SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 (Prsopect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n RICH PEDRONCELLI\/AP PHOTO<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assemblymember Jasmeet Bain (D-Bakersfield) works at her desk at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, September 12, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Democratic congressional challenger in a key swing House district in California likened an ad from her primary opponent about her corporate donors to \u201cpolitical violence,\u201d in an early sign of the potential fallout of Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder on campaign rhetoric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Jasmeet Bains, a state assemblymember who is running in California\u2019s 22nd Congressional District, made the comment in a Facebook post after a fellow Democrat running for the seat, a college teacher and auto repair shop owner named Randy Villegas, released an ad<\/a> criticizing her corporate contributors. Both Democrats are challenging Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) in a Central Valley seat that will be very competitive, whether California voters pass new congressional maps<\/a> or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy opponents, Democrat and Republican alike, have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the same corporations that are ripping us off, making our health care, housing, and groceries more expensive,\u201d Villegas says in the ad. Bains is not mentioned by name, but her image appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More from David Dayen<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Campaign finance disclosures compiled by the Working Families Party<\/a>, a supporter of Villegas, which the Prospect <\/em>verified, show that both Bains and Valadao have indeed received direct contributions or corporate PAC donations from the same 53 corporations, including AbbVie, Amazon, Anheuser-Busch, AT&T, Bayer, BNSF Railway, Charter Communications, Chevron, Comcast, Eli Lilly, Exxon Mobil, Google, Honeywell, Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, McDonald\u2019s, Merck, Paramount, Pfizer, Phillips 66, Sempra Energy, Southern California Edison, Union Pacific, UnitedHealth Group, Walmart, and Waste Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These companies donated at least $258,600 to Bains throughout her State Assembly career, while donating over $1 million to Valadao in his congressional campaigns. Bains, who entered the CA-22 race in July<\/a>, has not disclosed her federal donations yet because the quarter is not over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hours after Villegas released the ad on September 18, Bains posted a message to Facebook<\/a> that began: \u201cAs political violence increases in America, I myself have experienced a heightened level of it.\u201d Bains then alleges that she, a woman of color, is being attacked because of her identity. (Villegas, incidentally, is Mexican American.) \u201cWhat gave a man the permission to resort to spreading lies just because his campaign is going nowhere,\u201d Bains wrote, using the word \u201clie\u201d four times without articulating what the lie was. She was only referred to in the ad in the context of her political donations, which are public and documented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bains followed this up with two other<\/a> Facebook posts<\/a> expressing anger over being called out with what she claims are \u201clies,\u201d while highlighting her own work providing health care and claiming that any attack on her is \u201can attack on all healthcare providers.\u201d In one post, she writes, \u201cThrowing punches at me makes you look ridiculously phony especially when you have nothing in your resume that could match up to half of what I\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a Sikh woman, Bains has experienced online attacks on her race and religion in the past, but the flurry of Facebook posts came directly after the ad and referenced her primary opponent. The campaign did not respond to a direct question about whether she was associating criticism of her campaign donors with political violence, in the wake of Donald Trump\u2019s attempts to cancel journalists and late-night talk show hosts who criticize him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Bains campaign spokesperson responded to a series of questions from the Prospect<\/em> with this statement: \u201cDr. Bains has a strong voting record focused on solving California\u2019s cost of living crisis and increasing access to health care. That is why she is the only Democrat in the race that can flip this seat blue, and the polling and support from her community proves it \u2026 the Valley needs fewer candidates that talk and more candidates that win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n THE 22ND DISTRICT COVERS LOTS OF FARM COUNTRY<\/strong> and several oil and gas sites in the center of California. It is over three-quarters Hispanic<\/a>, and the median age is barely over 30. CA-22 has a poverty rate of almost 23 percent, more than twice the national average, and one of the largest populations on Medicaid of any congressional district in the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite this favorable demographic set for Democrats, Valadao has been representing the area since 2012, save for one two-year term in 2019-2020. He won back the district in 2020 despite Joe Biden defeating Donald Trump there by 13 points. Now, Valadao\u2019s vote for the GOP mega-bill<\/a> that cuts Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion, after initially saying that Medicaid cuts were a red line, has threatened his re-election hopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Valadao\u2019s opponents have largely resembled the kind of frontline challenger the Democratic Party is comfortable with: centrist and corporate-backed. This hasn\u2019t exactly touched off a flood of engagement in politics: The district is marked by catastrophically low turnout, barely scratching past 100,000 votes in the last midterm election in 2022, with 113,000 in 2018 and only 79,000 in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Villegas got into the race in April promising a different approach. \u201cI\u2019m running because I\u2019m fed up with the status quo of politics we\u2019ve seen,\u201d said the son of Mexican immigrants who worked at swap meets and the family auto repair shop growing up. Like Bains, he also has an advanced degree\u2014his Ph.D. led him to become a political science professor at the College of the Sequoias<\/a>, a community college in Visalia, while also running the auto shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n COURTESY RANDY VILLEGAS FOR CONGRESS<\/p>\n\n\n\n Progressive Democrat Randy Villegas, challenging in CA-22, released