This California congressman is betting the farm on water

This story is part of State of Emergency, a Grist series exploring how climate disasters are impacting voting and politics. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.

When Donald Trump was running for reelection four years ago, he paid a visit to Bakersfield, California. With the Golden State staring down a historic drought, Trump held a standing-room-only rally in an airplane hangar, focusing on water needs in the state’s Central Valley, which stretches from Bakersfield hundreds of miles north and includes some of the country’s most productive farmland. Amid raucous cheers, the then-president signed a memo that directed federal agencies to relax endangered species rules, which had limited deliveries of irrigation water to fruit and nut farmers in the region.

Standing alongside Trump at that rally was David Valadao, a former dairy farmer who now represents a largely rural swath of the valley in the U.S. House of Representatives. Trump had no hope of winning California’s electoral votes, but Valadao was locked in a close race to regain a swing seat he had lost two years earlier. He appeared to hope that promising more water for his constituents could pave his path to victory.

“What’s being done here actually does turn on the pump and move water,” Valadao told reporters after the rally. “It does [make] a real big difference for us in the Central Valley.” The president’s intervention in the California water wars seemed to help rally support for the former representative. He won back his seat in Congress later that year.

In the years since, however, Valadao has soured on Trump. His congressional district voted for Biden by a 12-point margin, and he was one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president over his role in the January 6 riot, calling Trump’s behavior “un-American.” Trump, in turn, reportedly said he “never loved” Valadao.

But as Trump seeks the Oval Office once again, there’s a sense of deja vu in Valadao’s district, where thirsty dairies and nut farms occupy almost every square mile of available land. Valadao is once again facing a tough race that could determine control of the House of Representatives — and he is once again appealing to his constituents’ water woes to help him get over the finish line. 

Valadao has been walking this tightrope for more than a decade. He won a close race for an open congressional seat in 2012, then got reelected by narrow margins twice before losing his seat to a Democrat in 2018. During the 2022 midterm elections, he eked out a victory over former state legislator Rudy Salas — the same Democrat challenging him again this year — by a margin of around 3,000 votes.

Republicans hold just a two-seat majority in the House of Representatives heading into this election. Valadao’s seat is one of just 25 toss-up races in the chamber, according to ratings from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Of the 14 Republican representatives in such races, Valadao represents one of the most Democratic districts, making his seat one of the easiest targets for his opposing party, at least in theory. The district is more than 70 percent Hispanic, and there are almost twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

But Valadao’s resilience in his district — he’s won five out of his last six races, a feat most political observers say that almost no other Republican could replicate in a district as blue as Valadao’s — is a testament to the importance of water in a region where irrigated agriculture is by far the largest industry. Around one in seven residents in the district work in agriculture or an adjacent industry.

Valadao is the last representative of a bipartisan consensus on water, one that prioritized the construction of new water infrastructure and the delivery of irrigation water to massive farms. For decades, these “water buffaloes” — so-called for their ingenuity in finding new water sources for the drought-prone communities they represent — dominated politics in California and the West. Political titans like former California governor Jerry Brown, former speaker of the house Kevin McCarthy, and the late senator Dianne Feinstein would often cross party lines to find money for new water storage projects or defend farmers against environmental regulations.

Valadao is one of the last Golden State politicians who is still animated by this project. As the politics dominating the state have become increasingly liberal, legislators have focused more on environmental and social issues than big business interests. Meanwhile, in the decade since Valadao first entered Congress, the state of California has seen two historic droughts that have cut water deliveries to farmers and caused thousands of local household wells to go dry. As a result the state has rolled out strict water restrictions that could result in at least half a million acres of agricultural land going out of production in the Central Valley.

At every opportunity, Valadao has pressed for more water deliveries from the massive irrigation canals that move water from California’s wetter north to its drier south. He has blasted the federal government for cutting such water allocations during dry years, pushed for a more relaxed approach on Endangered Species Act fish protections that limit irrigation water availability, and passed bills requiring the government to fulfill water contracts to farmers even during droughts. In pushing this “water buffalo” line, he has argued that ample water is essential to California’s economy, regardless of the painful tradeoffs that such deliveries might cause.

“It’s not just about the farming side of it,” Valadao told a local television station earlier this year, emphasizing “the importance of making sure we have a representative in Congress that understands what we do with [irrigation] water, the importance of that water, and is willing to fight for that water.”

In a district where no serious politician of either party is willing to stake out a position opposing the agriculture industry, Valadao’s tenure as a farmer and his long record securing water access gives him substantial credibility, according to political experts.

