Race To Replace Eric Swalwell Undecided, House Race Still Not Called
Wahab Led by More Than 20 Points in June. Now Eric Swalwell’s Old Seat Is a 51–49 Nail-Biter
Aisha Wahab entered California’s special election as the overwhelming favorite. Millions in outside spending, a low-turnout electorate and a sharper ideological contrast turned the race with Melissa Hernandez into a contest too close to call — and the same two Democrats will do it again in November.
A race that was supposed to be over became the closest kind of unfinished business
Six weeks ago, California state Sen. Aisha Wahab looked as if she had already answered the central political question in the race to replace Eric Swalwell.
She had beaten Melissa Hernandez by more than 20 percentage points — twice.
Wahab finished first in the regularly scheduled June 2 primary for the next full congressional term. Two weeks later, she again finished first in the June 16 special primary to fill the final months of Swalwell’s old term, taking 42.8% while Hernandez finished at 16.8%.
Then the campaign changed.
By the time voters cast ballots in Tuesday’s special general election, what had looked like a comfortable progressive victory had become a virtual tie.
In the latest published results reviewed for this article, Wahab held roughly 51% of the vote to Hernandez’s 49%, a lead of only about 1,350 votes with a substantial number of ballots still to be counted.
No major election authority had called the race.
That is the first fact that matters.
The second is that whoever eventually wins will have almost no time to enjoy it.
Wahab and Hernandez are already scheduled to face each other again on November 3 for the next full two-year term.
Why there is a vacancy in the first place
The special election exists because Swalwell’s political career collapsed with unusual speed in April.
The longtime Democratic congressman ended his campaign for California governor and resigned from the House after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault.
At least five women had made allegations by the time he left office.
Swalwell denied the serious allegations and described them as false, while acknowledging past “mistakes in judgment.”
His resignation became effective on April 14, leaving the East Bay district without its longtime representative and triggering a special election process.
That background matters because the winner of Tuesday’s contest is not waiting until January.
Once the result is certified and the winner is seated, that person can immediately vote in a House where the Republican majority is already extremely narrow.
So even though CA-14 is safely Democratic at the party level, the timing gives the special election national significance.
The strange part: this is really two elections using two slightly different maps
California voters in this district are effectively choosing between the same two candidates twice in less than three months.
Tuesday’s special election determines who completes Swalwell’s old term under the congressional boundaries that were in effect when that term began.
The November election determines who serves the new term beginning in January 2027 — under slightly redrawn boundaries adopted after California voters approved Proposition 50.
The changes do not transform CA-14 into a competitive Republican district.
Both versions remain heavily Democratic and are entirely within Alameda County.
Kamala Harris carried the current district with 65.8% of the presidential vote in 2024. Under the new lines, her share would have been almost identical, about 65.4%.
But the electorate will still be different in November.
A special election in August tends to attract a smaller and more unusual electorate than a November midterm. The new map also changes which voters are eligible for the full-term race.
That means Tuesday is both consequential and imperfect as a preview.
Wahab entered as the progressive favorite — but her coalition is broader than that label
Wahab, a Democrat from Hayward, has served in the California Senate since 2022 and is the first Afghan American elected to the state Legislature.
She has positioned herself on the progressive side of the party on immigration, civil liberties, labor and economic policy.
Her congressional platform calls for lower prescription-drug costs, stronger worker protections, expanded housing, clean-energy investment and a “secure, fair, and humane” immigration system with due process.
She has also backed efforts in Sacramento to make it easier for people to pursue civil claims against federal law-enforcement officers accused of constitutional violations — legislation promoted amid disputes over aggressive federal immigration enforcement.
That record has helped her win support from progressive organizations including Our Revolution, the group founded out of Bernie Sanders’ political movement.
She has also been endorsed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and progressive members of Congress including Pramila Jayapal and Greg Casar.
But calling her simply the “left-wing candidate” misses part of the story.
Wahab also has endorsements from the California Democratic Party, major labor organizations, the California Police Chiefs Association and the California Peace Officers Association.
That broader coalition helps explain why she dominated the June primaries.
Hernandez built the race around a different kind of Democratic argument
Melissa Hernandez has tried to make the contest less about national progressive politics and more about whether voters want a pragmatic local executive in Congress.
She is the president of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board and a former mayor of Dublin.
Hernandez has presented herself as the more moderate option, emphasizing cost of living, housing, public safety and government management.
On immigration, she has criticized the current system as broken while declining to join calls to abolish ICE.
Her campaign argues for border security alongside legal pathways and protections for immigrants already living in American communities.
That position creates one of the clearest contrasts with Wahab.
Hernandez has also accumulated support from local officials, law-enforcement organizations and a growing group of congressional Democrats who see her as a better fit for the district’s more moderate voters.
In a normal primary, that argument might have struggled against Wahab’s party endorsements and June momentum.
The special election gave Hernandez another ingredient: money — a great deal of it, much of it from outside her own campaign.
The biggest change between June and August was outside spending
The most important structural difference between Wahab’s 20-plus-point June victories and Tuesday’s near tie was the explosion of independent spending.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and aligned outside groups poured millions of dollars into the race, overwhelmingly in ways that benefited Hernandez or attacked Wahab.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that AIPAC-related spending against Wahab had reached roughly $6.3 million by election night.
The Associated Press, using an earlier campaign-finance window, calculated about $4.1 million in total outside spending since mid-July, with about $3.7 million of that benefiting Hernandez and only about $400,000 benefiting Wahab.
