The race in California’s 7th Congressional District, which includes Sacramento, the state capital, will pit incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) against Mai Vang, a member of the Sacramento City Council, a fellow Democrat who has accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
Vang finished first in California’s June top-two primary with 65,617 votes (31.2%), followed by Matsui with 61,114 votes (29.1%), according to the Associated Press. Under California’s open primary system, the two highest vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation.
Dan Schnur, a political science lecturer at Pepperdine University, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley, told JNS that “Vang is currently riding a wave of progressive energy that has been deciding Democratic primaries across the country.”
“These candidates are younger, more liberal and far more anti-Israel than the incumbents and other establishment-backed targets they have been taking out,” Schnur said. “There’s no way to predict whether Vang can keep this trend going, but she has clearly tapped into a nationwide surge that has been electing these candidates elsewhere.”
Vang’s campaign website calls to “stop the genocide in Palestine” and states that “in 2024, while Doris was cashing checks from AIPAC, I was in City Hall passing Sacramento’s ceasefire resolution.” Though the American Israel Public Affairs Committee endorsed Matsui in 2024, she does not appear on AIPAC’s list of 2026 endorsements.
The ceasefire resolution, which passed in March 2024, called for an end to the Gaza war and the release of the hostages in Gaza, as well as the “unconditional release of all Palestinians held without charge or trial in Israeli prisons.” The resolution also denounced the rise in Jew-hatred and Islamophobia following the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Vang’s campaign website also states that she will “fight to end military aid that enables war crimes and the occupation of Gaza” and support the “Block the Bombs” bill that would restrict the U.S. president from providing Israel with certain offensive weapons. She criticized Matsui in a social media post for not calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” and for not signing on to the Block the Bombs bill.
In October 2025, Vang posted a picture of her with Linda Sarsour, an anti-Israel activist, at a local Council on American-Islamic Relations event.
‘Opportunistic’
Matsui stated in February 2024 that she supports Israel’s right to defend itself and has voted to provide aid to the Jewish state, but she voted against an Israel security funding bill because it didn’t address the “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.
At an April 2026 candidate forum, Matsui called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “war criminal,” said she would not support sending “offensive dollars” to Israel and reiterated her support for a two-state solution.
“Netanyahu does not represent the Israeli people, just like Donald Trump doesn’t represent the American people,” she said.
Schnur told JNS that Matsui’s position on Israel seems “more opportunistic than ideological,” arguing that her recent remarks reflect declining public support for the Israeli prime minister.
Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told JNS that Matsui’s position is “close to the center of the core voter base. Not totally out to the left but sharply critical of the policies that any fathomable Israeli government would back.”
Regarding the candidates’ chances in the general election, “the question is whether Republicans vote for one of the Democrats,” according to Olsen.
“If they do in large numbers, they will probably back Matsui as the less liberal of the two,” he said. “Since nearly 78,000 voters chose a Republican, I think Matsui will likely win.”
However, “for intra-party Democratic politics, that does not matter,” Olsen added.
“Vang won by about 4,500 votes among Democrats, which suggests a progressive presidential candidate would narrowly defeat an establishment candidate in a 2028 one-on-one,” he told JNS. “It’s yet more evidence that an unabashedly progressive, left-wing, Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidate would fare extremely well.”
