Adam Gray, a Democrat, represents California’s 13th Congressional District, covering Merced County and parts of Madera, Stanislaus, Fresno, and San Joaquin counties. Born in Merced in 1977, he holds a B.A. in political science from UC Santa Barbara. He lost narrowly to Republican John Duarte in 2022 by 564 votes, then won a rematch in November 2024 by just 182 votes in a race that was the last U.S. House contest in the nation to be called that cycle, and took office in January 2025.
Before Congress, Gray worked as a legislative staffer for several California Assembly members and a state senator, including testifying in a 2015 federal corruption trial involving former state Senator Ron Calderon. He served a decade in the California State Assembly representing the 21st District, chairing the Governmental Organization Committee until he lost that post after breaking with his party on water policy; he is credited with helping secure roughly $3 billion in Central Valley water storage funding and support for UC Merced’s medical school. In Congress, he sits on the House Agriculture and Natural Resources committees and chairs the Blue Dog Coalition’s whip operation, focusing on water storage, groundwater recharge, and wildfire response legislation; he was one of 46 House Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act in 2025.
Gray has faced scrutiny over a real estate matter: in 2018, as a state assemblyman, he pushed for $6.5 million in state funding to expand a Google self-driving vehicle testing program at the former Castle Air Force Base in Merced County. In 2022, a company he partly owns purchased four apartment buildings on that same property, and in 2023, after he had left the Assembly, the state awarded Merced County nearly $50 million to develop the surrounding land. A former head of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission called the timing “suspicious,” though experts said no law appeared to have been broken; Gray’s campaign has said the property has lost money and denies any impropriety.
