Election 2026 · Federal

U.S. House, California District 43

Published September 29, 2026 · Updated October 2, 2026

Maxine Waters (incumbent) and Cristian Morales are the candidates for U.S. House, California District 43 on the November 3, 2026 ballot.

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat, faces Cristian Morales, a Republican, for the U.S. House seat in the 43rd Congressional District. About 156,000 City of Los Angeles residents live in the district, in Watts, Harbor Gateway North and parts of South LA and Westchester.

Summary by CityHallPass, not the official text or legal advice. The official text controls: LA County's official election information.

What it means for the City of LA

Congress writes the budgets for federal grant programs that pay for some City of Los Angeles services. One example is the Community Development Block Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The City's 2026-27 Proposed Budget says the City gets these funds based on its population, poverty and housing overcrowding, and uses them for housing, economic development and social services for low- and moderate-income residents. The same budget estimates $749,787,681 in grant receipts for City departments in 2026-27, from federal, state, local and other sources. About 156,000 City residents live in this district, in Watts, Harbor Gateway North and parts of South LA and Westchester.

Primary results, June 2, 2026

Four candidates. Maxine Waters (Democrat) and Cristian Morales (Republican) placed first and second and advanced to November 3. The whole district is in Los Angeles County. Total votes: 118,651. Certified results

The candidates

The job

Powers. The House “makes and passes federal laws.” Members introduce bills and resolutions, offer amendments and serve on committees, which also oversee federal agencies (House.gov). Under Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution, bills for raising revenue must start in the House (Constitution, National Archives transcript).

Pay. $174,000 a year. Members last got a raise in January 2009. Congress has blocked every scheduled raise since, most recently in a law signed November 12, 2025 (CRS).

The district. California’s new congressional map was drawn by the Legislature (AB 604) and approved by voters as Proposition 50 in November 2025. The Secretary of State says the map is used from 2026 through 2030 and the new districts take effect January 3, 2027 (SOS).

• Cities. Under the new map the district includes all of Inglewood (108,396 residents), Compton (96,687), Hawthorne (88,502), Gardena (61,296) and Lawndale (31,930), and 67,156 of Torrance’s 147,385 residents (Statewide Database city splits report). It also includes unincorporated areas (AB 604 map data). Waters’s House site, which describes the current district, lists Lennox, West Athens, West Carson and El Camino Village among them (House bio).
• City of Los Angeles share. 156,200 City residents live in the district (2020 Census), out of 3,912,115 citywide. The City is split among 11 House districts (Statewide Database city splits report).
• City council districts. The district’s City neighborhoods are mainly in Council District 15 (Watts and Harbor Gateway North) and District 8, with parts of District 11 (Westchester) and a sliver of District 9. Method: census tracts assigned to the district in the state’s AB 604 map data, matched to City council and neighborhood council maps from the City’s GeoHub.
• Neighborhood councils in the district, by the same tract match against the GeoHub neighborhood council map, include Empowerment Congress Southeast Area, Harbor Gateway North, Watts and part of Westchester/Playa.

Federal money and the City.

• On August 14, 2026, Waters praised a ruling by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter that temporarily blocked the administration from suspending the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority from federal homelessness grants. Her office said the ruling protected about $241 million (Waters release).
• The February 2026 spending law that ended a partial shutdown included $94.3 million for 2028 Olympics transportation, according to Metro (LAist). Waters joined an August 26, 2026 panel of LA House members, convened by Rep. Laura Friedman, with Metro and LADOT on Olympic transit readiness (Lieu release).

Records

Maxine Waters

Offices. She served 14 years in the State Assembly, where she became Democratic Caucus Chair, and has been in the U.S. House since January 1991 (House bio). In the 119th Congress she serves on the Financial Services Committee (House Clerk), where she is ranking member (Waters release). Her office says she was the committee’s first woman and first African American chair, is a member of the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, was a founding member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and is a past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus (House bio).

