U.S. Congress

California Congressional District 20

California
Federal
Election

about this guide

To help voters better understand where each candidate stands on issues that matter to people of faith, candidates were invited to respond to a set of specific questions. Their answers are presented below in their own words, without commentary or endorsement, so that voters can weigh each candidate's positions and make an informed decision.

Candidates

Pick candidates to set them head-to-head and compare their answers on the issues, side by side (the candidates will sort in alphabetical order).
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Sandra Van Scotter

Democrat
D
did not
answer

Vince Fong

Republican
R

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Candidates were asked specific questions to help voters better understand their views on issues important to people of faith.

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Vince Fong
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The issues

Sandra Van Scotter

Democrat
D
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Vince Fong

Vince Fong

Republican
R
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The issues

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Voter ID

What’s your view on the 2026 SAVE America Act requiring proof of citizenship and a government-issued photo ID to vote?
Only citizens may vote. That is federal law, and I support enforcing it. But the states run elections, and the federal government should stay out of how a county registrar does her job. The SAVE America Act requires every new voter, and every voter who moves or changes her name, to show up with a passport or a birth certificate. Every state that has issued me a driver's license already required my birth certificate, and because my birth certificate carries a different last name than my license, I have produced marriage licenses and divorce papers to get one. The ID already proves who I am. In my district, "in person" means a two-hour drive from Ridgecrest or Lake Isabella to Bakersfield, and most farmworkers do not own a passport. If a state requires an ID that proves citizenship, it should be free and painless to get, and the state should decide that. Prove the voter is a citizen once, with the records the government already holds. Do not make her prove it twice.
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

Budget

The U.S. national budget deficit continues to grow. What approach do you believe the government should take to address the mounting debt?
"Stop passing bills that add to the debt and calling them something else. Last year's budget law raised the debt limit by five trillion dollars and cut Medicaid to pay for tax cuts that still did not cover its cost. My opponent voted for it. That is not fiscal discipline. It is borrowing from my grandchildren to fund a promise to someone else's donors. I would support spending caps written into law for several years, applied equally to defense and non-defense, enforced automatically, with no side door for war funding. I would not vote to raise the Pentagon's budget until the Pentagon can pass an audit; it has failed them all. I would not vote to raise the debt limit inside a bill that adds to the debt, and I would not use a default threat as a bargaining chip, because the people who get hurt in a default are the ones on Social Security. And I would stop the two things that have added most to the deficit this year: a war Congress never authorized and tariffs Congress never voted on."
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

Israel

What is your view on U.S. support for Israel?
"Israel has a right to exist and a right to defend itself. The United States has a right to decide for itself when its money and its soldiers go to war, and it has stopped exercising it. I apply one standard to every country: judge it on its circumstances, and favor none. By that standard, the United States should end its military entanglement with Israel and deal with Israel the way we deal with every other ally: as a friend whose wars are its own. That is not hostility. It is the only rule that lets Congress keep its power to decide when Americans fight. That power is being traded away. In July the House passed a defense bill putting one Pentagon official in charge of merging our military technology, supply chains, and data with Israel's, with the concurrence of Israel's defense minister, after leadership blocked a vote to remove it. No ally, not even in NATO, has that arrangement. Congressman Fong voted for it. I would vote to strip it, and I would say so about any country."
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

Border

What is your view of President Donald Trump's measures to enhance border security?
"Securing the border is a legitimate job of the federal government, and the border is more secure than it was. I will not pretend otherwise because of who did it. My objection is to what came next, and to how it was done. Border security turned into interior sweeps that pull farmworkers off their way to the fields, separate parents from citizen children, and send masked agents into workplaces and churches. That is not the border. That is fear as policy in the counties that feed the country, and when the workers stop showing up, crops rot and prices rise for every family. Congress funded it without conditions. My opponent voted for that. And it was done by emergency declaration and executive order, not by a law Congress passed. A border that depends on one man's signature lasts until the next signature. The durable version is a law: a border that is enforced, a legal path for the farmworkers already here who pay in, and one accountable agency instead of three. I would vote for that."
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No response was submitted for this question.

