Veteran California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s bid for re-election could prompt a challenge from a second fellow Democrat – San Francisco hedge fund billionaire turned activist Tom Steyer – who also believes she’s insufficiently opposed to President Donald Trump.

California Senate President Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, has campaigned across the state in the month since announcing he would challenge Feinstein, who at 84 is the oldest U.S. senator and who has been blasted by progressives for saying in August that it was possible Trump might end up being a “good president.”

On Thursday, de León, who is 50, won the endorsement of four Democratic supervisors in Feinstein’s home town of San Francisco – Jane Kim, Hillary Ronen, Aaron Peskin and Norman Yee.

That came four days after the Sacramento Bee posted a scathing piece by columnist Marcos Bretón that declared that white San Francisco Democrats acted as gatekeepers blocking the ascension of talented Latinos like de León.

“For all the self-congratulatory proclamations of California as a progressive haven, the state is not as cool as it thinks it is,” Bretón wrote. “The traditional paths to power in California have been closely guarded by a Bay Area pecking order heretofore off-limits to Latino candidates.”

National TV ad sends name recognition soaring

But Steyer is coming off an even better month than de León – thanks to an unprecedented political maneuver that’s sent his name recognition soaring and prompted excitement from progressives.

Steyer paid for a $10 million national ad buy for a commercial in which he personally urges Americans to support his effort to impeach Trump.

“Donald Trump has brought us to the brink of nuclear war, obstructed justice, and taken money from foreign governments. We need to impeach this dangerous president,” he somberly intones in the ad.

Steyer, who is 60, told Politico on Thursday that more than 1.9 million Americans had signed his online petition calling for the president’s ouster and that he was so heartened by the response that he would spend another $10 million to air the ads.

While Steyer has also shown interest in running for governor next year or even president in 2020, leading a push for Trump’s impeachment seems an ideal start for a run against an incumbent Democratic senator accused of being soft on Trump.

Footage of the August event in San Francisco in which Feinstein made her remarks would make for potent primary attack ads in a state in which Democratic delegates at a May party convention gleefully chanted “F— Trump.”

That intense sentiment is hard to square with Feinstein’s remarks to a crowd at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco: “Look, this man is going to be president, most likely for the rest of this term. I just hope he has the ability to learn, and to change. And if he does, he can be a good president. And that’s my hope.”

Steyer’s impeachment push won him national attention even before his ad campaign began. An Oct. 11 New York Times story noted how the prolific Democratic fund-raiser had sent a letter to every congressional Democrat’s office and to the party’s Senate and House campaign committees urging them to make a pledge to impeach Trump central to their 2018 campaigns.

The story noted that while impeachment was very unlikely because of Republican control of Congress and the view of many Democratic leaders that it was an energy-sapping distraction, polling showed 70 percent of Democrats nationally backed impeachment.

The Times account also noted Steyer’s unsubtle dig at Feinstein in his letter: “It is clear for all to see that there is zero reason to believe ‘he can be a good president,’” as Feinstein said in August.

California Sen. Kamala Harris’ splashy first year in Washington has made her a

While the California Legislature’s recent vote to move the state’s 2020 presidential primary from June to March was seen in the Golden State as yet another attempt to make America’s most populous, richest state more of a factor in deciding the presidential nomination, a Newsweek analysis last month saw it as an attempt to boost Harris’ potential White House bid. The Newsweek headline: “Is Kamala Harris Now the 2020 Favorite to Take on Trump?”

In 2016, California had 548 delegates at the Democratic Convention – nearly one-quarter of the 2,382 needed for the nomination that year. The numbers are likely to be similar in 2020, potentially giving Harris a big boost in the nomination race after voting in Iowa, New Hampshire and a handful of other states possibly more inclined to back more familiar Democrats such as former Vice President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

But there appears to be a fair chance that the assumption Harris would be the clear choice in the Golden State faces a huge complication: the presence of another popular, fresh California politician in the Democratic nomination mix.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has hinted that he’s thinking about running for governor in 2018 as well as president in 2020. After his recent appearance at the Sacramento Press Club, a Los Angeles Times account said his coy responses to questions about his political future “did little to dampen what has become a rowdy parlor game among California politicos: speculating on just what Garcetti will do next.”

The idea that Los Angeles residents might be upset about a Garcetti presidential bid because it would take him away from his duties as mayor is undercut by a Loyola Marymount poll released last month. It showed 63 percent of the 914 Los Angeles County residents surveyed were “strongly supportive” or “somewhat supportive” of Garcetti seeking the White House.

