Your guide to California’s 29th Congressional District race: Bernal vs. Rivas

Republicans and Democrats are pouring millions of dollars into a handful of races in California that could determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives next year.

The 29th Congressional District in the San Fernando Valley is not one of those seats.

Nearly 3 in 4 voters in the deep-blue district supported Joe Biden for president in 2020, and Democrats running for office there typically win by comfortable margins.

Now Democrat Luz Rivas and Republican Benito “Benny” Bernal are vying for its House seat, which Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Pacoima) has held for more than a decade. He announced last year that he would not seek reelection.

Rivas, 50, has been in the state Assembly for six years, where she has focused on climate and environmental concerns, including plastic pollution, resilience to extreme heat and climate change education in schools. The North Hollywood Democrat has also introduced bills related to worker safety, education and homelessness.

She studied electrical engineering at MIT and earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard. Before entering politics, Rivas ran a Pacoima-based nonprofit organization called DIY Girls, which encourages girls to pursue educations and careers in science, math, engineering, art and technology.

She has been endorsed by many key Los Angeles-area Democrats, including Cárdenas, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, as well as by major labor unions, including the California Labor Federation and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Rivas finished first in the March congressional primary, with 49.3% of the vote. If elected, she will be the first Latina to represent the district in Congress.

Bernal, 60, a longtime Valley resident and community advocate, has run for Congress and the Los Angeles City Council several times before.

A leader in the Valley’s secession movement, the Republican served on the board of the nonprofit that pushed a failed 2002 ballot measure that would have carved out the Valley from the city of Los Angeles.

Bernal worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District as a school bus driver and supervisor. He said he retired early in 2021 after the district mandated that employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 and refused to honor his request for a religious exemption.

He was previously an elected vice president with SEIU Local 99, the union that represents service employees including public school bus drivers and teachers’ assistants.

The California GOP and the Los Angeles County Republican Party have endorsed Bernal, who finished second to Rivas in this year’s all-party primary with 26.4% of the vote.

The 29th Congressional District covers much of the East Valley.

The majority-Latino district includes nearly a dozen Los Angeles neighborhoods, among them Toluca Lake, North Hollywood, Valley Village, Valley Glen, Van Nuys, Lake Balboa, Panorama City, Sun Valley, Arleta and Sylmar, as well as the city of San Fernando.

Following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade, Rivas has said she would be a champion for abortion access and reproductive rights in Congress, and would support codifying abortion rights nationwide. (Senate Republicans blocked an attempt by Democrats to pass a similar bill in June.)

Rivas has a 100% rating from the Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California from her time in Sacramento.

Bernal said women should not be able to “have an abortion, just because.”

He said he would support a national ban on abortion, with the exception of cases that involve incest or risk the life of the woman.

Bernal said that he supports increasing security along the U.S.-Mexico border and would like to see the completion of former President Trump’s border wall.

He said he would support more deportations of people who came to the U.S. illegally and committed crimes. He also supports improving the U.S. asylum system to make it easier for people fleeing war or violence in their home countries to stay in the U.S.

Rivas said she would support improvements to the asylum process as well as a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

In the state Assembly, Rivas sponsored a successful 2021 bill that replaced the word “alien” in state laws with “immigrant” or “noncitizen.” She has also backed efforts to expand Medi-Cal — the health insurance program for low-income residents that covers more than a third of California’s population — to immigrants regardless of their legal status.

Rivas said she would like to see the federal government offer more assistance for people with mental illness and drug addiction, and build more transitional housing to keep people off the streets. She said she would also support policies to help people buy starter homes.

Bernal said the most important step the federal government can take to reduce homelessness is to secure the U.S.-Mexico border. He declined to discuss more specifics until after the election.