Bills. Congress.gov lists 625 bills and resolutions sponsored by Waters over her career (Congress.gov). In the current Congress she has sponsored at least 47 (Congress.gov). Two passed the House and went to the Senate: the American Access to Banking Act (H.R. 4544) and the Promoting Opportunities for Non-Traditional Capital Formation Act (H.R. 3422). Others include:

• Stop TRUMP in Crypto Act of 2025 (H.R. 3573, May 2025)
• Ending Homelessness Act of 2025 (H.R. 4872) and Housing Crisis Response Act of 2025 (H.R. 6771)
• Downpayment Toward Equity Act of 2025 (H.R. 4069)
• Wildfire Insurance Coverage Study Act of 2025 (H.R. 550, January 2025), reintroduced with Rep. Brad Sherman during the January 2025 fires. It calls for an assessment of the home insurance market in high wildfire-risk communities (LA Times)
• Preventing Mass Casualties from Release of Hydrofluoric Acid at Refineries Act of 2026 (H.R. 7384)
• Food for Palestinian Children and Families in Gaza Act of 2026 (H.R. 7565)
• Three bank-oversight bills introduced March 9, 2026 (H.R. 7886, 7887 and 7888), including the Failed Bank Executives Accountability and Consequences Act
• A September 2026 bill to raise Federal Home Loan Bank contributions to affordable housing (H.R. 10325). The Financial Services Committee reported it unfavorably, 21-28 (Congress.gov).
• On December 11, 2025, the House rejected two Waters amendments to the Increasing Investor Opportunities Act (H.R. 3383), by 211-219 and 214-215 (Roll 326; Roll 327).

Key votes, 2025-2026. The same votes are shown for every House incumbent on CityHallPass.

As the Financial Services Committee’s top Democrat, she voted no on both crypto bills, which came from her committee. Most House Democrats voted no on CLARITY (78 yes, 134 no) and split on GENIUS (102 yes, 110 no) (Roll 199; Roll 200). She said the housing bill, which she calls the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, “became law anyway” after the president “refused to sign it” (Waters release). The S. 1071 short title, “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026,” is from the enrolled bill (Congress.gov; GovInfo text).

Attendance. Of 676 House roll calls from January 3, 2025 to September 16, 2026, Waters did not vote on 30 (4.4%), based on House Clerk roll call records.

Ethics and court records.

• FEC penalty (2025). After an audit of the 2019-2020 cycle, Citizens for Waters signed a conciliation agreement and paid a $68,000 civil penalty. The agreement says the committee understated 2020 receipts by $262,391 and disbursements by $256,164, accepted $19,000 in excessive contributions from seven people that it did not refund in time, and made four cash payments over the $100 limit totaling $7,000. The committee said it had switched reporting software, hired counsel and added procedures (FEC, MUR 8270; conciliation agreement). Its lawyer had told the FEC the errors “were not willful or purposeful” (Fox News, June 2, 2025).
• Nothing else found. No FEC administrative fine or ADR case names her committee or her leadership PAC, People Helping People (C00248948). The FPPC’s only documents in her name are advice letters from her Assembly years. No City Ethics Commission order names her, and she holds no State Bar license (searched Sept. 30, 2026).

Cristian Morales

Career. His ballot designation is Manufacturing Executive (SOS certified list). His FEC registration lists a Torrance address (FEC). No campaign website, published biography, candidate statement or news profile was found.

Record. No public office, votes or programs to report. His FEC registration and ballot designation list no public office (FEC; SOS certified list).

Ethics and court records. No public enforcement actions found in FPPC, City Ethics Commission or FEC enforcement records (MURs, administrative fines and ADR cases, searched by his name, his committee’s name and its ID, C00944405), and no license in his name at the State Bar. Results for his common name in CourtListener federal dockets and opinions and in GovInfo federal court opinions could not be tied to him (searched Oct. 1, 2026).

Where they stand

Issues are drawn from Waters’s bills, votes and statements. No published positions were found for Morales. No reputable voter survey specific to this district was found.

