Swalwell Resignation Could Be Boon for AAPI Congressional Prospects
By J. J. Ghosh | 14 Apr, 2026

The resignation of Congressman Eric Swalwell from a district with a 41% AAPI constituency opens up the possibility of an Asian replacement.

Eric Swalwell is gone.

The seven-term California congressman resigned on Tuesday following a series of credible accusations of sexual misconduct and even rape.

When the accusations surfaced on Friday, Swalwell was a candidate for the Governor of California — and arguably the frontrunner.  But by Friday evening, every single one of his high-profile backers had withdrawn their endorsements.

Swalwell addresses the allegations against him before resigning from Congress

Soon after, calls for him to drop out of the race became calls for him to resign from Congress.  The chorus became too loud for him to ignore.

On Tuesday, the same day that Swalwell officially tendered his resignation, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared that a special election to replace him will be held on August 18.

Now, if there’s a silver lining to all of the humiliation that Swalwell’s constituents have had to endure, it’s that the district — a plurality of whom are Asian American — might just get a representative who looks a little more like them.

CA-14

State Senator Aisha Wahab is widely considered the frontrunner to replace Swalwell

California’s 14th Congressional District covers a stretch of the East Bay — Hayward, Pleasanton, Livermore, Union City, parts of Dublin and Fremont.

Asian residents form the largest racial or ethnic group at approximately 41%, followed by Hispanic residents at about 25% and white residents at roughly 22%.

Nearly 40% of residents were born outside of the United States and the most commonly spoken non-English languages in the district are Spanish, Chinese, and Tagalog.

In other words: this is a majority-minority district where the plurality of residents are Asian American, roughly a quarter are Latino, and white residents are actually the third-largest group.

While Swalwell has been a congressman in the area for 13 years, redistricting has changed the boundaries of the district such that it wasn’t entirely his district prior to 2023.  But if anything, the old CA-13 was even more heavily Asian American than it is now but was still represented by a white person, which is unfortunately not an unusual situation in American politics.  It is, in fact, a depressingly common one.

Districts with large Asian American and Latino populations are routinely represented by white politicians, for reasons that have everything to do with fundraising networks, name recognition, incumbent advantages, and a political establishment that has historically channeled resources toward familiar-looking candidates.

The fact that Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the country has not translated into proportional representation at the congressional level.  There are currently 19 Asian American members of Congress out of 435, or less than 5% for a group that makes up nearly 7% of the US population.

But the vacancy in CA-14 is a chance to correct at least one instance of this particular imbalance.  And the field that has assembled to replace Swalwell suggests that the district may finally be ready to elect someone who actually looks like it.

The Field

There are already seven candidates in the running to replace Swalwell in the 14th Congressional District, most of them Democrats.  Swalwell won it by more than 30 percentage points in 2024.  Whoever wins the Democratic primary is almost certainly going to Congress.

It’s worth noting that since Swalwell was running for governor, he was not seeking re-election and therefore this was already a race for an open seat.

The most prominent candidate by a significant margin is Aisha Wahab, a California state senator who has been running for this seat since before Swalwell announced his resignation — and who, by any reasonable measure, is one of the more remarkable people currently seeking federal office in the country.

Wahab was born in Queens to Afghan refugees who had fled during the Soviet-Afghan War.  Her father was murdered when she was young, and her mother died shortly thereafter, leaving Wahab and her sister in foster care.  They were eventually adopted by an Afghan couple in Fremont, California.  “Uncle Sam raised me,” she likes to say.

Wahab went on to become the first Afghan American elected to public office in the United States when she won a seat on the Hayward City Council in 2018, and the first Muslim and Afghan American elected to the California State Senate in 2022.  She currently serves as Assistant Majority Leader and has championed legislation on affordable housing, civil rights, and economic inequality — issues that map directly onto the concerns of her district.

At the California Democratic Party’s pre-endorsement conference, Wahab received nearly 77% of the vote among CA-14 delegates — an unusually dominant showing that signals strong organizational support.

The rest of the field includes Melissa Hernandez, the President of the Bay Area Rapid Transit board and former Mayor of Dublin; Victor Aguilar Jr., a San Leandro City Councilor; Matt Ortega, a political operative and former digital director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign; and Rakhi Israni Singh, an educator and attorney from Fremont.

Every leading Democratic candidate in this race is a person of color.  The field, in other words, already looks more like the district than its outgoing representative did.

More Than Symbolism

Representation is not just symbolic.

Research consistently shows that legislators who share the background of their constituents are more likely to prioritize those constituents’ specific concerns, more likely to be accessible to them, and more likely to be trusted by them.

For a district where nearly 40% of residents were born outside the United States and where English is not the primary language in a significant share of households, having a representative who understands that experience from the inside is not a small thing.

Wahab’s story in particular — Afghan refugee parents, foster care, adoption by immigrants, economic hardship during the recession, a career built from the community up — maps onto the lived experience of a significant portion of CA-14’s residents in a way that a White congressman like Swalwell who was born in Sac City, Iowa simply cannot replicate.

Having more minority voices in Congress isn’t just about representation in the abstract.  It’s about having people in the room when decisions are being made that directly affect these communities.

CA-14 is a safe Democratic seat.  The only real question is which Democrat wins it.

Eric Swalwell served in Congress for 13 years.  He was a nationally recognized Democratic attack dog, a cable news fixture, and, as it now appears, a creep to say the least.

But his departure isn’t a loss for the district.  It’s an opportunity.