California House Primary in Sacramento Displays Democrats’ Fierce Generational Battle

At the California Democratic Party convention this year, Representative Doris Matsui, 81, was trying to convince a roomful of delegates that her experience was valuable when a heckler in the back of the room shouted at her.

“Don’t shame young people!” the heckler said.

Ms. Matsui is facing her toughest re-election campaign in her more than two decades of representing a safely Democratic district in the Sacramento region. And the depth of her political vulnerability was evident from the appearance of a powerful supporter who quietly slipped into the room to help her friend: Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker and the doyenne of California Democrats.

In Tuesday’s primary election, Ms. Matsui is facing an intraparty challenger about half her age at a moment of generational upheaval within the Democratic Party. Her opponent, Mai Vang, 41, a liberal Democrat on the Sacramento City Council, has made a fervent case for generational change, arguing that Democrats need more firepower.

“We are losing people from our base when we need fighters actively working with our community to change hearts and minds so that we can fight Trump,” Ms. Vang told delegates.

In Sacramento, California’s capital, voters have sent a Matsui to Congress for the last 47 years. Robert Matsui, whose name is etched into the city’s towering federal courthouse, represented the area from 1979 until his death, in January 2005. Two months later, his widow, Doris Matsui, was elected to fill his seat. She has won with ease ever since, championing flood protection for a city at the confluence of two rivers.

But then Republicans blew out Democrats in 2024, and questions lingered about whether President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was too feeble to seek re-election. Younger Democrats were furious. In San Francisco, Ms. Pelosi’s home, they proposed a mandatory retirement age and inspired other Democrats across the country to seek generational change within the party.

In California, some younger Democrats eyed new opportunities to oust incumbents after voters changed district boundaries last year. Though the goal of the gerrymander, driven by Gov. Gavin Newsom, was to help Democrats flip Republican-held seats, the redrawn districts have spurred intraparty challenges in some parts of the state where incumbents have been forced into new territory.

In the Napa Valley wine country, Representative Mike Thompson, 75, is facing a challenge from Eric Jones, 36, a former venture capitalist, after redistricting shifted Mr. Thompson’s district eastward. In Southern California, Jake Levine, 42, is running to oust Representative Brad Sherman, 71, whose district now swoops in the shape of a backward C from Malibu to Simi Valley.

And in the Sacramento area, Ms. Matsui must now introduce herself to voters in upscale suburbs and small Gold Rush towns in the Sierra Nevada foothills beyond the urban core.

Frank Porter, vice chairman of the El Dorado County Democrats, said he was excited by the chance to be represented by a Democrat after having had a Republican congressman for decades. He met with Ms. Matsui and Ms. Vang as he weighed his options.

“I had reservations about her age, I’ll be candid with you,” he said of Ms. Matsui. But he found her sharp, capable and “very ready to serve us well.”

While he was impressed by Ms. Vang’s enthusiasm and passion, Mr. Porter decided to vote for Ms. Matsui because he believes she will be more effective if Democrats win the House majority, given her seniority.

“I think Mai Vang has a bright future,” he said. “It’s just a practical decision about how will we get Congress back in shape.”

Ms. Matsui has been endorsed by Mr. Newsom, a powerful federation of labor unions and most of Ms. Vang’s colleagues on the Sacramento City Council. She also won the endorsement of the California Democratic Party after a hard-fought battle at the convention.

“It’s not about clinging to power,” Ms. Matsui said at the convention after being heckled. “Right now you have to have effectiveness when you have the highest risk that we’ve ever had in this country.”

Still, Ms. Matsui senses a serious threat from Ms. Vang. She loaned her campaign $1.4 million, a step she has never taken in her 10 prior re-election campaigns, according to campaign finance reports.

Progressive groups see a real opportunity to oust an establishment incumbent. Three national organizations that back progressive candidates, Our Revolution, Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party, have endorsed Ms. Vang.

Under California’s primary rules, if Ms. Matsui and Ms. Vang finish first and second Tuesday, the intraparty battle will continue into November. But if a Democrat and a Republican make the top two, the Democrat is almost certain to prevail in November because the district’s voters skew Democratic.

The campaign has had a uniquely Sacramento flair, with the candidates’ life stories reflecting the region’s diverse communities. Ms. Vang is the daughter of Hmong refugees who fled war in Laos and settled in Sacramento’s large Southeast Asian community. Ms. Matsui was born in an internment camp for Japanese Americans, where her parents were sent during World War II, and raised on a farm in California’s Central Valley.

Glimmers of the race have emerged along Sacramento’s tree-shaded streets, where front yards are dotted with campaign lawn signs, the candidates sometimes alternating on the same block. In the city’s youthful Midtown neighborhood, hundreds of Ms. Vang’s supporters gathered in March for a fund-raising concert by the rock band Cake, which hails from Sacramento.

Onstage, the band’s leader, John McCrea, held up a T-shirt that said, “I [heart] Democracy.” Cheers erupted as he threw it into the crowd. The drummer hit his opening beats and fans holding plastic cups of beer began singing along.

Afterward, John Ruffner, a contractor in attendance, said he was supporting Ms. Vang because he liked her activism during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and her opposition to U.S. military funding for Israel.

For a long time, he saw Ms. Matsui as someone “you don’t need to think about” because her family was such a constant in local politics.

“When I was a little boy, her husband was the rep, and then when I was a teenager, she kind of slid into it,” Mr. Ruffner, 43, said.

But Ms. Matsui now strikes him as a politician who has lost touch with her community and refuses to pass the torch.

“Pure hubris,” he said. “She feels entitled to camp in that seat.”

At the California Democratic Party convention in February, Ms. Pelosi rose from her seat as the forum came to an end. Ms. Pelosi, 86, is retiring this year, giving way to younger candidates, but she still wields tremendous clout among California Democrats.

“I know that some of you are eager for another generation,” she said.

But, she added, sometimes people forget how much seniority helps representatives deliver for their districts.

“That’s important, to have new blood coming into the Congress and experience to show the way,” Ms. Pelosi said. “Congresswoman Matsui has been great on that.”

When the meeting was over, Ms. Vang remained energized, if a bit shellshocked by Ms. Pelosi’s surprise intervention: “I just had the establishment come in and say, ‘Hey, what are you trying to do? She’s my friend.’”