California 27: Turning Over a New Candidate
For three consecutive elections, Republican Mike Garcia has bedeviled Democrats by winning a left-trending Los Angeles County seat despite amassing a staunchly conservative record in Congress. But Democrats have a renewed optimism this cycle, because for the first time in four years, they’ll have a different candidate.
Democrats need a net gain of five seats to regain the House majority, and they’ll likely need to win races like this one in Southern California to make it happen.
The Lay of the Land
The 27th District sits in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County. Its three main population centers are the cities of Santa Clarita (30 percent of the district), Lancaster (23 percent), and Palmdale (22 percent). The latter two sit in the Antelope Valley region. The district also includes a small slice of Los Angeles proper, the neighborhood of Porter Ranch.
Demographically, the 27th is diverse. By overall population, the district is 42 percent Hispanic, 34 percent white, 12 percent Black and 11 percent Asian. But the electorate skews whiter. As of 2020, the citizen voting-age population was 44 percent white, 35 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Black and 10 percent Asian.
The Hispanic population is concentrated in the Antelope Valley, while the Santa Clarita valley area is predominantly white.
Politically, the 27th leans Democratic at the federal level, despite the area having been held by Republicans for most of the last few decades. Joe Biden would have carried it by…
