If the Democrats are going to take back the House, one place to start is the Central Valley, where Republican David Valadao represents a district with a 73.1% Latino majority, including the east side of Bakersfield, most of Kings County and portions of Tulare and Kern counties.
The DCCC has backed conservative candidates in the past and… well, that’s why Valadao keeps winning in a district where Biden beat Trump by over 12 points.
Randy Villegas is a solid, dedicated New Deal Democrat, a progressive populist who is determined to give back to the communities that raised and nurtured him and supported his goals. Blue America is proud to endorse him. If you can, please consider contributing to his grassroots campaign here.
It Takes A Valley
-by Randy Villegas
Valley Fever, Diabetes, Cancer, doesn’t give a sh*t who you voted for in the last election. Your mortgage or rent bills won’t ask you for your party registration, and neither will I. Because we need a healthcare system, and an economy that works for ALL. My name is Randy Villegas, and I am running for Congress in the 22nd district, in the heart of California’s Central Valley. While the Valley feeds the world, our workers struggle to feed their families. That’s because we have a bunch of millionaires working on behalf of billionaires in Washington D.C.
People are fed up with the corruption and corporate influence in politics. This fight isn’t about left vs. right. It’s about bottom vs. top.
Since launching my campaign, I have been to more public town halls in the last 2 months than Rep Valadao has hosted in over a decade. Republicans like my opponent are hiding from their constituents after voting to pass trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” While I am proud to say I would have voted against it, I don’t think that’s enough. Democrats must be willing to fight for more. We know that our healthcare system is broken:
• Two out of every three bankruptcies are tied to medical debt in this country.
• We pay much more for prescription drugs than other countries across the world.
• Over 60,000 people die every single year because they didn’t have health insurance.
This should not be happening in the richest country in the history of the world! Rather than trying to expand programs, Republicans like Valadao just voted to take healthcare away from us, so they can give billionaires more tax breaks.
I have spoken to folks who rely on Medicaid as they fight for their lives in this district, even a mother who has a child with cancer, a pediatric cancer patient. Nobody should be fighting cancer and their congressman at the same time. When we talk about government expanding healthcare, we’re not asking these politicians to give us anything they don’t already give themselves. David Valadao has a healthcare plan as a member of Congress, and I think he needs to use that plan to schedule a physical. Because he needs to look for that spine that he’s been missing for the
last few years.
What’s notable about this seat, is that we have flipped it before. Back in 2018 we actually had a candidate who advocated for expanding healthcare and a single payer system. Unfortunately, that promise on the campaign trail was one that was later walked back in Congress, and the following cycle, we lost that seat.
As a congressman for the Valley, I will not waiver, I will not give in to corporate or party interests, I know that I am fighting for working families, not billionaires, and not special interests.
Government is not working for working class people. These cuts will gut crucial federal programs like Medicaid that, like my family, two-thirds of residents in this district rely on for their healthcare. This budget is stealing from the needy, in order to give to the greedy. They want to give the top 1% in America, 1.1 trillion dollars in tax cuts. For what? So that these billionaires can go buy another yacht or private island? These are billionaires that don’t give a sh*t how much our eggs cost at grocery stores right now, and who don’t care how our families are going to afford the bills if one of us gets sick.
That’s why we need to get corporate money out of politics. Citizens United was a disastrous decision that now allows these billionaires and corporations to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money in politics. Just last cycle Elon Musk spent about a million dollars to help my opponent get elected. If we want government officials to work on behalf of working families, we need to get money out of politics.
Not just in elections either. When one of our Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas, has been receiving luxury gifts from a Republican billionaire donor, when the president of the United States accepts a plane worth hundreds of millions of dollars from Quatar, you don’t need a Ph.D. to know that this screams corruption. All of this is going on at the same time that working families are struggling to pay the bills, we have homeless veterans in our country, schools are under funded and our communities are fighting to make ends meet, people are right to be pissed off.
That is why I’m proud to be running a campaign that is not taking a single cent of corporate PAC money, because when I get to Washington D.C. I will be working on behalf of people, not special interests. I’m not taking corporate PAC money because I don’t want to be another part of the problem in D.C., I want to be part of the solution. For far too long the Valley has been left behind by politicians who are more in love with power, then they are with people. Politicians are more interested in serving corporations than our own communities. Politicians like Valadao who have sold us out to his billionaire corporate sponsors.
I stand with our families who work hard to put food on the table and pay their bills. I will continue fighting for them, and I am willing to fight for every person across this district and country who is fed up with politics as usual. There’s an old saying:
They say it takes a village…
We know it takes a Valley.
Watch Randy at Ro Khanna's town hall:
