Democrat Randy Villegas is running against Republican Rep. David Valadao in California’s 22nd District on a familiar campaign promise: affordability. But his energy agenda suggests that affordability, in Villegas’s world, may not include affordable oil.

In a district where the oil and gas industry supports roughly 15,000 jobs and contributes nearly $5 billion to the economy in just one county, Villegas’s agenda looks less like a recipe for affordability than another exercise in costly virtue signaling.

Villegas has accepted endorsements from environmental groups backing an aggressive phaseout of fossil fuels and has pledged support for the Polluters Pay Climate Fund Act, legislation that would require major fossil-fuel producers and refiners to contribute $100 billion annually for 10 years, a $1 trillion total, to a federal climate fund. The bill’s supporters call it accountability, but accountability hardly matters in a state where families are regularly crippled by out of control oil, gas, and electricity costs. 

To make matters worse, this has been a longstanding fight of Villegas', and one he has sought to downplay as a socialist professor collecting a $170,000-a-year compensation package.

In his 2022 doctoral dissertation, "Voices from the Valley of Vulnerability," Villegas argued that Central Valley leaders who were not sufficiently hostile to oil and gas had left young voters “increasingly disillusioned.” He also cast the region’s energy politics in racial terms, writing that, “despite young residents of color outnumbering white residents, the region’s political debates continue to be dominated by … agribusiness and oil.” Villegas went even further, arguing that “the consolidation of White political power in the Valley has contributed to a long-lasting legacy of racism and discrimination in this region.”

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Even before his academic career, in 2017, Villegas organized a May day protest and called on people to "protect mother earth," and to boycott gas stations.

But even as Villegas embraces an anti-oil agenda, his campaign appears to be scrubbing the more politically inconvenient parts of it. Until recently, the campaign’s so-called “red box,” a public-facing page designed to signal preferred messaging to outside groups without formally coordinating with them, instructed allies to portray Villegas as someone who would “hold corporate polluters accountable.” That language has since vanished.

"Villegas can't explain how an alleged car mechanic wants to send the Central Valley back to the horse-and-buggy days," RNC Spokesman Nick Poche said. "Villegas is pro gas tax, thinks oil is racist, and is trying to trick Central Valley voters into thinking he's one of them when he's a far-left academic elite."