Sacramento Primary's Cliffhanger: Every Vote Could Flip the Race for Matsui's Seat

The drama in Sacramento’s congressional race isn’t over—it’s just entering overtime. With roughly half the ballots still being counted, the battle for second place in the primary for California’s District 7 is so tight that 100 votes separate a rising progressive challenger from a first-time Republican candidate. And unlike a lot of elections that feel decided on election night, this one genuinely isn’t.

Congresswoman Doris Matsui, who’s held the seat for two decades after taking over following her husband’s death, currently leads with 30% of the vote. Behind her, Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang and 25-year-old Republican Zachariah Wooden are locked in a dead heat, with Wooden ahead by the thinnest of margins. The top two vote-getters advance to a November runoff, regardless of party—and that’s where things get interesting. Vang’s campaign has spent months knocking on over 40,000 doors and making over 38,000 phone calls, running a progressive grassroots operation that channels the nationwide trend of younger Democrats pushing back against establishment politics. Wooden, meanwhile, has energized Republican voters in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties and is running his first campaign.

But here’s where it gets spicy: Vang’s team has spent weeks accusing Matsui’s campaign of strategically boosting Wooden precisely because a Republican opponent in November would be easier to beat than a progressive Democrat. The logic is simple—and strategic math at its finest. Republican political strategist Rob Stutzman acknowledged before the election that this was a viable playbook: consolidating Republican voters around one candidate to help that Republican push through and avoid a costly runoff with Vang. Matsui’s campaign denied the accusation, with Campaign Strategist Roger Salazar emphasizing that the congresswoman knows exactly what’s at stake and is focused on the bigger picture.

That bigger picture includes Matsui’s two-decade record opposing Donald Trump, voting to impeach him twice, and advocating for universal health care. On election night, she leaned into that record. Vang, for her part, has framed the race around bread-and-butter issues—free health care, affordability, and the fact that families across the political spectrum are struggling. If more ballots break her way (and Sacramento City Councilmember Karina Talamantes believes they will, predicting that late-arriving ballots tend to skew younger and more progressive), she could edge ahead of Wooden and force a Matsui-versus-Vang November showdown.

California’s mail-in system means ballots postmarked by Election Day can arrive up to seven days later, dragging out the suspense. That’s good news for candidates still holding their breath. And in this race, that’s almost everyone except Matsui. The second-place finish remains genuinely undecided, and the votes still in the counting machine could reshape November’s race entirely.