About
Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) first won the seat to represent California’s 25th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives in a special election in May 2020. With Trump’s endorsement, he then narrowly beat Democratic candidate Christy Smith (by 333 votes) in the November general election. In 2022, Garcia ran for his second term in Congress—again with Trump’s endorsement and again against Smith—and narrowly won.
A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Garcia is a veteran of the war in Iraq and a decorated Navy pilot and officer with almost 20 years of service. He also worked for defense giant Raytheon for more than a decade and runs for Congress as a “political outsider” who is “pro-business” and “pro-taxpayer.”
After the 2020 presidential election, Garcia showed his loyalty to Trump by voting against certifying President Biden’s electoral win, impeaching the then-president for inciting the insurrection, and establishing a special House committee to investigate the attack on the Capitol, among other measures.
His brother Gus is an avid QAnon believer and In August 2022, Garcia again spoke out in Trump’s defense after the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago revealed that the ex-president has broken the law in holding on to thousands of government documents—many of them classified or top secret. In echoing right-wing claims of a “deep state” and “weaponizing federal agencies,” he told Sara Carter on her podcast: “This is literally tyranny of a majority right now that is acting more like a Third Reich than they are the United States. And this is very dangerous.”
January 6, 2021
- On Dec. 17, 2020, Garcia was one of 19 House Republicans who signed a letter to House committee members demanding an investigation into allegations of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
- Just hours after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Garcia joined 146 other congressional Republicans in refusing to certify Biden’s win of the 2020 presidential election. He claims that his vote against certification was not about overturning the election, even though that would have been the result had the vote succeeded as planned.
- Garcia also voted against impeaching Trump for his role in inciting the attack on the Capitol. In a prepared statement, he wrote, “With only a few days left in the Trump administration, the vote to impeach the president is no more than political theater that runs the risk of further dividing us at a time when we need to come together.”
- Garcia voted against holding Steve Bannon in contempt for Congress and against creating an independent House committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The Big Lie
- On Jan. 4, 2021, Garcia called for a “forensic audit” of the election in several states.
- In a radio interview on Feb. 10, 2022, Garcia continued to dismiss the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as legitimate political discourse and likened the Capitol Police to “acting effectively as the Gestapo.”