As the high desert sun beat down on him at Laurie Dantley Park in Lancaster early Saturday morning, Democratic congressional candidate George Whitesides was surrounded by dozens of volunteers cheering and blaring noisemakers.

“We want the astronauts to hear his name!” yelled Nadia Abrika, the state Democratic Party's organizer, pointing to the sky. “George! George! George!”

“Are you fired up, guys?” Whiteside asked the crowd. “Are you ready? Are you ready to change the House of Representatives?”

“Yes!” they cried.

Whiteside, a former NASA chief of staff under President Obama, is running to unseat three-time Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Garcia in California's 27th Congressional District, a battleground district in northern Los Angeles County. The race will be crucial in determining whether Republicans can maintain their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Democrats believe they have a chance to flip the district, riding the national enthusiasm unleashed by Vice President Kamala Harris' entry into the presidential race.

“It makes a difference, and what really helped us was we felt reinvigorated when we found out Biden was withdrawing,” said Whiteside volunteer Alvarez Marcos, 61. “We feed off of that.”

But as Whitesides left the atmosphere of the park pep rally and canvassed door-to-door at a nearby apartment building, he spoke to centrist voters who made one thing clear: Winning this purple-tinged suburban district won't be easy.

“I do not have “You're a Democrat,” said the young woman who first answered the door. “Are you in favor of open borders?”

“No, ma'am,” Whitesides said after about 90 seconds of trying to summarise a message largely about creating local jobs. “We're trying to create a secure border for this country.”

In this year's presidential election, which is centered on deeply partisan national issues including immigration, both Whiteside, 50, and Garcia, 48, are positioning themselves as moderates and their opponents as political hardliners.

“People are excited to bring positive change to the district and are really excited to defeat Mike Garcia, who is perceived as an extreme figure who has no connection or chemistry with the people of our district,” Whiteside told the Times.

Whiteside called Garcia a Trump sycophant and highlighted his vote against the certification. 2020 Presidential Election Results The reasons include Trump's actions after the January 6th riot and his vote against President Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Whiteside also pointed to Garcia's anti-abortion record. Garcia is one of several Republicans who have been in the House of Representatives since 2003. Signed an amicus brief He has called on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, and co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which would create a nationwide ban on abortion with no exceptions in 2021. (Rep. Garcia later indicated he might support exceptions for rape, incest, and threats to the mother's health, but this is a departure from the bill.) Did not sponsor This is the reintroduced version.

Garcia's campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

But Whiteside's supporters have tried to portray him as a far-left megadonor trying to use his personal wealth to buy a seat.

As a first-time candidate, Whitesides has no voting record to scrutinize, so Republicans are zeroing in on his hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to progressive candidates and causes.

Republican National Congressional Committee spokesman Ben Petersen said in a statement that Garcia, a former Navy pilot, “has lived a life of service from flying fighter jets into combat to his mission in Congress to control inflation and protect public safety.”

“Voters can easily tell the difference between the extreme George Whiteside, who supported cost-of-living bills, attacked police and funded radical activists who dismantled law and order,” he added, noting that Whiteside's support Equality California, an LGBTQ+ rights group, Prominent conservative fundraiser They're called the Police Budget Cut Group. (Whiteside) It is advertised He was endorsed by the California Equality Association.

About an hour's drive north of liberal-leaning downtown Los Angeles, the 27th Congressional District stretches from fast-growing Santa Clarita to the Kern County line. The district includes the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, as well as rural desert towns like Acton and Pearblossom.

Due to its proximity to Edwards Air Force Base, the area has strong ties to the military and aerospace industries, reflected in the name of the recently disbanded minor league baseball team, the Lancaster Jethawks.

Once a staunchly conservative district, the area has become younger, more diverse and more Democratic as Los Angeles residents move there in search of more affordable housing. Redistricting after the 2020 census removed conservative Simi Valley, making CA-27 even more Democratic.

Just over 41% of registered voters identify as Democrats and about 30% identify as Republicans, and more than a fifth identify as independents, making the district somewhat unpredictable.

The district voted for Biden in 2020, but supported Republican state Sen. Brian Dahl over Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in the 2022 gubernatorial election.

