Wahab wins race to replace Swalwell in House

What happened

California state Sen. Aisha Wahab (D) on Thursday secured victory in the special election to serve out the remainder of former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-Calif.) term in the House. With nearly all ballots counted from Tuesday’s vote, Wahab led fellow Democrat Melissa Hernandez 53% to 47%. Swalwell resigned in April after multiple women accused him of sexual assault and harassment. The FBI seized his phone and laptop at the San Francisco airport and searched his Washington, D.C., home last weekend as part of a federal investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, CNN and other news organizations reported.

Who said what

Wahab, a progressive who ran on housing affordability, will be the first Afghan American to serve in Congress. She was long “favored to win” the safely Democratic seat, the Los Angeles Times said, but the “race became more competitive” after the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC “spent millions on ads attacking her.”

What next?

Wahab and Hernandez will face each other again in November to compete for a full two-year term. In a statement, Hernandez, a public transit executive and former mayor of Dublin, California, said the next election “will be in the new district lines, adding 26,000 Dublin voters who didn’t have the chance to vote for me in August.”

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