‘My Last Chance’: Perennial Candidate Ammar Campa-Najjar Believes He Can Finally Win an Election

Many California Democrats who’ve backed Campa-Najjar in the past don’t want to see him run again. In 2018 and 2020, he easily won the California Democratic Party’s official endorsement, but this year, he did not. And yet, Campa-Najjar thinks 2026 is his best shot at winning.

Campa-Najjar first ran for Congress in 2018 against Rep. Duncan Hunter, who had been indicted for misusing campaign funds, losing by 3.4 percentage points. He lost in 2020 to Rep. Darrell Issa by 8 percentage points. He lost the Chula Vista mayoral race to John McCann in 2022 by 4.2 percentage points.

With California’s newly redrawn congressional map, Issa’s district became more Democratic, inspiring Campa-Najjar to run against him again. Last week, Issa announced he would retire from Congress, endorsing Republican Jim Desmond on his way out. In response, Campa-Najjar said in a press release, “While I’m glad Darrell Issa will no longer represent CA-48, we cannot exchange one MAGA rubber stamp for another this November.”

“This country’s going in a different direction, and so I felt very compelled by the moment,” Campa-Najjar told NOTUS last month. “If I’m going to try to prove what I believe about this country, this is my last chance to try to stand in the breach and do something about it.”

Not everyone is as enthusiastic about his run. Campa-Najjar has several endorsements from members of Congress, including his girlfriend, Rep. Sara Jacobs, and he’s the top fundraiser in the race. But state and local Democrats are not lining up behind him in quite the same way.

In late February, thousands of members of the California Democratic Party gathered in San Francisco for the state party’s annual convention. Their main purpose: to organize ahead of the midterms after voters in the state overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, solidifying Democrats’ advantage in congressional races, and to endorse Democratic candidates. In 2018 and 2020, Campa-Najjar easily landed the party’s endorsement.

This year, the California Democratic Party did not endorse anyone in the primary, which will take place in June. Of the 33 delegates who voted in California’s new 48th district, only about 18% voted to endorse Campa-Najjar, compared to 55% for San Diego City Councilwoman Marni Von Wilpert, just shy of the 60% threshold needed to obtain the full party’s backing.

The results were not surprising. Campa-Najjar has faced accusations of opportunism and changing his positions based on political headwinds. In mid-January, he attended the party’s pre-endorsement conference with the hopes of convincing local Democrats to support him. But ahead of that meeting, five California Democrats sent a letter to state delegates urging them not to support Campa-Najjar.

“With Prop 50 now law, Democrats finally have a chance to win California’s 48th Congressional District and take back the House from Trump. But that depends on nominating a credible, electable candidate Democrats can unify behind. Ammar Campa-Najjar is not that candidate,” the Democrats wrote in the letter, which was obtained by NOTUS.

“Ammar’s repeated defeats have compounded a troubling pattern: a lack of clear principles Democrats can unite behind and a tendency to tell different groups whatever they want to hear,” the letter continued. “These positions will define Ammar again in 2026 – undermining his credibility with all voters, let alone Democrats.”

The letter’s authors pointed to his past positions on guns. Campa-Najjar said in 2020 that he was opposed to banning assault rifles: “I don’t believe in banning so-called ‘assault weapons.’ First of all, that’s a term that was coined by liberals who know nothing about guns.”

“I don’t believe that we should have an assault weapons ban. I just don’t think it would work and it would just give criminals an advantage over the rest of us law-abiding people,” he added. “That’s where I break ranks with my own party.”

At a candidate forum this past September, which NOTUS obtained audio of, Campa-Najjar said, “I firmly believe” in California’s current assault weapons ban.

“On a military base, I can’t bring a personal firearm on a military base, so why can we be allowed to take military firearms into civilian hands?,” he said. “We shouldn’t be able to do that. The military has stricter gun rules than our country does.”

The Democrats who signed the letter also took issue with past comments he made to Defend East County, a far-right group in Southern California that has since disbanded. There, he said that Amy Coney Barrett, at the time a nominee to the Supreme Court, “was very qualified” and that he would “probably” have voted to confirm her had he been in the Senate. Barrett’s confirmation as a justice ultimately gave the court the conservative supermajority that overturned Roe v. Wade.

At the pre-endorsement conference, Campa-Najjar said that “as your next congressman if I’m honored to be that person … It looks like introducing an amendment to codify Roe v. Wade to protect a woman’s freedom and right to choose.”

But the damage was done. At the conference, he obtained the support of only 14.29% of the 77 delegates who voted. Von Wilpert won a whopping 68.83%.

Campa-Najjar downplayed those results. In a lengthy interview with NOTUS in early February, the Democratic candidate called the state party’s endorsement “a nice to have, but not a need to have.”

“This is not going to get won by the party’s brand blessing,” he told NOTUS. “The party’s brand, with all due respect, is not what’s going to get us to the promised land in any of these districts. It’s still a party that’s trying to figure us out.”

He touted the growing number of endorsements he’s received from members of Congress. So far, he’s gained the support of 20 House Democrats, including Jacobs, and two congressional PACs, the campaign arms of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. One Democratic strategist involved in California races, but not in the CA-48 primary, told NOTUS it was unusual to see that many endorsements.

“I’m just surprised so many politicians are taking sides in that race … That’s an interesting element,” said the strategist, who was granted anonymity to speak freely.

“The members of Congress who know what it takes, they want me to be here and be their colleague,” Campa-Najjar told NOTUS. The delegates in the pre-endorsement conference, he said, are “a group of activists, 80 of them” that do not “speak on behalf of 800,000” people.

He says now that he regrets what he sees as a hard pivot to the right in 2020, after running as a more traditional Democrat in 2018.

“That outreach, in that moment, became an overreaching,” he said.

“I went too far,” Campa-Najjar continued. “What I realized is that if you stoop to their level, they don’t respect you, and you lose your own respect.”