Of these 2 vulnerable Republicans in Central Valley districts, only 1 is firmly behind Trump

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Central Valley Republican incumbents in two toss-up U.S. House of Representatives races are split in their responses to former President Donald Trump’s conviction last week.

Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, has decided against commenting on his party’s presumptive presidential nominee, who was convicted last week on 34 felony counts in a New York hush-money trial, while Rep. John Duarte, R-Modesto, has called the verdict a miscarriage of justice, more closely mirroring the national GOP response.

Valadao, 47, and Duarte, 57, represent districts where President Joe Biden would have beaten Trump by more than 10 percentage points in 2020 if current legislative maps had been in place, before redistricting.

“For both of these Republicans, it is going to be difficult for them to navigate and potentially toxic [climate] in a district that Biden won by several points,” said Erin Covey, an elections analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

Valadao, one of 10 House Republicans in 2021 who voted to impeach Trump over the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, brushed off the inquiries about the verdict, telling the Washington Post in a story published Tuesday, “I’ve chosen to stay completely out of the presidential race. So I’m not taking a position on anything.”

His campaign declined to comment for this story.

Valadao, who represents California’s 22nd Congressional District, has managed to walk the line on Trump since he voted to impeach him. Of the 10 House Republicans who broke from the party, Valadao is one of only two who remain in the House. The others either chose not to run again in 2022 or were defeated at the polls.

“He has managed to walk that tightrope for the last couple of cycles,” Covey said in an interview Tuesday with the Bee. “But it’s going to be really difficult for him because he can’t avoid (cq) to anger his base” of Republicans in his district who support Trump.

Duarte, a freshman in California’s 13th Congressional District — considered by analysts to be the state’s most vulnerable House Republican — denounced the verdict and said he would be supporting Trump in November.

“It was an abuse of the justice system,” Duarte said in an interview Tuesday. “I think whatever any individual sentiments about Donald Trump are, we’re seeing a lot of people expressing grave concerns with the way the government functioned on that.”

Duarte added that immigrants in his Hispanic-majority voting district who fled persecution in Mexico and other countries would resonate with the message of injustice, saying “The swing voters are going to lean Republican over this.”

“I’ve always said I will support the Republican candidate for president, whether it’s happened to have been Donald Trump or another candidate,” Duarte said. “I’m very committed as a Republican to support Donald Trump for president.”

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the nonpartisan election-analyzer Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said in an interview Thursday that Valadao “is doing what you might expect, which would be just to try to not deal with it. Duarte, this is his first term, so he’s behaving it sounds like more like a national Republican because the vast majority of national Republicans have basically rallied around Trump on this.”

Last week, Trump was convicted of falsifying records to hide a sex scandal that could have harmed his 2016 presidential campaign. He is the first former U.S. president to become a felon.

Democratic challengers in toss-up races

The Democratic challengers — former Assemblymen Adam Gray and Rudy Salas — denounced their opponents’ approach. The races are closely watched rematches where Gray, 46, faces Duarte in the 13th district and Salas, 47, contests Valadao in the 22nd.

“I’ve never voted for a 34-time convicted felon, and I don’t plan on starting in 2024,” Gray said in a statement to The Bee. “I’m supporting Joe Biden — and unlike John Duarte, I’m proud of the fact that I’ve stood up to my own party when I’ve thought they were wrong. Duarte ought to try that sometime.”

Gray, who represented the area around his hometown of Merced in the Assembly for a decade, lost to Duarte in the 13th District by less than a percentage point — 564 votes — in 2022.

“The unanimous [jury] ruling on all 34 felony counts against Donald Trump shows that nobody is above the law,” Kyle Buda, campaign manager for Salas, said in a statement to The Bee. “To the detriment of Valley families, David Valadao has supported the Trump agenda in Washington every step of the way.”

In 2022 Salas, who represented the area around his hometown of Bakersfield in the Assembly for a decade, came within 3 percentage points of Valadao, who was first elected to Congress in 2013.

While national Republicans have rallied around Trump post-verdict, Democrats have taken a more measured approach, analysts said. In the Central Valley, analysts added, voters could split their November tickets — meaning they might choose a presidential candidate and House candidate who are from different parties.

“There’s been a real kind of ‘rally around the flag’ effect for Republicans on this,” Kondik said. “And there hasn’t necessarily been an equal and opposite reaction for Democrats attacking Trump.”

Said Covey, “I think they’re going to be largely focused on the economic issues and immigration and abortion that seem to be the most-motivating issues for swing voters.”

Why these Central Valley elections are toss-ups

The Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate the neighboring races in California’s 13th and 22nd districts as toss-ups in November.

In the 13th, Biden would have won by 11 percentage points in 2020 over Trump. In the 22nd, Biden would have won by 13 percentage points. The neighboring Central Valley districts have more registered Democrats than Republicans. They are Latino-majority voting districts with a large proportion of voters under age 35.

But historically low turnout in each means older, white, more conservative voters have a disproportionate electoral say.

California’s 13th holds all of Merced County and chunks of Madera, Stanislaus, Fresno and San Joaquin counties. Kondik previously described it as one of the “truest toss-up districts in the whole country.”

California’s 22nd includes most of Kings County and parts of Tulare and Kern counties. Valadao has survived tough elections before, having lost and regained his House seat on slim margins between 2018 and 2020.

Kondik said it’s too early to tell how Trump’s conviction might play out in November but for now the presidential race is very close, according to polls. The same goes for control of the House, where Republicans currently hold a slim majority.

“I think the House is basically 50-50, too,” Kondik said. “And the majority is going to be decided in places like the two districts [in California] we’re talking about.”