Randy Villegas Flips Highly Contested Central Valley Congressional Seat

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, November 5, 2026

• Democrat Randy Villegas has ousted longtime Republican incumbent David Valadao from his seat in the Central Valley’s 22nd Congressional District. The seat was one of five targeted by new redistricting maps approved under Prop 50.  
• Election results are still being tallied across the state. And of the 14 state propositions on the ballot, more than half remain too close to call. But voters did pass two ballot measures aimed at tackling the state’s housing crisis. 
• Democrat Clarissa Cervantes is leading incumbent Republican Leticia Castillo in the race for the 58th Assembly seat in Riverside County. The rematch is one of the most competitive Assembly races in California. 
• A measure to approve farmworker housing in Half Moon Bay is still too close to call, with just 64 votes separating the two sides.

Political newcomer Randy Villegas has won the U.S. House of Representatives seat in District 22 against Republican incumbent David Valadao. The Associated Press called the race Wednesday morning after Villegas showed a decisive lead in early election results.

Valadao represented the San Joaquin Valley in Congress for six out of the last seven elections. Valadao first held a congressional seat in 2012 and was re-elected in 2020 after Democrat T.J. Cox unseated him for one term. The district was redrawn after a Democratic gerrymander effort last year to counter similar efforts by Republicans in other states.

Villegas declared victory at his election night party in Bakersfield long before the race was officially called. He addressed a crowd of about 200 supporters and thanked them for the journey. “A lot of people wrote us off. We had to beat our own party to get to where we are today,” Villegas told the crowd. “We beat the Democratic establishment. We beat the Republican establishment.”

Throughout his campaign, Villegas made promises of establishing healthcare for all, lowering costs and helping reform immigration policies. He emphasized that he did not take funding from corporate political action committees. Villegas said one of his first acts in Congress will be to help undo health cuts from last year’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act – which cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid and established new work requirements in order to qualify. “We have the most Medicaid recipients in the entire country in this district, and despite that, my opponent voted to go give tax breaks to billionaires,” Villegas said. “That is money that our communities deserve. Those are resources our communities deserve. I’m going to fight like hell to reverse that damage and restore funding to Medicaid, SNAP, WIC and so many programs that our working families rely on.”

House District 22 was watched closely by both parties looking to flip the district. High-profile politicians stumped in Bakersfield for the candidates in the lead up to the election. Valadao was endorsed by House Speaker Mike Johnson while Villegas was endorsed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

California voters approved two housing bond measures, Propositions 1 and 37, according to the Associated Press.  

The two bonds take aim at the state’s affordable housing crisis in very different ways.

Prop. 1 would give the state permission to borrow a record-breaking $11.25 billion, with the lion’s share going toward the construction of affordable housing for low-income renters and homeless Californians.

Prop. 37 is a first-of-its-kind revenue bond that would have the state borrow as much as $25 billion from private investors and lend that money to qualifying homebuyers to help cover the bulk of their down payments. Plenty of experts have questioned how this untested program would work, but most agree that it would not come at the expense of state taxpayers.

There are still many open questions about how Prop. 37 will be administered and how many Californians will benefit, said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. But its blow-out margin “speaks to just how much the dream of homeownership matters to so many Californians,” he said.

Democrat Clarissa Cervantes is leading incumbent Republican Leticia Castillo in the race for the 58th Assembly seat in Riverside County. It’s one of the most competitive assembly races this year.

The 58th Assembly District traditionally votes with a Democratic sway and is about 60% Latino, but in 2024 President Donald Trump and Republicans carried the election. Castillo benefited from this political shift. Castillo narrowly defeated Cervantes by close to 600 votes in 2024.

At an election night watch party, Cervantes spoke with KVCR. “I think the biggest issues we talked to people at the doors were cost of living. You’re having ICE agents terrorize our communities. Trump again, you know, was trying to interfere with our elections in these last two weeks. But it was really powerful to see the turnout in our community, and I am hopeful for the final results,” she said.

Just 64 votes separated the two sides of Half Moon Bay’s Measure Q on Wednesday, leaving the future of a downtown housing development for older farmworkers uncertain as ballots continue to be counted.

The measure had just over 49% support, with 1,608 votes in favor and 1,672 against, according to preliminary results from the San Mateo County Registrar of Voters. The outcome remains too close to call. Many ballots remain uncounted countywide, including mail-in ballots received or dropped after Oct. 30, as well as provisional and conditional voter registration ballots, according to the elections office. The county’s next update on results is expected Thursday before 4:30 p.m.

The vote is a referendum on the city’s approval this summer of a controversial five-story apartment building at 555 Kelly Ave. in downtown Half Moon Bay that’s been hotly debated for the past four years. The project, from nonprofit developer Mercy Housing and nonprofit advocacy organization Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, or ALAS, would include 39 affordable apartments for low-income agricultural workers aged 55 and older and one manager’s unit.

The proposal predates the 2023 mass shooting at two Half Moon Bay farms that killed seven people and exposed substandard living conditions among local farmworkers. The killings intensified calls for better housing in a community where many agricultural workers struggle to afford a place to live.

And it comes as Half Moon Bay faces pressure from the state to build more housing. In July, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration sued the city, saying it had fallen behind on zoning changes required under state housing law.