In CA-49, incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Levin cruised to victory in the jungle primary, garnering 48.9% of the vote against two Republican opponents. This seat is much safer than the other two Dem holds in California as the District is D+3 and rated Lean Dem.
Mike Levin is a proven fighter for San Diego and Orange County. He has focused on solving intractable local issues, including cleaning up the radioactive contamination at the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear power plant, shoring up dangerous crumbling seaside bluffs, protecting local estuaries, and stopping raw sewage spills from the Tijuana River from befouling local beaches
His opponent, Brian Mayott has twice lost bids for Congressional seats and been charged with crimes related to mishandling of election information in Orange County.
Mike Levin was raised in South Orange County by a Mexican-American mother and a Jewish-American father. He is the grandson of Mexican immigrants on his mother’s side.
Levin attended public elementary and junior high schools in South OC and spent his high school years at Loyola High School of Los Angeles. He went on to study at Stanford University, where he served as student body president. After college, he served in the Coro Fellows Program and then attended Duke University School of Law.
After law school, Levin served as executive director of the Democratic Party of Orange County, supporting a variety of local, state, and federal political campaigns, and community organizations.
In addition to his political activism, Levin worked as an attorney focused on environmental and energy regulatory compliance and government affairs. A passionate believer in clean energy with over a decade of experience in the industry, Levin has helped to accelerate the transition towards more sustainable power generation and transportation options. Levin served for several years on the board of the Center for Sustainable Energy, based in San Diego, and co-founded Sustain OC in Orange County.
Rep. Mike Levin knows that we can protect our environment, combat the climate crisis, and grow our economy at the same time. He fought to include provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure law to expand electric vehicle charging infrastructure, invest in the supply chain for batteries, provide $1.5 billion for clean hydrogen manufacturing, and invest $550 million in the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program.
Rep. Levin will always defend women’s access to contraception and the right to make their own reproductive choices. He believes that only a woman, her family, and her doctor should be able to decide what is best for her health. Levin will continue to defend Planned Parenthood, which provides essential preventative and reproductive health care services like cancer screenings, STD testing, and low-cost birth control to millions of American women.
Rep. Levin is a strong proponent of legislation to address the epidemic of gun violence. One of the first caucuses he joined as a member of Congress was the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, and one of the first bills he signed onto was the bipartisan Background Checks Act, which would require universal background checks on all gun sales and transfers, with very limited exceptions for gifts to family members and temporary transfers for hunting. Levin has also worked to institute an assault weapons ban and expand Brady background checks to all gun sales, including those made over the Internet and at gun shows.
