PALM SPRINGS — At an upscale bistro in Palm Springs, Rita Aikey had just written a $500 check for a congressional candidate who hails from more than a hundred miles away from the Coachella Valley.

For more than an hour, Aikey and her spouse, Jim Fitzjames, had listened to San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert make her stump speech to a crowded fundraising brunch.

“She was very impressive,” Aikey said.

Days later, a Democratic congressional candidate from the Coachella Valley was making his pitch to San Diego County voters.

On Lincoln Parkway in Escondido, economist Brandon Riker introduced himself to a line of protesters who had just marched from the nearby office of Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who represents the area in Congress.

Like von Wilpert, Riker is among a crowded field of 11 Democrats challenging Issa, the only Republican in the race.

After Proposition 50, scenes like this are getting increasingly common in the 48th Congressional District.

California’s mid-cycle redistricting not only made the district more competitive for Democrats but also split it evenly between San Diego and Riverside counties. That’s created a dual-county dynamic in the race, where San Diego County candidates have to make their pitch to Coachella Valley voters and vice versa.

Prop. 50 led Riker to jump to an entirely new district; he had previously been running to challenge Republican Rep. Ken Calvert in the 41st Congressional District.

Riker insists redistricting hasn’t yet given any Democrat an edge in the race for the 48th. “A lot of people are still being educated on it,” he said.

He also says being from the Coachella Valley isn’t holding him back from connecting with voters in a place like Escondido. “It’s just more miles on the car,” he says.

To Ammar Campa-Najjar, one of the leading San Diego County Democrats running for the seat, there’s not much difference between the two regions, at least when it comes to how they’ve been hit by high costs and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

“There’s a common thread that unites these two counties in terms of their biggest concerns and priorities,” he said.

Palm Springs key to the primary?

Proposition 50 has redrawn the 48th to flip it from a map where Republicans enjoyed a 12-point registration advantage to one where Democrats have a 4-point registration advantage.

As a result, other San Diego-area congressional districts have absorbed a modest amount of Republican voters, though those other districts still remain comfortably Democratic.

For Democrats, that new competitive edge in the 48th has made the race a must-win for their hopes of winning control of the House of Representatives.

In the coming June nonpartisan primary, Issa’s challengers are focusing on larger inland cities like Temecula, home to about 16% of the new district’s voters, and San Marcos, which has 12% of them.

But for the eventual Democratic nominee, victory might not necessarily run along Interstate 15 or state Route 78, but rather a city out in the desert — Palm Springs.

Long a haven for wealthy retirees and the LGBTQ+ community, Palm Springs is a major part of what’s made the district newly competitive for Democrats.

Palm Springs has about 30,000 of the district’s 461,000 voters, or 7%. But Democrats make up nearly two-thirds of its voters, and the city accounts for 18% of all the district’s Democratic voters.

Von Wilpert has been trying to lock down support in the desert city, and hopes to rely on her moderate appeal to win support in the broader district, including its more purple areas.

She’s done it before. In 2020, von Wilpert flipped her north inland San Diego City Council seat, becoming the first Democrat to win a district long held by a Republican.

“I’m planning to win this campaign the way I did in San Diego,” she said. “I’m meeting all sorts of people and hearing what they need so we can go take their voices back to Washington.”

Apart from meeting with business owners, health care workers and union workers, von Wilpert’s strategy in Palm Springs has leaned on one of her major campaign surrogates: former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

“My job is really to get Marni out face to face with people,” the retired four-term Democratic senator said in an interview.

Boxer, now 85, has lived in nearby Rancho Mirage since the mid-2000s. She says von Wilpert “thinks the way we think here.”

While Democrats dominate Palm Springs politics, they haven’t been represented by a Democrat in Congress since 2022. For years, the city was represented by Democratic Rep. Raul Ruiz, but after redistricting in 2021, the city was added to Republican Calvert’s more conservative district.

