Without Doug LaMalfa, the Sacramento Valley loses a key political voice | Opinion
In 2002, Doug LaMalfa was a rice farmer looking for a second job in public service. He decided to run for the California Assembly’s 2nd District. Introducing himself in a visit to the Sacramento Bee that year, he had the ruddy handshake of a farmer who worked his land as opposed to merely owning it.
There was, and has been, no mistaking LaMalfa as a true representative of the Sacramento Valley. He has been a constant of the valley’s universe ever since, until his sudden passing on Monday at the age of 65. And now, a massive political void has opened wide.
The Sacramento Valley has lost a voice in Congress, and in more ways than one. It has lost LaMalfa, who stayed true to his conservative roots and partisan winds flew in various directions around him. But something more permanent may be afoot, a lasting legacy of the never-ending battles between President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The Sacramento Valley is a unique economic engine of California, as it is anchored in agriculture and its intense connection to the Sierra rivers that sustain crops like rice. But throughout history, it has rarely been allowed to have its own political ecosystem, with its own member in Congress.
How redistricting reshaped North State politics
All that changed in California, when voters in 2010 embraced the fairest elections possible for Congress and delegated map-drawing to a new independent and nonpartisan commission. Respecting the boundaries of geography and community, the commission redrew the first Congressional district to be one of the Sacramento Valley. No longer would the district cross westward over the Mayacamas Mountains into the land of Democrats.
The incumbent Congressman of the 1st District at the time, Democrat Mike Thompson, fled westward to safer political grounds, and has stayed in power representing one district or another ever since.
LaMalfa, by then a California State Senator with a cemented reputation as a stalwart, straight-talking conservative, ran for Thompson’s unoccupied seat. And he has held it ever since, until Monday.
As the Republican Party shifted to the right and for the rich as the Trump juggernaut slashed taxes for the upper brackets and deprived some lower-income Americans of their government health care, LaMalfa stayed loyal to the new conservatism while not shying away from home. He was one of few Republicans this summer to hold a local Town Hall on a testy day in Chico. He was unphased by the loud opponents of the president. “It’s your time,” he told the gathering. “Ninety minutes is what we get so if you guys want to waste it, you all go ahead.”
But the political world was shifting under LaMalfa. Trump’s drive to gerrymander more congressional seats in Congress inspired Newsom to seek to temporarily abandon independently-drawn seats here in California.
Redistricting muzzles the Sacramento Valley’s voice
The Democrats that summer quietly redrew California’s political future in California. And true to historic form, the 1st District was changed to shift westward over the Mayacamas yet again, into Democratic-leaning communities of Sonoma County.
California voters, in a resounding statement against Trump, approved Proposition 50 in November to basically embrace cheating for the next three congressional elections in the state.
LaMalfa for the first time in his political career was to be, based on mapping, the underdog should he have continued to pursue plans to retain his seat. And the Sacramento Valley is poised to lose a homegrown representative in Congress as Santa Rosa Democrat Mike McGuire, the outgoing leader of the State Senate, now has a clearer path to victory.
In all candor, LaMalfa wasn’t my favorite political leader of all time. He was a farmer who could have benefited from a little more flexibility to different views of the world. But in this attribute, he has plenty of company on both sides of the political aisle.
There were real reasons why two different independent redistricting commissions in both 2012 and 2022 honored the importance of the Sacramento Valley with its own congressional seat.
Having representatives in Washington with a passion for agriculture and water, a complex subject in which most Californians in Congress are utterly illiterate, is crucial to advancing this state. LaMalfa lived these issues because it was in his genes. That only comes from living in the Sacramento Valley.
This story was originally published January 6, 2026 at 9:41 AM with the headline "Without Doug LaMalfa, the Sacramento Valley loses a key political voice | Opinion."