After Proposition 50’s passage, California's 2nd Congressional District may be the most gerrymandered district in America. 

It stretches from the Oregon border to the Nevada border and spans nine (count them, nine!) counties, snaking up the Pacific coast from Marin County to Del Norte County, then cutting east along the Oregon line all the way to Modoc County in the high desert. 

“It kind of looks like an elephant head with a trunk running down the coast,” says Rose Penelope Yee, a progressive Democrat running for the newly drawn seat.

The new California CD2 includes all of Marin (35% of registered voters), Shasta (24%), Humboldt (17%), Siskiyou (6%), Mendocino (4%), Del Norte (3%), Trinity (2%), and Modoc (1%), along with parts of Sonoma (9%). 

Major population centers include Redding (12% of voters), San Rafael and Novato (7% each), Petaluma (3%), and Eureka (3%).

California uses a nonpartisan Top Two open primary, in which all candidates appear on the same ballot regardless of party. The election is on June 2. The top two vote-getters advance to the November general election, no matter their affiliation. 

Proposition 50 gave California Democrats the authority to redraw congressional lines. The new map was designed to give Democrats 5 additional seats in Congress (or 92% of the state's congressional delegation).

But the redrawing also reshuffled the electorate within individual districts, making some previously safe Democratic seats slightly less predictable. 

Nearly 100,000 No Party Preference voters are now in the redrawn 2nd District; it remains to be seen whether an NPP candidate could break into the top two for the first time.

The District After Prop 50

The new boundaries absorbed Shasta and Modoc counties from the neighboring 1st District, fundamentally altering the district's political character. Under the old lines, 69.53% of the district's voters came from the old 2nd District, which carried a D+40.33 advantage. The remaining 30.42% came from the old 1st District, which carried an R+29.86 advantage. That merger collapsed the overall Democratic advantage from D+35.3 to D+16.8 under the new lines, a shift of nearly 19 points.

Under the old boundaries, the Democratic registration advantage had grown steadily for more than a decade, from D+27.4 in 2012 to a peak of D+36.6 in 2022, while Republican registration fell from 22% to 18.2%. No Party Preference registration reached a high of 24.8% in 2018 before gradually declining to 18.7% by the 2024 general election cycle.

Under the new post-Proposition 50 lines, the district has 491,244 registered voters. Democrats account for 44.6%, Republicans 27.9% and No Party Preference voters 19.1%, representing 93,585 registered voters with no party affiliation. Despite the shift, the district remains safely Democratic in most election scenarios.

No Party Preference voters are present in significant numbers across every county, from 32,684 in Marin to 20,620 in Shasta to 16,737 in Humboldt, totaling 93,585 district-wide.

The 2024 Result, Under the Old Lines

In 2024, Democrat Rep. Jared Huffman won reelection with 73.78% of the vote against Republican Chris Coulombe, receiving 197,597 votes to Coulombe's 70,232. 

That same year, Kamala Harris carried the district over Donald Trump, 60.76% to 36.10%, and Adam Schiff won the U.S. Senate race, 60.71% to 39.29%, over Steve Garvey.

The 2026 Field

Huffman is seeking a seventh term. His most notable challenger is Nicolette Hahn Niman, a No Party Preference candidate, attorney, and rancher whose candidacy is at least partially rooted in a direct dispute with Huffman over the fate of ranching families within Point Reyes National Seashore. Huffman faces five other challengers: one additional NPP candidate and four Republicans.

Through March 31, 2026, Huffman reported $1,045,602 cash on hand, having raised $698,455 and spent $637,495 for the cycle. Hahn Niman is the best-funded challenger

The Candidates

JARED HUFFMAN (DEMOCRAT) (b. 2/18/64) has represented the North Coast area since 2012, when he won the seat after three terms in the state Assembly. 

Huffman is a Vice-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and serves as co-Chair of the Congressional Freethought Caucus, co-founded with Rep. Jamie Raskin in 2018 “to protect separation of church and state, defend religious freedom, and promote public policies based on reason, science, and moral values.”

Elected to the Assembly in 2006, Huffman chaired the Water, Parks, and Wildlife Committee. Before his time in the Legislature, he served on the Marin Municipal Water District board, his first elected office, and worked as a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. 

Huffman holds a bachelor's degree from UCSB and a law degree from Boston College of Law. He and his wife, a schoolteacher, live in San Rafael with their children.

In his candidate statement, Huffman frames the race around national themes, citing rising costs of living, threatened cuts to Medicaid and Medicare, and what he describes as the "lawless brutality of ICE." 

He emphasizes his role as ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, where he says he is working to block offshore drilling and strengthen wildfire resilience. 

