I met Ammar Campa-Najjar at San Diego State in 2010. He was beautiful. I mean that literally. The kind of face that makes people forgive things they shouldn’t forgive, paired with a presence that filled every room he walked into. He laughed at exactly the right moments. He said exactly what each person in front of him needed to hear, then moved on to the next person and said something completely different.
My best friend and I met over our shared contempt for him. That’s not an exaggeration. We were both watching the same performance and we recognized it for what it was. Ammar was seeing a girl at the time, and he was not being faithful to her. That was enough for both of us. We were 20. People change, we told ourselves. We gave him that.
He did not change.
Then he started running for office. Not city council. Not school board. Not the state Assembly. Congress, at 28 years old. And every time I come back to California I see him on TV, with that face, in a new costume, saying different things to different audiences. Fifteen years later. He still sounds exactly like the 20-year-old I watched work that room.
The difference is that now I can prove it.
| Race | Year | His Vote % | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. House CA-50 | 2018 | 48.3% | Lost to Duncan Hunter |
| U.S. House CA-50 | 2020 | 46.7% | Lost to Darrell Issa |
| Chula Vista Mayor | 2022 | ~48% | Lost to John McCann |
| U.S. House CA-48 | 2026 | Pending | Running now |
Four Tries, Zero Wins
The first thing to understand about Ammar Campa-Najjar is that he has never held elected office in his life. Not city council. Not the water board. Not state legislature. He launched at the congressional level in 2017, at age 28, against an indicted incumbent who got re-elected even after being charged with misusing campaign funds to pay for his family’s personal expenses.[1] He lost by 3.4 points.[1]
He came back in 2020. Lost by 6.6 points to Darrell Issa, a man who had literally moved districts specifically to run against him.[2] He briefly opened an exploratory committee for the State Assembly, raised $73,000, and then quietly abandoned that race too.[8] Then he ran for Chula Vista mayor, a city with a 24-point Democratic registration advantage, and still lost.[3]
After Chula Vista, NOTUS reported that every time Campa-Najjar runs he declares the current race his last chance.[4] He said it again about CA-48 in 2026. He said it before that about Chula Vista. He said it before that about the 2020 congressional race. At some point “this is my last chance” stops being a vow and starts being a marketing line.
He Will Say Whatever You Need to Hear
The San Diego Union-Tribune called him, in a 2022 editorial, “a brazenly cynical ideological chameleon whose views depend on his audience.”[6] That is the local paper of record. Not a Republican attack ad. Not a political opponent. The newspaper editorial board of his own city, watching him for six years, arriving at a verdict.
They were right. Here are the receipts.
| Issue | What He Said Before | What He Says Now |
|---|---|---|
| Trump Impeachment | "I would not have voted to impeach President Trump." (Oct. 2020, KPBS)[7] | "Stand up to Trump without hesitation." (2026 campaign) |
| Abortion | "I don't support legal or illegal abortion; we need to reduce unexpected pregnancies." (2020 Facebook)[8] | "I believe every woman has a right to choose what to do with her own body." (Sept. 2025)[4] |
| Assault Weapons | "I don't believe in banning so-called 'assault weapons'... that's where I break ranks with my own party." (Gun Sports Radio, April 2020)[8] | "I firmly believe in California's assault-weapons ban." (Sept. 2025 forum)[4] |
| Border Wall | Supported "Trump's border wall." (KPBS, Oct. 2020)[7] | Anti-ICE, anti-wall platform. (2026) |
| Investigating Democrats | "I'm going to investigate Trump, Biden, Hillary — all of them." (DEC livestream, Oct. 7, 2020)[7] | The Clintons and Obama "shouldn't go to jail, there wasn't anything there." (KPBS, same week)[7] |
| Amy Coney Barrett | ACB "seems very qualified" and he would "probably" have voted to confirm. (DEC interview, Oct. 2020)[7] | Walked back to "I'd wait for her answers on the ACA." (KPBS, days later)[7] |
| His 2020 Biden Vote | "You think I will vote for Biden necessarily, I still want to see how they perform in the debates." (DEC, Oct. 7)[7] | "99%" likely to vote Biden. (KPBS, Oct. 8, the following day)[7] |
| Medicare for All | Fully supported in 2018 campaign | "Walked back" by 2020; called Green New Deal "impractical"[10] |
| Party Identity | "Blue dog Democrat," "I'm a maverick," compared himself to John McCain. (2020)[7] | "Fighting Democrat" against MAGA. (2026) |
