SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California state Sen. Aisha Wahab will serve out the rest of former Rep. Eric Swalwell's term after securing victory Thursday in a special election.
Swalwell, a Democrat who was running for California governor, ended his campaign and resigned from Congress in April after he was accused of sexual assault and harassment, which he denies. Wahab will represent the state’s 14th Congressional District, which covers parts of Alameda County on the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay, through Swalwell's term ending in January.
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FYI - Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., talks with reporters after holding a town hall meeting in Sacramento, Calif., April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic candidate for Congress in California's 14th district, speaks during a primary election night event on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Hayward, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic candidate for Congress in California's 14th district, speaks during a primary election night event on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Hayward, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic candidate for Congress in California's 14th district, speaks during a primary election night event on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Hayward, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
She will be the first Afghan American to serve in Congress. The progressive Democrat defeated Bay Area Rapid Transit Director Melissa Hernandez even after a swell of spending by outside groups opposing Wahab in the race's final stretch. She said her victory shows her district “cannot be bought.”
“I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a statement. "From foster care to Congress, this journey shows the possibility of the American Dream.”
The conclusion of the race to replace Swalwell comes as criminal investigations continue into the sexual assault allegations he faces. Over the weekend, federal agents seized electronic devices from Swalwell at the San Francisco airport and later searched his home in Washington, D.C., according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Swalwell’s attorney did not immediately respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.
Wahab became the first Afghan American elected to public office in the U.S. when she won a Hayward City Council seat in 2018.
She has championed housing affordability and access in her time in the Legislature and throughout her campaign. She also wrote a bill in 2023 to ban caste-based discrimination, which garnered national attention. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed it, saying such discrimination is already outlawed by civil rights protections.
Wahab and Hernandez will face off again in a separate November election determining who will serve the next full two-year term.
Wahab won the June primary decisively, but outside spending in favor of her rival poured into the race ahead of the general election.. Groups affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, spent millions into supporting Hernandez, and thousands into opposing Wahab.
At a candidate forum in April, Wahab answered “yes” when asked if she considered “what is happening to the Palestinian people” to be a genocide.
Hernandez did not give a straight yes or no answer. She said Israel had a right to defend itself following the October 2023 attack by Hamas but that “the destruction into Gaza has gone too far.”
Hernandez, a moderate Democrat, said she was proud to put up a competitive fight after Wahab’s success in the primary.
“I’ve been a fighter my whole life, and when I promised the residents of CA-14 I would fight for them, I never gave up,” she said in a statement.
Associated Press reporter Alanna Durkin Richer contributed from Washington.
FYI - Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., talks with reporters after holding a town hall meeting in Sacramento, Calif., April 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic candidate for Congress in California's 14th district, speaks during a primary election night event on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Hayward, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic candidate for Congress in California's 14th district, speaks during a primary election night event on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Hayward, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
State Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democratic candidate for Congress in California's 14th district, speaks during a primary election night event on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, in Hayward, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
HONOLULU (AP) — Communities still recovering from last weekend’s hurricane in Hawaii could get pounded again in coming days from another tropical system gaining strength over warm Pacific waters.
Hurricane Lala tore roofs off houses, uprooted trees, covered roads in mud and rocks and left many households without electricity. With thousands of homes and businesses still in the dark Thursday, forecasters warned yet another tropical cyclone is likely to approach the islands soon.
A depression moving west and northwest could become a tropical storm in the coming hours and pass near or south of Hawaii's Big Island over the weekend or early next week, the U.S. Central Pacific Hurricane Center said. That system could dump up to 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain on the Big Island and trigger life-threatening flooding, mudslides and rip currents, it added.
“There's definitely tension in the air'' at the thought of more rain in communities that floodwaters turned into rivers, said Tiffany Edwards Hunt, a teacher living in Keaau, on the east side of the Big Island. “There were some areas that were completely washed out.”
Some people paddled to safety on surfboards, she said.
Hunt went to the area's grocery store but hesitated to buy food in case the power goes out again. Her home was without electricity from Saturday to Monday, she said, but some neighborhoods were still in the dark days later.
The Hawaiian Electric utility said it expects nearly all affected customers on the Big Island to have power restored, except for certain remote and severely damaged areas.
Many families with limited resources are worried about spending more money to prepare for another storm, Hunt said Thursday.
“We’re at the beginning of the hurricane season,” she said. “We know how to pull it all off in our community. It’s just having to mentally and emotionally prepare for it.”
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and other state officials, held a news conference Thursday afternoon to update Lala recovery progress and urge people to prepare for the next storm.
“These hurricanes are very serious. There were many houses that were destroyed,” Green said. He said the next storm could be similar in strength but there's still a lot of uncertainty though “we're going to prepare.”
John Bravender, a warning coordinator meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the tropical depression was just starting to become more organized, and while the system is not expected to take exactly the same track or even dump potentially as much rain as Lala, the ground is already saturated from the recent hurricane.
“We're worried about people going through this again," Bravender said. "Normally we would say pay attention to the forecast just in case. Now we're saying take action now.”
Residents found the body of a man in his 60s in a pasture Tuesday, a day after the recovery of the body of May Doi, 93, whom neighbors said was trying to escape from floodwaters in her home. Doi was a beloved former kindergarten teacher who taught generations of residents in a small town on the Big Island.
“She taught grandkids of her students,” said ʻĀina Akamu, a former student of Doi who is now a vice principal at a local school. “She was a fixture in this community.''
The highest total rainfall from Lala, 43.54 inches (1.1 meters), was recorded on the northeast coast of the Big Island, the National Weather Service said. Dozens of homes were washed from foundations, bridges were damaged and about 13,200 customers on the Big Island remained without power Thursday.
Efforts to restore power in hard-hit areas of the Big Island could take at least two weeks, the Hawaiian Electric utility said.
Lala is the first major hurricane of 2026 in the Central Pacific Ocean. Now well west of Hawaii’s main islands, Lala had top sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph) on Thursday and had begun pummeling the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument — a remote area at the northwestern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago. The impacts were being felt between Lisianski Island and Maro Reef, authorities said.
Forecasters said Lala would cross the waters of the marine national monument for a few days at hurricane strength despite some gradual weakening.
Even in that remote area, people were seeking safety. A charter boat carrying a 16-member crew dedicated to removing marine plastics and abandoned fishing nets from the shores of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands got out of Lala’s projected path.
Kevin O’Brien, president of the nonprofit Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project, said the vessel left Lisianski Island on Monday and headed hundreds of miles (kilometers) out to sea away from the storm.
“We were ready for it,” O’Brien said. “We keep on our toes out here during hurricane season.”
Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.
This satellite image provided by NOAA shows Hurricane Lala on Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026, in the Pacific Ocean northeast of Hawaii. (NOAA via AP)