Huffman points to local results he has delivered to the district, including funding for health clinics, affordable housing, and water infrastructure. He also touts bipartisan work on special education funding and congressional stock trading reform, although the latter has not passed Congress despite broad public support.

Huffman’s campaign stresses that he’s been a “fierce defender of democracy and the rule of law.”  

“He was one of the first and most active members advocating for Donald Trump’s impeachment in both 2019 and 2021.  In 2024, he led congressional efforts to sound the alarm about Trump’s Project 2025 as a grave threat to democracy and fundamental rights, founding the congressional Stop Project 2025 Task Force.” 

The California Democratic Party has endorsed Huffman.

NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN (NO PARTY PREFERENCE) is an author, attorney, and rancher based in Bolinas, where she and her husband, Bill Niman, who built one of the country's best-known humane ranching businesses, graze cattle on a 575-acre ranch within the Point Reyes National Seashore. She spent years as a senior attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance, litigating against industrial livestock operations that pollute rivers and streams, before transitioning to writing and advocacy focused on sustainable, pasture-based farming. 

Hahn Niman has served on the Bolinas-Stinson Union School District board for the past five years. Earlier in her career, she served two terms on the Kalamazoo City Commission in Michigan, where she was raised by two college professors. 

In her candidate statement, Hahn Niman argues the district needs an independent voice willing to measure every vote by a single standard: "Does this help the people of my district?" 

“I’m running as an independent because I’ve been an independent my entire life,” she says in a recent ad.

In an interview on KWMR, Niman describes 23 years of ranching in Marin, environmental legal work, community coaching, church leadership, and school board service as the foundation of a candidacy rooted in local engagement rather than partisan positioning. 

In her statement of candidacy, she said Californians should be able to "afford to live, work, attend school, and get medical care in their local communities" and that the district's farmers, fisherfolk, and ranchers should be central to a healthy regional food system.

Hahn Niman told KWMR, a community radio station in Pt. Reyes Station, she’s never joined a political party. 

"I never joined a political party in part because I've always had a lot of reservations about the political parties and sort of having some large group of people telling me what I think about something or how I'm supposed to vote or feel about something. It's not how I work." 

As an independent, she says she wants to "try very hard to represent everyone in this district of every political stripe and demographic." 

She intends to "work in Washington as someone who's a bridge between the different political camps," pointing to her work with farmers and ranchers as preparation. "We work with farmers and ranchers all over the place," she said. "Many are very conservative and very liberal and everything in between. I have a very deep respect for people regardless of their political party."

Regarding healthcare, Hahn Niman describes the current system as broken, a view shaped by conversations with her two sisters, both physicians. As ranchers, she and her husband pay for their family’s health insurance out of pocket and have seen their premiums rise roughly 40% in recent years. She argues that "affordability cuts across every community" in the district, citing rising costs in healthcare, groceries, gas, and housing as significant challenges for working families. While she acknowledges that Congress cannot solve affordability overnight, she argues that there are concrete actions Congress can take. 

She also connects healthcare directly to agriculture: 

"I think a lot of the problems in our health care system actually relate to our agricultural system and how we're producing food that isn't healthy and how we're not making healthy food affordable and accessible to all people."

In the radio interview, Hahn Niman urged listeners to "lower the political temperature" by trying "to treat every person in our country as a human being," recognizing and respecting their humanity. 

Then she offered a concrete suggestion: "Don't spend too many hours a day listening to your radio or watching your TV. You know, work in your own garden and in your own neighborhood and in your own school and your neighbors, and you'll find so much more satisfaction and joy in that." 

She described the United States as an "amazing, wonderful place," citing its diversity, landscapes, and people, and said the country could remain a "beautiful country" if citizens move away from divisive partisan bickering.

Hahn Niman added that civic renewal "begins with each of us trying to be good neighbors and good, accepting members of our society that values all voices and isn't engaging in that shrill kind of partisan bickering that we see all the time on social media and on the TV."

Hahn Niman said she wants Americans to "feel good about living in this country again," and described that work as beginning with people trying to be "good neighbors" who value "all voices" and refuse to engage in "that shrill kind of partisan bickering."

Asked about her legacy, she said she would like to be "someone who helped restore that sense of pride that we feel in this country."

Hahn Niman’s decision to run for Congress was directly influenced by the redistricting process itself. She explained that it was the addition of three primarily rural and agricultural counties to the district after Prop 50 passed that convinced her it needed a representative who could understand and address the specific concerns of both the urban population in Marin County and the people living in more rural areas like Shasta, Siskiyou, Modoc, and Humboldt counties.

Her candidacy was also catalyzed in part by a legal settlement that resulted in the closure of most ranches within Point Reyes National Seashore. The Nimans, who did not participate in the litigation that produced the settlement, were not part of the mediation and the $30 million buyout that accompanied it. Hahn Niman has been critical of the incumbent Huffman's involvement in brokering the agreement.

