Your guide to California’s 4th District state Senate primary race
The race to represent California’s 4th Senate District, a mountainous region on California’s eastern border, is gearing up to be a competitive one. The incumbent is Marie Alvarado-Gil, a farmer and educator who switched parties from Democrat to Republican in 2024. Her Republican challenger is farmer Alexandra Duarte, the wife of a former Republican congressman with strong name recognition in the region.
Democrat Jaron Brandon, a local county supervisor, faces the toughest battle in a district that is Republican-leaning. In 2023, 34.5% of the district was registered Democrat, 38% was Republican, and 19% had no party preferen.
State senators represent their constituents in the upper house of the Legislature, where 40 lawmakers work throughout the two-year session to craft new laws for the state.
Where is the district?
California’s 4th Senate District scoops up Modesto and stretches east to the Nevada border, including parts of the Sierra Nevada mountain range and Lake Tahoe. It includes parts of Stanislaus, Tuolumne, Merced, Calaveras, Alpine, Amador, El Dorado, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa, Mono, Nevada and Placer counties.
Who are the candidates?
Alvarado-Gil, the incumbent, has had an eventful few years in the Senate. She was elected in 2022 after a crowded field of Republicans split the vote, putting two Democrats on the ballot to represent the largely Republican area. Alvarado-Gil, the more moderate Democrat, secured the position.
Two years later, she joined the Republican Party, due to frustrations, she said, with the Democratic Party’s tactics to limit stronger penalties for criminals. That same year, she was accused of sexual harassment by her former chief of staff, a claim that was not substantiated, although she was reprimanded by the Senate’s Workplace Conduct Unit for retaliating against her former chief and his son.
Alvarado-Gil’s background is in nonprofit management, and she most recently served as the Senior Director of External Affairs for a charter school network, according to her LinkedIn profile. She successfully passed several bills during her time as a Democrat, but she has been less successful as a Republican. She remains an advocate for people in rural areas, including on the issues of fire insurance, the fentanyl crisis, and farmers’ interests, but faces opposition from the Legislature’s Democratic supermajority. She is the vice chair of the Senate’s committees on agriculture and revenue and taxation.
Duarte is a co-owner of a vineyard in El Dorado County and helps lead the Duarte Nursery, a wholesale plant nursery in Stanislaus County. She’s also the wife of John Duarte, a one-term Central Valley congressman who got into politics after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fined him $2.8 million for harming wetlands when he planted wheat on his Tehama County farm.
Duarte describes herself as “unapologetically pro-gun, pro-family, and pro-freedom,” and says she wants to secure the border, protect parents’ rights and “stop radical environmentalists from letting our forests burn.” She says she would end California’s sanctuary state policies, fight for harsher sentences for criminals, make guns easier to buy, notify parents if their child is presenting as transgender at school, cut taxes, and permit more drilling in the state.
Brandon, chair of the Tuolumne County board of supervisors, describes himself as a “steel-toed Democrat” who supports public safety, infrastructure improvement and fiscal responsibility on the state level.
On his campaign website, Brandon touts his record as a supervisor, including aggressively investing in the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office to re-establish a fully-staffed department, disbanding homeless encampments in the district, and co-founding a local housing collaborative to support pro-housing policies.
Who is funding the race?
Despite not being the incumbent, Duarte has taken the fundraising lead in the race. Campaign filings show she raised nearly $710,000 through 2025 and the first four months of 2026, and spent about $458,000. Her main supporters have been ranchers, winery owners, grape growers, and other agricultural business groups located in the Central Valley. She also received two $5,900 donations from her husband’s congressional campaign account. She currently has close to $255,000 on hand.
Records filed with the Secretary of State show Alvarado-Gil raised about $308,000 through 2025 and the first four months of 2026 and spent about $345,000. She has the support of some members of the current Republican legislative leadership, netting $5,900 donations from individual contributors Sen. Kelly Seyarto, R-Murrieta, and Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, plus about $33,000 in donations from the Sutter County Republican Central Committee, which Republican leaders have been using to fundraise in recent months. She has also gotten contributions from the builders union, California tribes, and tobacco and oil and gas companies. She reported having a little over $92,000 on hand in mid-April.
Brandon’s campaign records list dozens of small-dollar donors, plus an influx of recent donations from labor groups — representing workers in construction, education, and public service, among others. He’s also gotten contributions from Democratic groups, including the Democratic central committees of El Dorado, Tuolumne, Calaveras and Madera counties. Brandon raised about $284,000 between January 2025 and April 2026 and spent $163,000. The candidate boosted his campaign with an $80,000 loan to himself last summer. He currently has a little over $72,000 on hand.
