“Have you ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?”
Country music legend Buck Owens sang this on his most famous track about a struggling artist trying to make it in the Nashville of the West—Bakersfield, Calif.
But a lot of political animals are walking the streets of Bakersfield these days, trying to win a hotly contested congressional seat in the reddest part of California.
In recent weeks, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have visited, or are visiting, the San Joaquin Valley where Bakersfield sits, trying to move the needle in the U.S. House District 22 race between Republican incumbent David Valadao and his Democratic rival, political outsider Randy Villegas.
The Broken Heart of California
The county seat of Kern County and a long-time late-night punchline on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, Bakersfield is where I lived for 5 years as a staff writer for its daily newspaper, The Bakersfield Californian. There, I learned about the Mean Justice dispensed by Kern County law enforcement, particularly its former District Attorney, Ed Jagels, and I covered a lot of weird, disturbing, violent crime as a general assignment/backup police beat reporter in 2003.
Long neglected because it’s such a solidly conservative area within a very blue state, House District 22 (which includes Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, and Tulare counties) has a lot of problems.
Problems with water rights. Problems with air quality. Problems with the rising cost of living. Problems with healthcare. Problems with ICE’s immigration raids destroying families. Problems with the price of fuel needed to support its agriculture industry. Problems with rampant poverty and a large unhoused community.
When I lived in Bakersfield in the early 2000s, it was a town starving for investment, new infrastructure, and resources.
Twenty-six years later, it still is.
“The valley has been left behind by both parties, in Sacramento and in Washington, D.C.,” Villegas told The Guardian. “We deserve better than the scraps these politicians give us.”
The Central Valley has been a huge, shiny failure of the GOP, which has long controlled it, and a Greek tragedy for the Democratic Party that long abandoned it.
But will there be a change this fall?
Political Knowns, Unknowns, and Bakersfield Being Bakersfield
Democrats in the Central Valley think they have a real chance to flip the district.
For one, they did it once before, beating Valadao in 2018. Second, redistricting has made the district more favorable to state Democrats.
Democrats now make up 42% of all registered voters in the Central Valley, while Republicans have dropped to 26%.
Villegas is currently beating Valadao in polling by almost 7 percent.
“I’m running on the power of the many against the power of their money,” Villegas told The Guardian. “The Democrats should be the party of the working class. And the only way we transform that is by electing leaders who stand up for the working class and for working people.”
For Villegas, an educator, the key to winning will be turning out a typically disengaged coalition of young, working-class, and Latino voters—all fed up with Trump and ready for a change.
“I’m concerned with the price of living in Bakersfield, the price of living in California overall,” said Sara Garcia, a college student, to KVPR, an NPR station. “I’m concerned with the wars that we’re currently funding, whether that be devastating in Palestine or funding the war in Iran. It’s really important that it’s time to look at ourselves and see what we can fix at home first, and then go from there.”
Villegas is putting in a lot of effort to flip the district, holding town halls, being vocal, and meeting with potential constituents, compared to his rival Valadao, who prefers smaller, more intimate gatherings with supporters and donors. A populist, Villegas has rejected larger campaign donations that don’t jibe with his beliefs, preferring small donations from the community, while Valadao has focused on painting Villegas as too “far-left” and a “Marxist.”
And while election officials are encouraging voters to mail in their ballots and vote early, there are already problems. The Bakersfield Californian recently reported that voter guides were mailed late, and many still haven’t been sent.
Not a great look (and also not the first time) for a county that often has low voter turnout.
“How can something that the County Elections only produces every two years for primary and general elections be late repeatedly?” said Bakersfield Republican political strategist Cathy Abernathy to The Bakersfield Californian.
Hope for the Central Valley
Despite its woes, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Central Valley, even if many of my old haunts, like The Spotlight Theater in downtown Bakersfield and Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, are long gone.
But as someone who has walked the streets of House District 22, I know what’s at stake for the city of Bakersfield and the surrounding areas of Fresno and Tulare.
To paraphrase Owens, people may not know or even like the San Joaquin Valley, but who are we to sit and judge them when they’ve long struggled for recognition and funding from a wealthy, populous state that pretends it’s largely working-class and Latino residents don’t exist?
After all, if the Democrats are to take the House on Nov. 3, they’ll need California’s House District 22.
They’ll need every win they can get.
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