That Biden row is my favorite. He sat down with a far-right group called Defend East County on October 7, 2020, told them he wasn’t sure he’d vote for Joe Biden, that Amy Coney Barrett was qualified, that he’d investigate Hillary Clinton, and that he supported the border wall. The next day he told KPBS it was 99% likely he’d vote Biden. Twenty-four hours. Two completely different answers.[7]
The Defend East County group’s founder later attended January 6th. Ammar Campa-Najjar sat down for cigars and whiskey with these people and told them what they wanted to hear, while simultaneously running as a Democrat. Local party leadership was furious.[7] He also, in September 2020, donated $650 to the San Diego County Gun Owners PAC, the group that had opposed the very assault-weapons ban he now claims to support.[8]
“Ammar Campa-Najjar has been a DSA-backed candidate whose record of flip-flops on Trump, impeachment, and abortion makes clear he will say whatever it takes to get elected, and voters in CA-48 see right through it.” — Brian Romick, President, Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, April 2026 [20]
Pick a Heritage, Any Heritage
The name on your ballot was not the name he was born with. He was born Ammar Yasser Najjar. He ran in the June 2018 primary as “Ammar Campa-Najjar,” adding his mother’s surname to create a name that reads as Latino. He then legally changed his name on June 12, 2018 — after the primary had already concluded.[12]
“Campa” is his mother’s maiden name. She is Mexican-American. His father is Palestinian. Adding “Campa” to the ballot created a name that sounds Latino without dropping the Arabic surname. This is not speculation about motive. The Republican he was running against in 2018, the indicted Duncan Hunter, said publicly that Ammar “changed his name so he sounds Hispanic.”[25] Hunter was a corrupt racist who went to prison. He was also describing something that actually happened.
2018: "Latino Arab-American," mobilizing the "Latino sleeping giant" in East County. 2020: "Jamuligan" — East County rural moderate in cowboy boots with a silver belt buckle. 2022: "Third-generation Chula Vistan," son of the South Bay. 2026: "Palestinian-Mexican American, U.S. Navy Officer," son of a Palestinian immigrant. Same man. Four different audiences. Four different costumes.
In 2020 he posed in campaign mailers with old photos of himself alongside Donald Trump, softening his image for conservative East County voters.[18] By 2026 he leads with Palestinian identity in a redrawn district with a stronger progressive base. The candidate who campaigned as a border-wall-supporting blue dog in 2020 would not recognize the platform of the candidate running in 2026.
A January 2026 letter signed by California Democratic delegates and obtained by NOTUS put it plainly: Ammar had shown “a lack of clear principles Democrats can unite behind and a tendency to tell different groups whatever they want to hear.”[9] The California Democratic Party refused to endorse him for the 2026 primary, giving him approximately 14–18% of delegate votes against his opponent Marni von Wilpert’s 55–69%.[4] His own party looked at his record and said no.
The Grandfather Problem
Ammar Campa-Najjar’s paternal grandfather was Muhammad Youssef al-Najjar, known as Abu Youssef. He co-founded Fatah alongside Yasser Arafat in Kuwait in 1965. He commanded Fatah’s military wing. He was a member of the PLO Executive Committee. And he is widely identified in historical records as the leader of Black September, the cell that murdered 11 Israeli athletes and a West German police officer at the 1972 Munich Olympics.[11]
Israeli commandos killed him in his Beirut apartment in April 1973, in an operation led by a young officer named Ehud Barak. The Palestinian Authority named a hospital in Rafah after him. Mahmoud Abbas gave him a posthumous medal in 2014.[11]
When this became public in a Haaretz story in February 2018, Campa-Najjar condemned his grandfather publicly and separated himself from his actions. That condemnation was appropriate. He was eight years old when his grandfather died. He has no personal responsibility for Munich.
What I will note is what came after the condemnation.
In 2015, before any of this became politically relevant, Ammar posted on Instagram calling his grandfather a “legend” and a “hero.”[8] When those posts surfaced in October 2018, his Instagram account went private. The posts disappeared.[8]
In 2019, after Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman published research raising questions about whether the “Wrath of God” targets had definitively planned Munich, Ammar walked back his own condemnation. He told Newsweek: “I condemned him because I presumed… Now I found that it’s disputed. So, upon that evidence, you can’t have your beliefs immune to evidence.”[4] He had gone from firm condemnation to renewed skepticism in roughly 12 months.
