California — 1st District

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California’s most confusing contest on the June 2 ballot delivered one of the quickest, clearest results.

Assemblymember James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, is heading to Congress after winning one of two races for the state’s 1st Congressional District.

Gallagher, a longtime GOP leader in the Legislature, jumped to an early, insurmountable lead in the special election to fill the remainder of late Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s term in the existing 1st District, sprawling across red-leaning northeastern California.

The Associated Press projected late Tuesday that he would win that race, steamrolling his two Democratic rivals, state Sen. Mike McGuire of Healdsburg and Chico educator Audrey Denney. Gallagher had 62.5% of the vote to 17.6% for both Denney and McGuire, based on the latest results posted shortly after 4 a.m. Wednesday.

In a statement released Tuesday night, Gallagher said, “The results tonight prove what we have known for many years — Doug LaMalfa was loved and respected by the people of his district. I am humbled that the voters of the First District have placed their faith in me, in the same way, to be a voice and champion for our North State communities.”

In the other race for a dramatically reshaped 1st District — going forward, a rough crescent, anchored at its southern end by Santa Rosa, and favoring Democrats — Gallagher and McGuire are headed for a November runoff.

Gallagher was ahead in that race, slightly extending his lead over McGuire by about 10 points as of the latest returns posted at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday. Gallagher had 47.2% of the vote to McGuire’s 37.5%.

Denney, a Butte County nonprofit leader and three-time candidate for the 1st District seat, had 13.4% of the vote.

In a Wednesday morning statement that also served as a concession, Denney reiterated that her campaign had been about “giving Northern Californians a real alternative: a government accountable to people instead of powerful interests.

“Movements,” she added, “are not built by people who accept broken systems as inevitable,” but rather by those “courageous enough to imagine what comes next and determined enough to fight for it.

“The election may be over, but the work of building the future we deserve continues.”

Despite McGuire trailing his Republican rival in early returns, his campaign hailed the snapshot as a victory on Tuesday night, sending out a celebratory statement: “Tonight’s numbers speak for themselves. … Come this November, we will flip this seat.”

Speaking to a reporter Tuesday night after a brief, celebratory speech in front of a Democratic Party crowd at Los Molcajetes restaurant in Santa Rosa, McGuire said he “could not be more thrilled” by the early returns.

“This is playing out just as we thought it would, candidly. And we are going to flip this district in November.”

In that runoff against Gallagher, McGuire expects to get most of the votes which this time around went to Denney.

McGuire’s people also believe he’ll whittle away at Gallagher’s 10-point primary advantage as results continue to trickle in. Pat Sabo, chairwoman of the Sonoma County Democratic Party, lamented Tuesday night that many Democrats waited “until the last minute” to cast their ballots.

Sabo and others believe that plenty of those last-minute Democratic votes remained uncounted Tuesday night.

David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University, said the goal for McGuire “isn’t to win now. It is to win later – while pushing Denney aside.”

What Tuesday’s results reflect, said Sonoma State University political science professor David McCuan, is that while McGuire was never well-positioned to win in the old 1st District, “he is well-positioned for the new district.

“This is all about the play for November.

In the special election to fill LaMalfa’s seat, however, Gallagher steamrolled both his Democratic opponents. As a result, he’s likely to be seated soon by House Speaker Mike Johnson. Come November, he’ll have the advantage of running as the incumbent.

Winning in that reconfigured 1st District, however, will prove a far heavier lift.

In his statement Tuesday night, Gallagher celebrated the victory at hand.

“This was only one vote, but it is perhaps the most important one. The communities and people of the North State are united through our history, our jobs, our farms and industries, and most importantly, by our values and roots that run deep into the land. Their confirmation and vote of confidence means everything to me. I take this trust seriously and I mean to do everything in my power to protect their voice,” he said.

The death of LaMalfa, a staunch conservative and Butte County rice farmer, necessitated the special election — held within the borders of the existing, safely Republican, pre-Prop. 50 1st District — to serve out the remaining months of his term.

Gallagher, an attorney, former minority leader in the Assembly and LaMalfa protegee endorsed by — among many other Republican luminaries, the late congressman’s widow, and also by President Donald Trump — has worked to depict McGuire as a machine politician who basically drew up the new 1st District for himself, an oft-leveled but never-proved accusation. He’s accused McGuire of votes that have helped fuel the state’s stubbornly high electricity and gas prices.

“In November,” he said Tuesday night, “we will be running in a new district, drawn not by an independent citizens commission, but in a backroom by my opponent Mike McGuire and other Sacramento politicians. The results tonight indicate that we will do well, as voters are fed up with Gavin Newsom and his chief Lieutenant Mike McGuire, whose policies have made California unaffordable and unsafe for too many families.”

For his part, McGuire has called out Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran as primary reasons Californians are hurting, referring to Gallagher as a “lapdog” for the president.

“The hard working folks who call the First District home are tired of the chaos, corruption, and cruelty of the Trump administration — and they’re ready for representation that actually delivers,” McGuire said in the campaign statement Tuesday night.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at [email protected].