On the other ballot measures

No statement by either candidate on any November 3, 2026 state proposition was found on their House page, FEC filings or in the sources cited here.

Source: measure list from the Secretary of State’s qualified ballot measures page; positions checked on Waters’s House site and Morales’s FEC committee page.

City residents in the district also vote on City measures FD, TE, LA, PL, EE, PRK and PRT (City Clerk Voter Information Pamphlet). Voters who live in LAUSD also decide City Charter Amendment SC, shown in the table above. No position by either candidate was found on those.

Endorsements

Maxine Waters

No current endorsement list was found. A committee called Making California First paid for a pro-Waters ad in the Los Angeles Sentinel before the primary (FEC 48-hour report). No newspaper editorial endorsement was found.

Cristian Morales

No endorsements were found, from newspapers or anyone else.

Polls

No public polls of this race were found.

Money

Source: FEC candidate summaries (Waters; Morales), from the FEC’s bulk candidate summary dated September 29, 2026. Committees: Citizens for Waters (C00167585); Cristian Morales for Congress (C00944405). The FEC lists no financial summary for Morales. A candidate must file reports once he raises or spends more than $5,000 (FEC). Federal law limits individuals to $3,500 per candidate per election (FEC contribution limits).

Who is giving

Method: FEC itemized individual contributions to the principal committee, 2025-2026 cycle, from the FEC bulk data. Committees must itemize donors who give more than $200 in a cycle (FEC). Gifts through ActBlue are itemized too. A donor is a normalized name plus ZIP code, with refunds netted. Geography uses the City’s ZIP code list and Census ZIP-to-county files. “In the district” means the ZIP code’s center falls inside the new district.

Maxine Waters

Source: CityHallPass analysis of FEC itemized receipts and the FEC candidate totals above.

• Who. Waters raised more from PACs ($400,500) than from individuals ($338,657). Of itemized individual dollars, 41.0% came from out of state, led by Washington, D.C. ($30,750), Texas ($17,300) and Maryland ($15,550). Donors in the district gave 3.5% (FEC receipts).
• Industries: retired or not employed 16.9%; finance and investment 12.5%; law 7.2%; lobbying and public affairs 6.7%; entertainment and media 4.4% (FEC receipts).
• Largest individual donors. Six gave the $7,000 two-election maximum, $42,000 in all (FEC receipts, largest first).
• PACs and other committees. FEC committee data show $444,000 from 114 committees (FEC receipts from committees). By type: corporate PACs $142,000 (DTCC and BlackRock at $10,000 each; Visa, Aflac and Zillow at $7,500; Optiver $7,000); trade associations $133,500 (insurance advisors, convenience stores, America’s Credit Unions, the National Multifamily Housing Council, land title agents and home builders at $10,000 each; mortgage bankers and apartment owners at $7,500); leadership and other PACs $61,500 (Equality PAC, La Bamba PAC and Ernst & Young’s PAC, which has no organization type in FEC data, at $10,000 each); membership groups $51,500 (insurance brokers and CPAs at $10,000); labor unions $40,500 (AFSCME and AFT at $7,500).

Cristian Morales

No contributions are on file with the FEC (FEC candidate page).

Outside spending

Source: FEC independent expenditure reports (Schedule E) (FEC independent expenditures for Waters). All spending on file is from before the primary. No general-election spending had been reported as of September 29.

Who funds Making California First. Its donors could not be traced. Its periodic reports were not in the FEC data used here (FEC committee page).

No outside spending for or against Morales was reported (FEC).

Key moments

Debates and forums

No debates or candidate forums for this race were found.

Events

• Primary (June 2, 2026). Waters won 63.8%. Republican Cristian Morales placed second with 16.9%, ahead of Democrat Myla Rahman at 15.0% (SOS Statement of Vote).
• LAHSA funding ruling (August 2026). Waters praised Judge Carter’s order keeping LAHSA in federal homelessness programs (Waters release). Morales: no statement found.