20 Feb 19
Orange County Register
California’s top GOP vote-getter from last year’s U.S. Senate primary election will try to unseat freshman Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda in the 2020 election, becoming the first Republican to formally enter what’s likely to be a competitive and expensive contest.
James Bradley, a Laguna Niguel businessman, declared candidacy this month for the 48th Congressional District. Bradley was a political unknown before he finished third in the state’s 35-candidate U.S. Senate primary in June, earning 8.1 percent of the statewide vote despite being a first-time candidate who spent little on his campaign.
Bradley is a self-described “America First, MAGA constitutionalist” who focused his Senate run campaigning against Obamacare and California’s sanctuary state laws. Bradley also counts himself as a supporter of former GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the 30-year Congressman who lost the 48th District to Rouda last year as part of a blue wave that swept Republicans from federal power in Orange County.
“I’m not a professional politician, but we need more outsiders to have real solutions,” said Bradley, a Coast Guard veteran.
Next year’s race for CA-48 is expected to draw prominent Republican contenders. Most Orange County political observers expect former county GOP Chairman Scott Baugh to take another shot at the seat after finishing fourth in June’s primary, finishing only 2,585 votes (1.5 percentage points) shy of Rouda, the eventual winner. And in December, former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who served a 12-day prison sentence for lying to the FBI during its Russia probe, said he planned to run for Congress in Orange County in 2020.
Rouda defeated Rohrabacher by nearly 21,000 votes despite the fact that Republicans still outnumber Democrats in the district by 34,000 registered voters. The National Republican Congressional Committee announced this month that it will be targeting all seven California House seats that Republicans lost last year, including the 48th District.
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