This California Democrat Might Be the Future of the Party

Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) was elected mayor of Redlands, his San Bernardino County hometown, at 31. He came to Congress at 36. Now, at 43, he’s the third-ranking House Democrat.

And as his party attempts to reclaim the majority next year, he’s embracing a new role: mentor, guide and, he hopes, eventually leader for the next generation of California Democrats emerging and arriving in Washington.

Aguilar is creating a new fundraising arm, the California House Majority Fund, to protect the Democratic-held seats in the state and flip the five California districts represented by Republicans which also voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Aguilar will pool money from donors and then release the cash next year after it becomes clear who the Democratic standard bearer is in each of the seats.

Beyond financial help, he wants to play the role of sherpa for the candidates, helping them navigate policy and politics through the duration of the general election. “They’re going to know how to find me, I’m going to go to these districts,” Aguilar told me, joking that he was eager to play the role of congressional rabbi even if he was “raised Catholic.”

With Democrats needing to net just five seats to take back the House, the majority could effectively be determined when the votes are all counted in California, raising the stakes on Aguilar’s intervention.

His step forward, though, is about far more than just maximizing his party’s House pick-ups in California.

After a generation of carrying outsized clout in Washington, California Democrats are waning. Their powerhouse senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, are no more, with Boxer retired and Feinstein suffering a painful, public decline on the way to her own retirement after next year. House fixtures like Henry Waxman, George Miller and Jane Harman long ago headed for the exits. And many of their contemporaries in the 70-and-up category — lawmakers like Maxine Waters, Zoe Lofgren and Mike Thompson — find themselves in the minority and without the committee gavels they understandably crave at this stage of their career.

Further, the Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress are New Yorkers and the Democrat in the White House is also from the Northeast and lacks the affinity for California (or the Pacific broadly) of the party’s other recent presidents.

Most significant to California, of course, was the decision last year by Nancy Pelosi to step down from the leadership after Democrats lost the majority. It’s impossible to overstate the role she played in her home state in her two decades as leader or speaker, whether with fundraising, mentoring or perhaps her favorite role, appropriating money for California projects. There has not been any question who led the delegation from America’s largest state.

That may soon change, and particularly if Pelosi is joined out the door by her longtime lieutenants, lawmakers like Lofgren, Thompson and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.).

While remaining in Congress, at least through this term, Pelosi’s turn to emeritus status has raised the question of who will take her place when she retires, not as the Gentlelady from San Francisco but as California’s Boss in Washington.

Aguilar’s move toward taking command of next year’s House races back home makes clear he’d like to step into that position. Affable and respectful of his seniors, and seniority, he’s taking care to step gingerly, though.

“I benefited from learning from her, spending time with her, watching her build relationships,” Aguilar said of Pelosi, adding: “Nobody is going to recreate that in four months.”

Working in his favor is that Pelosi is thrilled by Aguilar rise, claiming pride of political parentage in his career.

The speaker emerita, as she now goes by, was eager to discuss his ascent.

Pelosi reminded me she had made sure Aguilar “had visibility with some of our folks in Southern California” when he first ran, and lost, for a House seat in 2012.

She nurtured his ambitions soon after he was elected to the House on his second try in 2014, helping him secure a seat on the Appropriations Committee in only his second term and then in 2021 naming him to the committee investigating the January 6^th attack on the Capitol, an appointment she called “a real recognition of the value we placed on his leadership.”

Pelosi doesn’t directly answer when asked if she’s passing the California baton on to Aguilar, but she lavishes praise on him.

“He has all the talent, he’s articulate and eloquent, he is values-based, he knows the subject matter,” she said. (He also has some other skills that come in handy: Before Pelosi threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals game this week, Aguilar gave her a few pointers on her delivery.)

There’s more, though.

Pelosi has a special affinity for Aguilar because, like her brother and father, he was once a mayor and because, like her and her father, he’s an appropriator. He views appropriations with the reverence that’s seemingly conferred on all members of a committee traditionally important enough that’s it only semi-jokingly referred to as the third party in Congress.

“When I was a little girl, my father was in Congress, when I was a baby, I could remember him saying when I was 2 or 3 years old, ‘I’m a member of the almighty powerful Appropriations Committee,” she recalled. “I loved being there myself and I love that Pete understands that it’s such an important committee.”

There’s another reason, however, why Pelosi is so enamored with Aguilar — he’s a House guy.

The top talent in both parties now increasingly leaves the fractious chamber, either out of frustration or ambition, rather than making a career there in the fashion of, well, Nancy Pelosi, who came to the House in 1987, built seniority and never left.

Look no further than the Democrats’ vaunted class of 2018, the group that put Pelosi back in the speakership: Some of the brightest lights are already running for the Senate (Colin Allred (D-Texas), Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.)) and others are eyeing governorships (Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.)).

House members, Pelosi said, “either come and make a commitment to stay or they come and use it as a stepping stone for something else.”

The issue hits close to home for her, quite literally, which is also why she’s enthused about Aguilar, who’s of Mexican descent.

Pelosi recalled California Democrats like Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn who left the House — they’re both now on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, itself an influential perch — despite her pleadings.

“I’ve had some where I’d say, ‘Oh, please don’t go,’ whether it be a woman or a minority or something because we work hard to increase our diversity,” she said.

Aguilar sees his future in the House. “This is where I want to be,” he said.

He doesn’t deny designs on one day following Pelosi’s path all the way to the speakership — “you never know what the future holds” — but for now dutifully says he wants “a front row seat for Hakeem to be speaker,” alluding to House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The road to a Jeffries speakership is through California and New York. Eleven of the 18 House Republicans in seats Biden carried hail from those two states, making the two coastal population hubs a crucial battleground for control of the chamber (And Jeffries, too, is intimately involved in his home state effort to flip seats).

For the moment, Aguilar is positioning himself in Washington and California alike.

He recalled a recent dinner with some of Pelosi’s California inner circle, Thompson, Eshoo and Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), who represents the Sacramento area.

“They’re intimidating as hell when you get to Congress,” he said of the group, but now he said they’re an invaluable resource for institutional knowledge about California and Washington (to say nothing of tales about John Burton, the legendary former state party chair and lawmaker whose penchant for profanity came up over dinner).

Aguilar has also bonded with his own generation of 40-somethings in the California delegation. “He’s able to manage everyone’s competing priorities, holding us together during often turbulent times,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), a class of 2018 member who’s not looking to leave the House.

All but salivating over the seats currently held by California Republicans John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Young Kim and Michelle Steel, whose districts Biden all carried, Aguilar recalled his own initial victory and the mindset Democrats will need to win the districts. “I flipped a Republican-held seat, I know what they’re going through,” he said.

Aguilar used a speech at last month’s California Democratic convention, during which he also introduced a video of Pelosi, to proclaim that “the path to the House majority begins and ends in California.”

Pelosi is more cautious about California’s role flipping the House, only allowing that the state alone “can come very close” to making the difference. She frets about losing Democratic-held seats in other states, recounting her own first rise to state power as a lawmaker. It was 2000 and she helped engineer a series of victories in California (including that of another protégé, Adam Schiff) only to see House Democrats lose ground in other states and remain out of power another six years.

Pelosi has already introduced Aguilar, Jeffries and Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), the second-ranking House Democrat, to many of California’s top donors and there’s plans for another swing through the state.

“I take personal responsibility for our having what we need for California” for the election, Pelosi told me.

But she’ll soon have company, a lawmaker who said he has jotted down some of Pelosi's maxims and witticisms.

Aguilar’s favorite: "Self-promotion is a terrible thing, but somebody has to do it."