Marriage

In 2024, Californians voted to amend the state Constitution to establish marriage as a fundamental right regardless of sex. What is your view on this amendment?
"I supported it, and I will tell you why in terms I think you will recognize. Religious liberty runs in both directions. No church in California has ever been required to perform a marriage it does not recognize, and Proposition 3 did not change that by a word. A pastor decides who stands at his altar. The county clerk decides who gets a license, and the clerk works for everyone. Two people marrying at the courthouse take nothing from a congregation that would not have married them. I have spent thirty years in healthcare, and I have sat with people at the worst hour of their lives who could not get into a hospital room, sign a form, or make a decision for the person they had spent forty years with, because the law did not count them as family. I will not vote to put anyone back in that hallway. The government does not belong in the exam room, the classroom, or the sanctuary. It does not belong in the marriage either. Protect the church's choice and the couple's, and stay out of both"
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

Abortion

What is your view on abortion and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to return the issue to the states?
"I supported it, and I will tell you why in terms I think you will recognize. Religious liberty runs in both directions. No church in California has ever been required to perform a marriage it does not recognize, and Proposition 3 did not change that by a word. A pastor decides who stands at his altar. The county clerk decides who gets a license, and the clerk works for everyone. Two people marrying at the courthouse take nothing from a congregation that would not have married them. I have spent thirty years in healthcare, and I have sat with people at the worst hour of their lives who could not get into a hospital room, sign a form, or make a decision for the person they had spent forty years with, because the law did not count them as family. I will not vote to put anyone back in that hallway. The government does not belong in the exam room, the classroom, or the sanctuary. It does not belong in the marriage either. Protect the church's choice and the couple's, and stay out of both"
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

Parental Rights

What is your view of the Supreme Court’s decision supporting a parents’ right to know about their child’s gender issues at school?
"The decision belongs to a woman and her doctor. Not a legislator's, not a sheriff's, and not mine. I served thirty years in healthcare, twenty at the bedside. I never saw a politician in the room when a pregnancy went wrong, and in states with bans, the doctor who acts can now be charged with a crime. No doctor ends an eight-month pregnancy because a patient changed her mind; the standard of care forbids it. Late in pregnancy these are emergencies and heartbreaks, and no family should wait on a judge. On the Court: it said this question belongs to the states and their voters. California's voters answered it in 2022. If that ruling means anything, it means Congress has no business passing a national ban, and I will vote against one every time. I would hold the people who praised that ruling to it. And no law should write one faith's teaching into everyone's medical chart. My care does not violate anyone else's beliefs. Religious liberty works in both directions."
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

Vaccines

What is your position on California's vaccine mandate for public school students?
"The Supreme Court said parents have the right to know what is happening with their own child, and I accept that. But a right to know is not the same as a government order that turns a teacher into an informant. One belongs to the parent. The other belongs to the state, and the state does not belong in this equation at all. A law requiring a teacher to report a child by the end of the day and a rule forbidding a teacher from answering a parent's question do the same thing: both put the government between a parent and a child. I am surprised how far schools have been pulled into things my own parents never expected a school to handle. A school's job is to teach, keep children safe while they are there, and send them home. Who a child is becoming is between that child and their family. The school is not a party to it. When a child is in danger at home, teachers are already mandated reporters. In Congress, I will not vote to tie a dollar of school funding to either side of this fight."
Did not answer
No response was submitted for this question.

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"I support it. I am a respiratory therapist. I have watched children fight for air with diseases a shot would have prevented, and I have cared for the child with leukemia whose only protection is that every other child in the classroom is vaccinated. California requires the vaccines a child needs to sit in a public school, allows exemptions for genuine medical reasons, and has had far fewer outbreaks for it. That is the state's decision to make, and Congress should leave it alone. On religious exemptions, I would say this as a clinician, not a lawyer. Nearly every medicine on a pharmacy shelf was developed or tested in ways that would trouble the same beliefs people cite against vaccines. A sincere objection is one that applies across the medicine cabinet, not only to the one shot the school asks about. I respect the sincere ones. I do not respect using a church to avoid a nurse. Religious liberty protects a person's conscience. It does not give anyone a right to make another child sick"
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