Jared Huffman

It’s a crowded field in the contest for the District 2 House of Representatives seat as seven candidates challenge incumbent Jared Huffman in the June 2 primary.

The district boundaries were redrawn last year to favor Democrats in response to Republican-led gerrymandering in Texas. Modoc, Shasta and Siskiyou counties were added to the district, which includes Marin County and the North Coast.

Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat who was first elected to Congress in 2012, is seeking an eighth term. Five of the challengers— Rose Penelope Yee, Tim Geist, Robin Littau, Paul Saulsbury and Angelita Valles — live in Shasta County. The other two, Nicolette Hahn Niman and Gregory Burgess, are Marin residents.

Hahn Niman is a 58-year-old West Marin rancher, author and lawyer. She and her husband, Bill Niman, sued the National Park Service over its decision to prohibit agricultural operations on 28,000 acres at Point Reyes National Seashore. In January 2025, the Nature Conservancy announced that the owners of six dairies and six ranches operating in the park had agreed to halt their operations in exchange for undisclosed compensation from the nonprofit.

“I decided to run for Congress because people were trying to make a living in food production and agriculture and were not being supported,” Hahn Niman said. “In fact, they were being driven out of their profession, out of their homes and off of their land. Our member of Congress was a major player in all that happening. I was deeply troubled.”

Huffman said, “That is a reckless and false narrative.”

Huffman said he helped the ranchers negotiate new 20-year leases with the National Park Service, but the deal was derailed by three environmental groups that refused to accept the agreement and sued.

Huffman said he “took heat from some of the environmental community“ for helping to secure the leases. He conceded that he helped initiate the mediation process that resulted in a settlement agreement that was “maybe bigger than it should have been.”

“But even then,” Huffman said, “the ranching families asked me to support this settlement.”

Huffman, 62, said he should be returned to Congress because no one knows better than he “what this moment is really about and what it requires of our national representative.”

“This is not a drill,” Huffman said. “If you don’t understand that this is a moment where we could lose our democracy, where there is a level of corruption unlike anything we’ve seen in the history of this nation, you don’t understand the moment.”

Hahn Niman and Burgess are running as independents. Hahn Niman said she will caucus with Democrats if elected, while Burgess said he isn’t prepared to commit to either caucus. Yee is a Democrat. Geist, Littau, Saulsbury and Valles are Republicans. Saulsbury was the only Republican who committed to caucusing with the Republican Party.

Littau, 46, a Coast Guard veteran and single mother of four grown children, is the only Republican who identified as a supporter of President Donald Trump.

“It is our civic duty and God-given responsibility to build and not destroy America,” Littau wrote in an email. She said if elected she would focus on legislation “to support the broken family system.”

Saulsbury, 46, a mobile crisis clinician, wrote in an email, “The most important issue facing our nation right now is the rising cost of living and the strain it’s putting on everyday Americans.”

Valles, 57, who has been a prison warden, a director of human resources and a director of finance, also cited “the growing gap between the cost of living and economic sustainability for working families” as the most pressing issue facing the country.

Geist, 71, said he entered the race to alert the public about the dangers of artificial intelligence. He said AI threatens to steal most people’s jobs, but that isn’t the worst of it.

“AI poses an existential risk,” Geist said. “Super-intelligent systems may one day pursue goals that misalign with human survival. Once AI surpasses human intelligence, we may lose the ability to control or even shut it down.”

Burgess, 61, who lives in Mill Valley and has a master’s degree in public health, said the most important issue is food security.

“We are facing a rather drastic problem with our national herds,” Burgess said. “Climate change is reducing our arable land.”

He noted that as of January, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported 86.2 million head of cattle in the United States, the fewest since 1951.

Burgess said that local environmentalists, agriculturalists and tribes need to “come to a sustainable way of managing our land that can sustain us throughout the future.”

Yee, 65, who immigrated to the U.S. from the Philippines in 1992 and co-founded a nonprofit, wrote in an email, “The most important issue facing our nation is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a very small group of elites.”

Yee said she is not accepting any campaign contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or any other pro-Israel lobbying organization. She said she would “pursue an arms embargo on Israel and others where human rights violations are occurring.”

Yee also said she wants to eliminate U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“ICE didn’t exist until 2003 and there’s no reason for it to exist right now,” she said. “As an immigrant myself, I believe that we can create a clear path to citizenship.”

The other candidates were critical of ICE but none called for its elimination.

“My Democratic colleagues and I are not going to fund ICE anymore until we tear it down to the studs and fundamentally reform it,” Huffman said.

Geist said, “I am against ICE shooting Americans and the administration lying about it.”

Hahn Niman said, “There’s no question that there needs to be a course correction. But that being said we obviously need to have a functioning immigration system and an enforcement process that works.”

Burgess said, “People who come across our border illegally are trespassing. It is a slap in the face to those people who did go through the proper channels.”

Other candidates besides Yee criticized Israel but none called for an arms embargo.

Huffman repudiated the violent actions of some Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and calls from some within the government for annexation of the area.

“But I also believe in the right of the state of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state,” Huffman said.

Geist said, “I love the people of Israel; I’m not crazy about Netanyahu. I don’t believe we should make the Israel people suffer in a very hostile climate because they have lousy leadership.”