California Congressional District 19 (June 2, 2026)

Summary:

Our team’s position is that we would like the two top vote-getters in the primary to be Jimmy Panetta and Sean Dougherty.  We think a November contest between these two candidates would provide us with the best opportunity to promote deeper public reflection on the key challenges currently facing our democracy

Indivisible Santa Cruz County polled its membership about making an official endorsement, but no candidate reached the required 60% endorsement threshold. Sean Dougherty received 54.1%, and Jimmy Panetta received 43.6%.

Given that we would like the November contest to be between Jimmy Panetta and Sean Dougherty, our team could conceivably have endorsed Dougherty for the primary long ago. However, we don’t think Panetta is a bad guy, and an argument can also be made for trying to work with him. From a pro-democracy perspective, our biggest problem with Panetta is his acceptance of AIPAC funding. Panetta might justify this by arguing that he will stop taking PAC donations when his opponents do the same.

Background:

Early in 2026, our team developed a list of questions for the candidates in the primary election in CA-19. We presented these questions to the Indivisible Santa Cruz County (ISCC) leadership group, and they proposed expanding the initiative by asking each of the Issue Teams to submit two questions to the candidates. We readily agreed to participate in this collaborative effort and revised our questions accordingly. The questions from all of the Issue Teams were sent out to the candidates in early May. Five of the seven candidates, including Democratic incumbent Jimmy Panetta and Democratic challenger Sean Dougherty, returned completed questionnaires. The completed questionnaires were emailed to the ISCC membership, along with a request to indicate whether any of the candidates should be endorsed by ISCC.

Information about the ISCC CA-19 Endorsement Process and the unedited candidate responses is available here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K-pBo8vQrHWyvBsZLtuTxZwLKVG7bM1zoBYiPEWvURU/edit?mc_cid=b1b38403ba&mc_eid=18fc77bab5&tab=t.0#heading=h.3vij3j1ct06s