Veteran Republican Rep. Darrell Issa announced Friday that he will not run for reelection in his newly configured congressional district in San Diego and Riverside counties.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision has been on my mind for a while and I didn\u2019t make it lightly,\u201d Issa said in a statement, arguing that he would have won the 2026 race based on his campaign\u2019s polling and his support from President Trump among others. \u201cBut after a quarter-century in Congress \u2014 and before that, a quarter-century in business \u2014 it\u2019s the right time for a new chapter and new challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n
Issa called serving in Congress \u201cthe honor of my life,\u201d and highlighted his work for constituents such as 100-year-old retired Navy fighter pilot Royce Williams<\/a>, who was awarded a congressional medal of honor during Trump\u2019s State of the Union address. \u201c… every day my teams in Washington and California have worked to deliver for our constituents,\u201d Issa said.<\/p>\n Issa, among the wealthiest members of Congress, began telling people earlier this week that he would retire from Congress, sources said. <\/p>\n He had an outsized impact on state and national politics, according to political experts and strategists, including funding the successful 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis, which ushered Arnold Schwarzenegger into office, and his work as the head of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee during high-profile investigations of the Obama administration.<\/p>\n \u201cDarrell Issa was a constant and consequential presence in the Republican Party in California without ever being its most prominent leader,\u201d said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego. \u201cHe\u2019s the person probably most responsible for the recall of Gray Davis going forward, but then he got boxed out of the race when Arnold Schwarzenegger got in. He became one of the most prominent protagonists of Barack Obama. But that never elevated him to statewide prominence or statewide office in his own state.\u201d<\/p>\n National and state Republicans lauded Issa.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are grateful for Congressman Darrell Issa\u2019s decades of dedicated service to the people of California and our nation,\u201d said Christian Martinez, the spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. \u201cThroughout his career, he has embodied the spirit of public service, championed our military, and fought tirelessly for a stronger America.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin Spillane, a San Diego-area GOP political strategist, said Issa substantially enhanced his national profile during the investigation into the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, that resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s been a national figure pretty much since he has been in Congress,\u201d Spillane said. \u201cHe was of the people most vocal on Benghazi. He has been a national foil to Obama and Hillary Clinton. He was a major statewide figure in terms of funding the recall that allowed Arnold Schwarzenegger to be elected. He has been a major figure in San Diego County politics for more than two decades. He\u2019s an important member of Congress.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a loss for California Republicans in terms of our congressional delegation,\u201d Spillane said. \u201cIt\u2019s a loss for national Republicans in terms of losing a significant figure in the Republican caucus.\u201d<\/p>\n Issa\u2019s move was prompted by the reconfiguration of his congressional district under Proposition 50, a redistricting plan voters passed in November to counter President Trump\u2019s efforts to push GOP-led states to redraw their congressional lines to favor Republicans.<\/p>\n \u201cRep. Issa is unfortunately a victim of his own inaction,\u201d said Paul Mitchell, the Democratic strategist who drew the new congressional districts voters approved in November that made Issa\u2019s reelection prospects shaky. \u201cPrivately all the California Republican incumbents knew it was a mistake, and yet the veterans with all the chairmanships and power didn\u2019t speak out.\u201d<\/p>\n Issa wasn\u2019t the only Republican member of California\u2019s congressional delegation whose reelection plans shifted on Friday because of Proposition 50. <\/p>\n Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Roseville) made a surprise announcement Friday evening that he would run for reelection as an independent candidate.<\/p>\n Voter-approved redistricting last year fractured Kiley\u2019s huge Northern California district into six pieces. Earlier this week he announced he would run in the district that includes his hometown and other Sacramento-area suburbs but has a nine-point Democratic voter registration advantage.<\/p>\n Kiley described his decision to run as a no party preference candidate as a way to \u201cfight back and protect our democracy\u201d from \u201cpartisan games.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is no secret I\u2019ve been frustrated, at times disgusted, by the hyper-partisanship in Congress. In the last year it\u2019s led to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, a massive increase in healthcare costs, and of course, a pointless redistricting war,\u201d Kiley wrote on the social media site X.<\/p>\n Shortly after Issa announced his retirement Friday evening, Democrats were quick to celebrate and boast about the party\u2019s prospects of winning the seat and increasing its ranks in California\u2019s congressional delegation.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter over two decades of disastrous representation, Darrell Issa is once again running for the exits \u2014 and good riddance,\u201d said Anna Elsasser, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. \u201cIssa abandoning his voters now is the clearest sign yet that Republicans know he can\u2019t win on his record of skyrocketing prices, gutting healthcare, and looking out for himself and wealthy special interests above all else.\u201d<\/p>\n Issa endorsed San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond to replace him. His supervisorial districts includes more than a quarter of the new district.<\/p>\n Desmond has been running in a neighboring congressional district that straddles Orange and San Diego counties that is currently represented by Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Juan Capistrano). Though the Levin district has been considered competitive, Proposition 50 made it more safely Democratic. Desmond withdrew from that race and filed to run in Issa\u2019s district on Thursday, according to the San Diego County registrar of voters. <\/p>\n Desmond\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Issa, 72, has represented various San Diego-area districts in Congress for 23 years. Issa\u2019s once solidly Republican district had been trending more moderate in recent years. <\/p>\n Democratic registered voters outnumber Republicans by more than four percentage points in Issa\u2019s new district, which spans San Diego and Riverside counties and was reshaped to include liberal communities such as Palm Springs, according to the nonpartisan California Target Book. Issa\u2019s current congressional district had a 12-percentage-point GOP edge in voter registration in 2024. \u201cI believe that the people of San Diego County, who have elected me so many times, will, in fact, regardless of registration, vote for me,\u201d Issa told the Fox affiliate in San Diego in December. \u201cThis is my home, and I\u2019m going to fight for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Several Democrats had already announced plans to challenge Issa, including San Diego City Council member Marni Lynn von Wilpert and repeat candidate Ammar Campa-Najar.<\/p>\n Issa, a high school dropout and Army veteran, made his fortune by purchasing a struggling electronics business in 1980 and transforming it into the Viper car alarm system, with Issa\u2019s voice warning potential thieves to \u201cstand back.\u201d<\/p>\n Times staff writer Nicole Nixon contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran Republican Rep. Darrell Issa announced Friday that he will not run for reelection in his newly configured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1906,432,1909,1902,8,1898,1900,1903,9,1144,1901,1907,1908,1899,1904,1690,7,1905],"class_list":{"0":"post-1836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-comment","9":"tag-congress","10":"tag-congressman","11":"tag-desmond","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-issa-spokesperson","14":"tag-new-democratic-leaning-district","15":"tag-newly-configured-congressional-district","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-plan","18":"tag-reelection","19":"tag-request","20":"tag-riverside-county","21":"tag-san-diego","22":"tag-source","23":"tag-thursday","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-veteran-rep-darrell-issa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116185773023718202","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
As soon as the new districts were approved, speculation began swirling about Issa\u2018s reelection plans. Some of his supporters in Texas urged him to move there to run in a GOP-friendly Dallas-area district, but he said in December that he declined and would instead seek reelection in California<\/a>.<\/p>\n