Another House Democrat is getting an age-driven primary challenge.
Jake Rakov, a former staffer to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), is launching a bid Wednesday to oust his onetime boss. Rakov, 37, is part of a string of Democrats waging intraparty battles against a longtime House incumbents by calling for a generational change in leadership.
Standing in front of a Los Angeles structure decimated by wildfire, Rakov used a 2.5-minute long launch video to blast Sherman, 70, as out of touch with his constituents and unwilling to mount a meaningful resistance against President Donald Trump’s “MAGA hellscape.”
“He and people like him, who have stayed on for so long, who don't even check into the district anymore,” Rakov said in an interview with POLITICO, “are why we have Trump twice, and why our party is so bad at fighting back against him now.”
First elected in 1996, Sherman is serving his 15th term in the House. His last truly competitive election was in 2012 when redistricting pitted him against then-Rep. Howard Berman in a race that turned so acrimonious that the two nearly came to blows during a debate. Sherman ended 2024 with $3.9 million in the bank.
Rakov served as Sherman’s deputy communications director in 2017. He is active in the LGBTQ+ community in the district and sat on the steering committee for Los Angeles’ Stonewall Democratic Club.
The district spans the western San Fernando Valley and includes Pacific Palisades, a part of Los Angeles devastated by the wildfires in January. Sherman was a regular presence at press briefings in the area as a series of major fires fueled by high winds and dry brush raced through the county. He also sparred with Trump during the president's January visit to the disaster area, challenging the assertion that FEMA was doing a poor job.
But Rakov said Sherman’s response to the tragedy was lacking and that he did little besides “maybe tweeting out a 1-800 number.”
“If I were in office and our district had gone through what it's gone through, I would be here every recess with my staff out at the Westside Pavilion rebuilding center,” Rakov said. “How can the federal government help? Who do you need us to talk to? He hasn't done any of that.”
Rakov pledged to eschew corporate PAC money — he is married to Abe Rakov, who is the executive director of campaign-finance reform group End Citizens United — to serve no more than five terms in the House and to hold monthly in-person town halls, a practice he says Sherman avoids.
He said his challenge is motivated more by Sherman’s leadership style rather than ideological differences.
“We're both progressive Democrats, and I'm sure we'll find daylight on a few things here and there,” he said, “but I think this is much more about being a better member of Congress and actually doing what needs to be done in this moment in time.”
Sherman’s speeches on the House floor and lengthy social media videos don’t win the party new voters or “get any of our message out there,” Rakov said. Younger Democrats can better relate to Gen Z and millennial voters, he argued, and know how to reach them on new mediums.
In an interview after Rakov's launch, Sherman pushed back on many of his opponent's claims. He described himself as "fit as a fiddle" and said he attended plenty of in-person town halls around the wildfires this year, though they were organized by others. He said his office helped set up the FEMA ...
