ELECTION FINALLY CALLED – GAVIN NEWSOM IS DEVASTATED
California Democrats Are Locked Out of CA-40—But the Bigger Story Is How Redistricting Created an All-GOP November Race
California Democrats spent months looking at the state’s new congressional map as an opportunity to gain seats.
In the 40th Congressional District, the map produced something very different.
Two Republican incumbents finished first and second in the June 2 primary, shutting every Democratic candidate out of the November ballot and guaranteeing that the district will remain in Republican hands.
California’s certified results show Rep. Ken Calvert leading the field with 75,811 votes, or 34.9 percent.
Rep. Young Kim finished second with 44,818 votes, or 20.6 percent.
Under California’s top-two primary system, the two highest vote-getters advance regardless of party.
That means Calvert and Kim will face each other again in November.
For Democrats, the immediate consequence is simple.
They no longer have a candidate in the race.
But the result also illustrates a more complicated reality about California’s mid-decade redistricting: a map designed to improve Democratic prospects statewide also created a Republican-leaning district where two GOP incumbents were pushed into the same political space.
California voters approved Proposition 50 in November 2025, temporarily replacing congressional lines drawn by the state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission with legislatively drawn districts for elections through 2030.
Supporters presented the measure as a response to Republican-led redistricting in Texas and as a way to improve Democrats’ chances of gaining additional House seats.
Republicans attacked the plan as partisan gerrymandering.
The new 40th District became one of the clearest examples of the tradeoffs built into that strategy.
Calvert had represented the neighboring 41st District, but the new map dramatically changed that seat and made it much more favorable to Democrats.
He instead entered the redrawn 40th District, where Kim was already the incumbent.
The result was an unusual incumbent-versus-incumbent Republican contest in a district that remained favorable to the GOP.
The Cook Political Report rated CA-40 Solid Republican and gave it a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+6 before the primary.
So the Democratic lockout is a setback, but it is not the same as losing a district that had been expected to flip.
The more significant result is that Democrats no longer have any path to contest the seat in November, while Republican campaign resources can be directed elsewhere.
That is the point Eric Daugherty of Florida’s Voice News emphasized after the race was called.
He wrote that Democrats had been “locked out” of California’s 40th Congressional District, arguing that no Democratic resources would now be needed to defend the seat in November.
The November contest, however, is not simply a routine Republican hold.
Calvert and Kim entered the primary as sitting members of Congress with overlapping claims to the same electorate, and much of their campaign became a fight over who was more closely aligned with President Donald Trump.
Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas endorsed Calvert before the primary and made Trump loyalty and immigration central to his case.
“It comes down to two things. One is that Ken Calvert is a huge defender and supporter of the president,” Gill said.
“And number two, he’s got a fantastic record on immigration, which I think is the most important issue that we have in front of us today,” he added.
Gill also pointed to Kim’s actions after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Kim opposed Trump’s second impeachment, but she said at the time that the president should be held accountable and supported censuring him instead.
She joined several Republican colleagues in introducing a censure resolution.
That record became a campaign issue as Calvert and his allies sought to portray Kim as less reliable on Trump.
Immigration created another dividing line.
Kim is an original cosponsor of the DIGNIDAD Act, a bipartisan immigration proposal that has drawn criticism from immigration hardliners.
Breitbart and other conservative critics have characterized the legislation as a pro-migration or amnesty measure.
The bill itself would offer qualifying long-term undocumented immigrants legal status and work authorization while requiring background checks, tax compliance and restitution payments, alongside additional border-security and employment-verification provisions. The principal Dignity status does not provide a path to citizenship.
For Gill, Kim’s support for the measure was another reason to back Calvert.
For Kim, the broader campaign challenge was to defend a record that has sometimes placed her closer to the center of the Republican conference while simultaneously competing in a primary dominated by questions of loyalty to Trump.
The primary results settled who would advance.
They did not settle which Republican coalition will control the district.
Calvert entered the race with long-standing ties to much of the territory now inside CA-40 and decades of congressional seniority.
Kim entered as the sitting representative of the 40th District and has built her own political base in Orange County.
November will force Democratic and no-party-preference voters who participated in the primary to choose between two Republicans, abstain from the congressional contest or leave that portion of the ballot blank.
That makes the general election a different kind of test.
Instead of asking whether a Democrat can flip the district, the race will ask which Republican can build the broader coalition after a primary that was heavily shaped by partisan loyalty.
The outcome also complicates the political story surrounding Proposition 50.
Statewide, the new map was drawn to create more opportunities for Democrats.
In CA-40, however, the restructuring concentrated Republican strength in a way that made the seat safer for the GOP and ultimately left Democrats without a November candidate.
That does not mean the broader redistricting strategy failed.
It means the effects of a statewide map cannot be reduced to a single district.
For California Democrats, the 40th is now off the list of seats they can win in November.
For Republicans, the seat is secure as a matter of party control, but the fight over who holds it is far from over.
The primary settled one question: California’s 40th Congressional District will remain represented by a Republican.
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What it did not settle is whether voters will choose Calvert’s argument for seniority, Trump alignment and a harder immigration line, or Kim’s case for keeping the seat she already represents.
That is the contest the redrawn map has left for November.
