The eyes of the nation are on the race for California District 48's House seat, one of the five districts whose boundaries were redrawn by Proposition 50. Governor Gavin Newsom pushed for that effort to favor Democrats after Texas redrew its districts in an apparent effort to favor Republicans.
Jake Gotta, the Public Matters reporter with KPBS, shares an update from the San Diego area:
The current representative from the 48th, Darrell Issa, who is a Republican, he chose not to run for re-election after this district was changed. He is retiring and he endorsed Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond, who is now running to represent the 48th in San Diego County. Jim Desmond has a long history in San Diego. He's been in some sort of political office since the mid-2000s. He was a city council person and a mayor and now county supervisor for District 5. So he's got a long history in politics here, he's not some newcomer, and he was expected to mount a pretty strong campaign. He did so, but he is running against Marnie Von Wilpert. She is a Democrat and a San Diego City Council member right now who's running for the 48th as well. The two of them advanced into the general from the primary election as the top two vote getters. And so now Marnie Von Wilpert has really taken this mantle as the standard-bearer for Democrats running really against President Trump and the administration even more so than against Desmond himself. And yeah, here in San Diego, it's really one of the only ways that voters in San Diego County can have a say in the whole national conversation over who controls Congress, who controls the House. And what Marnie Von Wilpert has said she wants to do is put a check on the Trump administration. She says she wants to stop ICE from raiding San Diego communities and others. She says she wants to put an end to the war in Iran and bring money investment back into San Diego — or into California and San Diego. So it's really gonna be a question of what voters respond to on that front and what the national environment is over Trump and his administration.
