GOP Rep. Mike Garcia's ad distorts role in Violence Against Women Act

Rep. Mike Garcia gestures while standing and speaking into a microphone as other House members sit behind him

Sept. 4, 2024 3 AM PT

In its first advertisement for the general election season, the campaign for Rep. Mike Garcia, a politically vulnerable Santa Clarita Republican, offers a misleading description of the congressman’s role in passing the Violence Against Women Act, which provides aid for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.

The 30-second advertisement, titled “Voices,” was released Tuesday. It features an unnamed female constituent who says: “Mike co-sponsored the Violence Against Women Act to protect us against domestic violence. That’s why we need Mike Garcia in Congress.”

Garcia made the same co-sponsorship claim at a Santa Clarita town hall event last month, calling his support “a big deal” because “not very many Republicans” had sponsored reauthorization of the landmark 1994 law.

But in 2021, Garcia voted against a version of the reauthorization measure that was passed by the Democratic House majority, joining conservatives who protested provisions that expanded protections for LGBTQ+ people and tightened gun access for people convicted of abusing or stalking a dating partner. Instead, Garcia co-sponsored a Republican-led stop-gap measure to renew the act for one year, minus the new provisions, that failed to move forward.

He was not a co-sponsor of the amended reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act that Democratic President Biden ultimately signed into law the following year as part of a wide-ranging federal spending measure. It is that version of the act that remains in force today.

The Garcia campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Garcia’s Democratic opponent, George Whitesides, also released his first ad on Tuesday. The 30-second TV spot, titled “Experience,” highlights Whitesides’ time as a NASA chief of staff and a chief executive of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic.

“I’ll use my business experience to solve problems instead of playing politics,” Whitesides says in the ad.

The race between Garcia and Whitesides to represent Congressional District 27 in northern Los Angeles County, including the Antelope Valley, is one of the most competitive — and consequential — in the country.

Erin Covey, an analyst for the Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, said the race will be crucial in determining whether Republicans maintain their narrow majority in the U.S. House. Although Garcia has been elected three times, he represents a district where Democrats hold a significant voter registration advantage, and which President Biden won by double digits in 2020.

“I think this is going to be a race to watch,” Covey said during a roundtable discussion at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month. “It’s suburban. It’s diverse. It’s a race where [Vice President Kamala] Harris should really be a boost.”

George Whitesides standing in the sun wearing a baseball cap and speaking to two people, their backs to the camera

The new ads by Garcia and Whitesides mark the start of a major advertising blitz that will inundate Southern California airwaves through election day.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that supports Republicans running for the House, has reserved $18.2 million for advertising in the Los Angeles area this fall, with a focus on the 27th District.

The House Majority PAC, which backs Democrats, has booked more than $22.4 million in television and digital ads in both English and Spanish in the Los Angeles media market, one of the country’s most expensive.

The House Majority PAC said last year that it would spend $35 million in California, roughly triple what it spent on the 2022 midterm campaigns in the Golden State, when Democrats underperformed in some districts that had been expected to be strongholds.

The new advertisement from Garcia’s campaign leans into his military credentials. The congressman, a former Navy fighter pilot, flew in more than 30 combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom before spending 11 years as an executive with defense contractor Raytheon.

“While I’m no longer in the cockpit, my fight for you and the country never stops,” he says in the ad, wearing a brown leather flight jacket.

Constituents chime in to say that his “new mission” includes lowering prescription drug costs and “fighting the career politicians” to lower costs for families. The ad does not specify which costs.

The new ad for Whitesides says he created more than 700 jobs in the Antelope Valley and Santa Clarita while leading Virgin Galactic.

Those jobs included positions for engineers, technicians, accountants, human relations professionals and others, with a focus on early-career development for recent high school and community college graduates, Whitesides said in an interview this week.

Whitesides, a first-time candidate, said his first ad focuses on job creation because so many of the district’s residents endure long commutes to work in Los Angeles while living in the Antelope Valley, where housing is more affordable.

“People are hungry for local job opportunities so they don’t have to spend four hours on the road,” Whitesides said.

In the ad, Whitesides also says people are struggling with crime and that he will “get more funding for police.”

Whitesides has come out in favor of Proposition 36, a statewide ballot measure that calls for stiffer penalties for some drug and theft crimes.

The measure, called the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, asks voters to partially unwind Proposition 47, a controversial ballot initiative passed in 2014 that reclassified some nonviolent felonies as misdemeanors.

Proposition 36 has been endorsed by the California Republican Party.

Democrats are split on the measure. It has been endorsed by some big-city mayors, including San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. But Gov. Gavin Newsom and some top Democratic leaders in the state Legislature have spoken out against it, alleging it would return California to a draconian tough-on-crime era that swelled the state’s prison population to unconstitutional levels.

Whitesides said he’s “one of the few Democrats who have come out in favor of the reform measure” because residents want to get smash-and-grab robberies under control and are “rightly concerned about public safety.”

In his town hall meeting last month, Garcia said he, too, supported more funding for law enforcement. He said Proposition 47 needed to be nixed and that state Democrats had been pushing too many “pro-criminal” policies.

Times staff writer Noah Bierman contributed to this report.