Your guide to the California Congressional District 26 race: the battle for Julia Brownley’s seat

The decision by Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village) not to seek reelection in California’s 26th District has created an open race for the Ventura County-centered seat for the first time in more than a decade.

The district stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains, representing affluent suburban communities as well as working-class agricultural communities. It includes the cities of Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Moorpark and the L.A. County communities of Calabasas and Agoura Hills.

Cook Political Report ranks the district as a solidly Democratic seat, making it a valuable prize for a politician seeking a base of well-to-do donors and favorable reelection odds. However, the district also comes with a set of infrastructure and climate-related challenges, which include wide swaths of wildfire-prone areas and homes threatened by coastal erosion and flooding.

California

Voter guide to the 2026 California primary election

California’s primary election takes place on June 2. Learn about L.A.’s city and county races and others for state offices.

May 1, 2026

• Samuel Gallucci: Republican, pastor, nonprofit leader, former business executive

Gallucci is a 40-year resident of Ventura County and most recently was the senior pastor at Embrace Church in Oxnard. He is the founder and chief executive of the Kingdom Center, according to his campaign website, a nonprofit that provides shelter and transitional housing for at-risk women and children in Ventura County, and started another to provide food and legal and educational resources to migrant agricultural workers. Before becoming a pastor, he worked as an executive at IBM, according to his LinkedIn bio.

• Michael Koslow: Republican, retired Air Force veteran, retired federal agent, small business owner

Koslow is a retired state command chief master sergeant in the California Air National Guard, according to his campaign website. He concurrently worked as a federal agent for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which investigates fraud and abuse in Department of Defense programs. He later founded a private investigation firm, the Aenigma Investigation Agency, based in Westlake Village.

• Jacqui Irwin: Democrat, state Assembly member, former Thousand Oaks mayor

Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) has served in California’s State Assembly since 2014 and is the only candidate in the 26th District holding elected office. While in the Assembly, she has chaired committees on veterans affairs, taxation, climate change, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, according to her government bio, and authored legislation to increase local university funding and to expand the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. She began her public-service career on the Thousand Oaks City Council in 2004 and served two terms as mayor. Irwin has a background in engineering and worked at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab, according to her bio.

• Chris Espinosa: Democrat, environmental law advocate

Espinosa is an advisor of federal public policy and organizational development strategies for his consultancy company, Communities First Consulting. Previously, he was the legislative director for climate and energy policy at Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization; worked as the director of outreach and engagement for the House Committee on Natural Resources and was the chief operating officer at GreenLatinos, a nonprofit focused on environmental issues in the Latino community.

• Sonia Devgan-Kacker: Democrat, physician and small-business owner

Devgan-Kacker is the owner of Westlake Village Urgent Care. She completed her undergraduate degree at Stanford University and her medical degree at UC Irvine and teaches other professionals and clinicians at UCLA, USC and other schools, according to her website.

Other candidates include:

• William Scott: Republican, retired Department of Defense civil servant
• Kyle Langford: Democrat, construction professional
• Crystal Golden: Republican
• Liam Andres Hernandez: Democrat

Irwin said people who break the law should be held accountable, but said that can be accomplished through well-trained law enforcement, not “the deployment of masked thugs into our streets and neighborhoods.”

Koslow criticized the number of illegal immigrants who entered the country during the Biden administration. He supports the Dignity Act of 2025, a bill introduced by Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) that would create a seven-year program allowing certain undocumented immigrants to work legally and offer Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients a pathway to legal status.

Espinosa said he supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and opposes the mass deportation of immigrants without a criminal background. He supports creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

Gallucci said undocumented immigrants who have “peacefully worked in our communities for decades” should be allowed to stay, while the “millions of unchecked and unvetted illegal migrants who came into America under the Biden Administration” should be deported.

Devgan-Kacker pointed to Ventura County’s agriculture industry, saying it depends on a stable workforce and that broad deportation of nonviolent residents is not a substitute for comprehensive reform of the immigration system. That reform, she said, should focus on reducing threats to public safety while limiting unnecessary family separation.

Devgan-Kacker advocates for more federal funding for wildfire prevention in Ventura County focused on supporting wildfire fuel reduction, defensible-space programs and infrastructure hardening, especially in communities at high risk of fires. She also said there is a need for faster disaster response so families and small businesses are not trapped in long bureaucratic delays.

Gallucci said Congress should expand federal wildfire mitigation but condition the disbursement of funding on responsible management. He added that mismanagement of water resources is a “catastrophe” for farmers and people displaced by fires.

Irwin supports increasing federal funding for wildfire resilience.

Espinosa calls for federal investment in vegetation management, home-hardening programs, improved emergency communications and community microgrids to maintain power during disasters. He also says Congress should accelerate funding for drought mitigation and disaster recovery.

Koslow supports increasing federal funding for wildfire resilience as long as there is accountability for how the funding is spent. He said firefighting personnel in local and federal agencies should be allowed to perform their work with minimal influence from political leaders.

Espinosa said President Trump has governed with division and chaos, undermined democratic institutions, scapegoated immigrants and failed to help everyday people struggling with rising costs. He said that as the son of a Vietnam veteran, he is alarmed by Trump’s military escalations in Iran and Venezuela without a coherent rationale, clear legal authority or strategy that makes Americans safer.

Gallucci believes Trump has done well and is pleased with what he described as the president’s quick and decisive foreign policy. But the candidate said the implementation of tariffs could have been more precise and targeted.

Koslow said Trump has surrounded himself with strong executive talent, worked diligently to increase the oversight of government programs and taken foreign policy action to advance national security.

Irwin called the Trump presidency a “chaotic assault on democratic norms, international alliances and environmental protections.” She said his tariffs were arbitrary, uninformed and harmful to the economy, and raised concerns that his foreign policy actions in Venezuela and Iran were made in a rash and chaotic manner.

Devgan-Kacker has serious concerns about transparency, accountability and the possibility of abuses of power under the Trump administration, noting that the president’s tariffs were imposed without congressional approval and raised costs for Californians.