID-19. Each side is claiming momentum going into the final weeks of the campaign. Garcia touts big fundraising gains of $3.184 million in the third quarter and closing it out with just under $2 million cash-on-hand. According to the Federal Elections Commission, as of the end of September, his total contributions were are at $4.2 million since the beginning of 2019. But Smith touts her own $1.3 million, bringing her total raised to $4.8 million. (The FEC showed her total contributions at $3.5 million by the end of June). Her campaign is reporting a slight edge over Garcia in internal polling.
Oh, how time flies and things change.
Exhibit A: The 25th Congressional District — where Trump-era politics have collided with COVID-era concerns.
It was just less than a year ago that Mike Garcia was campaigning, along with a sprinkling of brave Republicans who actually thought they had a chance against Katie Hill. She was the skyrocketing young Democratic congresswoman, who along with her Assembly counterpart Christy Smith had flipped their northern L.A./Ventura County districts from red to blue in 2018. For them, the sky was the limit in an ever-bluing district that stretches from Porter Ranch to Simi Valley to Palmdale and Lancaster.
And then it wasn’t.
Flash forward to the end of a tumultuous 2020, and it’s Garcia who is defending the 25th Congressional District seat in this year’s Nov. 3 General Election. Smith, once considered the favorite after Hill resigned, is the challenger.
Voters here have seen three Congress members in the seat in two years.
But as much as the tables turned for the purple 25th in 2020, for Garcia, 44, the platform isn’t all that different than where it started.
“Constitution, capitalism and free market competition,” is a frequent refrain from the former Navy fighter pilot and Raytheon executive who’s GOP street cred has been heavily touted by President Donald Trump and Garcia’s supporters, ranging from former California Gov. Pete Wilson to the National Right to Life Committee.
The chorus from Smith, a former Newhall school board member and assemblywoman: You can still have a free market, but with “a level playing field,” buoyed by a government role in protecting the economy and the environment. They’re notes that have prompted support from civil rights leader Dolores Huerta to former President Barack Obama in a much watched California seat.
At stake is who the district’s 420,505 registered voters want to represent the area for the next two years as it emerges from a catastrophic pandemic. But if you’re Trump or Joe Biden, it’s a key seat in gaining votes in Congress.
But whoever wins could face continued gridlock on The Hill.
Garcia has gotten a front-row seat to that logjam in the five months since his stunning special election win over Smith in May to fill out the remainder of Hill’s term.
“Here in D.C. it’s probably the most dysfunctional institution I’ve been a part of,” Garcia said, noting that he has committed much effort to constituent services and setting up district offices in record time. “It’s extremely frustrating when they pack five hours of work into five days. It’s a very partisan atmosphere and very toxic right now, especially with the election season.”
Even while railing against partisan toxicity and his intention to not put party over patriotism, he points to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the reason.
“She’s wanting to give money to illegal immigrants and defund the police … in this latest HERO’s version,” he said, referring to federal aid legislation the Democrats have put on the table. (Any legislation before election was effectively tabled by President Donald Trump on Tuesday). “There’s some true poison pills that aren’t good for the country and frankly are being added for political showmanship rather than actually helping anyone. She’s catering to her base rather than the care of the nation.”
Both promise to lead putting community over party politics, but one person’s political nemesis is another’s political ally in a bitterly fractious 2020, a year when accusations of “socialism” and “corruption” are commonplace.
What they are fighting over?
That kind of division is playing itself out in the 25th Congressional District.
Take AB5, the state Assembly bill requiring firms to reclassify gig workers as employees with the goal of giving them health insurance protections. It’s become a telling flashpoint.
For Smith, who supported the bill during her time in the Assembly, it was about establishing essential worker protections while the Trump Administration is seeking to gut the Affordable Care Act. For Garcia, the legislation was an affront to a market economy that hurt businesses and workers.
Garcia was among several GOP representatives who co-sponsored the Gig Worker Equity Compensation Act, designed to “pre-empt” a bill like AB5 from success in Congress. It’s “killing literally thousands of jobs here in California,” Garcia said, pointing to the threatened departure from California of companies like Uber and Lyft as evidence.
“I look at everything California has done… and we need to do the opposite of that at the federal level,” Garcia said, adding that voters could expect policy choices more in line with the principles that underpinned his AB5 resistance.
As recently as Thursday, on Twitter, Garcia was demanding Smith “oppose a national version” of the bill.
Smith, though, points to the urgency of the bill, spurred by a 2018 California Supreme Court Decision: “Had the California State Legislature not acted, small businesses throughout the state would have suffered millions of dollars in employment lawsuits,” Smith said. “I will always defend small businesses who are the backbone of our economy, and that’s why I co-authored a critical fix to the bill protecting small businesses and supported additional carve-outs for various industries.”
