A ‘battle of the ages’ in a California House race: Matsui, 82, faces a 41-year-old challenger

In summary

The race for Sacramento’s seat in Congress hinges on what kind of “experience” voters value most — seniority and familiarity with Capitol Hill, or first-hand knowledge of the struggles today’s workers face?

Rep. Doris Matsui and Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang are locked in an intergenerational “battle of the ages” in the 7th Congressional District. 

Matsui, 82, touts her experience securing federal funding for local projects and her ability to work across party lines, such as a 2022 law she co-authored to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, despite a largely gridlocked Congress. Her massive fundraising advantage has enabled her to flood the airwaves and voters’ mailboxes with millions of dollars in traditional television ads and mailers. 

Vang, 41, wants to prove that money and seniority aren’t enough anymore to win a seat in Congress. She has relied on door-to-door canvassing, in-person events and an active social media presence to introduce herself to voters. 

The race, a more intense iteration of their June primary contest, ends a nearly 50-year span without a competitive congressional race in the district. Matsui has held office since 2005 after succeeding her late husband, former Rep. Robert Matsui, who was first elected in 1979. 

At its heart is the question of which candidate’s “experience” in politics voters care about more — Matsui’s seniority and experience in the U.S. Capitol, or Vang’s lived experience of being a working-age person in the 21st century?

Democrats in the left wing of the party, who support policies championed by national figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are betting it’s the latter. 

They’re bullish on candidates like Vang, whose campaign signs appear to outnumber Matsui’s in Sacramento front yards, especially as voters sour on career politicians from both parties and lawmakers who they see as rubber stamps for party leadership or monied special interests. 

While races featuring two Democrats won’t change the math for which party controls the U.S. House, they will likely play a crucial role in deciding the future of the Democratic Party after a highly anticipated Election Day rout of Republicans. 

Vang said she speaks frequently with other young, progressive candidates around the country seeking to unseat longtime Democrats about how to support each other and they are making plans to stick together if they get to Congress.

“I always have said that this race is more than just about one congressional seat,” Vang said. “It is truly about the future of this country.”

A similar dynamic is unfolding in the 34th Congressional District in Los Angeles, where community organizer Angela Gonzales-Torres, 30, hopes to unseat Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez, 50. Gonzales-Torres is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. 

Unlike Matsui though, Gomez belongs to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has vocally supported progressive policies such as the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Still, Gonzales-Torres has criticized Gomez for not being progressive enough, particularly for continuing to accept campaign contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which has systematically targeted progressives it views as too sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. AIPAC bankrolled successful efforts in 2024 to oust members of the left-leaning “Squad” for being too outspoken on the war in Gaza.

Political relationships

Matsui argues that her more than two decades of experience in Congress have allowed her to build the trust and lasting relationships with colleagues required to produce results.

“I really feel that it is important to have somebody there who understands how to get things done,” Matsui told CalMatters. “In a world like we have in Congress today, with the administration that we have today, we cannot afford to not have enough people there who understand that.”

She points to her role authoring a law to boost domestic production of semiconductor chips and strengthen workforce training programs to create a labor and talent pipeline. 

“Legislating is really about relationships,” Matsui said. “That might be in an elevator, just talking about your kids or the last football game.” 

Matsui has painted Vang as a young, naive newcomer to national politics who is “more focused on making political statements on social media than doing the hard work of getting things done,” according to one recent Matsui campaign mailer that also criticizes Vang for voting against city budgets and missing meetings on local boards. 

Vang points out that she is two years older than Bob Matsui was when he first ran for Congress. When Matsui won the special election to succeed her late husband, she had even less governing experience than Vang, a city council member for six years and a school board member for four years prior to that. 

Vang contends that Matsui is offended by her decision to eschew the “unspoken rule” in Democratic Party politics that younger elected officials should pay their dues and wait in the wings until more senior members are ready to leave.

“I don’t have the luxury of waiting on the sidelines when our democracy is under attack. When I have family members who wake up every morning afraid that they’re going to be separated by ICE,” Vang said.

Matsui argues that her close relationships with Democratic Party leaders who will wield outsized power if Democrats win back control of the House gives her greater leverage to deliver more federal funding to Sacramento-area projects. She frequently highlights the more than $4 billion in flood prevention funding she has secured, including nearly $1 billion for improvements to Folsom Dam to prevent water from rising too quickly in Folsom Lake.

