Adam Gray is not changing course. Even after Prop. 50 made Congressional District 13 lean more Democratic, the 49-year-old Democrat says his campaign strategy has not changed much and he is still trying to win over Republican voters as well as Democrats.
That approach matters now because Gray won the House seat two years ago by fewer than 200 votes, and the district has only gotten a little bluer since then. As of Sept. 4, Democrats made up 42% of registered voters in the district, Republicans 27% and voters with no party preference 23%, out of 348,208 registered voters. The Democratic share was up just over 1% from two years earlier, while Green Party and Peace and Freedom Party registrations had grown by more than 600 voters since Gray’s last election in 2024.
Gray’s district runs through all of Merced County and parts of Fresno, Stanislaus, Madera and San Joaquin counties, a stretch of the southern San Joaquin Valley where he has leaned on what he calls a Valleycrat approach. In practice, that means talking to voters across party lines instead of shifting hard left to match a district that now tilts more Democratic after Prop. 50.
Gray framed that case in plain terms, saying, “You can both be a strong Democrat, as I am, and still believe in bipartisanship.” It is a message aimed at the middle of the district, even as the numbers suggest he no longer needs every Republican vote he once did to survive. Blake Zante said progressive politics often do not take center stage for Valleycrat candidates and argued that Prop. 50 largely made seats safer for Democrats, not necessarily more progressive.
That is the friction in Gray’s race. He is running in a more Democratic district, but he is still acting like a candidate who needs to hold together a coalition that includes Republicans, Democrats and a large bloc of voters with no party preference. His Republican challenger, Kevin Lincoln, a former Stockton Mayor, has already won backing from the Republican Party in Merced County and picked up an endorsement from Donald Trump early in the campaign, giving Gray a more traditional partisan fight even as he keeps pitching himself as the bipartisan one.
Blake Zante put the shift this way: “It’s not a progressive wave,” but rather “a general discontentment on the direction of the country.” That may be the best explanation for why Gray is not rushing left. In a district where the registration map changed only modestly but the political stakes remain narrow, he is betting that moderation still beats momentum. The open question is whether that same centrist pitch can hold if the race hardens into a straight party contest.
