The Will Rollins Endorsement

Why Welcome's first investment in 2022 is positioned to pull off a big win in CA-41.

Welcome identified a top Democratic overperformer when we chose to support Will Rollins in 2022, investing more than $700,000 in his race that cycle. 

A Welcome candidate through-and-through, Will’s 2022 race can be seen as a blueprint for competitive races to come – showing up, running as part of Team Normal, and cutting through the partisan noise to speak to what matters most to voters. 

Will was so successful in 2022 that he single-handedly put California’s 41st on the map, moving it from a “solid Republican” district in 2022 to a district that Punchbowl called one of the five “House Races to Watch.” Cook identified it as one of their top toss-up districts in 2024. 

Why Will Rollins Can Win

Will Rollins is a dynamic and charismatic former Arnold Schwarzenegger aide who held January 6th insurrectionists accountable as a federal prosecutor. He hails from a Republican family and centers bipartisanship in his stump speech and ads. 

Rollins’ moderate credibility has led to a raft of endorsements from surprising places. The Palm Springs Police Officers Association endorsed Will Rollins after supporting Republican incumbent Ken Calvert in 2022. Rollins continues to communicate and push his cross-partisan credentials. Recent polling from the Rollins campaign has him up by a whopping 6 points over Calvert. 

Rollins continues to crush fundraising, pulling in $2.2 million in Q2 with $4.7 million on hand, while Calvert raised $1.4 million in Q2 with $3.6 million on hand. Rollins also scored the endorsement of the Blue Dog caucus, led by the trio of dynamic centrist Democrats who won Trump districts last cycle.

We featured a recent Slate article on Rollins in our latest Win the Middle update. The piece noted that “Democrats are just fine running as cops” in reference to former prosecutor Vice President Kamala Harris. The Slate piece also highlights the way Rollins is winning the middle.

The District

CA-41 has slowly grown more competitive on the national level, with Biden losing by only a point in 2020. Clinton would have lost by 6 points in 2016 under current lines. However, neither party spent significantly in the race for Congress in 2020 or in 2022, despite the fact that Calvert won by his narrowest margin in decades with 52 percent of the vote to Rollins’s 48 percent. Split Ticket currently pegs Democratic odds at 41%, up dramatically from the forecasters’ general 2022 odds of 5%.

The Rollins campaign has been taking advantage of the district’s changing demographics, launching two new Spanish language ads: “Cambio” and “Amigos.”

The Republican Incumbent

Ken Calvert has been in Congress since 1993 but has not faced serious electoral competition until 2022 when Rollins first ran. He immediately withered under the heat; his margin of victory dropped from +14.2 in 2020 (57.1% to 42.9%) to +4.6 (42.3% to 47.7%).  

The reason is simple: Calvert’s record is out-of-touch, corrupt and extreme. He has undermined democracy by defending the Jan. 6th insurrectionists. He has been scandalized by ethics and real estate baggage, in addition to personal indiscretions. 

Demographically, he is not a natural fit for the district, which is increasingly diverse and young, with a growing Hispanic population.  

Join Us

Support Will Rollins and help him flip California’s 41st district blue in November via our Win the Middle slate. To see how we think about endorsements, read our piece introducing the Win the Middle slate.