Influential left-wing group seeks to oust L.A. Democratic congressman

The group behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking 2018 victory in New York is looking west for its next fight.

Justice Democrats — the influential left-wing PAC known for helping Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives oust Democratic incumbents — is backing a primary challenge to Democrat Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a four-term congressman representing a staunchly Democratic Los Angeles district.

The group endorsed Angela Gonzales-Torres on Thursday, characterizing the 30-year-old Highland Park resident as a fighter willing to take on not just the Trump administration, but also corporate interests in the Democratic establishment. The group also cited the millions of dollars that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent in support of Gomez last cycle.

The powerful pro-Israel lobby’s standing among Democrats has become a flash point amid broader internecine conflict in the Democratic Party over Israel’s unrelenting war in Gaza.

Justice Democrats-backed candidates were loud and early advocates for a ceasefire in Gaza, whereas AIPAC — which backs both Democrats and Republicans— unleashed a torrent of spending in Democratic primaries to target candidates who’d been vocal critics of Israel. AIPAC played a consequential role in unseating two Justice Democrats-backed progressive incumbent members of Congress in 2024.

With Justice Democrats entering the fray, the battle for California’s 34th District could very well become a proxy war between AIPAC and the activist left flank of the Democratic Party, which characterizes the war in Gaza as a genocide and AIPAC’s influence in the party as existentially toxic.

Gonzales-Torres, a community activist and former president of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, said her worldview and advocacy were shaped by her childhood in the district, facing housing insecurity and being raised by a single mother after her father was deported to Mexico. She criticized Gomez — who is also the child of working-class Latino immigrants — as no longer being rooted in the community and accused him of being beholden to the outside special interest groups who have heavily backed his previous campaigns.

Gomez, a former state legislator and union organizer, was first elected in a special election in 2017 and reelected to a full term in 2018. He represents a majority-Latino urban district that stretches from Koreatown through Pico Union to Highland Park, Eagle Rock and East L.A. California’s 34th District is overwhelmingly composed of renters and includes some of the most densely populated working-class neighborhoods in the country, as well as some of the most rapidly gentrifying sections of Los Angeles.

Gomez successfully fended off challenges from David Kim, a progressive Democrat targeting him from the left, in 2020, 2022 and 2024. Kim has endorsed Gonzales-Torres and does not plan to run for a fourth time.

“I think that Angelenos want to see change. And what we are seeing is our current Congress member accepting $2.3 million from AIPAC, then failing to co-sponsor the only bill calling for a ceasefire,” Gonzales-Torres said, referencing a resolution introduced in October 2023 that was supported by nearly 20 Democrats. “And what we are seeing is Jimmy Gomez taking, you know, $500,000 from crypto lobbies, then voting to further Trump’s corrupt crypto agenda.”

Gomez is far from a hard-line pro-Israel voice in Congress, having called for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation, pushed for humanitarian aid to Gaza and backed a ceasefire in the war. But Kim, the opponent AIPAC helped him fend off in previous cycles, was much further left on these issues.

Gonzales-Torres currently works as an academic counselor at a Pasadena City College program supporting formerly incarcerated students and also serves as program director for a permanent affordable housing project in Altadena, and previously interned in Mayor Karen Bass’ administration, she said. She is also a member of the Metro Public Safety Advisory Committee.

“I’m running for Congress because I know what it felt like to do my homework on the dashboard of a car that I lived in here in Highland Park,” she said. “And we have unhoused LAUSD students now, and I think that 20 years later, to see things really haven’t gotten that much better is unacceptable. Those of us closest to that pain should be closest to these positions of power, so we can see real change.”

Justice Democrats rose to prominence after Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset ouster of then-Rep. Joe Crowley. The then-28-year-old activist stunned the political establishment when she unseated the fourth-ranked Democrat in the House to represent a New York district that includes parts of the Bronx and Queens. Her victory was a shot in the arm for a nascent activist left.

Justice Democrats backed other insurgent members of “the Squad,” such as Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and have frequently targeted moderate Democratic incumbents from the left. Their aggressive tactics and commitment to reshaping the party have led to comparisons to the conservative tea party movement.

With 10 employees, they remain a relatively lean operation. But they have transformed over the last half-dozen years from a little-known grassroots organization to a potent force in national politics, with nine current Justice Democrats-affiliated members in Congress and the power to pull discourse left even in races where they have lost.

They had a bruising year in 2024, and found themselves in an unlikely position: protecting their own incumbents from challengers seeking to oust them. Two Justice Democrats-backed incumbents, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, were unseated last year, with AIPAC pouring money into both races.

But after a cycle on the defensive, the group is targeting incumbents again in favor of working-class progressives who will shake up the status quo. Gonzales-Torres is their second endorsement of the 2026 cycle, and Gomez is the first California Democratic incumbent they have targeted following their rise to prominence in 2018.

“We’re going to leverage our network and small-dollar donors to raise money for her and do whatever we can to help Angie beat Jimmy Gomez,” said Justice Democrats spokesperson Usamah Andrabi.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez at a news conference in Los Angeles in 2021.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

But Gomez is hardly a moderate: The Eagle Rock resident has more in common with the Justice Democrats slate than many of the members they have previously tried to unseat.

At 50, he’s too old to be categorized as a millennial, but still far younger than the septuagenarians and sexagenarians ousted by some of Justice Democrats’ current and former candidates. Nor is he a white incumbent representing a district that is now majority-minority, as was the case with representatives ousted by other members of the slate.

Gomez supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for all. He still had student loans when he was sworn into Congress and went viral a few years ago for baby-wearing his infant son on the House floor during a House speaker fight.

He was a featured speaker when Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders brought his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour to downtown Los Angeles. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Gomez in 2024 and he previously partnered with Pressley and Bush to fight to extend the federal eviction moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, Andrabi argued, the Democratic Party’s base was clamoring for change, particularly in districts like Gomez’s, where the question isn’t if a Democrat will be elected, but rather what kind of Democrat constituents want to see representing them.

“We can have all these fights and excuses about what a swing-state Democrat should look like and what a purple front-liner should look like, but we should have no sort of excuses in a deep blue district,” Andrabi said.

Gonzales-Torres is one of six candidates, including Gomez, who have filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission in the 34th District. The district would remain unchanged if Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting ballot measure passes in November.