The Southside Oroville Community Center gave District 1 voters the chance to voice concerns in a Feb. 12 town hall featuring state Sen. Mike McGuire.
McGuire, a candidate for California’s 1st Congressional District seat under the Proposition 50 redrawn map, spoke to an audience of about 70 people. Whoever wins the Nov. 3 race will take the seat that was occupied for a dozen years by Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the Richvale rice farmer who represented District 1 and passed away earlier this year.
An audience member who said she is blind asked about the possibility of adjustments to Social Security benefits for the disabled.
“When I turned 62, I started getting Social Security, and at the same time, I was a small business owner, so I was totally okay,” she said. “Then came a few years, and I lost my sight all of a sudden, and when I went to Social Security to see if there was the possibility of increasing my [benefit payment] because I was blind, the answer is no.
“So if you can be an ambassador for change of Social Security, I would like you to do that,” she said to McGuire.
McGuire is one of a trio of Democrats who have announced they are running in the Nov. 3 congressional election in a district that was redrawn by Proposition 50 and will now have a Democratic voter majority. The new member of the House of Representatives will take office in early 2027.
Besides McGuire of Healdsburg, Democrats who are running are Audrey Denney of Chico and Kyle Wilson of Santa Rosa.
In addition, Republican Assemblyman James Gallagher of Nicolaus is running in the 1st District race. Gallagher has been endorsed by President Trump.
Because of LaMalfa’s passing, there will be two primary elections in District 1 in June. Voting under the new district map in the statewide primary will determine the top two candidates who will run for the District 1 seat in the November general election, said Keaton Denlay, Butte County clerk-recorder.
Ife Sainte, the 25-year-old outreach coordinator for the Black Resiliency Project, attended the event and told ChicoSol he is concerned about job security, the need for a higher minimum wage and the lack of affordable housing in his community. Sainte said people in his age group discuss these issues “internally all the time.”
Sainte, an Oroville resident, said he doesn’t want young people to realize that staying in the area is a “dead end.”
“We want people to find something to do out here,” he said. “What we really look for is real change.”
Sen. McGuire noted the importance of the race for District 1, where almost 12 percent of residents have annual income below the official poverty level.
“If you want to deliver good health care, if you want to save health care, if you care about all the jobs, if you care about our democracy, strong public schools, raising wages and protecting workers, then I’d be honored to have your vote,” McGuire told the audience.
Oroville Pastor Robert Morton said he had suggested to McGuire that he speak in Oroville “specifically since Oroville is often not provided a voice.”
Once the event was set up – with the help of several community leaders — Morton then emailed community members urging them to take advantage of the opportunity to speak to McGuire. Morton said the event wasn’t intended as an endorsement of McGuire.
“This is about engagement,” Morton wrote. “It’s about being strategic with our presence and making sure that the people who want to represent us have to reckon with the fullness of who we are and what we need.
“We are a community still navigating wildfire recovery and disaster preparedness with too few resources and not enough urgency from Washington,” the email states.
Later, Morton commented to ChicoSol on what he believes District 1 constituents need.
“Whoever the office holder is, they have the ability to bring funds from the federal government into this district, and that should address education, that should address economic disparity, that should address the issues that we have with housing,” Morton added. “Not only our unhoused population, but also so many of our folks, brothers, who are literally a paycheck away from being housed.”
Can redrawn District 1 help Democrats win the House?
McGuire called the District 1 seat, under the redrawn map, “one of the more flippable seats in the United States of America.”
“And if we can flip this, I am firm in my belief that the House of Representatives is going to flip this November. That’s what Prop 50 is all about,” McGuire told ChicoSol.
David Welch, secretary of the Butte County Central Democratic Committee, said the Democrats need only win four or five seats to establish majority control of the House.
But for liberals who hope to see a House majority that can help put the brakes on the Trump administration, Welch warned that complacency is not advised.
“All the signs we would normally read — based on polling, how special elections have gone –everything points in the direction of a wave election for Democrats,” Welch said. “But there’s real reason to be concerned.”
Welch pointed to the SAVE America Act as an example of the effort underway to “mess with the election.” That legislation, which has passed the House, would require documentary proof of citizenship to vote, even though, as the BBC has reported, “an estimated 21 million Americans do not have documents proving their citizenship readily available …”
In addition, Welch said the administration might choose to place masked federal immigration agents around polling places in some large cities to discourage voter participation.
“We have to be incredibly vigilant about that kind of stuff,” Welch said. “We have to push people to vote early.”
Leslie Layton is editor of ChicoSol. Yucheng Tang is a California Local News fellow.