This week, two well-established Republicans kicked off bids in California’s 50th Congressional District against Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who is scheduled to stand trial in January on corruption charges. First, state Sen. Brian Jones confirmed that he’d take on Hunter in the March top-two primary. However, he was immediately overshadowed by former Rep. Darrell Issa, who represented the neighboring 49th District until January and spent years topping Roll Call’s list of wealthiest members of Congress.
Two other notable Republican candidates, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells and former Escondido Mayor Sam Abed, announced on Thursday that they were dropping out of the race and supporting Issa. However, fellow Republican Carl DeMaio, who became a prominent conservative radio host after two tight election losses earlier in the decade, quickly made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. Democrat Ammar Campa-Najjar, who lost to Hunter 51.7-48.3 last year, is also running again. All the candidates will face off on one ballot, and the top-two vote-getters will advance to the November general election.
Progressives across the nation were delighted in January of 2018 when Issa, who spent years using his position as chair of the House Oversight Committee—and millions in taxpayer dollars—to launch bogus investigation after bogus investigation against the Obama administration, announced that he would retire from Congress. Issa’s decision came just over a year after he’d narrowly won re-election in the 49th District, a once-safely red seat that had swung from 52-46 Romney to 51-43 Clinton; that fall, Democrat Mike Levin would decisively flip Issa’s constituency.
However, while Issa was done with the 49th District, he wasn’t actually done with Congress. Weeks after he announced he would retire, reports emerged that Issa was considering switching to the 50th District, an inland San Diego County seat that was still reliably red turf at 55-40 Trump, if Hunter resigned.
Hunter, who was under investigation at the time for allegedly misusing campaign money but had not yet been indicted, reacted by telling The Hill, “If I was to blow up in the air, then he would be running for it. If I was to blow up, then he would run for the seat.” Hunter continued, “If I blow up, yes. Why wouldn't he run for my seat if I was to blow up in the air?”
Hunter did not blow up in time for the candidate filing deadline, and Issa was not on the ballot anywhere in 2018. Later that year, Issa also got some good news when Donald Trump picked him to lead the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, but his nomination quickly stalled in the Senate. Over the summer, Issa once again began showing interest in seeking the 50th District, and this time, he was willing to face Hunter. However, not all of his former colleagues were onboard. In June, The Hill wrote that some GOP House members believed he had "rubbed colleagues the wrong way."
One unnamed member sounded particularly pissed at Issa for wanting to come back to Congress after abandoning the 49th District, declaring, "Issa had his time here," and added, "[Y]eah, we know California is a challenging political environment, but I don't think there's been a lot of calls made to have him come back." That skepticism didn’t stop Issa from launching an exploratory committee in late August, which included a site with an issues section with that read "placeholder for 1st issues title" and "placeholder for 2nd issues title," with plenty of dummy text underneath.
A few weeks later, though, Issa’s nomination to head the U.S. Trade and Development Agency briefly got a new lease on life after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee scheduled a confirmation hearing that would have taken place exactly a year after Trump first picked him. However, things quickly went off the rails last week after New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, who is the committee’s top Democrat, began the day by calling for the hearings to be delayed, saying that information in Issa’s FBI background check was “problematic” and “potentially disqualifying.”
Menendez didn’t reveal what those bogeys were, but Republican Sen. Jim Risch, the committee’s leader, agreed to postpone the hearings until the Trump administration gave Issa’s file to the full panel (only the chair and ranking member have seen it).
Issa downplayed Menendez’s objections and argued that the senator was simply rehashing public information about the former congressman’s time in the Army nearly 50 years ago. Issa’s military career included a demotion and an “unsatisfactory” conduct rating, as well as an allegation that he stole another soldier’s car.
However, Menendez said there was more troubling information in Issa’s file, adding, “If they were all public, then we wouldn’t be having the difficulty that we have.” Issa quickly seems to have decided this wasn’t a battle worth fighting, and he said in his Thursday congressional kickoff that he’d informed Trump he was withdrawing his name from consideration.
Jones, the other GOP candidate who launched his campaign against Hunter this week, also has a long career in San Diego County politics. In 2008, Jones ran for a previous version of this seat (then numbered the 52nd District) in the GOP primary against Hunter, the son and namesake of longtime Rep. Duncan Hunter Sr. The younger Hunter won that race by a lopsided 72-16 margin, but Jones was elected to the state Assembly just two years later.
Last year, Jones won a promotion to a state Senate seat that takes up 87% of the 50th Congressional District, which could give him a good geographic base of support. Last week, the San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Michael Smolens also wrote that Jones “has strong ties to local faith-based organizations,” which might come in handy in this crowded race.
However, while DeMaio, Issa, and Jones each said they were running because Hunter could jeopardize the GOP’s hold on this seat, they could end up splitting the anti-Hunter vote and sending the incumbent into another general election against Campa-Najjar. California’s candidate filing deadline is in December and if Hunter runs for re-election as he’s pledged to do, he’ll remain on the March ballot no matter how his trial goes.
However, it’s very possible that Hunter still won’t have gone before a judge by the time voters get to weigh in on his future. The congressman’s team has convinced a federal appeals court to hear their motion in December to dismiss the case, and one former federal prosecutor told San Diego’s local NBC affiliate that these proceedings could delay his trial by as much as 18 months. Federal prosecutors allege that Hunter illegally used campaign money for personal matters, including on video games, a flight for his family’s pet rabbit, and to finance his affairs with at least five different women.
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