(Fremont, CA)
Voters in California's 14th Congressional District decide on Aug. 18 who serves out the remainder of Eric Swalwell's term. The winner gets about four and a half months in the House. Then the same two candidates face each other again on Nov. 3 for the full term.
Swalwell resigned in April after several women accused him of sexual misconduct. The seat has been empty since April 14.
Both candidates are Democrats. State Sen. Aisha Wahab of Fremont has already beaten former Dublin Mayor Melissa Hernandez twice this year, 38.3 percent to 17.2 percent in the June 2 primary and 42.8 percent to 16.8 percent in the June 16 special primary. Hernandez is currently BART Board president and works in Supervisor David Haubert's office.
Tri-Valley OpGov News sent both candidates the same five questions. Their answers describe two campaigns that largely agree on what to do and disagree sharply about each other.
Where they overlap
Hernandez led with costs: housing, health care, childcare, gas, groceries. "Families here are working harder than their parents did and getting less for it," she wrote. She would build housing at every income level, protect health care subsidies and get promised transit money spent.
Wahab listed lowering the cost of living, housing supply, public safety, reproductive rights, and defending Medicare, Social Security and public education.
Neither named a Swalwell bill they would change. Hernandez said she would change where the work happens. "This seat has had a national profile; I want it to have a local one," she wrote. Wahab said she would push harder on affordability and problem-solving.
Both answered the first-100-days question as though starting a full term. Whoever wins will serve roughly 100 working days total.
The money
The clearest difference between the campaigns right now is who is spending on their behalf.
Since July 1, outside groups have spent about $2.45 million supporting Hernandez and just under $200,000 supporting Wahab, according to FEC filings reviewed by The American Prospect. Most traces to BOLD America, a super PAC founded by three former members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has taken $1.55 million this year from United Democracy Project, the super
PAC affiliated with AIPAC.
Asked about it, Hernandez pointed to the law. "On independent expenditures, I have no say over them," she wrote, adding that she found it insulting to suggest an organization that exists to elect Latinos to Congress is an arm of anybody else.
She is right that coordination is prohibited and candidates do not control super PAC spending. Two clarifications are worth making anyway. CHC BOLD PAC, which endorsed her in April, is the caucus campaign arm and a separate entity from BOLD America, the super PAC now spending here. And direct contributions are a different category, one candidates do accept. The Prospect reported Hernandez has taken more than $128,000 during this race from AIPAC-affiliated donors, including the organization's president.
Wahab answered our PAC question with one word, "Yes," and noted that donations are reported through the FEC. Her outside support has come from state labor, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC and Rep. Pramila Jayapal's leadership PAC.
The public safety fight
Hernandez's sharpest answer called Wahab "a Sacramento politician who voted to lower sentences on child predators and fentanyl dealers." That is also the centerpiece of the super PAC mail arriving in Tri-Valley mailboxes.
It refers to two things. SB 1414 in 2024 would have made soliciting sex from anyone under 18 an automatic felony. The Senate Public Safety Committee, which Wahab chaired, amended it to apply when the victim was under 16 or an identified trafficking victim. Separately, CalMatters reported that a bill requiring judges to warn convicted fentanyl dealers about murder charges died when Wahab and three other committee Democrats stayed silent during roll call.
Wahab points to a different record. She co-authored the measure making sex trafficking of a minor a serious felony, authored laws on untested rape kits and AI-generated child abuse imagery, and pushed for an audit of Alameda County's child welfare agency. She has called the ads false and misleading.
One number to flag
Hernandez wrote that three million Californians recently lost health care to federal cuts. Researchers at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA project 2.2 million could lose coverage by 2030 from combined state and federal cuts. The cuts are real and underway. The figure describes what may happen, not what has happened.
What decides it
Turnout. Ballots went out in mid-July for a summer election with nothing else on the ballot, which normally favors the better-known candidate. The outside spending is aimed at exactly that unpredictability. Winning on Aug. 18 also means running in November as the incumbent.
Ballots must be postmarked by Aug. 18. Check your status or find a drop box at acvote.org.
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