Also in 2019: he requested a personal meeting with Ehud Barak. The man who ordered the operation that killed his grandparents agreed. Ammar told Jewish Insider it was a warm conversation about peace and shared humanity.[24] Palestinian-American activists denounced him for it.
“I’m not a security risk. I got clearance from the FBI to work at the White House and they went through all my family connections.” — Ammar Campa-Najjar [25]
He is correct that he is not a security risk. The attacks on him in 2018 were racist and Islamophobic and I do not endorse them. But notice the pattern: condemnation when it’s politically necessary, “legend” when it isn’t, walk-back when the historical record gets complicated, then a warm handshake with the man who ordered the killing when that seems useful. Three positions in three years. He read each room.
The Navy Stunt
After losing the Chula Vista mayoral race in November 2022, Ammar Campa-Najjar did something unexpected. He joined the Navy. Not enlisted. Not Officer Candidate School. He received a direct commission as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve’s Restricted Line, Public Affairs branch, sworn in August 31, 2023, on the deck of the USS Midway Museum in San Diego.[15]
A direct commission as a Public Affairs Officer is not a combat role or a ground-floor military career path. It is an officer commission, in the reserve component, in a communications and messaging role. He was promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade in June 2025.[13] He had never served in the military before joining the Navy in his mid-30s, after three election losses, when another campaign was presumably already taking shape in his head.
The Navy Reserve Inspector General referred concerns about Campa-Najjar's use of his uniform in campaign materials to Commander, Navy Reserve Forces Command "for action deemed appropriate." Referral dated April 22, 2026. His campaign updated his ballot designation from "U.S. Navy Officer" to "U.S. Navy Reserve Officer" only after KPBS began asking questions in March.[13]
His campaign website and Facebook page featured his uniformed photo as the primary graphic representation of the candidate. DoD Directive 1344.10 prohibits exactly that for political campaign materials.[14] A freelance journalist filed a Navy IG complaint in early March 2026. The Navy said it was looking into it. The IG issued corrective action in April.[13]
Brian VanRiper, a Marine veteran and Democratic campaign consultant, told KPBS: “There’s a matter of integrity. Veterans can immediately smell this out quickly.”[14] Another Marine veteran consultant, Joseph Ball, said: “His page, his campaign, everything kind of makes it sound like he’s active duty Navy or was active duty Navy when the reality is as far from it as possible.”[14]
He joined the Navy to put something on a resume that had never included elected office or government executive experience. He used the uniform to make campaign materials look military. He then got told to stop by the Navy itself. That is a complete four-act play. It tells you everything.
The Money Behind the Ambition
Ammar Campa-Najjar has raised and spent roughly $11 million across three losing campaigns. He has never won a race. This money came from somewhere, and a significant amount of it came from the family of the woman he is dating.
Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA-51) is the granddaughter of Irwin M. Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm, estimated net worth approximately $1.2 billion. Ammar and Sara met in 2018 when they were both first-time congressional candidates. They have been together since 2019. They live in her house, in her congressional district, which is not the district he is running in.[18]
The “Serving CA” super PAC launched in February 2026 to support his campaign and had $819,980 in cash on hand by late April 2026.[16] Largest single donor: Irwin Jacobs at $500,000. Second largest: the Bezos-family-backed With Honor Fund at $250,000, routed through a Delaware-registered entity.[16] Irwin Jacobs co-hosted a fundraising lunch for the campaign at up to $7,000 a ticket.[16]
His opponents are not subtle about this. Von Wilpert’s campaign manager Dan Rottenstreich told reporters: “After three losing campaigns Campa-Najjar has so little support that it’s his grandfather in-law and dark money from Delaware donating to his campaign.”[16] Democratic consultant Mike Trujillo told the New York Post that Sara Jacobs was “trying to impress her boyfriend” with the endorsements she was leaning on colleagues for, and called Campa-Najjar a “perennial loser.”[18]
The campaign also appears to have created a straightforward “red box” on his campaign website labeled “What Voters Need to Know,” stocked with talking points and B-roll for the independent super PAC to pick up without technically coordinating.[16] His own party’s rules say they shouldn’t. They did it anyway.
