The 50th district is based in San Diego County. It includes suburban and outlying areas of the county, including Fallbrook, San Marcos, Valley Center, Ramona, Escondido, Santee, Lakeside, parts of El Cajon and mountain and desert areas stretching east to the Imperial County line. It extends slightly into southwestern Riverside County and covers much of the city ofTemecula.
Representative Cunningham resigned on November 28, 2005, as a result of a bribery scandal. An open special election was held on April 11, 2006. The top vote getter was DemocratFrancine Busby, who won 44% of the vote. The second-place finisher was RepublicanBrian Bilbray, who won 15% of the vote. Paul King was the top Libertarian party vote getter, with 0.6% of the vote. Since no candidate received a simple majority, the top vote-getters in each party competed in a runoff or special general election on June 6, 2006. Bilbray was sworn in on June 13, based on unofficial counts, two weeks before the election was certified. As a consequence of this action, a court challenge to the election results filed by voters was denied on jurisdictional grounds. This decision was appealed unsuccessfully.
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Historical district boundaries
44th District
In the 1980s, was one of four encompassing San Diego. The district had been held for eight years by Democrat Jim Bates and was considered the most Democratic district in the San Diego area. However, Bates became bogged down in a scandal involving charges of sexual harassment. Randy "Duke" Cunningham won the Republican nomination and hammered Bates about the scandal. Cunningham won by a point. The San Diego area was represented entirely by Republicans for only the second time since the city was split into three districts after the 1960 U.S. Census. After his victory, Cunningham changed his official residence from his Del Mar home to a condominium in the Mission Valley neighborhood in San Diego, so he could reside in the district that he represented in Congress.
41st District
In the 1980s, was another of four encompassing San Diego. The northern San Diego County district had been held for 12 years by Republican Bill Lowery and was considered the most Republican district in the San Diego area. Most of the district became the after state redistricting following the 1990 U.S. Census. In 1992, Cunningham campaigned against Lowery in Lowery's district in the Republican primary. The new 51st District was more dominated by ethnic whites and was more conservative than Cunningham's more urban, former 41st District located farther south. Lowery was tainted by the House check kiting scandal and lost the primary to Cunningham. The latter, a Navy career officer, had run on a campaign theme of "A Congressman We Can Be Proud Of." After winning, Cunningham changed his official residence back to his Del Mar home in the old 41st/new 51st District.
2000s
From 2003 to 2013, the 50th district consisted of the northern coastal region of San Diego County and included the suburbs of San Marcos, Carlsbad, Encinitas, Solana Beach, and Escondido.
On November 29, 2005, Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report declared on his show that the 50th Congressional District was "dead" to him after its insufficient support for his "friend" Duke Cunningham. Colbert placed the district on the show's ever-changing "Dead to Me" board, saying that he now considered the number of congressional districts in the United States to be 434. On March 1, 2006, he "downgraded" the 50th District's status from "dead to me" to "never existed to me."
