Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress in April after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, and now Bay Area voters are sorting out who gets to clean up after him. State Sen. Aisha Wahab advanced Tuesday in the special primary for California's 14th Congressional District. Who she'll face in a potential runoff is still being counted.
What Swalwell Left Behind
Swalwell, if you need the recap, didn't exactly ride off into the sunset with his dignity intact. According to CBS News, he ended his campaign for California governor and then resigned from Congress in April, days apart, following multiple accusations of sexual misconduct that he has denied. That's a lot of dominoes falling in a very short window.
The seat he vacated covers a chunk of the East Bay that includes Dublin, Fremont, Hayward, and Livermore. It is, by any reasonable measure, a Democratic stronghold. The drama here is not whether a Democrat wins. The drama is which Democrat, and under what circumstances.
Wahab Out Front, But It's Complicated
CBS News reports that state Sen. Aisha Wahab came out on top in Tuesday's special primary. The other major Democratic contender is Melissa Hernandez, a Bay Area Rapid Transit director, which is a job title that sounds made up but is, in fact, a real and important position in the Bay Area's notoriously chaotic transit ecosystem.
On the Republican side, real estate investor and former tech executive Wendy Huang and small business owner Dena Maldonado are both in the mix. Neither is favored in a district that, again, tilts heavily Democratic. But they exist in this story and deserve a mention, so there you go.
The rules here matter. Per CBS News, if any single candidate breaks 50% of the vote, they win the whole thing outright and serve the rest of the term through January 2027. If nobody clears that bar, the top two finishers regardless of party move to a runoff on August 18th.
The Special Election vs. The Regular Election: Yes, There Are Two
Here's where California's election machinery gets delightfully convoluted. This special election is only about filling the remainder of Swalwell's current term, which expires in January 2027. It's a short-term placeholder race, essentially a congressional temp job.
Meanwhile, the regular November election for the next full term is already decided at the primary level. CBS News reports that Wahab and Hernandez already competed in California's June 2 primary for that race and both advanced, guaranteeing the seat stays Democratic no matter what. So voters in CA-14 are looking at a situation where they might vote twice for the same two candidates across two entirely separate elections in the span of a few months. California, baby.
The Swalwell Factor
It's worth being clear about what actually happened here, because the political media moved on fast. Swalwell, who spent years as a prominent House Democrat and briefly ran for president in 2019, faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct. He denied them. He dropped out of the governor's race. Then he resigned his congressional seat. All of this happened in rapid succession in the spring of 2026.
The speed of his exit was notable. He didn't wait around to let things play out or mount a public defense. He was gone. And now a special election is underway to fill his seat, costing taxpayers money and voters their Tuesday evenings, because a congressman couldn't keep his behavior in order.
The Dingo Take
Look, the seat is going to stay Democratic. Everyone knows it. The real story here is that Eric Swalwell, who once positioned himself as a crusading progressive voice and spent years appearing on cable news to lecture people about accountability, resigned under a cloud of sexual misconduct accusations without ever fully accounting for himself publicly. He just left. The press barely blinked.
Aisha Wahab is the frontrunner and, based on how California's already-decided November primary shook out, is likely to be the congresswoman from this district going forward regardless of how the special election resolves. That might be fine. She might be great. But she's inheriting a seat vacated under genuinely ugly circumstances, and the speed with which the political conversation moved from 'what happened with Swalwell' to 'who's the next Democrat' tells you something uncomfortable about how these things get processed.
Meanwhile, voters in the East Bay are being asked to show up twice in a few months to fill a seat for a term that expires in January anyway. The short-term job they're electing someone to do will be over before some of these ballots are fully certified. This is not governance. This is administrative purgatory with a Democratic primary attached. Great system, everybody.
