It’s been a rough few years for state Assemblymember Heath Flora, and now he is facing a challenge for his legislative seat.
With a decade serving in the California Legislature, Flora has developed a reputation as a level-headed lawmaker willing to work behind the scenes with Democrats to find agreement.
But his personal and political life have been the subject of news reports that have helped put an otherwise safe district in play during the general election.
It’s been alleged that the Ripon Republican engaged in extramarital affairs, including one with a lobbyist. Records show that after getting a divorce, Flora wasn’t paying child support payments until threatened with wage garnishment. Questions have also been raised about how he spent campaign funds, including dozens of charges totaling $16,000 at a Sacramento tavern, some of them listed as “district meetings.”
And after alienating members of his own party by joining Democrats on a vote that could raise local taxes, he was ousted as the Republican leader in the Assembly.
Normally, those kinds of troubles might doom any candidate seeking reelection. But in District 9, which tilts Republican by a 10 percentage-point margin, it’s yet to be seen whether Flora’s Democratic challenger, Matthew Adams, can capitalize on his opponent’s struggles.
None have in the past. In the June primary, Flora easily bested the next closest Republican candidate, Jim Shoemaker, securing 30.6% of the vote compared with Shoemaker’s 22.7%. At the time, the GOP committees in San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Amador counties had all passed on Flora and endorsed Shoemaker.
In the same contest, Adams, a former middle school teacher, garnered the second highest overall vote, earning 25.9%. He quit his teaching job in San Leandro to focus on his campaign.
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He said he believes voters will be willing to reject Flora once they know the full scope of the allegations against him.
“This guy needs to be held accountable,” he told Stocktonia in an interview.
Faced with a huge fundraising gap, Adams — who lives in Woodbridge, near Lodi, where he grew up — has been taking lots of face-to-face meetings with voters, including Republicans. He had raised $24,715 as of Sept. 19, California Secretary of State records show. Flora had raked in $611,385 over the same period.
Adams was a field organizer for Equality California, a statewide LBGBTQ+ rights organization. He also has been a volunteer services coordinator for Habitat for Humanity.
The 9th District is largely agricultural. It stretches across San Joaquin County from Galt and Lodi in the north to Manteca and Lathrop in the south, skirting around Stockton. As such, Adams is trying to appeal to farmers and growers.
He said in an interview that he’s opposed to the proposed Delta tunnel that would funnel Sierra water to Southern California. Instead, he said he would like to work with farmers to guide them toward less water-intensive crops. He also said he wants to try to preserve family farms.
When it comes to homelessness, Adams said the answer is to build more housing while also investing more in mental health and addiction treatment. He wants to expand early childhood education and wants smaller class sizes overall in California’s schools.
And he wants a system in which anyone can receive the healthcare they need, regardless of whether the have the ability to pay — including better healthcare for veterans.
Flora did not respond to repeated requests for an interview, but he did sit down for a video session in May with 209 Times publisher Motecuzoma Sanchez.
In it, he also talked about healthcare. He said the top issue is access, noting that the San Joaquin Valley needs to attract more doctors.
When it comes to high gasoline prices, he said the problem is not the price of oil, but rather the loss of oil refineries in the state that’s causing pain at the pump.
On crime, Flora said he favors loosening laws to make it easier for people to defend themselves against aggressors. In particular, he said people should be allowed to throw the first punch if they feel threatened. At present, the law doesn’t let people fight a potentially threatening person without being attacked first.
To a large extent, Flora’s stands on the issues are overshadowed by his personal and professional troubles, which culminated with his ouster as Republican leader in the Assembly two months ago.
In July 2022, the San Joaquin Valley Sun reported that a health industry lobbyist had tweeted that she had had an extramarital affair with Flora at a time when he was serving on the Assembly Health Committee.
The Sacramento Bee followed up three years later by reporting that after he had divorced his wife, Flora refused to pay $2,000-a-month child support payments until threatened with wage garnishment. Furthermore, the Bee said Flora moved to Sacramento after the divorce, but maintained his official address in Ripon, where he was no longer living. And as he did, he received state per diem payments that compensate legislators for the cost of living outside of the state capital, the story alleged.
The California Post, an offshoot of the conservative New York Post, reported in August that Flora was the subject of two ethics probes by the state Fair Political Practices Commission. The newspaper also reported Flora had a second affair that overlapped with the first and included drinks and meals at Chargin’s Bar & Grill, where he is said to have racked up $16,000 in charges and billed them as campaign expenses.
There was no comment in any of the stories from Flora regarding the allegations.
The final straw came in July when Flora joined another Republican in backing a Democratic-supported measure that would allow local governments to raise sales taxes. Soon after, Republicans replaced him with Alexandra “Ali” Macedo, R-Tulare.
Adams thinks all of Flora’s problems give him an opening to win the District 9 seat. But he knows it won’t be easy.
“The Republican Party is very upset at him and not unified” going into the election, Adams said of Flora. But, he added, most voters don’t pick candidates based on personality. That leaves “a big education gap” to inform them about where he believes Flora has fallen short — a gap the former teacher thinks he can bridge.