Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln announced Tuesday that he'd campaign as a Republican against Democratic Rep. Josh Harder in California's 9th District, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy's team confirms he'll hold a fundraiser Thursday for his new recruit. Joe Biden won this Central Valley seat 55-43, but Republicans are hoping Lincoln has the name recognition to put it into play following his upset 2020 victory against a Democratic incumbent.
Prior to that shock win, Lincoln's only campaign saw him lose in a landslide in the 2016 general election for a blue seat in the state Assembly. With that background, he initially didn't look like much of a threat when he decided to challenge Democratic Mayor Michael Tubbs in what was officially nonpartisan race.
But while Tubbs was a nationally prominent progressive who'd even been the subject of an HBO documentary about his mayoralty, the incumbent had spent his four years in office on the receiving end of attacks from a conservative blogger named Motecuzoma Patrick Sanchez, who'd tell Politico's David Siders after the election that he'd waged "a calculated, four-year, sustained campaign with tactics that represented an overall strategy to remove [Tubbs] from office."
Sanchez, in the words of the Los Angeles Times, bombarded Tubbs with "relentless, and unfounded, allegations of corruption." His social media pages, which also published racist memes targeting the city's first Black mayor, took advantage of the void left by the decline of the local paper, the Stockton Record, to gain a huge following and help take down Tubbs.
But Sanchez wasn't the only factor in Lincoln's win; Tubbs's own prominence may have in fact undermined him. "People resent when somebody gets a statewide profile or, in Michael’s case, a nationwide profile," one Tubbs supporter argued after the election. "It’s, ‘Who does he think he is? Too big for his britches." Local concerns, such as the city's crime rate, the mayor's conflicts with the local police and firefighter unions, and Tubbs' unsuccessful attempt to construct low-income housing on a shuttered golf course, also dragged down the incumbent.
Tubbs initially led Lincoln 42-22 in the March nonpartisan primary, and his failure to win the majority he needed to avoid a second round cost him badly. The Republican went on to topple Tubbs 56-44 even as Biden was carrying Stockton 66-32, a win that makes him the mayor for over 40% of the denizens of the 9th District.
Harder, though, has already signaled that he plans to attack Lincoln's record in office. "He diverted money away from police and now the Stockton PD is short over 100 cops," his team charged. "Crime and homelessness have soared on his watch." The congressman has also proven to be a tough opponent for Republicans going back to 2018, when he unseated GOP Rep. Jeff Denham after an expensive battle for the old 10th District.
Following the 2020 census, California's redistricting commission dramatically reconfigured the state's congressional map, and Harder originally planned to run in the 13th District last cycle until Democratic colleague Jerry McNerney decided to retire from the slightly bluer 9th. Harder's party might have benefited had he'd stuck with his original plans and ran for the 13th, which Republican John Duarte would narrowly flip, but the congressman's presence at least helped ensure the race to succeed McNerney would be a fairly easy hold: He beat San Joaquin County Supervisor Tom Patti 55-45 in a race that attracted little outside spending even as Republican Brian Dahle was defeating Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom 52-48 in the 9th.
Lincoln will now be in for an expensive bout against Harder, who raised $550,000 during the second quarter of 2023 and finished June with a huge $1.9 million war chest. The Republican told KCRA he was running for Congress because "there’s no better time," though Lincoln doesn't appear to have used his deliberation period to prepare for the type of questions he can expect on the campaign trail.
When asked if he'd have supported the GOP's defense bill, which among other things would have restricted abortion access to servicemembers, the mayor replied, "Listen, I haven’t seen that just yet." He continued, "But the fact of the matter is we’re going to make sure that, um …" before moving on to another topic without completing his sentence.