The district has been at the forefront of partisan battles since millennial Democrat Katie Hill defeated a Republican incumbent in 2018, but Hill resigned less than a year later amid a sex scandal. Garcia won the seat in a special election and held on to it in two subsequent elections, defeating fellow Democratic candidate, former state Rep. Christy Smith, three times.

Garcia beat Smith by just 333 votes in the 2020 general election, then won by 12,732 votes in the midterm elections amid a decline in voter turnout.

The nonpartisan election forecasting site Cook Political Report predicts the following for this year's election: Fifty-fifty.

“When you run a company that launches people into space on test programs, you get used to taking on high-risk things,” said Whiteside, the former CEO of Mojave-based Virgin Galactic. “We need to flip the House and protect all of our hard-won gains on health care, climate and jobs.”

“The Republican caucus is totally dysfunctional right now,” he added. “I'm trying to refocus on actually getting things done. Wouldn't that be great? Getting Congress working again?”

“It's going to be a tough election for Garcia,” said Lawrence Becker, a political scientist at California State University, Northridge.

“Most voters are going to the polls with the presidential election in mind,” he added. Trump is deeply unpopular in California, and his leading the field “poses a bit of a headwind for Mike Garcia.”

Still, frustration with California's high cost of living and gas prices, major issues for many in the district who make long commutes to Los Angeles, have so far worked in Garcia's favor, who won a handicap three-way primary last spring with 55% of the vote to Whiteside's 33%.

State Republican Party Chair Jessica Milan Patterson said the fact that Republicans have been able to be so competitive in districts where Democrats have a big registration advantage shows how tired voters are “of what the California Democratic Party has been delivering.”

Both parties are pouring money into the election campaign.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that supports Republicans running for Congress, $18.2 million advertising offensive This fall, we will be focusing on the 27th District in the Los Angeles area.

Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman for the super PAC, said Garcia's background resonates deeply in the district: He was a Navy pilot who flew more than 30 combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later worked as an executive at defense contractor Raytheon for 11 years.

“California voters are tired of rising crime, border chaos and soaring costs – all driven by progressive one-party control of the Democratic Party,” Parella said in a statement. “California holds a majority in the House of Representatives, and CLF will be committing significant resources to the state this fall.”

Meanwhile, Whiteside loaned to his campaign Whiteside has raised more than $1 million, outdoing his opponents. As of June 30, Whiteside's campaign $3.9 million The Federal Election Commission said money was flowing into the bank. Garcia's campaign $2.2 million At hand.

Whiteside's campaign has fueled accusations that Garcia concealed the sale of up to $50,000 in stock in the company in August 2020, shortly before Garcia served on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which released a scathing report on the company.

According to the Daily Beast: First reported the saleGarcia missed a 45-day deadline to publicly announce the sale, filing the paperwork after he narrowly won the election in November of that year.

Garcia campaign spokesman He told Politico Garcia claimed he had not seen the report before it was made public and that not disclosing the stock sale was an accident.

On a Saturday in late July, Whitesides set out from Laurie Dantley Park and wandered around his apartment complex exuding a nerdy dad vibe, wearing a white NASA baseball cap and brandishing a spray-on SPF 50 sunscreen.

During each of their brief exchanges, he said he had created 700 local jobs while running Virgin Galactic and had made job creation a central focus of his campaign.

In one apartment window was a license plate that read EPDMLGY. Whiteside ran to the door and said, “Epidemiology! Come on, that's my voter.”

“I'm a moderate Democrat,” he said as Nancy Welsh, a 63-year-old pharmaceutical company administrative assistant, opened the door. “I worked for NASA, so I'm a science and fact-oriented person.”

When Whiteside asked her what issues were important to her, she laughed and said: “Don't start talking.”

He stopped Megan and Shawn Holst, a couple in their early 30s who were walking their golden retriever, Cosmo. “I know you guys from your dad!” Megan said, her father had put up a Whiteside sign outside his home on a dirt road in Acton.

Megan said she supports abortion rights and doesn't like Garcia's record on the issue. But the couple — she's a medical lab technician and he's a programmer — are pretty moderate, she said. They're mostly concerned with local issues like crime and the cost of living. They've lived in the apartment for years and hope to be able to buy a home one day.

“It should be more affordable in the Antelope Valley,” she said. “We thought we had a decent income, but it's still a struggle.”

Whiteside handed her a campaign flyer, which she said she would consider.