LA Times: “Veteran Republican congressman’s reign in Riverside County under siege”

For decades, Rep. Ken Calvert, 71, presided comfortably over this corner of the Inland Empire. The lifelong Riverside County Republican largely coasted to reelection in a safely conservative district, eventually becoming one of the most senior members of the California House delegation.

But that evaporated in 2022, when Calvert was nearly toppled by a fresh-faced Democratic insurgent.

Will Rollins' candidacy in California's 41st District was made viable by redistricting changes the year prior that swapped Republican havens like Temecula and Murrieta for a swath of the Coachella Valley that included overwhelmingly liberal Palm Springs, home to one of the largest concentrations of LGBTQ+ voters in the country.

The 2022 race didn't draw much attention at first. That quickly changed in the months prior to the election when the former federal prosecutor, now 39, showed he might have an actual shot at unseating the entrenched Republican stalwart. Rollins was briefly ahead on election night, though Calvert ultimately bested him by more than 11,000 votes.

Two years later, Rollins and Calvert are set for a 2024 rematch in what is now one of the most closely-watched races in the country.

The seat will likely play a crucial role in deciding which party dominates the U.S. House of Representatives next year, with partisan control of the House set to be determined by a handful of competitive seats in New York and California.

In a twist that one advocate described as "poetic justice," Rollins was a young gay candidate battling an older Republican who had voted against LGBTQ rights in the past in a district that now included Palm Springs, the first city in the nation to elect an all-LGBTQ city council.

All of those dynamics remain at play, and the addition of the Coachella Valley is precisely what made the district competitive.

Both sides say this year's race will likely be dominated by kitchen-table issues including the daily cost of living, crime and housing, rather than the divisive culture wars that permeate the national political narrative, and that results will come down to what happens in the western Riverside suburbs.

"Corona, Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Eastvale, Canyon Lake, Norco - those are the cities that are going to decide the outcome of this election," Rollins said, sitting at an oversize table in a Corona fire station. The local firefighters he'd been meeting with had just rushed out on an emergency call and the smell of their chorizo and eggs lingered, along with several hastily abandoned breakfast plates.

"That's why I'm here today in Corona," Rollins said, noting that he'd been at the Corona Chamber of Commerce earlier that morning and tries to be in his Corona field office five days a week.

Registered Democrats now slightly outnumber Republicans in the city, though folks still tend to be more fiscally conservative regardless of party affiliation, Speake said.

More broadly speaking, the 41st District stands out as a rare piece of truly purple topography in a national landscape dominated by red and blue congressional districts.

Trump endorsed Calvert in 2022, and the congressman has endorsed Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. Rollins, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the National Security Division at the Department of Justice, has blasted Calvert for his continued support of Trump, even after Trump became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes last month, with Rollins saying on the social media site X that the district deserves "a representative who cares more about the 750,000 of us in Riverside County than one convicted felon in New York."

"Riverside of 2024 is not Riverside of 1994," said Sky Allen, executive director of Inland Empire United, a progressive political group that has endorsed Rollins. "The community looks different, our needs are different. And also, there's a lot of people in our community that were never really represented by someone that holds conservative values."

Allen cited the increased racial and ethnic diversity, more LGBTQ+ and immigrant families and more organizing from nonprofits like hers as factors shaping the district.

Calvert and Rollins diverge on a number of pivotal issues. Calvert has said decisions on abortion should be left to the states and has an A+ rating on SBA Pro-Life America's "National Pro-Life Scorecard," whereas Rollins has been outspoken on protecting abortion rights and is backed by Planned Parenthood California's political action committee. Rollins has advocated more gun-safety restrictions, whereas Calvert has voted against more stringent restrictions and received high marks from the National Rifle Assn.

Both candidates have criticized the country's broken immigration system and advocated securing the country's borders, but Rollins' positioning also focuses on creating a path to citizenship for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and other "qualified immigrants."

The Democratic establishment is putting its full backing behind Rollins. He's one of the top candidates on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "red to blue" list, a program that provides organizational and fundraising support, and he has also been the beneficiary of high-profile fundraising efforts, with Orange County Rep. Katie Porter blasting emails to her supporters on his behalf and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries swinging through Southern California to headline a fundraiser.

Calvert retains the advantages of incumbency and ample name recognition, but Rollins has been a particularly prolific fundraiser. The Democratic challenger had roughly $500,000 more in his war chest than Calvert as of the end of March, according to federal filings. Money will be critical to either candidate getting their message out, especially with the western portion of the district overlapping with the extremely expensive Los Angeles media market.

"If you're looking at the trend line, this new district is definitely moving toward Democrats after redistricting," said Erin Covey, a House analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, citing the addition of Palm Springs and the fact that parts of the historically conservative Inland Empire have also shifted slightly to the left.