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GOP nominees won back four of the seven California House races Democrats overturned in 2018, despite president-elect Joe Biden celebrating in the state to a 30-point victory over President Trump, on his way to seizing the White House with 306 Electoral College votes.

California GOP Rep. Mike Garcia secured the state’s 25th Congressional District weeks after Election Day. Garcia initially won the district last May during a special election to fill the seat left by former Democratic Rep. Katie Hill, who left Congress after 10 months following a sex scandal.

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Hill won the seat in 2018 by a 7-point margin when she took down two-term Republican incumbent Rep. Steve Knight. Before Knight’s occupation, the district was served by Republican Rep. Buck McKeon for 22 years.

Garcia, the son of a Mexican immigrant, attended the U.S. Naval Academy after being drafted by then-Rep. McKeon. Garcia proceeded to missions in Iraq and later served for 10 years as an executive on the board at Raytheon.

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Garcia’s special election victory in May was the first time a Republican House filled a Democratic House seat in California since 1998. Seven months later, Republicans overturned three additional seats and glorified these wins as the first cases since 1994 that the party defeated incumbent House members.

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"[His race] was all mail-in ballots," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican from Bakersfield, recently told the Washington Examiner about Garcia. "First and foremost is the quality of the candidate ... I recruited the class in 2010, I think this class is even better. We are stronger to be more diverse. We've expanded the Republican Party further."

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The California Republican Party matched Democrats’ campaign struggles on the ground, from voter filing to ballot collection to mail-in voting, especially with Garcia’s successful campaign. Worried about the GOP's progress with third-party ballot collections, California Democrats went after Republicans for their drop boxes in certain places all over the state.

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Since early spring 2020, according to California GOP Deputy Executive Director Bryan Watkins, the party frequently worked with grassroots GOP activists, instructing over 1,500 people in one week alone.

Half of the Republican 2020 House seats filling came out of areas that included regions of Orange County, a traditionally conservative stronghold that upheld Hillary Clinton in 2016, the first time it supported a Democratic presidential nominee in 80 years. Orange County also helped Democrats win the House majority by turning four Republican seats placed there in 2018.

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Garcia on Monday emerged the winner after his Democratic rival, Assemblywoman Christy Smith, conceded the 25th District race. That came a few days after former Republican Rep. David Valadao was called the winner in a Central Valley district, the 21st. Valadao formerly served the district since 2013 but lost the seat to Democratic Rep. TJ Cox in 2018 by less than 1,000 votes.