Even more striking, those repeal votes came even though California has arguably benefited more than any other state from the ACA. Nearly 4 million of its residents have gained coverage under the law, more than double any other state. California adults are now far less likely than people in demographically similar Texas and Florida to report difficulty paying medical bills or delaying needed care because of cost.

The California Seven represent two broad geographic areas. Five of them hold seats in Southern California: Ed Royce, Mimi Walters, and Dana Rohrabacher in Orange County; Darrell Issa in a district that straddles Orange and San Diego counties; and Steve Knight in the northern Los Angeles exurbs. Jeff Denham and David Valadao represent seats in the agricultural Central Valley.

Privately, Democrats acknowledge that allowing all seven to survive in 2016 was a missed opportunity. With Trump’s insular nationalism deeply unpopular in diverse, global-facing California, Clinton won the state by more than any Democrat since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936—and became the first party nominee since FDR’s run that year to carry Orange County, a onetime conservative bastion now being reshaped by growing racial diversity and rising education levels. Crowded with the white-collar voters who recoiled from Trump, the SoCal districts held by Walters, Issa, Rohrabacher, and Royce were among the 30 nationwide where the president’s performance deteriorated most from Mitt Romney’s in 2012. Clinton also routed Trump by over 15 points in Valadao’s district and beat him soundly in Knight’s. (She carried Denham’s seat only narrowly.)

Yet Democrats last year mounted serious, well-funded challenges only against Knight, Issa, and Denham, and came close to ousting just the latter two. Operatives in both parties acknowledge Democrats should be able to recruit more consistently strong candidates for 2018 because the state filing deadline for last year’s election, in March, fell before it was clear Trump would win the GOP nomination. And, especially after the health-care vote, these races are guaranteed to draw more local and national media and fundraising attention than they did in 2016. Democrats are aggressively recruiting candidates even in the seats where credible 2016 challengers Douglas Applegate and Bryan Caforio are seeking rematches with Issa and Knight, respectively.

With California trending so Democratic, the Republican mantra in these seven seats has been to localize the races. And even Democrats acknowledge that several of the Republicans have effectively connected themselves to their districts. That’s especially true for Valadao and Denham, whose districts have voted Democratic in all three presidential races since 2008. Knight and Issa also tried to establish distance from Trump by supporting an independent counsel on Russian election meddling before the Justice Department named former FBI Director Robert Mueller.