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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Andrew Gumbel in Bakersfield

The ferocious battle in California’s heartland laying bare Democrats’ struggles

Jasmeet Bains Randy Villegas California David Valadao United States Bernie Sanders DCCC Donald Trump
a composite image showing a man and a woman speaking
Left: Randy Villegas, who is running for California's 22nd congressional district, was campaigning walking a neighborhood in Bakersfield on 23 May 2026. Right: Dr Jasmeet Bains, the first Sikh-American politician to be elected in the California state legislature, attends a luncheon in Artesia, California, on 8 June 2024. Composite: Los Angeles Times via Getty Images, Reuters

When Jasmeet Bains first announced she was running for Congress, some Democratic powerbrokers saw her candidacy as downright providential in their quest to flip a crucial House seat that had been in Republican hands for years.

As a doctor in California’s agriculture-heavy Central valley, living and working in one of the poorest districts in the US, Bains could speak with singular authority about the devastating impact of cuts to healthcare enacted in Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

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