40 Days to Go: Adam Gray

Sep 26, 2024

Who: Adam Gray

Where: CA-13 (the Central Valley)

Why: Adam Gray's race against Republican John Duarte in 2022 was so close that both of them attended new member orientation in D.C. As it happened, Gray lost by 564 votes, or 0.42 percentage points. Biden had carried this district by 11 points in 2020, but the poor turnout that plagued several California Democrats running for House seats in 2022 sent him back home as the runner-up.

Gray is back, however, and his rematch against the freshman Duarte is considered a toss-up. During his ten years in the state Assembly, Gray founded the Problem Solvers Caucus and developed a centrist reputation, often bucking his own party over issues related to water rights in his district. He also secured state funding to open a medical school at University of California-Merced in order to address the doctor shortage in the Central Valley.

In 2017, the incumbent Duarte, was fined $1.1 million after federal regulators discovered that he was plowing over protected wetlands on land owned by his nursery. Not surprisingly, once on the Hill he went after clean water standards and other environmental protections that he believes harms farmers.

His bill that weakens oversight of so-called dredge-and-fill permits—the type he himself failed to obtain—would “fast-track permits for notoriously harmful infrastructure like oil and gas pipelines while silencing the ability of communities to speak out against dangerous threats to water resources and public health,” according to Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization. The House passed the bill in March but it is stalled in the Senate. Duarte also supports expanding oil and natural gas drilling.

In this heavily agricultural district known as “the food basket of the nation,” with a voting population that is 61% Hispanic or Latino, this race may again come down to the wire.

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