New Congressional Maps Mean Longtime Democrat Has to Appeal to New Voters | KQED
Here are the morning’s top stories on Monday, June 1, 2026
Rep. Jared Huffman has spent more than a decade representing California’s liberal North Coast. Now he’s campaigning in some of the state’s most conservative counties, where concerns about wolves, ranching and federal land management dominate political conversations.
The 2nd District changed after California voters approved Proposition 50 in 2025, a Democratic-backed redistricting plan designed to help the party gain U.S. House seats and counter Republican redistricting efforts elsewhere in the country. The new map expanded Huffman’s district eastward to include Siskiyou, Shasta and Modoc counties. The change has transformed one of the state’s most reliably Democratic districts into a far larger and more politically diverse region, forcing Huffman to introduce himself to voters who often hold very different views from his coastal base.
Huffman, first elected to Congress in 2012, has rarely faced a competitive race. He has won ev…