At first glance, the congressional district covering a swath of Central Valley farmland from Fresno to Bakersfield looks like fertile ground for Democrats.
Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in the 21st district by more than 17 percentage points, and Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 15 points here in the last presidential election. More than 70 percent of its residents are Latino.
But with the Friday filing deadline looming for candidates in the 2018 election, party leaders have scrambled to find a standard bearer to take on Republican Rep. David Valadao, who’s represented the district since 2013.
The 2016 Democratic candidate, Emilio Huerta, dropped out this week after struggling to raise money. And the only Democrat who has jumped in so far, entrepreneur T.J. Cox, doesn’t live in the district and has other vulnerabilities in his business record.
It’s a marked contrast with competitive Republican-held Congressional districts in Southern California and elsewhere in the state that have seen an outpouring of credible Democratic candidates. Democrats are counting on wins in California to help take back the House of Representatives this year.
Now local activists are worried that the blue wave election the party is expecting this year will leave their chunk of the Valley dry.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Kimberly Kirchmer, president of the Democratic Women of Kern County. “It’s too bad that we don’t have some homegrown folks who feel that they can take this on.”
Huerta, the son of prominent labor rights activist Dolores Huerta, lost the last election by 13 points. He had struggled to raise money for a 2018 rematch and said he didn’t want to imperil Democrats’ opportunity to take the seat.
“I just felt it would be better to give another Democrat the chance,” he said in an interview. “The goal is to unseat Valadao — I don’t have an ego in the race.”
Cox jumped into the race Tuesday, switching over from the more crowded field of Democrats taking on Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, in the 10th Congressional district to the north. He’s the president and founder of the Central Valley NMTC Fund, which invests in economically disadvantaged areas of the Valley, funding projects such as health clinics and job training programs. In 2006, Cox ran for Congress against former Rep. George Radanovich, losing by more than 20 points.
Cox moved to Modesto last summer to run in the 10th district but will now move back to Fresno, where he has a house a few miles outside the 21st district. (Candidates don’t have to live in the congressional districts where they run.)
“I work every day in the 21st,” Cox said.
Cox has a few other potential vulnerabilities in addition to his address. In 2015, his own lawyers sued him for not paying his legal bills, and a judge ordered him to pay more than $49,000, including interest, according to Fresno County court records. He later paid the bill.
That debt came from an extended legal dispute over one of Cox’s businesses, a real estate firm called CMSS. In 2007, the firm sold a Fresno storage unit property to A-American Self Storage, a storage chain. A-American later discovered leaks and other problems in the roof that led to water damage in the facility and filed for arbitration against Cox’s company.
An arbitrator found that Cox knew about the roof problems at the time of the sale, according to a 2016 appeals court judgment. The arbitrator ordered CMSS to pay A-American more than $1.3 million for breach of contractual warranty.
Cox said that the roof defect was a contractor’s fault and he didn’t learn about it until several years after the sale. And he said the dispute over his legal bills was due to a delay in an insurance payment. “These are not unusual things to go through with the amount of business I do,” he said.
Cox and his wife, Kathleen, were also hit with an IRS tax lien last year for $48,362 in unpaid income tax, county records show. He paid the taxes and the lien was released in January, according to a document provided by his campaign.
Cox blamed the lien on an IRS mistake. “I have lived through basically bureaucratic incompetence,” Cox said. “My check was stuck on the back of somebody else’s payment.”
Democrats’ difficulty drumming up more viable candidates in the 21st district is a sign the party lacks a strong bench in the Valley. To help build it up, local leaders want to see more financial and organizational support from the state and national party.
“The Central Valley is a forgotten stepchild,” said Michael Evans, the chair of the Fresno County Democratic Party.
Some activists say Huerta hurt Democrats’ chances by sticking in the race too long before dropping out, scaring off other potential challengers worried about antagonizing his famous family.
The 21st is also one of the poorest congressional districts in the state, with a median income of $41,174, according to census data. While some of the Democrats running for Congress in Southern California are millionaires ready to spend their fortunes to get elected, there are fewer people able to do that in the Valley. “People want to run and step forward, but the cost is prohibitive,” said Cathee Romley, the Kern County party chair.
Cox has shown a willingness to self-fund. According to the latest federal campaign fundraising records, he raised about $200,000 from donors last year and gave his campaign a $200,000 personal loan. His campaign had $280,000 in the bank at the end of 2017, compared with more than $980,000 for Valadao.
Cox said he’s planning to focus on health care policy and Valadao’s vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would have cut Medi-Cal for many district residents.
“He voted to take away health care from over 50 percent of the population in this district,” Cox said. “I’ve been creating health clinics in this district.”
Valadao, a dairy farmer who speaks Spanish, has proved himself a tough contender in previous races, despite his party’s registration disadvantage. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“T.J. Cox is a failed congressional candidate who has shopped all over the Central Valley for a district to run in,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, calling Cox a “third-string recruit.” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Drew Godinich responded that Cox was “a compelling and exciting candidate” whose record contrasted with Valadao’s “crusade to rip healthcare away from tens of thousands of his own constituents.”
For his part, Huerta said he’s planning to start a new organization to support Democrats in the Valley and boost civic engagement and turnout among Latinos.
“We here in the Valley need to do more to organize so we can recruit our candidates and get our candidates elected,” he said. “It’s a question of who’s going to pick up the ball.”
