The job may be in Washington, but for Democratic Rep. Mike Honda and his challenger, Fremont attorney Ro Khanna, the real fight is in the cities of the South Bay.

Honda spent Tuesday on what was dubbed a “business tour” of his 17th Congressional District, making stops in Fremont, Newark and Santa Clara. On Thursday, he was at the county building in San Jose, talking about the need to make transgender kids safe in their South Bay schools.

“You do have a voice in Congress,” said Honda, who told a hearing that included members of the county’s Office of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual and Queer Affairs about the influence his transsexual granddaughter has had on his views.

“I’ll make sure your voice is heard,” he told them.

Khanna, who lost a tight Democrat-versus-Democrat race to Honda in 2014, spent Monday night in Milpitas, listening to residents who wanted to know what he would do about the city’s bad smells and worse traffic.

“There are things a congressman can’t do,” Khanna said after the town hall meeting. “But he can always listen.”

When the late Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill famously opined, “All politics is local,” he was putting into words what successful officeholders knew instinctively. While a congressman may have to make high-profile votes on national security, the country’s budget priorities and other decisions that can shake the world, it’s what he does in — and for — his district that will get him elected.

Tech not the only game

Khanna learned that the hard way two years ago when he ran as the candidate from Silicon Valley, not recognizing that there are plenty of voters in that district who aren’t hooked into the tech world.

This time, though, the former Commerce Department official is expanding his reach, going beyond the tech company boardrooms to the council chambers of cities like Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, listening to people concerned about things other than boosting the number of H-1B visas for foreign computer scientists.

“It would be a very boring community if the only people who could live in the 17th Congressional District were software engineers,” Khanna told the 70 or so people who came to his town hall meeting in Milpitas. “We need poets, artists and even unemployed artists.”

Although Khanna is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago with a degree in economics and an intellectual property attorney who attended Yale Law School, he talked to the crowd about growing up in Philadelphia as a member of “a modest, middle-class family,” and how at age 39 “I worked for the president, worked as a lawyer and I still have student (loan) debt.”

Khanna’s retooling as a man of the people remains a work in progress, however, with reminders of his economic and tech background popping up in unexpected places.

Talking about dealing with climate change, for example, he warned of the “negative externality” that any solutions might entail, and that fixing the problems could involve “disruptive innovation” for existing businesses and markets. Any changes are hard for private industry to make because they might not “commercialize.”

‘A straight shooter’

Khanna, standing tieless in a white shirt with his hands shoved into the pockets of his gray suit, spent nearly two hours in front of the Milpitas crowd, taking questions from all comers.

“One reason politicians don’t do town halls is because they don’t like to take concrete positions,” Khanna told the crowd. “I’m going to be a straight shooter. You’re going to disagree with me at times, but you’ll know where I stand.”

There’s plenty of old-school politics involved in Khanna’s well-publicized visits to local cities. His campaign staff noted that Honda hasn’t held an in-person town hall for more than two years, and Khanna told the Milpitas audience that “it’s important for a member of Congress to serve all the cities in the area he represents.”

That’s a barely disguised dig at the 74-year-old Honda, a San Jose resident whose public career started when he was named to the city’s Planning Commission in 1971.

“Pitting people and cities against each other is wedge-issue politics, and if you want that, go with” Khanna, Honda said in San Jose. “If you want to bring people together, vote for me.”

Honda’s deep roots

Honda argues that his roots in the district are deep and extend well beyond San Jose. His online Wikipedia biography, for example, includes a yearbook picture of Honda, sporting dark hair, a wispy mustache and a corduroy sport coat, as a science teacher in his twenties at Sunnyvale High School.

Honda “is very plugged in to the district,” traveling home from Washington most weekends and holding regular telephone town halls, said Vedant Patel, a spokesman for Honda’s campaign. “It’s really easy for someone who has only lived in Fremont since 2011 to say he’s in touch with the community,” he said, referring to Khanna.

While Honda says he’s confident he’ll be re-elected for a ninth term, it won’t be easy. He’s facing an ongoing House ethics investigation over whether his congressional aides were improperly involved with his re-election campaign, and campaign finance reports show that as of Dec. 31, Khanna had nearly triple Honda’s cash on hand, $1.7 million to $572,199.

Khanna’s ongoing push for local support has brought him endorsements from people like San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and plenty of other local council and school board members.

Back to Gallery Rep. Mike Honda, rival Ro Khanna cultivate grassroots 5 1 of 5 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 2 of 5 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 3 of 5 Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle 4 of 5 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle 5 of 5 Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle









But Honda still has the support of the Democratic establishment, which endorsed him over Khanna at the state convention in February, and local labor leaders. And while he says he plans to run the same type of campaign that brought him the narrow victory in 2014, he’s stepped up his visibility in the district, doing the type of feel-good public events that come easy for incumbents.

Honda’s busy schedule

On Friday, for example, he toured a Sunnyvale low-income housing development with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, and on Saturday he hosted a hepatitis B health fair in Milpitas, focused on the Asian American community. On Monday, he is scheduled to join San Jose Rep. Zoe Lofgren in hosting a women’s policy summit at De Anza College in Cupertino.

John Wildermuth is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jfwildermuth