A Politico analysis in May offered a look at why a Garcetti bid intrigues some in the upper ranks of the Democratic establishment. It described him as a handsome 46-year-old who “was just re-elected to a second term with 81 percent of the vote, and is half-Mexican (he speaks Spanish fluently) and half-Jewish (he’s an active member of a very progressive L.A. synagogue), a Rhodes scholar and former Navy intelligence reserve officer.”

Harris, who turned 53 Friday, also has an attractive personal story in a Democratic Party on the lookout for candidates who can inspire large turnouts among young and minority voters. She has a Jamaican-American father and Indian-American mother and has been a trailblazer throughout her political career.

Both have records with fodder for attack ads

But if either Garcetti or Harris seek the White House, rival Democrats will have no shortage of fodder for attack ads.

Garcetti was first elected mayor in 2013 and cruised to re-election earlier this year, facing no serious opposition. He is considered hard-working and an impressive policy wonk.

But Los Angeles has emerged as the epicenter of American poverty in recent years thanks to high housing costs and the departure of Fortune 500 firms and mid-sized businesses alike. A 2014 blue-ribbon report commissioned by the City Council depicted Los Angeles as “facing economic decline, weighed down by poverty, strangled by traffic and suffering from a crisis of leadership,” according to a Los Angeles Times account. Garcetti has not reversed this downward arc, leading to a Los Angeles magazine article in August lamenting how Silicon Valley had far eclipsed the Los Angeles region.

As for Harris, her record during six years as attorney general was more mixed than some national coverage assumes – and at times at odds with now-ascendant Bernie Sanders-style populism. While she achieved high-profile wins in going after corporate malfeasance  – starting with shady mortgage lenders  – she was not a leader in criminal-justice reform in an era in which the movement built up momentum in California with dramatic changes in sentencing and parole laws. Some editorial writers challenged her description of herself as a “bold leader.” Jacobin magazine, which has a devoted following among progressives, was much harsher, depicting her as having “two faces” on crime and siding with reactionary tough-on-crime policies repeatedly while attorney general. Other liberal voices strongly agree, as the New Republic reported in August.

As California AG, Harris also continued a long bipartisan tradition that appalls good-government advocates: writing slanted descriptions of ballot measures that are meant to help or hurt the proposals. In 2015, for example, the liberal San Francisco Chronicle editorial page blasted Harris for ballot language that effectively killed a pension reform campaign in its infancy.

In the announcement, de León said that as the state Senate leader, he moved to propel “progressive California values in important policy efforts like immigration, women’s rights, quality education, civil rights, job creation and fighting climate change.”           

“We now stand at the front lines of a historic struggle for the very soul of America, against a president without one,” de León added. “Every day, his administration wages war on our people and our progress. He disregards our voices. Demonizes our diversity. Attacks our civil rights, our clean air, our health access and our public safety. We can lead the fight against his administration, but only if we jump into the arena together.”

The 50-year-old Democrat has long been rumored to be eyeing the seat, as he’s termed out of the state Senate next year. And while few expected him to launch a bid unless Feinstein, 84, decided to retire, calls have been intensifying for a challenge from the left, as Feinstein’s image as a moderate Democrat willing to reach across the aisle is now viewed by many progressives as falling short of the strategy needed to defeat the Trump agenda.

For example, the California senator faced fire this summer after making comments about the president that were seen as too tepid by an audience eager to hear fierce rhetoric on how to defeat Republicans in Washington.

“Look, this man is going to be president most likely for the rest of this term,” the senator said at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club. “I just hope he has the ability to learn and to change and if he does he can be a good president. And that’s my hope.”

After the backlash, she walked back the remarks.

Feinstein’s perceived strengths – bipartisanship, civility and Washington experience – are now seen as weaknesses in a state that has positioned itself at the center of the so-called “resistance” against President Trump.

The contrast between the two is striking. De León, raised by an immigrant mother in Los Angeles is looking to climb the political ladder. He’s the first Latino to be Senate president pro tem in over a century and has embraced the role of being against all things Trump.

“Do I support impeaching Donald Trump? Well. Let me see. The answer is yes,” he told The New York Times.

Meanwhile, Feinstein is a fixture of the establishment with her roots in the Bay Area. She’s also one of the wealthiest members of Congress, and has found herself aligned with the GOP on issues like national security and privacy.

“On the big issues of our time, she’s been on the wrong side of history,” said progressive Rep. Ro Khanna ,D-Fremont, last week on SiriusXM’s “The Dean Obeidallah Show,” referencing Feinstein’s image as a “war hawk” for her vote for the Iraq war and support for the Patriot Act.

