California is the key to control of Congress

California will determine whether Democrats retain their majority in the House of Representatives. Conventional wisdom holds that the outcome of the midterm elections is a fait accompli in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will surrender her gavel to fellow Californian Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, but the actual outcome is far less foreordained, and the Golden State will have a big say in which Californian presides over the chamber in January 2023. 

The reason so many believe that Democrats are doomed to lose power is the historical trend in which the party that controls the White House typically loses seats in midterm elections. California is on the cutting edge, however, of a countervailing national trend — the country’s demographic revolution — and that trend is poised to scramble the midterm electoral calculus.

Republicans need to oust four Democratic incumbents this fall in order to capture control of the House. California changes the math — because it has five Republican incumbents in racially diverse districts where Democrats have an excellent opportunity to win. By concentrating on and flipping those seats, Democrats could put the elusive prize of power further out of Republican reach and require Republicans to win more than twice as many seats across the rest of the country.

A big part of the reason that pundits underestimate the significance of the California contests is that they fail to factor in the implications of the demographic revolution. It’s a simple statistical fact that years of exit polling data affirm the reality that three-quarters of people of color nationally consistently vote Democratic (a fact which isn’t surprising when the opposing political party’s power is predicated on stoking white racial resentment). In California, the majority of eligible voters — 55 percent — are people of color, and Biden received 78 percent of their votes.

None of the leading political analysts, however, incorporate racial realities into their assessments and predictions. The race-neutral approach of Cook Political Report, for example, has resulted in the determination that just two California Republican-held seats are toss-ups (out of seven nationally), while they also put two Democratic Golden State seats in that category (out of 26 nationally).

I’ve spent the past several months working with a talented team of data scientists to devise a ranking system, the New Majority Index (NMI), that deepens the data pool by also analyzing the racial composition of a district and the voter turnout patterns by racial group. The NMI shows a different picture that is much more promising for Democratic prospects — if they take a smart and race-conscious approach. When diversity data is incorporated, it shows that five Republican-held seats could certainly be flipped this November if voter turnout is maximized.

Given the racial diversity of California, success in its electoral contests requires significant cultural competence and a deep understanding of the priorities and interests of the respective groups of color that comprise the state’s population. In two of the vulnerable Republican seats, Asian Americans will play pivotal roles. Orange County, California — the political launching pad for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan — was long a Republican stronghold when it was a majority white. But — depictions in popular television shows aside — whites are now a distinct minority, just 38 percent, of the county’s population. In California as a whole, 76 percent of Asians backed Biden, but in two congressional races, Calif.-40 and Calif.-45, Asian American voter turnout was lower than that of whites. Addressing that racial voter turnout gap will be key to Democrats capturing those two seats.

Notably, Republicans have shown greater awareness of racial dynamics and acted on that knowledge by backing a Korean woman, now-Congresswoman Young Kim (R-Calif.), as their standard-bearer in the region.

In the other three Republican-held competitive seats, it’s the Latino vote that will play kingmaker. Latinos cast 75 percent of their votes for Biden, but in these seats, the racial voter turnout gap is quite pronounced, with whites voting at a higher rate by an average of 11 percent. That’s tens of thousands of potential Latino votes not coming into play in each of the competitive seats, two of which were decided by less than 1 percent in 2020. This racial vote gap points the path to power for Democrats if they will open their eyes and look at the data.

Although the potential is evident, like a garden that could yield bountiful fruit, it requires the deployment of significant time, energy and resources to get the garden to blossom. Unfortunately, too few in the Democratic establishment understand the math or map to flipping the House. The standard Democratic modus operandi is to craft and broadcast ads that proceed from the premise that most voters have fickle political allegiances that are susceptible to commercials extolling the virtues of President Biden and the Democrats. House Majority PAC has announced plans to spend $121 million, but almost all of its money is focused on running television ads focused on trying to fight for the affection of the largely white cluster of voters seen as “swing voters.”

Fundamentally, smart spending means moving millions of dollars to the organizations and leaders with strong track records of moving voters of color to the polls.

The history of political races involving Republican Rep. David Valadao, who represents the state’s heavily Latino Central Valley, is instructive. In 2018, progressive donors moved hundreds of thousands of dollars to Communities for a New California (CNC), an organization with roots in the state’s vaunted farmworker movement, and CNC hired teams of community-based canvassers to knock on doors and make phone calls to 40,000 voters, most of whom were Latino. As a result, Valadao was ousted, by a margin of 862 votes. Two years later, the urgency had dissipated, the progressive investments dried up, and Valadao was able to recapture the seat, winning by less than 1 percent. This year, he is running in a district that is 59 percent Latino and facing a Latino opponent, Rudy Salas.

The good news for progressives is that California has a robust civic engagement infrastructure across the state with strong electoral organizations in the counties where the vulnerable Republican members are — Orange County, San Bernardino, the Central Valley and even Los Angeles. In addition to CNC, organizations such as OC Action, IE United, CHIRLA Action Fund have deep ties, long histories and solid track records of helping voters of color overcome the myriad obstacles to voting.

If the party and the country’s Democratic donors invest in bringing that infrastructure to scale and party leaders unapologetically champion their support for and defense of multi-racial democracy, they can flip the seats in California that will enable the party to keep control of Congress.

NOTE: This post has been updated from the original to correct the ethnicity of Rep. Young Kim.

Steve Phillips is the host of Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips, a color-conscious podcast about politics. He is author of the New York Times bestseller “Brown Is the New White.” His new book, “How We Win the Civil War,” is due out in October.