Michael Masuda, a Democrat, is running for California’s 5th Congressional District in November 2026 against 12-term Republican incumbent Tom McClintock. Masuda holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and grew up partly in Amador County, within the district. He has worked as an electrical engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on high-power microwave systems for defense applications, and in 2021 was selected as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow, joining the U.S. State Department as a program analyst in the Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary during the Biden administration. He was one of three Democrats who qualified for the June 2026 primary and advanced to the November general.
