Fake news powered this Republican to the mayor's office. Now he's running for Congress

Stockton Mayor Kevin Lincoln announced Tuesday that he'd campaign as a Republican against Democratic Rep. Josh Harder in California's 9th District, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy's team confirms he'll hold a fundraiser Thursday for his new recruit. Joe Biden won this Central Valley seat 55-43, but Republicans are hoping Lincoln has the name recognition to put it into play following his upset 2020 victory against a Democratic incumbent.

Prior to that shock win, Lincoln's only campaign saw him lose in a landslide in the 2016 general election for a blue seat in the state Assembly. With that background, he initially didn't look like much of a threat when he decided to challenge Democratic Mayor Michael Tubbs in what was officially nonpartisan race.

But while Tubbs was a nationally prominent progressive who'd even been the subject of an HBO documentary about his mayoralty, the incumbent had spent his four years in office on the receiving end of attacks from a conservative blogger named Motecuzoma Patrick Sanchez, who'd tell Politico's David Siders after the election that he'd waged "a calculated, four-year, sustained campaign with tactics that represented an overall strategy to remove [Tubbs] from office."