The Rest of the File
The press-release version of Ammar Campa-Najjar is a charming, public-service-minded son of an immigrant who worked for Obama, joined the Navy, and wants to fight Trump. A few things get left out of that version.
The social media posts. The New York Post in 2026 published screenshots from 2009 in which Campa-Najjar repeatedly used the N-word in messages to friends, including writing to one friend: “Yeah my cell still works, and maybe we can pick your n—r ass up… Or I can ask immigration to give you a ride, we’ll see.”[17] His response: “I was once an insecure young man trying to belong who said stupid things to impress friends.” That framing is recognizable to anyone who watched him operate at 20. Saying whatever he needed to say to belong in the room he was currently in. The pattern is old.
The family mailer. During his 2022 mayoral campaign, a mailer featuring Campa-Najjar with a woman and two children ran with the caption “Ammar and his Family.”[19] He is not married and has no children. The woman was not Sara Jacobs. When pressed, the campaign said the children were his godchildren.[19] He ran a mailer implying a family he does not have.
The residency contradiction. He spent years calling himself “a Jamuligan” and voted from his mother’s address in Jamul. He tweeted at Darrell Issa and Carl DeMaio: “Chillin at my pad. What a novel idea, a candidate running for congress who can actually vote for himself! Cc: Darrell Issa and Carl Demaio. #CarpetBaggers.”[22] Then he ran for Chula Vista mayor registered at an Eastlake condo owned by his aunt, while his opponent’s private investigator documented him spending 30 or more consecutive nights at Sara Jacobs’s Bankers Hill condo.[20] He now lives at her Kensington home, which is in her congressional district, not the CA-48 he is running for.[20]
The Georgetown credential. He has described himself as a “college educator” and as “teaching” at Georgetown. He was admitted to a master’s program in Conflict Resolution in March 2025 and is a graduate teaching assistant, a role typically held by first-year grad students helping faculty run classes.[4]
The unpaid invoice. Campaign consultant Jaimey Sexton said publicly that Campa-Najjar’s 2022 mayoral campaign still owed him roughly $6,000.[17] Sexton told the New York Post: “Sara can stop by the ATM, take out $6,000 and pay me… If you can’t pay his bills, how can you be responsible for our money as a congressman?”
What the Record Shows
I’m not the only one who recognized this pattern. Everyone who has dealt with him long enough has arrived at the same place.
His own party’s delegates recognized it. A January 2026 letter signed by California Democrats stated that Ammar had shown “a lack of clear principles Democrats can unite behind and a tendency to tell different groups whatever they want to hear,” and that “his repeated defeats have compounded a troubling pattern.”[9] The California Democratic Party endorsed Marni von Wilpert. He got 18% of delegate votes.[4]
Darrell Issa, who beat him in 2020, recognized it. Issa told NOTUS in March 2026: “It’s fun to watch, including one of the candidates that ran as almost a Republican in 2020 now going back to his roots of being an extreme left-winger.”[5]
Veterans in his own party recognized it, and the Navy’s inspector general put it in writing.[13]
The DMFI PAC, which is spending over $750,000 to defeat him, named their attack ad “Say Anything” and ran it in April 2026 on broadcast and cable in the CA-48 market.[20]
The Republican National Congressional Committee published a press release last week titled “Says Anything, Wins Nothing.”[8] They reportedly prefer him as the Democratic nominee. A leaked GOP targeting memo lists him as the opponent they want. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend, and the Republicans actively rooting for Ammar Campa-Najjar to be the Democratic nominee are telling you something.
Progressives recognized it in 2020 when he sat down with a far-right group to tell them he’d investigate Hillary Clinton, and walked away.[23]
I recognized it in 2010 at San Diego State when he was 20 years old and working a room.
He is beautiful. He is charismatic. He is running for a seat that Democrats should win in a redrawn district that gives them a real shot. And he is almost certainly going to lose to a Trumpist Republican because nobody who has watched him long enough can tell you what he actually believes.
CA-48’s primary is June 2, 2026. Marni von Wilpert is running. His own party endorsed her. Don’t trust the face. Read the record.
Do not give Ammar Campa-Najjar political power.
Sources
Share on
Comments are configured with provider: disqus, but are disabled in non-production environments.