ROSE PENELOPE YEE (DEMOCRAT) (b. 5/24/60) is the CEO of Green Retirement Inc. and a Redding resident who was born in the Philippines. She lives in Redding, Shasta County. She earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of San Agustin and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management. Yee was the Chair of the Democratic Central Committee of Shasta County. She voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020.

Yee said in a recent interview that she was opposing Huffman “in terms of moral and policy differences.”

“I attended a meeting last year by the progressive caucus of the California Democratic Party, and somebody said Huffman should be primaried, and that made me question why. And so I looked under the hood. I have a civil engineering degree, a master’s in business, and an engineering mindset. What is going on, what is below the surface? I did research, and I was really disturbed. He voted for the $26 billion Israel supplemental appropriations bill, and it boggled my mind that a Democrat, who I thought was a responsible person…has never condemned what Netanyahu was doing.” 

Yee has run for Congress twice before, first in 2022 in the neighboring 1st District as a No Party Preference candidate, where she placed last in the primary with 3.4% of the vote, and again in 2024 as a Democrat in the 1st District, when she advanced out of the primary, but eventually lost to incumbent Republican Doug LaMalfa 69.50% to 30.50%.

In her candidate statement, Yee emphasizes healthcare and housing as human rights, supports Medicare for All, and calls for an end to what she characterizes as excessive military spending and corporate influence in government.  She is on the board of an organization that has been organizing for single-payer healthcare.

She calls for abolishing ICE. She says she refuses corporate PAC money, including from AIPAC, and draws on her upbringing under authoritarian rule in the Philippines as a personal motivation for her candidacy.

“Growing up, Rose watched her parents take real risks for democracy and human rights. Her father, a lawyer who organized fellow attorneys to defend jailed student protesters, was himself detained for it. Her mother, a local journalist, modeled courage and integrity in the face of censorship. As a student, Rose joined massive street demonstrations against dictatorship and later helped her father campaign for public office—early lessons in people-powered change that continue to guide her today.”

GREGORY WARREN BURGESS (NO PARTY PREFERENCE) is a third-generation Marin County native currently working as an elder caregiver. His professional background spans public health, education, clinical engineering, and behavioral health, including stints as a CDC quarantine officer, special education teacher, clinical engineer at Stryker Corp., postal carrier, Teamster (and union grievance representative), and behavioral health counselor. He holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Minnesota, with a focus on environmental health, food security, and climate change.

Burgess is running on a platform he calls "Environmental Realism," which he describes as "regenerative stewardship honoring working landscapes, sustaining rural livelihoods, and rejecting policies that sacrifice human communities for ideology." 

“I didn’t want to end up like the two old Muppets in the balcony — heckling Kermit’s show while doing nothing to help put it on. If the satirists were tapping out, someone had to actually do the work,” Burgess said, in deciding to run for Congress.

Burgess says he has drafted 38 federal bills available for voters to read at his website, including three targeted specifically at the district: the CA-2 CAFE Community Health Act addressing housing and education, the From Seashore to Stockyard Act focused on protections for ranchers, fishermen, and farmers, and the North Coast Healthcare Act addressing the rural hospital and workforce crisis. He accepts no PAC money.

PAUL SAULSBURY (REPUBLICAN) has worked as a passenger assistance agent for SkyWest Airlines since 2013 and currently works as a mobile crisis clinician. He previously held administrative, residential counseling, and customer service positions and earned an associate degree from Shasta College in 2013. He resides in Anderson.

TIM GEIST (REPUBLICAN) is a former researcher in the department of psychological and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara. He studied philosophy at Sierra College and concentrated in biochemistry and molecular biology at UC Santa Barbara. He resides in Nevada City.

ROBIN LITTAU (REPUBLICAN) is a member of the Enterprise Elementary School District board in Shasta County.

ANGELITA VALLES (REPUBLICAN) is a business owner based in Shasta County.

About the 2026 California Top Two Primary

The 2nd Congressional District primary takes place June 2, 2026.

The last day to register to vote for the June 2, 2026, Primary Election is May 18, 2026. All active registered voters will receive a vote-by-mail ballot. Ballots will begin mailing on May 4, and drop-off locations will open on May 5. Early in-person voting begins May 23 in Voter's Choice Act counties. Vote-by-mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by June 9.

Sources: California Secretary of State, Report of Registration, Dec. 30, 2025; California Secretary of State, Certified List of Candidates, March 26, 2026; Federal Election Commission, coverage ending March 31, 2026; Ballotpedia, California's 2nd Congressional District election, 2026, California Target Book.