Democrat Christy Smith announced Wednesday she has entered the race to unseat Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, in the 2022 midterm elections.
The news of her candidacy was announced early Wednesday morning on social media. Smith, a longtime Santa Clarita resident, also released a video titled “Let’s Get This Done” to announce her candidacy.
Garcia defeated Smith by 333 votes last November – a point that Smith acknowledged with her opening line in her announcement video.
In an interview with The Signal, Smith said November’s vote margin proved that every vote matters.
“We have to do everything that we can to not only protect the franchise (of voting) as it currently exists, but to empower people, to make voting easier, to make it more accessible and still safe and secure and fraud-free,” Smith said, calling November’s race for the 25th Congressional District “a textbook example of what happens when the system is functioning well.”
“To make (voting) more accessible to voters is incredibly important and there is no greater proof of that than races like mine that were so incredibly close,” she added.
Smith also denounced “intentional disinformation,” referring to the tactic as a form of “voter suppression.”
“Most people don’t see it that way, but contextually that’s what happens,” Smith said, citing a CalMatters investigation that explored the Republican Party’s use of misinformation in the effort to win four Democratic-held congressional seats in California in 2020. “You are convincing (and) you are compelling someone either to not participate or to participate against their own best interest.”
Smith voiced her support for House Resolution 1, a bill recently approved by the U.S. House of Representatives that would implement a variety of strategies aimed at expanding voter access to the ballot box.
“Our goal is to be as up-front and as out-front, and truth-leading as possible, (to) empower people and let them know that their vote matters,” Smith said of her campaigning approach.
Smith identified health care and environmental protection among her top priorities, and pointed out the changing demographics in north Los Angeles County.
“We have especially here started to trend much more diverse, and we have to acknowledge that everyone who’s a part of our community needs to be treated equally under the law,” Smith said, listing social justice issues as another priority.
Smith said Republicans have been engaging in “blatant obstruction” in Congress.
“Bipartisanship only can occur when the other party and the opposition party is coming to the table with alternatives and alternative measures in areas where they are willing to agree and given. Without that bipartisanship doesn’t occur,” said Smith.
Garcia’s campaign responded to Smith’s announcement Wednesday morning with a prepared statement saying Smith’s positions on the issues are not in line with the interests of 25th District residents.
“Failed politician Christy Smith is clearly hoping the third time’s a charm, but no matter how many times she runs and how many times she tries to reinvent herself with voters, the facts are clear: Smith supports higher taxes on working families, public funding of her congressional races while defunding our police, and a wide-open border, and those are simply not the values of CA-25 families,” said Garcia campaign spokesman Lance Trover in the statement Wednesday morning.
