Four nail-biter state legislative races

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Election Day countdown: 19 days until Nov. 3.

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With 80 Assembly seats and 40 Senate seats up for election this year, there is a lot to keep an eye on.

In the interest of taking a more bite-sized piece out of a packed election year, here are four state legislative races I’ll be watching in November. 

Assembly Member Esmerelda Soria, D-Fresno, is leaving the lower chamber behind for a shot at the Senate. She is running against Merced City Council Member Darin DuPont, the only GOP candidate to jump into the race. 

It’s an interesting race to watch for the Central Valley, as Fresno County narrowly went to President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. Soria’s run for the upper chamber also opens up the Assembly seat she has held since 2022, when she defeated her Republican opponent by 2.6 points. 

The matchup for her former seat is between Democratic Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco and the Republican former Merced Mayor Mike Murphy.

There are close races each year, but few have been quite so nail-bitingly close in recent memory as incumbent Sen. Melissa Hurtado’s 2022 victory in the redrawn Senate District 16. Hurtado won that year by 13 votes. 

The district encompasses a heavily Latino area of the Central Valley, including eastern Bakersfield and parts of Fresno, Kings, Kings and Tulare counties.

This year Hurtado is facing GOP candidate Guillermo Gonzalez, a former aide to Rep. David Valadao. The congressman’s own race to retain his seat is also closely watched for its potential to end with razor-thin margins, and because Democrats see it as a pickup opportunity under last year’s Prop 50.

Incumbent Assembly Member Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, is entering another competitive election to retain his seat representing eastern Sacramento County, encompassing a mix of wealthy and working-class cities of Folsom, Rancho Cordova and Citrus Heights. 

He slid into the seat with a narrow victory in 2022, and faced another tight race in 2024. This year, the Republican lawmaker is facing Democratic candidate Amy Slavensky, a longtime public educator and district administrator in the region. 

This Inland Empire race representing parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties is attention-grabbing on multiple fronts. 

Republican incumbent Leticia Castillo, R-Corona, is running to retain her seat after securing an extremely narrow victory over Democratic challenger Clarissa Cervantes, a Riverside City Council member. That race was the tightest one across California’s 120 state legislative districts – Castillo won by fewer  than 600 votes. Now, the pair are back for round two. 

If Cervantes unseats Castillo, the Legislature will boast a Cervantes sister in each chamber: Her sister is Sen. Sabrina Cervantes.

This year’s election marks the second time the younger Cervantes is running for her elder sister’s old Assembly seat, which she left in 2024 to join the state Senate. 

Trump’s Department of Justice sued California on Thursday after state officials rejected demands to review a list of alleged noncitizen voters and prevent them from voting in the Nov. 3 election. 

As the Chronicle’s Sophia Bollag and Hannah Wiley reported, the DOJ lawsuit seeks to block the state from counting the votes of people it says it has identified as potentially fraudulent voters. 

“By sending ballots to likely noncitizens despite the federal government notifying California of serious concerns, defendants (collectively, California) have made it nearly impossible for the United States to investigate and enforce federal law,” DOJ lawyers wrote.

The lawsuit claims that Homeland Security Investigations “reasonably believes that around 20,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California.”

Federal officials initially alleged 190,000 noncitizens are registered in California. State officials have disputed that claim. 

Weber sent a scathing response letter shortly after the lawsuit was filed, calling the allegations an “emergency of the DOJ’s creation” and said her office would not disenfranchise thousands of California voters based on “unverifiable information or methodology that you still fail to explain or provide.”

Attorney General Rob Bonta similarly spurned the federal government’s claims and said his office would fight the lawsuit. 

“We are not impressed with the federal government’s letter. We are not impressed with its lawsuit,” Bonta said during a Thursday press conference. “This is what the federal government does. They lie, they advance misinformation, disinformation, They advance conspiracy theories. They try to sow distrust with those lies.”

During a climate talk on Wednesday, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger complimented Gov. Gavin Newsom on his recent moves reining in the state’s landmark environmental protection law, CEQA. 

The pair was at an event commemorating the 20-year anniversary of another history-making law, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which Schwarzenegger signed in 2006. 

But while the event hinged on paying tribute to the former governor’s work pushing the climate bill through to the finish line, he told the crowd he had one big regret: not incorporating CEQA reform. 

“If I would have come back in time, I would have stressed more in combination with that, the CEQA reform,” Schwarzenegger said.

“You, during your governorship, have taken on that tremendous challenge,” he continued, addressing Newsom. “And I know it's a real challenge to do CEQA reform, and you were attacked immediately and all that, but you stayed with it and you really created some really good reform.”

The common sentiment between the two governors comes as voters are faced with a ballot measure that would, if passed, create some of the most sweeping changes to CEQA in years. 

Prop 45, sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce, would speed up environmental review under CEQA for specified developments deemed “essential,” such as housing, transportation, health and clean-energy projects. It would set tighter deadlines for public agencies, narrow some analysis of project alternatives and limit the ability for courts to review project approvals, all with the aim of expediting developments, which supporters say is often caught up in extensive “green tape.” 

Critics of Prop 45, which includes many environmental groups, warn the rollbacks will weaken needed environmental oversight and limit the ability for public input. 

Though Newsom has still not shared his position on Prop 45 (one of only two ballot measures he has stayed mum on, along with the billionaire tax poison pill Prop 41), he has come down on the side of CEQA reform in the past, when it’s been focused on facilitating home-building.

Most recently, the governor shut down a legislative attempt to loosen the ties on new CEQA reforms.

Newsom vetoed SB954 by Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, which would have halted CEQA exemptions for qualifying advanced manufacturing projects, such as lithium battery cell manufacturing and strip mining, if they meet specific advanced requirements. 

The bill sought to limit the reach of SB131, which Newsom signed into law last year, which created the exemption in a bid to limit CEQA’s so-called “green tape.” The high-profile bill created new regulatory exemptions for urban infill housing projects, with the aim of accelerating housing production. 

In his veto message, Newsom said SB131 should be given “a meaningful opportunity to work” before any carve-outs are added, applauding the 2025 legislation as a “long-overdue overhaul to get California building again.” 

It remains to be seen if the governor will extend that argument to Prop 45, or remain tight-lipped on his position. 

The San Francisco Chronicle’s 2026 voter guide is here, with all the need-to-know information about this year’s election. 

For those of you in the Bay Area, that includes guides about your local ballot measures and races. For the rest of us, it’s a very useful guide for all the state races, including the very long list of statewide ballot measures. 

Confused about the propositions? Out of the loop on the lesser-known statewide races like controller and insurance commissioner? We’ve got you. 

Check out the interactive voter guide for California and Bay Area elections.

Questions? Thoughts? Interesting tidbits to share? Reach out at [email protected], and follow me on X, @KathrynPlmr.