When Will Rollins announced in 2022 his challenge to Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., in the California 41st district, it was a race that didn’t garner as much national attention as other races in the Golden State.
Two years later, with control of the House of Representatives potentially running through the Golden State, it's quite a different story.
The district, once a Republican stronghold, is now more purple, following the addition of Palm Springs into its borders.
“Looking at the new configuration, this was a district that went to Biden in 2020 as it’s now formulated,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College and a member of the California Citizens Redistricting Committee that drew the new maps. “Certainly folks are looking at whether or not Will Rollins will be able to make the flip in this region.”
The addition is a potential benefit for Rollins, a former federal prosecutor who has been able to bolster his fundraising since the last election and has greater name recognition; ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Rollins has over $2.4 million cash on hand.
He’s branding himself as a moderate Democrat in hopes of earning the support of moderate Republicans in the purple district.
“I'm looking forward to building a big tent coalition and continuing to work hard to prove to Republicans that I'm reasonable, that I don't hate them, I have them in my family, they're my friends,” said Rollins in an interview with Spectrum News.
“I think a lot of what my friends and family who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 liked about him was that he was an outsider, he was going to shake things up, he was going to ‘drain the swamp,’” added Rollins, echoing one of the ex-president’s campaign slogans. “Ken Calvert is still stuck in the ‘swamp,’ the ‘swamp’ is still corrupt, and Donald Trump is running a second–third time now. Not for you, but for himself, and he's made the entire campaign about retribution. I mean, that's not Ronald Reagan's Morning in America Republican Party.”
Calvert, a three-decade incumbent, says he feels confident he can maintain his seat.
With the primary process not yet over, the race between Calvert and Rollins is all but locked in. Calvert has $2.3 million on hand to help defend his seat, and beat Rollins by 11,100 votes in 2022.
“Democrats want to burn their money in this race? God bless them. We're gonna win this big,” Calvert told Spectrum News. “I've been in a lot of races – I feel very good about this one. And so I look forward to not just for Tuesday, but next November.”
Despite around 20% of the district being new constituents, Calvert says he believes “we've done a good job of getting out in the district and meeting people.” He said he’s hoping that Republicans can build on their majority to address some of these issues.
“We need to elect more Republicans to office and make sure that President Trump is elected, and get back on a track that is sane for this country and for the world for that matter,” argued Calvert. “Hopefully in this next election, we'll expand our majority, we will get the United States Senate and bring back the White House where we can start doing things to further what's good for America, lower inflation, get control of the border and take on the crime problems that are ravaging this country.”
Rollins, says cracking down on crime and immigration are key issues he plans to focus on in the general election, but he also called out his opponent on the state and local tax deduction better known as SALT, which allows taxpayers to deduct certain state and local taxes from their federal tax payment. The 2017 Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act capped the amount taxpayers can deduct to $10,000, which critics say disproportionately harmed residents of blue states.
“He claimed he was going to take care of inflation, crime, homelessness – has talked a lot about immigration. But the reality is that he increased taxes on middle class families in California, making it harder for us to deduct our state and local taxes, making it harder for us to deduct our mortgage interests in a county where the average home price is skyrocketing, where people are struggling to pay rent and get into their first homes,” argued Rollins, referencing Calvert’s vote in support of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Calvert for his part has been attacking Rollins for being “the worst kind” of prosecutor – “like [George] Gascón in LA and the San Francisco prosecutor [Chesa Boudin] that they threw out, people that let criminals go,” he told us during our interview.
Rollins has been running his own ad – pointing out Calvert’s run in with the law in 1994, when he was caught with a prostitute on a Corona street – calling the congressman a “guilty dog.”
As for why things are getting so heated between these two candidates before the primary is even over?
“No doubt Ken Calvert is feeling the heat from Will Rollins and that's why he's running these ads now. It was an incredibly tight race back in 2022, and certainly Calvert is making that calculation that it's going to be competitive again in 2024,” said Sadhwani.
The polls close in California at 8pm PST on Tuesday, March 5.