Worlds collide as wine-country Dems vie for conservative Yuba-Sutter voters

The elected officials in the crowded Yuba City hall were introduced to the peach growers and concerned farmers before them. Then a voice rose from the pack of attendees. Mike Thompson, a Democratic congressman among the officials leading the town hall, shook his head as Eric Jones stood up from a folding chair in the audience to introduce himself.

Jones had never been elected, but his campaign for Thompson’s seat in Congress was well underway. The town hall marked an unsuspecting political battlefield for two Democrats based in wine country who are vying for conservative votes nearly 100 miles away from their homes: Thompson, a longtime congressman in his mid-70s from St. Helena, and Jones, a 35-year-old former venture capitalist and relative newcomer to Napa who, despite his lack of political experience, has out-fundraised his opponent.

“I don’t know what reaction you saw from me, but it was pretty blatantly political,” Thompson said of his opponent later in an interview.

“I wasn’t there to promote myself as a candidate, I was there to help.” Jones, for his part, contributed several times throughout the meeting, which saw community members and growers asking questions and airing their grievances about an issue that struck the core of the deeply-rooted farm community.

“We are frozen with a government that cannot deliver, locally or federally, and that room, and that dynamic, represented that,” Jones said. Such is the race for House District 4, a swath of the Napa and Sacramento valleys whose electorate starkly changed with the passage of Proposition 50. The new boundary lines voters approved in last November’s special election reshaped the state’s congressional districts, diffusing Republican voters into firm Democratic bases and tipping the electorate in favor of Democrats — in response to similar gerrymandering efforts in Texas — in several districts held by Republicans.

The shift also orphaned blocs of conservatives swept into neighboring districts long held by Democrats, turning the seats a lighter shade of blue, but blue nonetheless. Many Yuba-Sutter voters bear that distinction, of which the campaigns competing for their support are well aware.

“We’re in a really unique situation, where this is one of the most changed districts in California with Prop. 50,” Jones said.

“It’s about half new, by registered voters, and had already changed substantially in 2022. The vast majority of this district since 2022 is new. So, strategically, that’s an opportunity.”

An unusual predicament Complicating the relative plight of the Yuba-Sutter conservative is the contemporaneous race to fill the House District 1 seat vacated in early January when longstanding conservative stalwart Rep. Doug LaMalfa unexpectedly died. Because of that vacancy, Yuba-Sutter voters will choose a short-term replacement for their current district, and a separate full-term representative for their new district, at the June 2 primary election.

“When you add in a redistricting happening, it does create this unique situation where we’re voting for a replacement member of Congress for the old seat until the election, and at the same time we’re voting on a member for the new seat,” said Wesley Hussey, professor of political science at Sacramento State.

In other words, voters would be forgiven for confusion at the polls. In the meantime, they remain without a representative in Congress.

“The Democrats have to live with the fact that they’ve created this kind of representation gap,” Hussey said. Six other candidates, four of whom registered as Republicans, have also filed for the race. But their fundraising and campaign presences to this point have been minimal.

Whereas Jones raised nearly $2.6 million while Thompson raised more than $2 million, as of the last Federal Election Commission filings, positioning them as the most viable candidates ahead of the primary. A Republican candidate often advances in a top-two primary, even in a heavily Democratic district, Hussey said, but without a stand-out Republican to back, a scenario in which the four Republicans split votes could favor both Thompson and Jones advancing.

In that case, their two-man race would continue into the November general election, which would position Republican voters to choose their preferred Democrat or no one. That could spell a long summer of road trips to woo conservative holdovers stranded at the lower entryway to the north state. Charting new territory Thompson, up for his 15th term in Congress, won re-election with about two thirds of the vote in 2024.

Since then the district, then covering all or parts of five counties, broadened to nine counties — including traditionally red Colusa, Sutter and Yuba — and now includes cities such as Yuba City, Marysville and Lincoln. The longstanding Democrat was first elected to Congress in 1998, and won each subsequent bid for reelection over the better part of 30 years. In that time, the district has been redrawn multiple times.

Thompson said the recent redistricting, although different from past census-based changes reached by the bipartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission, maintained a rural base under his purview with similar problems to solve. Although left-leaning, Thompson’s district has historically included a significant rural constituency, including Napa Valley grape growers and Yolo County farmers.

He said many of the issues in the Yuba-Sutter area, to varying degrees, resemble those he has worked on for decades.

“I have something that I think is of interest to the district, and that’s my experience,” Thompson said.

“My experience and my position in the House, being on the Ways and Means committee, being a ranking member of the tax committee, taking over the health committee in the next Congress. That’s something that’s important to our area and will give us a lot of clout, and people understand that.” For some from a younger generation of Democrats, including Thompson’s opponent, the same politician representing the same district for decades is part of the problem.

“I don’t think the establishment today is working for everyday Americans, and I think it needs to be changed,” Jones said. Time for change? Jones, who was raised in Maine and graduated from Yale, talks about growing up on Medicaid and food stamps, and the lessons he learned about the nation’s health care inequity first hand through his father, a disabled veteran, then through his business ventures, several of which involved health care companies.

He campaigns on a message, shared by his American Dream Institute nonprofit, that aspires to course-correct Democratic rhetoric of late to reach disaffected voters, particularly of a younger demographic, whom the Democratic Party has lost hold of in recent years. His pro-working-class mantras focused on affordability and child and health care support funded by enforcing corporate tax code while closing loopholes exploited by billionaires registers politically to the left of Thompson, a moderate Democrat. But Jones blurs party lines with some of his other stances, including energy, deregulation and housing.

“My platform is not a Democratic platform,” Jones said.

“My platform is there to help working families, help young people, help people live the American Dream.” Challengers have emerged in other reshaped districts this midterm election cycle to usurp establishment members of Congress, such as Mai Vang, a 40-year-old Sacramento City Council member racing against Rep. Doris Matsui, who is 81 and serving her 10th House term.