By Dr. Julie Martinez Ortega

For the third time, Republican Congressman Mike Garcia is about to face off against a Democrat in a Southern Californian district (CA-27) that favors Democrats in both registration share and partisan preference. Can he beat the odds and get reelected yet again, or will the Democratic nominee this time — George Whitesides — motivate the district’s voters to finally oust Garcia?

CA-27 now has all the markers of a Democratic stronghold. With a NMI score of D+8 and Cook Political Report score of D+4, this is considered one of the most hotly contested races nationally. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has designated the Dem challenger, Whitesides, as one of its top fundraising priorities for 2024. Democrats hold a double-digit registration advantage in the district.

CA-27 is among the 18 districts that would have voted for Joe Biden in 2020 had they existed in their current configuration while being won or held by a Republican in 2022. It is also the only Republican-held congressional district to include portions of the actual city of Los Angeles.

An hour north of LA

Located about an hour's drive north of Los Angeles, CA-27 sprawls from Santa Clarita to the far-flung inland desert cities of Lancaster and Palmdale. This district was most recently considered deep red until 2018 when the young and charismatic Democratic Katie Hill managed to unseat the Republican in a race that drew national attention. But less than a year after her election, Hill was forced to resign due to a sex scandal. (Hill served as representative for CA-25. The CA-27 now covers largely the same geographic area as the old CA-25.)

Try, try again

In May 2020, Garcia managed to beat Christy Smith, a member of the CA State Assembly, in the special election to replace her with 54.9% of the vote after a grueling campaign in which he campaigned in support of Trump’s call to “build the wall” and against socialism, cutting taxes, strengthening the military. According to the Los Angeles Times Garcia’s victory marked the first time in more than 20 years that a Republican flipped a California congressional district held by a Democrat.

Smith challenged Garcia that November in the general election, only to lose yet again, but this time by a mere 333 votes. In 2022, Smith faced Garcia for the third time, but lost by a far wider margin of 12,754 votes.

Whitesides, the long-time CEO of Virgin Galactic and a former top-level Obama administration official at NASA, is the Democratic Party’s 2024 nominee. His work for Virgin Galactic in the Mojave Desert involved the creation of jobs in the district’s Antelope Valley.

Whitesides’ winning formula?

CA-27 REGISTERED TO VOTE, BY RACE

How can Whitesides turn the tide in this district and return it to the blue column? When we dig into which voters cast ballots in 2020 (when Garcia won by a healthy margin) and compare that to 2022 results for CA-27 (when Garcia won by just 333 votes), we see that the pool of voters differed in some very meaningful ways. This is especially true when we focus on white and Latino voters. When the votes were tight in 2020, whites comprised 49% of those who cast votes and Latinos comprised 30%. These shares somewhat mirrored each group’s composition of the registered voters of CA-27 (whites 45% and Latinos 33%), although whites overperformed and Latinos underperformed at the ballot box.

CA-27 2022 BALLOTS CAST, BY RACE

But in 2022 when Garcia won by almost 13,000 votes, whites rose as a share of voters to almost 60%, massively overperforming, while Latinos dropped precipitously by almost a third, down to 23%. With Latinos showing up to vote at a rate such that their share of the voters is a full 10 points lower than their registration rates, there was no way that Smith could emerge victorious.

Spoiler alert: Latino vote crucial

Whitesides must learn an important lesson from this comparison of Latino turnout in 2020 and how it differed from that of 2022: The only path to victory in November of 2024 runs straight through the district’s Latino community. (If you’ve been following all of our blog posts so far in this 2024 congressional races series, you will start to see a recurring theme!)

Is 2024 the Year Garcia’s Luck Dries up in the Desert?