In recent election cycles, Democrats fought to retake that seat — but former federal prosecutor Will Rollins twice lost to Calvert in 2022 and 2024.

Even though excitement is on the side of Democrats this year, Boxer said Palm Springs voters aren’t “going to just vote for anybody.”

“They’ll stay home if they don’t feel there’s someone there speaking out not only for the things they care about, but right now, speaking out for the country,” she added.

Like von Wilpert, Campa-Najjar also has to make inroads as a new face to voters in Palm Springs. But having run for Congress twice before, most recently against Issa in 2020, Campa-Najjar is betting that voters’ memory of those previous races will serve him.

“The other candidates have to start from scratch,” he said, noting that he’s campaigned before in San Marcos and Escondido. “I’ve been speaking to and connecting with voters in Palm Springs. But I do think it’s going to be an all-of-the-above approach.”

One Democratic candidate from Palm Springs, Marc Iannarino, wants to harness a different kind of energy and excitement. A bartender, Iannarino said it’s hospitality and service workers like him who keep the area’s casinos, hotels and restaurants going.

But representation for those workers, whose support Iannarino wants to build his campaign around, is almost nonexistent in Congress.

“Who’s maintaining that community?” he said of Palm Springs. “It’s swanky for people who fly in and out, for people who have second and third homes — but many of the people there are exactly who I’m talking about. That’s a huge service-industry city.”

Affordability above all

Even with the district’s changing boundaries, its core remains cities like Escondido, San Marcos, Vista, Temecula and Hemet, which represent the people and issues of inland Southern California, said Anuj Dixit, an Inland Empire voting rights attorney.

Dixit had been running in the Democratic primary but dropped out in November. He said he saw no path forward to victory and has not endorsed any other Democrat in the race.

Many people in the district cherish it because they get a piece of the “California dream” without having to pay coastal prices for where they live, Dixit said.

But with the rising cost of living, holding on to that dream is getting harder.

“The candidate who will be successful is the one who doesn’t just give lip service to that, but goes into these communities and actually talks about credible solutions,” he said.

Pam Albergo, who organized the protest outside Issa’s office in Escondido, agrees.

Still undecided on who to support in the Democratic primary, Albergo said affordability in the district includes both housing and health care.

Standing among signs denouncing “fascism” and a portable speaker playing Bob Dylan songs, Albergo shared how expensive it is for two of her grandchildren, who each has a neurological disorder, to receive health care.

“I’m looking for someone who will stand up for my grandchildren,” she said.

Jonathan Wilcox, a spokesperson for Issa, defended the longtime congressman’s record on the economy.

“Throughout his career, Congressman Issa has fought for and achieved policies and reforms that have delivered to his constituents unprecedented prosperity in the right way,” Wilcox said.

At a recent forum in the city of Riverside, eight Democrats running in the 48th District took to a crowded stage at a union hall. An emphasis on reducing costs of living dominated the event — but policy proposals varied.

Campa-Najjar named raising the capital gains tax and reinvesting the money into communities. For von Wilpert, Congress needs to pass the PRO Act, which makes it easier for workers to form unions. Riker and others said the minimum wage needs to be raised to $20 an hour and indexed to inflation.

Wilcox countered that Democrats’ policy ideas are “discredited,” calling them a path to “higher taxes, increased regulations and additional burdens on employers that kill jobs and stifle working families.”

On affordability, Democrats are looking local too.

Riverside County has a high concentration of distribution warehouses, and in Palm Springs, a proposal for a nearly 3 million-square-foot warehouse project has raised concerns from residents over its impact on air quality and the environment.

Democratic candidate Corinna Contreras, who sits on Vista’s City Council, said the region’s reliance on warehouse jobs isn’t stimulating the economy or creating diverse employment opportunities.

“You just can’t have a vibrant economy like that,” Contreras said. “How do you cut down on how much it costs for someone to just live? We need to build that through Congress. It’s the only way.”

_____

©2026 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.