Update: Rep. Josh Harder pledges to ‘build on the work we got done’ after election win
Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, has won re-election to his congressional seat, solidifying Democratic control over one of California’s battleground districts for another two years.
Harder was declared the victor in the race by The Associated Press early Wednesday morning. As of 5 a.m. Wednesday, Harder was up nearly 20 percentage points over Republican challenger Ted Howze.
“It has been the honor of my life to serve my home town in Congress the past two years — and it is just as much of an honor to receive the support of our community once again,” Harder said in a statement issued Wednesday. “We proved that we can get more done by finding common ground than fighting each other. I promise to build on the work we got done over the past two years to bring more water funding and good-paying jobs to the Valley and cutting the costs of health care while protecting everyone’s access.”
The district was originally expected to be one of the top congressional fights for California Democrats and Republicans in 2020. The Republican Party pulled support from the race in May, when offensive social media posts related to race and immigrants surfaced from Howze’s accounts.
Howze deleted the posts after reporters brought them to light and denied he wrote them, but refused to name who else would have written them.
(See updated Stanislaus County results of all races)
That left Howze to fund his own campaign. And while he raised nearly $1.5 million, more than half of that money was in loans he gave to his own campaign. The campaign is now underwater, with about $62,000 in cash on hand and $295,000 in debt as of mid-October, according to the latest Federal Election Commission reports.
Harder, meanwhile, raised $7 million as of mid-October and still had nearly $4 million in cash on hand and no debts, according to FEC reports.
The district remains one of the few remaining in California that both parties view as competitive. Harder won the district from former Republican Rep. Jeff Denham in 2018, when a blue wave flipped seven Republican congressional seats in California to Democratic control. Earlier this year, Republicans took one of those seats back in a special election.
Among those seven districts, only Harder and Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine, have been declared the winner in their races by AP. The other five are still up in the air.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 6:08 AM.
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