Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Monday endorsed Democrat Randy Villegas, a 31-year-old school board trustee and auto shop owner, in a hotly contested battle in California to take on one of the GOP’s most vulnerable House members.
Villegas and Jasmeet Bains, a doctor and moderate member of the California state Assembly, are competing in the all-party primary for Republican Rep. David Valadao’s seat. Villegas, who has centered his campaign on economic populism, is affiliated with the progressive Working Families Party.
Both Democrats hope to unseat Valadao, one of the most vulnerable Republican House members, who, aside from a 2018 defeat, has for years withstood Democratic challenges in this Democratic-leaning swing district.
“I am proud to endorse Randy Villegas because we need more working-class people in Congress who are not beholden to the corporations and special interests that have rigged our political system in favor of the billionaires,” Sanders said in a statement. “Randy is an educator and small business owner from a working class family who understands the struggles that so many millions of Americans are facing everyday.”
“We must do everything we can to elect new, bold leaders like Randy who will be a champion for working Americans in Congress,” he added.
The Cook Political Report rates the district — which will skew more Democratic after California voters this month passed a state constitutional amendment to redraw its congressional map ahead of the midterms — as a toss-up. Valadao lost the seat in 2018 to former Rep. TJ Cox, a Democrat, only to win it back in 2020.
“Bernie and I share the same goal: to make life more affordable for working families,” Villegas said in a statement. “He has dedicated his life to putting power in the hands of ordinary Americans instead of the ultra rich, and I’m excited to work together to fight for our communities here in the Central Valley and across the country.”
Villegas has also been endorsed by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus BOLD PAC, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Rep Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., as well as the district’s four Democratic Central Committee county chairs.
Bains did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The majority-Hispanic district has the highest share of Medicaid recipients and households receiving food stamps of any House district represented by a Republican lawmaker, according to an NBC News analysis this summer. Democrats have already seized on Valadao’s vote for President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending package that cut Medicaid and food stamp benefits and are centering health care and social safety net programs in the campaign.
Sanders, meanwhile, has flexed his political muscles this year, with a spate of early endorsements in the 2026 midterm elections, as well as a nationwide “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that drew thousands at rallies, including in Bakersfield, which is in California’s 22nd Congressional District.
“This is a pivotal moment in American history,” Sanders told NBC News in September. “And it is absolutely imperative that we have candidates and elected officials who have the guts to say: ‘No, I don’t want your billionaire campaign contributions. I’m going to stand up for working families.’”
Sanders has already endorsed more than a half-dozen 2026 candidates for governor, the House and the Senate, including in several swing races. He has endorsed Democrats Graham Platner in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan ahead of two key battleground Senate races, for example.
As NBC News reported in September, the strategy is a departure from past cycles, when Sanders often endorsed his chosen candidates just weeks before their primaries. Sanders’ endorsement of Villegas is the latest example of his jumping out early, giving his chosen candidates time to reap the benefits of his engaged community of online donors, among other things.
