Why this LA-area district could be home to the wildest congressional race of 2020

A former Trump adviser who spent 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. A bombastic left-wing media icon with a long record of controversial statements. A right-wing activist known for promoting conspiracy theories.

The special election for a competitive Los Angeles-area congressional seat that opened after a sex scandal has attracted more than a dozen candidates, including nationally known, unconventional hopefuls with massive social media followings who could turn the race into the wildest contest of 2020.

The campaign got an early shot of drama last week when Sen. Bernie Sanders endorsed one of the outsider contenders — liberal online news host Cenk Uygur — before retracting his support less than 24 hours later as controversy spiraled over Uygur’s past misogynistic comments.

Now locals are bracing for a bruising race — and wondering, why us?

“Around here, we know our neighbors, there’s a strong sense of community,” said Chad Kampbell, a Democratic activist in Stevenson Ranch. “It’s surprising to see this district getting all this attention from people who are coming from outside to raise their own personal profile and personal brand. A lot of it feels like a publicity stunt.”

The clown car of candidates was prompted by the shocking resignation of Rep. Katie Hill, a rising Democratic star elected in the 2018 midterms, who left office after being accused of an extramarital affair with a House staffer. Hill has denied the allegations and called them a smear campaign spurred by an ugly divorce with her husband, although she admitted to having a relationship with another campaign aide.

The sprawling 25th district — which stretches from the northern Los Angeles suburbs of the Santa Clarita Valley into the Mojave Desert — is home to the Ronald Reagan presidential library and sent a Republican to Congress for decades. But it’s become steadily more Democratic and diverse over the years: Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by seven points here in 2016, and two years later, Hill, a 32-year-old former nonprofit executive, unseated GOP incumbent Steve Knight.

Now the candidates battling to succeed her include Knight, who’s vying for his old House seat, as well as Christy Smith, a Democratic state assemblywoman who has consolidated most of the party establishment’s support, and Mike Garcia, a Republican former fighter pilot who’s been organizing for months.

But Hill’s unexpected resignation in late October has also attracted several nationally known Southern California figures from outside the district — including George Papadopoulos, a former low-level Trump campaign foreign policy aide who inadvertently kicked off the FBI investigation into ties between Russia and the campaign.

Papadopoulos was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI about his interactions with a potential Russian agent. But he’s parlayed his supporting role in the Russia saga into some level of fame among the Trump faithful, including a book deal and regular appearances on Fox News. It’s unclear how serious the 32-year-old Papadopoulos is about his campaign — he didn’t respond to interview requests — but he is working to fundraise.

“As Trump’s foreign policy adviser, I bore the brunt of the Deep State’s attack on our President during and after he won election in 2016,” Papadopoulos wrote in an email to supporters last week, timed to the FBI report into the investigation.

Also in the running is Uygur, the co-founder of the liberal online news network The Young Turks, who has pitched himself as an aggressive fighter for policies like Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal. Uygur (whose name is pronounced “Jenk You-grr”) has shown a willingness to take on Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, who he said “opposes every progressive priority,” and Barack Obama, whom he’s described as a “conservative in his bones.”

“Even great progressives right now in Congress, I think, are being too polite in how they challenge the power that the Democratic establishment has over this party,” Uygur said in an interview last week.

But Uygur also has a history that seems like an opposition researcher’s dream — from blog posts in 2000 declaring that “the genes of women are flawed” because they don’t want to have sex enough, to more recent comments such as defending the Harvard men’s soccer team for sharing a ranking of female students’ sex appeal. He’s apologized for some of his past statements, which are sure to find their way into attack ads.

Sanders endorsed him on Thursday, but reversed course the next day after facing a backlash from local and national activists upset the Vermont senator had overlooked Uygur’s history. Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna, who had backed Uygur several weeks ago, also pulled his endorsement. Uygur tweeted that he would only accept endorsements from voters in the district and “not let politics of distraction that corporate Democrats are doing work.”

Another potential contender is Mike Cernovich, a right-wing activist who’s known for spreading online misinformation and promoting the false “Pizzagate” conspiracy about Democratic leaders being involved in a child sex ring.

Cernovich didn’t file to run in the district’s regular election, but said in a Twitter message to the Bay Area News Group last week that he was still considering running in the special election — even though he would only serve through the end of the year if elected.

“The local GOP has no idea how to win,” Cernovich declared. He predicted that with Uygur in the running, the race was primed to be “the most watched congressional campaign of the year,” and that “if I run, then I’ll bring my own prominence to the race.”

The Democratic establishment quickly closed ranks around Smith, a former school board member elected to the Assembly last year. She’s won the endorsement of most of the state’s top elected officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein, and Pelosi, as well as Hill.

So far, Smith has emphasized her local ties and blasted her male rivals. “Here’s an idea,” she wrote on Twitter. “How about all of you manspread in your own damn districts?!”

“It’s a shame that there are charlatans from outside of the district who are running for this seat to seek the spotlight, not deliver results,” Smith added in a statement. Her campaign declined to make her available for an interview.

On the Republican side, the two top local candidates are Knight, the former congressman whom Hill defeated in 2018, and Garcia, who’s been organizing in the district for months. Both are painting themselves as strong supporters of Trump.

“Everyone else running can say, ‘I’m the shiny penny, vote for me,’ but I have the track record of getting things done,” Knight said in an interview.

But several of his past votes — like repealing Obamacare and supporting a tax bill that cut exemptions for state and local taxes — were used against him in 2018.

The GOP contenders have also sparred with each other. Garcia said that Knight wasn’t “aggressive” enough in the last race and that Knight had promised to endorse him before he decided to run again. Knight responded that Garcia was misguided trying to “jump in the deep end” when he’s “had no experience in any kind of politics and never been elected.”

“I don’t think going to jail for anyone is a noble thing,” Garcia added of Papadopoulous. “I think saying I went to jail for the president is a hollow statement.”

Garcia brought in $360,000 from donors between April and September. Fundraising reports for the other top candidates, who all jumped into the race after Hill resigned in October, are not yet available.

The candidates will face off in a March 3 special election primary, and if no one gets a majority of the vote — which seems unlikely — the top two contenders will move on to a May 12 runoff.

Locals say they’re hoping for a substantive debate on issues like environmental protections and gun control in a district that was hit by the worst natural gas leak in U.S. history, and where a student at Saugus High School last month shot five of his classmates, killing two.

“When Katie resigned, Democratic folks were really disappointed but not discouraged,” said Kampbell, who supports Smith. “This time, we’re going to prove whether this district is really purple, or if it’s beginning to turn blue.”

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