By Bo Erickson
CORCORAN, California (Reuters) - California is so heavily Democratic that neither the party's presidential candidate Kamala Harris nor her Republican rival Donald Trump even bother to campaign here.
It is an entirely different matter, however, in the fight for control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The state is home to six of the 38 most competitive House races, according to a Reuters analysis, and five of those seats are held by Republicans.
With Democrats seeking to overturn the Republicans' narrow 220-212 House majority, California is a key battlefield with contested districts stretching in a band from east of Fresno to south of Los Angeles.
Democratic former state lawmaker Rudy Salas made his pitch to unseat Republican U.S. Representative David Valadao on a late-September weekend to about 50 people in a backyard in Corcoran, a farming community about 180 miles (290 km) north of Los Angeles.
Pressed by one attendee frustrated by the high price of groceries, who asked why voters should continue backing Democrats, Salas said the leader of his party -- President Joe Biden -- is partly at fault.
"Nationally, both parties are kind of to blame, quite honestly. You can look at what Trump did, you can look at what Biden did," said Salas. "What I tell people is we need sensible people at the table that are going to be like, 'Who is doing stuff to lower my monthly costs?'"
Salas has the leeway to levy some criticism at Biden because California, unlike swing states including North Carolina, Nevada and Georgia, is not a factor in the presidential contest.
Beyond fundraisers, former President Trump and Vice President Harris have spent almost no time in the state, which last voted for a Republican for president in 1988.
Salas is mounting his second challenge to Valadao, a five-term incumbent who beat the Democrat by 3 percentage points in 2022. That was a good year for Republicans, who picked up nine seats and a House majority amid voter discontent over high inflation during Biden's first two years in office.
Control of the House could prove crucial for the next two years, particularly if Trump wins the Nov. 5 election.
Republicans have better-than-even chances of winning a Senate majority, so a Republican House could provide him an iron grip on Washington, while a Democratic majority could serve as the party's last check on Trump if Harris loses.
Five of the six competitive California seats are held by Republicans, enough for Democrats to win House control if they were to sweep all five and not lose any other competitive races.
ARM'S LENGTH FROM TRUMP
Valadao, a dairy farmer, also maintains an arm's length distance from his party's standard bearer, Trump.
In an interview at his farm, Valadao said he supported some specific tariffs but questioned Trump's proposal to impose blanket tariffs of 10% to 20% on virtually all imports.
"If you've got a country that is subsidizing their product to import against ours ... and they're making it harder for our farmers to compete, I think there's a spot where a tariff makes sense," Valadao said, "On everything across the board? I think that’s a mistake."
The child of immigrants from Portugal, Valadao also noted that voters would not support Trump's recent promises for mass deportations in his district, which is the most racially diverse competitive House district in the country, according to a Reuters analysis.
California is home to five of the six most diverse competitive districts in the country, with Hispanic, Black and Asian voters outnumbering white voters.
"People are a lot more sympathetic to the immigrant situation because so many of us here are immigrants," Valadao said, adding that local voters "won't come in and say, 'deport all of these people.'"
That's not the only way Valadao has broken with Trump.
He is among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him following the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S Capitol. Only two of them remain in office, Valadao and Representative Dan Newhouse of Washington state. The others have been driven out.
"I've stood by my decision, and I'll let history decide how they feel about it," Valadao said.
Long-time table grape harvesters, Becky Hernandez and Miguel Cortez Cazares, said they identify with Democrats but will likely vote for Valadao because of his focus on agriculture.
"We mostly go with the one who helps us more," Hernandez said, adding that she sees Valadao as an advocate for crucial water access. "Honestly, I'm a traitor sometimes, and my kids say I should become a Republican. I say, 'Well, I don't think so.'"
LESS 'AD CLUTTER'
Salas and Valadao have room to maneuver their messaging away from the main themes of the Harris and Trump campaigns because neither presidential campaign is running much advertising in the state.
By way of comparison, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, voters have been barraged with more than $185 million in presidential TV ads in the last four months versus only $390,000 in California, according to data from Democratic media monitoring firm Ascend.
"Californians are not seeing political ads at the same volume as many other places around the country, so there’s less so-called ad clutter," said Steve Caplan, a political advertising lecturer at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. "There is more of an opportunity for congressional campaigns in California to break through."
The California House ads feature more attacks on local issues like the state's gas tax, a main topic in the Valadao and Salas campaigns.
Republican ads tie Democrats to Governor Gavin Newsom's progressive politics and Democrats call out Republican congressional members on abortion rights, arguing the right is in jeopardy despite protection in the state's constitution.
But the absence of the presidential campaigns also poses challenges. As he spoke to supporters in the Corcoran backyard, Salas bemoaned the fact that his campaign "is being outspent by Republicans."
Valadao and Republican groups have already outspent Salas and Democratic groups on broadcast TV by at least $636,000, according to Ascend data reviewed by Reuters. The Republican's reserved advertising between now and Election Day is $1.25 million higher than the Democrats', the data showed.
“A lot of campaigns wait until the window when people are actually voting to invest in TV ads and in California that’s a four-week window” starting in October, said Andy Barr, managing director of UpLift, a Democratic media firm, which owns Ascend.
This is one reason why labor activist Dolores Huerta, who 60 years ago in this district led the first major U.S. farmworker strike alongside Cesar Chavez, is campaigning and organizing canvassers for Salas.
In an interview, she said she worried that Democrats nationally were underestimating the importance of the California races as they focused much of their attention on the Harris campaign.
"There’s a lot at stake,” said Huerta, 94. "Getting money for these other House races is more difficult ... but you're not going to be able to govern unless you get the House and Senate to support your legislation."