But much of Matsui’s flood prevention work has targeted levee projects in West Sacramento and Natomas, which are no longer part of the 7th Congressional District after voters approved Proposition 50 last year. The district now encompasses downtown and southeast Sacramento along with more conservative portions of El Dorado and San Joaquin counties.

Money and power take center stage

Vang has excoriated Matsui for accepting campaign contributions from companies that contract with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, including Lockheed Martin, which has contributed $3,000 this election cycle, and AT&T, which has contributed $10,000, according to campaign filings. 

During a candidate forum earlier this year, Matsui declined to return those contributions, saying, “I’m not for sale at all.”

With a warchest built up over years without a competitive challenger, Matsui was able to spend more than $1.3 million between July 1 and Sept. 30, according to the latest financial filing, while Vang only spent about $192,000. 

“We always knew that we were never going to outspend the incumbent, but the only way to beat the money is to have the many,” Vang said, touting the more than 900 volunteers who have signed up to knock doors and make phone calls for her campaign in the final weeks.

She also criticized Matsui for lending her own campaign $1.4 million for the June primary and another $1.5 million for the general election.

“I just never thought about myself as being someone who is characterized as this wealthy person. That’s not who I started out with, and not who I am now,” Matsui said.

She is married to billionaire philanthropist and Applied Energy Services co-founder Roger Sant, whom she married in April 2020.

The two candidates are also leaning heavily into their Asian and immigrant roots. Vang is the daughter of Hmong refugees and Matsui was born to Japanese Americans while they were incarcerated at an Arizona relocation camp during World War II.

One area they have clashed on is immigration enforcement. Vang supports completely abolishing ICE. Matsui has denounced ICE’s raids and hosted several news conferences outside detention facilities where she has been denied entry, but she has stopped short of calling for the agency’s dissolution. 

A similar debate is happening in the Los Angeles race, where ICE has become a key element of Gomez’s pitch. 

“When ICE blocked congressional oversight of detention centers, I personally sued them and won,” Gomez wrote in a statement shared with CalMatters by his campaign, which did not make him available for an interview. “When Trump started his ICE raids in LA, I went straight from the plane to Chinatown, demanded that federal agents leave, and de-escalated the situation.”

Gomez’s district is a heavily Democratic, urban tapestry of neighborhoods that cut across racial, ethnic, economic and educational attainment lines. It spans from Koreatown and Downtown Los Angeles, including Skid Row, through Little Tokyo and Chinatown into the heavily Latino Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles.

His success in suing ICE doesn’t make up for what his opponents view as an unforgivable act: accepting more than $2.6 million from AIPAC. 

That spending, some of which went directly to Gomez’s campaign and some through super PACs, helped Gomez fend off challenges from progressive Democrat David Kim in 2020, 2022 and 2024. 

“Too many of us are struggling while our current congressmember is in the pockets of those perpetuating and profiting off of our pain. And I just think it’s unacceptable,” Gonzales-Torres said following the June primary. 

Gonzalez-Torres’ campaign told CalMatters she was unavailable for an interview.

Connecting with young voters

Vang campaigned last week alongside Hogg, the co-founder of Leaders We Deserve, who rose to prominence as a co-founder of March for Our Lives after surviving the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

At a leadership forum for local high school students, Hogg stressed the importance of electing leaders who have lived through the affordability crisis that has saddled them with student debt and unable to afford homes — “people who understand what it’s like to pay rent in the 21st century.” 

Vang pointed to her own experience struggling to pay off student loans and afford childcare while also covering her family’s everyday expenses.

“Younger people feel like the system is rigged against them,” Hogg said in an interview with CalMatters. “Gen Z, which has really grown up under Trump’s presidencies, they’re much more hopeless, and they don’t have any real faith that anything is going to get better.”

Matsui challenged the idea that young people today face greater challenges than previous generations. When asked how she planned to persuade 20-and-30-somethings that she understands the financial obstacles they face, such as high housing and childcare costs, Matsui said young people were too short-sighted and needed to hold out hope that costs will come down eventually.

“I mean, all of us struggled at some point in time, and I’m not going to say that it was any easier or harder or anything like that, because you have to take it at the moment you’re at,” Matsui said. 

“I’ve gone through enough to know that these kinds of things — and I know I sound Polyanna-ish — we’re going to get out of this.”