an ad criticizing his opponents\u2019 corporate campaign funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the second quarter of 2025, Villegas raised a healthy $250,000 from over 4,000 individual donations. He rejects the idea that frontline candidates must move to the right on a host of issues to win in purple districts, instead foregrounding an economic populist message. \u201cThis is not a fight about left vs. right, this is about bottom vs. top,\u201d he said, connecting the Democrats\u2019 loss of working-class voters with the way in which money has overwhelmed politics and how elected officials have been bought off. \u201cIf you look on paper, this should have been a Democratic seat a while ago, but nobody\u2019s giving them a reason to vote for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an interview, Villegas repeatedly highlighted rejecting corporate PAC money, taking on monopolized sectors like the agriculture industry in his district, and standing with workers and residents over special interests. He aligns with the spurt of working-class candidates running in difficult races this year; his campaign video was made by the same group behind Graham Platner<\/a>, the Senate candidate in Maine, and Dan Osborn<\/a>, the independent Senate candidate in Nebraska. The Working Families Party has described Villegas as a top priority for 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTell me who you\u2019re with and I\u2019ll tell you who you are,\u201d Villegas said, referring to a slogan that his mother often said. \u201cTell me who you\u2019re taking money from, and I\u2019ll tell you who you support.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When he got in, Villegas didn\u2019t know he would be thrown into a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. But the entry of Bains, a physician, has created that dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n BAINS WAS SEEN AS A <\/strong>BIG RECRUITMENT WIN<\/strong><\/a> for the Democratic establishment when she announced in July. She quickly received<\/a> a number of endorsements<\/a> from three statewide officers, eight members of the California House delegation, and two labor unions (SEIU California and the electrical workers\u2019 local in the region) upon entering the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is despite, or maybe because of, Bains being among the most conservative Democrats in the legislature during her two terms in the State Assembly. Most notably, she was the only Democrat to vote against an oil price-gouging law<\/a> in 2023, losing her committee assignments<\/a> as a result. \u201cThe bill was to address price-gouging of consumers,\u201d Villegas said. \u201cIt shows disrespect for working-class people who are struggling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not the only<\/a> pro\u2013oil and gas vote<\/a> Bains has taken. Several oil companies drill in the Kern County section of Bains\u2019s district. She received a maximum donation from the Western States Petroleum Association PAC shortly after the price-gouging vote, and accepted $54,000 from oil and gas interests<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The corporate coziness doesn\u2019t stop with Big Oil, even on issues of affordability that will likely dominate the campaign. Bains voted against a bill to limit corporate landlords from owning more than 1,000 single-family properties. She voted against stronger tenant protections. She voted against giving the state attorney general authority to block private equity purchases of medical providers. She voted against disclosure of pesticides on pretreated seeds sold in California. She voted against requiring employers to create a workplace violence plan. And separately, she recently voted against ACA 8, the bill that put Prop 50 on the ballot to rewrite congressional maps in reaction to the attempted Republican gerrymander in Texas and elsewhere. (The new CA-22 map would be slightly more friendly to a Democrat but still quite competitive.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n FRANCIS CHUNG\/POLITICO VIA AP IMAGES<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) speaks with a reporter as he walks to a vote at the U.S. Capitol, September 18, 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, Bains chose not to vote at least 40 times, which in the California legislature is partially akin to a no vote. These skipped votes include a recently signed law<\/a> barring ICE agents from wearing masks, a law requiring notification for pesticide use<\/a> near school locations, and a law banning a type of cancer-causing chemical<\/a> known as PFAS in consumer products (on this bill, she initially didn\u2019t vote<\/a>, but supported the bill on final passage). Villegas took particular umbrage at the lack of support for the ICE masking bill, considering that he has family members who are undocumented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Money, like the 53 corporate PAC donations to Bains that mirror contributions to Valadao, sits behind these votes, Villegas argues. \u201cPoliticians like my opponents are bought and paid for,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though the expectation is that the establishment has lined up for Bains, Villegas claims the situation is different on the ground. He touts the support<\/a> of the three county central committee chairs in the district (Kings, Tulare, and Kern), and if Prop 50 passes and the district extends to Fresno County, he would have that party chair\u2019s support as well. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) has endorsed Villegas as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to move working-class voters,\u201d Villegas said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get young people to vote when they\u2019re so disillusioned. It\u2019s OK to have disagreements within the party. It\u2019s OK to have different policy priorities. But we have to decide, are we going to be party of the working class or the party of billionaires?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n David Dayen is the Prospect\u2019s executive editor. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is \u2018Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains took PAC money from 53 corporations that also donated to the incumbent Republican she\u2019s running against. She said a progressive challenger pointing that out is a form of violence. BY DAVID DAYEN SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 (Prsopect.org) Expand RICH PEDRONCELLI\/AP PHOTO Assemblymember Jasmeet Bain (D-Bakersfield) works at her desk… Continue reading ![\"Dayen-CA-22](\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/downloads\/23588\/download\/Dayen-CA-22%20092525.jpg?cb=db96923d4b7849fc0fc5f202dbbc2254\")
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nDAVID DAYEN<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n