“Whoever’s perceived as being more likely to protect agriculture, or secure existing water deliveries and identify new ones, is going to be rewarded at the ballot box as a result,” said Tal Eslick, a Fresno-based political consultant who served as chief of staff for Valadao from 2011 to 2015. Eslick added that most Democrats who have run against Valadao in the past have also adopted a pro-agriculture message on water issues, or at least not criticized the agriculture industry, but that most people perceive Valadao as having more genuine bona fides.

As is the case in other dry states like Arizona this election cycle, candidates’ messaging has generally focused on national issues, especially inflation. Valadao has aired ads accusing his opponent, Salas, of voting to raise California’s gas tax while in the state legislature. Salas has accused Valadao of inaction on issues like housing affordability. He has also criticized Valadao for voting against the Inflation Reduction Act — though not because the law dedicated billions of dollars to new water infrastructure, but instead because it allowed the federal government to negotiate the price of insulin.

“I think it’s sort of the same issues as always,” said Emilio Huerta, a politically active lawyer in the region and the son of famous farmworker activist Dolores Huerta. “There’s a lot of talk about immigration, and I think the economy as well, the huge disparity between the haves and the have nots.” Huerta unsuccessfully ran against Valadao in 2020.

Under the surface, though, the politics of water are shaping how the candidates marshal money and votes in a race that will be decided by a slim margin. Valadao has drawn the endorsement of the Kern County Farm Bureau, which represents major producers of carrots and pistachios as well as small family farms. He has received around $100,000 in campaign contributions from Farmers for the Valley PAC, a small political action committee that has raised money from some of the valley’s top farming families.

“David Valadao exemplifies the importance of protecting our agriculture future and understands firsthand the need for economic viability and sustainability for the generations to come,” said Jenny Holtermann, a Kern County almond farmer and the president of the county’s farm bureau. Valadao appeared at Holtermann’s farm in the city of Wasco to accept the endorsement of the farm bureau and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which praised his “bipartisan efforts to build more water infrastructure.”

But this time, rather than hoping to shift the conversation away from water, the groups backing Salas and the Democrats are betting that water will motivate residents of the district to vote against Valadao. The valley’s massive farms and dairy operations generate billions of dollars in revenue and create thousands of jobs, but they have also had severe negative impacts on water quality in the region. The runoff of fertilizer into the groundwater table and the over-pumping of groundwater aquifers has contaminated local water supplies with chemicals known to cause cancer, heart disease, and Parkinson’s.

Community Water Center, a nonprofit focused on addressing drinking water shortages in the valley, has spun off a political action committee that is focused on persuading marginalized voters to turn out in support of Salas, arguing Valadao has slacked on solutions to deteriorating drinking water quality in the state.

“We need drinking water solutions, and so often the reason that we’re not able to move them forward is due to electeds, whether that’s at the local level or all the way up to the congressional level,” said Kelsey Hinton, director of the Community Water Center Action Fund, the political arm of the organization. “They’re voting to support more storage and more dams, which creates more water, but it’s water for a few, water for those with water rights through agriculture.” 

Hinton said that Community Water Action has sought to target more than 40,000 low-propensity voters in Valadao’s district, most of them monolingual Spanish speakers in rural areas that rely heavily on agriculture. Many of these communities see the water issue from both sides — they work agricultural jobs that may disappear if farmers lose their water access, but they also have to live with drinking water that’s been compromised by the industries they work for.

Pablo Rodriguez, a political consultant and community organizer in the Central Valley, said that many of these farmworkers may have heard from their bosses that environmental regulations and water restrictions will threaten their jobs and livelihoods.

“The conservatives have done a really good job to frame the Democrats as the bad guys on water delivery to ranchers and farmers,” he said. “No water, no jobs, right? And your life is harder, and Democrats are the worst thing ever. However, they are not addressing actual drinking water. David Valadao has been in Congress for 10 years, and in those 10 years, he’s only been the primary author of one bill that has ever provided funding for water. Other than that, he’s never done anything other than get a paycheck.”

While representatives for Valadao did not respond to interview requests for this article, there are signs that Valadao hopes to counter this line of attack. As his district diversifies and becomes more Democratic-leaning, he is showing signs of outreach to stakeholders besides the farming interests who have long supported his campaigns. Just a few months ago, he toured a new water treatment facility in the city of Delano. The $55 million facility, built with money from a congressional appropriations bill, will expand the low-income city’s access to clean drinking water.

“Ensuring Central Valley communities have access to clean, reliable drinking water is my top priority in Congress,” he said at a press conference following the tour.

That press conference may have convinced some residents that Valadao is fighting for constituents on both sides of his district’s lopsided water dispute. The fate of the House of Representatives, and with it the direction of the nation’s politics, could depend on whether enough valley voters buy this argument.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline This California congressman is betting the farm on water on Nov 5, 2024.