Voted to Keep Us in the Unnecessary War in Iran
War destroys human lives, families and innocent people, causes economic ruin, and triggers immense suffering. War should always be the option of last resort.
Congress — not the President alone — is supposed to decide when America goes to war. That is in the Constitution. Within seven weeks of taking office, James Gallagher voted twice to let the President keep fighting without Congress ever authorizing it.
Sacrificed the Environment For Big Business
- California Environmental Voters scored him at 0% for 2022 and 11% for his lifetime. They list him as a member of the "Polluter Caucus" and note flatly that he "has accepted oil money."
- On that same scorecard, every single one of his recorded votes was marked an anti-environmental action. He voted against SB 1137, the bill the scorecard titles "Ending Neighborhood Oil Drilling" — while, by the same group's account, taking oil money.
- He also voted against AB 1931 ("Protecting Californians from Toxic Lead Pipes"), AB 2201 (the "Community Drinking Water Protection Act"), AB 2550 ("Restore Clean Air for the San Joaquin Valley"), AB 2597 ("Healthy and Heat Resilient Homes"), and AB 1279 ("Committing to Carbon Neutrality").
We're all going to pay the price for this with increased rates of asthma, cancer, wildfire, and premature deaths. We deserve better.
Sued to Stop Californians From Getting Mail Ballots
In America our vote represents our will. It gives us the power to make the change that we want to see in the world. Read about all the ways politicians are trying to take that power away on our
about page, then come back here.
James Gallagher didn't just vote against making voting easier. He went to court to stop it.
- In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Governor Newsom ordered that every registered California voter be mailed a ballot so nobody would have to choose between their health and their vote. Gallagher, together with Kevin Kiley, sued to block it, calling it an "illegal power grab."
- A Sutter County judge ruled in their favor in November 2020, finding the Governor had exceeded his emergency authority. The lawsuit did not change the 2020 results — but the goal was clear enough. A pandemic was not a good enough reason, in Gallagher's view, to make sure every voter got a ballot.
- He did not get to keep the win. On May 5, 2021, California's Third District Court of Appeal struck down that injunction and upheld the Governor's broad emergency authority.
- The case became Gallagher v. Newsom. He has spent years telling voters he is the man who fought vote-by-mail — and he is right about that.
YOU HAVE POWER. Why else do you think they're working so hard to take it away? Don't let them. We deserve better.
Campaigned Against Californians' Right to an Abortion
America is the land of FREEDOM. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to make your own medical decisions.
Unless you're a woman making the deeply personal decision about whether to have a baby. In 2022, Californians got to vote directly on whether that freedom belonged in our state constitution — and James Gallagher campaigned against it.
- Gallagher was one of only four sitting state legislators listed as an official endorser of "California Together, No on Proposition 1," the campaign to defeat the Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.
- Californians disagreed with him overwhelmingly. On November 8, 2022, Proposition 1 passed 66.88% to 33.12% — 7,176,883 votes to 3,553,561 — writing the right to abortion and contraception into the California Constitution.
- He was the Assembly's Republican Leader at the time. This was not a quiet personal view — it was the position he took as the head of his caucus, against the express wishes of two-thirds of the voters of his state.
Fought Public Health Protections During a Pandemic
When a virus is killing people, we deserve leaders who help us protect one another. James Gallagher spent the pandemic as one of California's loudest opponents of the measures designed to do that.
Being the loudest voice against public health during a public health emergency is not leadership. We deserve better.
Wants to Take Health Coverage Away
We all deserve access to quality healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives. Gallagher's answer to a strained system is to cover fewer people.
- As Assembly Republican Leader, Gallagher argued Medi-Cal — the program covering 15 million Californians — is "falling apart," and blamed the expansion of coverage: "a big part of it was expanding it to illegal immigrants. It's not fiscally feasible. It's ballooning the budget out of control."
- He now represents a rural Northern California district where distance to a hospital is already the difference between living and dying, and he arrives in Congress just as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" begins cutting roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid — the federal half of Medi-Cal.
- Nationally, letting the enhanced ACA tax credits expire is launching millions of Americans into 2026 with steep insurance hikes. The fewer people who carry coverage, the higher everyone else's premiums go.
We need healthcare to live. Literally. We deserve better.
Works for Big Business and Not for Us
James Gallagher works for big business, not for us. California Environmental Voters says flatly that he has accepted oil money. Here are some of the interests writing checks to him most recently, as logged by CalMatters' Digital Democracy project:
- Tenet Healthcare Corporation
- Eli Lilly and Company & Subsidiaries
- Waste Management and Affiliated Entities
- FanDuel, Inc.
- Live Nation Entertainment
- Western United Dairies PAC
- California Water Association PAC
- Biocom California PAC
- California-Nevada Conference of Operating Engineers PAC
- California Asian Chamber of Commerce Candidate PAC
James Gallagher is funded by big business and special interests. No wonder he's not doing anything to improve OUR lives. We deserve better.
Does Whatever Donald Trump Tells Him to Do
As a member of Congress, part of James Gallagher's job is to act as a check and balance on the executive branch. He got the job by promising not to be one.
We sent him to Washington to represent Northern California, not to be a rubber stamp. We deserve better.