The different totals reflect different reporting windows and categories, but they point in the same direction.
Hernandez did not suddenly erase a 20-point deficit with her own campaign spending alone.
Outside groups changed the scale of the race.
Israel was not the top local issue — but it helped bring national money into the district
The reason for that outside interest is tied in part to Wahab’s position on Israel and Gaza.
During a candidate forum, Wahab said she considered what was happening to Palestinians in Gaza a genocide.
Hernandez declined to use that label, saying Israel had a right to defend itself after the October 2023 attacks while also arguing that the destruction in Gaza had gone too far and civilians were paying the cost.
Neither candidate built her campaign primarily around Middle East policy.
Housing, health care, childcare, grocery costs and public safety have generally been more immediate concerns in the suburban East Bay.
But the Israel issue helped attract national attention and major pro-Israel spending into a race that otherwise might have remained local.
That spending then focused heavily on other subjects, including public safety and Wahab’s legislative record.
The result was a campaign in which foreign-policy politics helped finance a domestic message.
Public safety became the battlefield
Hernandez and allied groups tried to define Wahab as too permissive on crime.
Wahab pushed back aggressively, pointing to votes on human trafficking, fentanyl and organized retail theft, as well as endorsements from police chiefs and peace-officer organizations.
The disagreement is important because it shows why describing the race simply as “progressive versus moderate” can be misleading.
Wahab is clearly the more progressive candidate on several issues.
But she is not running on a platform of eliminating law enforcement, and her campaign has actively used law-enforcement endorsements to rebut attacks on public safety.
Hernandez, meanwhile, has made those attacks central to her argument that she would be a more practical and less ideological member of Congress.
That is a much more specific fight than the national shorthand suggests.
The ugliest campaign moment involved a social-media post attributed to Wahab’s adoptive father
The campaign also produced a controversy that had little to do with legislation.
Hernandez’s campaign highlighted racist social-media comments attributed to Wahab’s adoptive father, including a post calling for ICE to be used against Hernandez and saying she should be sent to Mexico.
The attack carried obvious political force because Hernandez is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and because Wahab has been one of the Legislature’s prominent critics of aggressive ICE enforcement.
Wahab condemned the comments as racist.
She also said her father, who is elderly and in declining health, was unaware of the post and that his social-media account had previously been compromised.
That leaves an important factual boundary.
The comments were publicly attributed to Wahab’s father and became a legitimate campaign controversy.
But the available reporting does not establish that Wahab herself wrote, approved or endorsed them.
Why the count is taking time
California elections can look frustratingly unfinished on election night because most voting is conducted by mail.
In the June 16 special primary, roughly 98% of ballots were cast by mail or delivered as absentee ballots.
Alameda County typically reports a large first batch after polls close and then continues processing valid mail ballots that arrive or require verification.
That is why a 51%–49% split with thousands of ballots outstanding is not enough for a responsible election call.
California also has no automatic recount provision triggered simply by a close margin.
The Associated Press says it will call the race only when the remaining ballots can no longer plausibly change the outcome.
Until then, the correct description is simple: Wahab leads, Hernandez trails narrowly, and the race remains unresolved.
Whoever wins gets an immediate advantage — but not much time
The special-election winner will gain something more valuable than a few months of congressional salary.
She will gain the title “member of Congress” before the November rematch.
That means access to the House floor, a congressional office, national media visibility and the ability to campaign as the sitting representative rather than merely as a candidate.
In a race already shaped by millions of dollars in independent spending, incumbency — even for a matter of weeks — can become another resource.
But it will not settle the long-term question.
The November election will bring a larger electorate, a different turnout pattern and slightly different district boundaries.
The same two names will appear on the ballot again.
What Tuesday actually changed
Before the special election, the safest assumption was that Wahab’s June margins would carry her comfortably through August and probably through November.
That assumption no longer works.
A candidate who led Hernandez by more than 20 points in two separate June contests was fighting for a lead of roughly two points by Wednesday.
That does not prove outside spending alone caused the shift.
Turnout changed. The electorate changed. The race became more visible. Hernandez sharpened her message. Wahab faced sustained negative advertising. And an August special election is not the same political event as a June primary.
But the movement is too large to dismiss.
Whatever the final result, Hernandez has already demonstrated that Wahab is not politically untouchable.
And whatever the final result, Wahab has demonstrated that even after millions were spent against her, she remained competitive enough to lead the first count.
That is why this race is now more important than the few months left in Swalwell’s term.
It has become a live experiment in how progressive credibility, establishment support, outside money, public-safety politics and low-turnout election mechanics collide inside the modern Democratic Party.
The first winner may be known soon. The real winner will not be known until November.
Eventually, Alameda County will finish counting enough ballots for the special election to be called.
One of the two women will go to Washington almost immediately.
But neither campaign will really end.
Wahab and Hernandez will turn around and ask many of the same voters — plus a much larger November electorate — to choose again for the full term.
If Wahab survives the special election, Hernandez can argue that she transformed a 20-point deficit into a race decided at the margins and deserves another shot.
If Hernandez overtakes her, Wahab can argue that a low-turnout special election flooded with outside spending should not define the district’s long-term representation.
Either way, the November contest will begin with one fact neither side could have plausibly claimed after the June primaries.
This race is competitive.
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And after what happened between June and August, nobody should assume the second round will look like the first.
