A few days ago, they were just candidates, hoping that the voters in their congressional districts would take a chance on them and send them to Congress.

Now, one week after Election Day, they are representative-elects, landing in Washington, D.C. to learn the ropes of being a member of Congress. 

“I used to work here on the Hill, back when I was a 17-year-old intern. It’s a full circle moment for me,” said Rep.-elect Sam Liccardo, D-Calif., who will represent California’s 16th District in Washington after serving as San Jose mayor from 2015 to 2023. Liccardo, who landed in the nation’s capital Monday night, says he’s hitting the ground running (quite literally, as the congressman-elect posted to his X account that he started the day with a run on the National Mall).

What You Need To Know

  • New member orientation is underway in Washington, D.C. for all the newly elected officials who will be sworn into office in January 2025

  • California, so far, has six new members that will be sworn into office in the new year, with a handful of races still too close to call

  • Some new members, such as Gil Cisneros, have served in Congress before, while others, such as Luz Rivas and Laura Friedman, come from the state legislature

“The most important thing to do when you're leading is building a good team in those first few weeks and months. And so I'll be very focused on building out a good team — I have some experience doing that as mayor of a large city, and I know how important it is to make sure you have good people in the right places.”

Liccardo isn’t the only new member from California with ties to Washington, D.C.; Rep.-elect Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., once represented California’s 39th District and was later tapped to serve as Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness in the Biden administration after he lost to Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., in 2020. He’s returning to Capitol Hill in January to represent the 31st Congressional District.

Chatting with reporters outside the new member orientation on Tuesday, Cisneros had some advice for new members.

“You got to pick your battles, and there are good people on the other side. And I think we can build those relationships and work with them and find the areas where we can work together with them and where we can't, you know, we're going to stand up and make sure that we can defend our policies,” he said.

“There's a lot of good things that we did that we need to protect — the Affordable Care Act. When I was under Secretary of Defense, we put in the reproductive health care policy — we allowed women to get contraceptives at our military treatment facilities on a walk in basis. These are things that are good for our military members and things that we need to continue to protect. And so we need to make sure that we work hard to do that, and I think those are going to be some of the challenges with this new administration coming in,” Cisneros added.

Other incoming members such as Rep.-elect Luz Rivas, D-Calif., and Laura Friedman, D-Calif., come from the California State Legislature, which has a Democratic supermajority. It will likely be an adjustment for them, with Republicans close to clinching a majority, but Rivas said she’s prepared to work with anyone.

“It doesn't matter what party or where you're from, I'm willing to sit down and discuss issues, whether we agree or disagree,” she said, noting that former Republican state Assembly colleagues have already been in touch with her, and that “we already have plans to have coffee or dinner.” Rivas will represent California’s 29th District come January, succeeding her mentor, Rep. Tony Cárdenas.

Friedman, who will take over California’s 30th District from the Golden State’s newly minted Senator-elect Adam Schiff, took a similar tone.

“The most important thing for everybody should be that we're delivering for the people of the United States, and that's what my aim is going to be,” she said. “I know that there's going to be disagreements, but I'm hoping that we can find common ground about things that we all agree on, like making things easier for people who are struggling right now, like getting people who are homeless off the streets, like building the housing that we need for everybody.”

“I'm interested in building bridges with people who are interested in delivering,” she said.