By admin 
A Democrat and a Republican candidate are squared off in the race for California’s sprawling 4th Senate District after the incumbent did not emerge from the primary.
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Toulumne County Board of Supervisors Chairman and Democrat candidate Jaron Brandon is running against Alexandra Duarte, a Republican farmer from Modesto and the wife of a former U.S. representative, in a race to replace Assemblymember Maria Alvarado-Gil.
The race pits the two major party candidates against each other in a Sierra Nevada foothills Senate District where Republicans have a narrow voter registration advantage.
Alvarado-Gil was a Democrat until 2024, when she changed parties. She placed third in the primary, narrowly losing the Republican vote to Duarte following a contentious race between the two Republican women. Duarte earned 84,630 votes, or 32% of the total primary votes cast in the race, while Alvarado-Gil notched just 70,217 votes, less than 27%.
Brandon received 109,094 votes, more than 41% of the total, but he now faces the threat of Republican voters aligning behind their sole general election candidate, Duarte.
Where is the district?
California’s 4th Senate District covers a lot of ground with portions of the Central Valley, some of the Sacramento areas farther flung communities like El Dorado Hills and vast rural swaths of the central Sierra Nevada range. It’s principal population center is Modesto, and the district stretches south to include Death Valley National Park and north to take in Lake Tahoe and the mountain town of Truckee.
The Central Valley towns of Turlock, Patterson, Delhi and Salida are all included. It covers 11 counties: Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, Nevada, Placer, Stanislaus and Tuolumne.
As of May, there were more than 634,000 voters in the district, and Republicans held an advantage. There were 250,621 registered Republicans, compared to 206,744 registered Democrats.
Who are the candidates?
Brandon is a young elected official at just 34 years old and has served five years on the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors. He seeks to overcome the partisan voter deficit on the strength of his experience in local government and by positioning himself as a centrist Democrat. His campaign website calls him a “steel-toed Democrat” and features the slogan “Let’s go Jaron Brandon,” in a nod to the anti-President Joe Biden chant and slogan.
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“Every year of my life, I’ve seen politics and civics grow increasingly divisive and dysfunctional, and agendas that have simply gone too far, too top-down, too one-size-fits-all to work for most Californians,” the candidate is quoted as saying.
He touts improvements he pushed for at the local level to law enforcement and wild land fire fighting programs and increased government efficiencies.
Both he and his opponent have made fixing the state’s home insurance crisis, which is hitting particularly hard in the fire-prone Sierra foothills, with higher premiums and less access to coverage.
Duarte, 52, aligned herself with President Donald Trump during the primary campaign and accused Alvarado-Gil of being a fake Republican. She received criticism from the California Republican Party for a mailer that included an image of Alvarado-Gil and another of herself firing a pistol.
Since the primary, however, she has received endorsements from county-level Republican parties and elected officials from the party at the state and federal level. Duarte’s website now does not mention the president, who has grown unpopular with most Americans and particularly with many Californians.
Duarte’s listed policy positions lean into affordability issues, with a focus on lowering gas and grocery prices by cutting taxes and regulations. She is the wife of John Duarte, who served one term in Congress, from 2023 to 2025, before narrowly losing his seat to Democrat Rep. Adam Gray. They have four children.
Who is funding the race?
In the more Republican-friendly district, Duarte pulled in vastly more money than her opponent did in the primary campaign. Duarte spent more than $900,000 through June 30. During that same period Brandon only spent around $122,000.
His largest donations come from labor unions, while Duarte pulled in her biggest checks from fellow Republican candidates, and industries groups and agricultural interests including some wineries and dairy farms.
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