The pandemic and the president that have loomed large in the race for the 25th.
While Garcia has sought to position himself as a defender against a “liberal, socialist agenda” in Congress, Smith has looked to connect Garcia to Trump’s response to COVID-19, while pushing for expanded healthcare and support for public education investment.
My team and I got to work with @Homes4Fams yesterday during their Women’s Empowerment Build Week in support of their mission of providing housing to our veterans and their families. Thank you for allowing me to join you and our incredible veterans in this transformative cause. pic.twitter.com/NkFGltu9YY
— Assemblywoman Christy Smith (@AsmChristySmith) September 15, 2020
“He has been silent and complicit to Trump’s lies resulting in more than 213,000 COVID-19 deaths, millions of permanent job losses and one in five small business closures,” she said, echoing recent tweets.
Garcia has voted with Trump about 91% of the time, according to a tracking poll from FiveThirtyEight. Those include his no votes on bills that would provide more money for clean-energy research, extend housing assitance amid COVID, expand Obamacare and increase law enforcement accountability.
Garcia mirrors many other local and national Republican candidates, who narrow Trump’s abrasive comments and actions to issues of style.
“Not everyone’s in love with his style,” Garcia said. “But the policy makes sense….When you look at what this administration has achieved, when you look at the economic prosperity and the national security accomplishments, before COVID, and hopefully very soon now as we start navigating toward the last phases of COVID, we are going to an amazing level of growth and stability here.”
As politicians keep pushing to defund the police, our officers continue to make sure our communities are safe. I am proud to donate to the AV Sheriff's Boosters, a nonprofit that supports deputies by providing funding for life-saving equipment that is not covered by the dept. pic.twitter.com/FbWK6mzGe2
— Mike Garcia (@ElectMikeGarcia) September 4, 2020
For as much change the district has seen, the candidates’ prescriptions are fairly conventional, even as they both say rebuilding is a top priority as the nation struggles through and out of the pandemic. Getting federal aid to get to the 25th is a priority, they said.
But not far away are longtime issues.
Smith is running on increased investment in public education, a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act, shutting down the Aliso Canyon natural gas facility and pushing for more oversight of local toxic cleanup sites like the Santa Susana Field Lab, beefed up gun safety measures and comprehensive immigration reform.
Garcia is running on policies that reduce regulation and taxes, noting that he would look to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent in a new Congress. Strong border security, beefed up national security, cutting the national debt and term limits are at the top of his to-do list.
Both candidates will tell you they support public safety, education and jobs, federal aid for frontline workers and businesses. But getting there and to what degree they’d tap federal funding are completely different stories.
A changing district
When Sandy Corrales moved to Palmdale 32 years ago from L.A., it reminded her a lot of Orange County, where the GOP dominated local races for years.
“I loved the hometown feel I got instantly when I arrived here,” she said of 1980s Palmdale, on the northern stretch of the 25th. “But at the same time, it was like, ‘Gosh, can one person make a difference here?’”
Today, Corrales, a former Palmdale school board member and a lifelong Democrat, celebrates the growth of the area’s Latino population in the Antelope Valley, part of larger influx of people coming from metro areas farther south.
All told, it was the blue-en-ing of a district known for its conservative-ness, its deep public safety ties and for being the home to the Ronald Reagan Library.
Katie Hill blew the door right open, Corrales said.
“She gave me a sense not only that she was fighting for herself but that she was fighting for me,” she said.
She supports Smith, who she said is poised to flip the seat, just like Hill did.
“It’s the very same feeling as 2018, when Katie Hill was elected,” she said. “You could physically feel something new was on the horizon.”
Not to mention the Trump factor, she added.
“The president has made it 1,000 times worse,” she said. “I never thought a president’s choices or decisions would play as great a factor as in this election, but that’s what we faced today. President Trump has made it very easy to make a decision on how they are going to vote.”
But across the district, in Simi Valley, Robin Kyle, a fierce Garcia supporter and volunteer, has been tending to her outdoor Trump and American flags.
“He is not part of the swamp,” she said of Garcia. “He’s not a lifelong politician. I like what he has to say.”
She said Garcia is a cut above past GOP candidates, in part because “because I’ve never seen him attack anyone for their beliefs,” she said.
“I want him to champion support for the police and for the military,” she said.
Kyle, a nearly 50-year resident of the area, was less enthusiastic about the change in the district, where she fears it’s led to an influx of people with “radical” views.
“It’s not the same place I was raised in,” she said. “It’s not the same place it was when I moved here.”