“We’re taking on the establishment, there is no doubt,” de León said. “But I’ve taken on the establishment all my life. … Now is the time for change and I look forward to having this debate of ideas, of vision for the state.”

While the announcement is grabbing early headlines, de León faces an uphill fight. Feinstein has the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, major party leaders like U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and enjoys almost universal name recognition. Furthermore, she has a robust fundraising apparatus, enjoying a strong donor base across the state – something that de León lacks.

Bill Carrick, an adviser to Feinstein, had harsh words for the challenger, describing his campaign to the Los Angeles Times as “wasting money and energy on what will turn out to be a rather difficult campaign for Sen. de León. … He’s a termed-out politician looking for a gig.”

Meanwhile, the race is also bringing more focus onto the state’s jungle primary system, with it being possible that de León and Feinstein face off in the primary and the general, leaving out a Republican voice in the overwhelmingly liberal state.

“This challenge makes the point of why the top two primary is bad for California,” conservative author and commentator James Lacy told CalWatchDog. “De Leon and Feinstein are likely to face off against each other twice, once in June and again in Nov., and in the meantime a reasonable Republican viewpoint will be lost in the noise.”

But still, Republicans are welcoming the intra-party conflict, seeing the race as one that can push the party even further to the left and divert resources away from congressional races in the state.

“Senator Feinstein’s rough start to her re-election campaign is every indication of what California Democrats can expect in 2018,” RNC spokesperson Christiana Purves said in a statement. “Democrats across the state should be prepared to embrace the calls of far-left progressives who support a failed single-payer healthcare system and a $52 billion gas tax increase, or brace themselves for well-funded primary challengers,”

The primary fight comes at a time of soul-searching for Democrats nationally. Reflecting on the failures of 2016, many left-wing activists see a need to push back against the old guard, in hopes that a new crop of talent could re-energize the base and lead to more victories in 2018 and 2020.

“We won’t defeat Trump and his Republican Party with corporate Democrats pushing Republican-lite policies and weak leadership,” argued Charles Chamberlain, executive director of Democracy for America. “We win when candidates offer a progressive vision for America and fight to make it happen.”

For example, Bay Area Congressman Ro Khanna, D-Calif., reportedly asked Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich to run against the incumbent, believing the party needs someone further to the left to occupy the seat.

“There are other voices in our state who are far more in touch with the values,” Khanna told Politico.

While Feinstein has been a fixture of California politics for decades, her softer tone toward President Trump and stances on issues like national security and encryption have caused her to lose favor with some in her party.
“She was totally out of touch when the whole debate happened on encryption,’’ Khanna added, according to Politico, referencing the dialogue that took place in the aftermath of the San Bernardino terror attack. “She didn’t even understand some of those issues.”

Furthermore, she faced jeers from a town hall crowd this summer after suggesting that President Trump could become a “good president” if he would “learn” and “change.”

“Look, this man is going to be president most likely for the rest of this term,” the senator said at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club in August. “I just hope he has the ability to learn and to change and if he does he can be a good president. And that’s my hope.”

Following backlash, she was forced to clarify her remarks.

At 84, she is the oldest senator in the upper chamber and the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As some reporters noted, the announcement is seen as bad news for L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, who were viewed as likely candidates if Feinstein decided to retire. De León in particular is thought to have been eyeing the seat, as he’s termed out of the state Senate next year.

The talks about a primary challenger come as Democrats nationally have been looking to revamp their image with fresh faces and “new blood” after Hillary Clinton’s defeat last November.

“Her policies are completely out of touch with California Democrats, and we think she’d be more at home in a Republican primary,” Corbin Trent of the Justice Democrats told Vox, expressing support for a primary challenger.

With California positioning itself as the center of the so-called “Resistance” against the Trump agenda in Washington, the stage could be set for a challenge to Feinstein from the left. But with support from top Democrats in the state like U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, along with a robust campaign infrastructure and strong name recognition, any effort to take her on will present a steep challenge.

The state’s voter-turnout rates hit the skids in the 2014 election cycles, with only 25 percent of registered voters casting a ballot in the June primary and only 42 percent voting in the November general election. State officials viewed the situation as something of a crisis and proposed a variety of reforms to encourage greater participation.

But voter turnout rebounded in the 2016 general election, with 14.6 million people voting during the Donald Trump v. Hillary Clinton race. The raw numbers were record-setting, although the percentage of voters (75 percent of those registered, and 59 percent of those eligible) was lower than in the 2008 presidential election, during Barack Obama’s race against John McCain.

There’s little question that a high-profile national election drives far more interest and participation than midterm contests, but state election officials still wonder about ways to encourage more Californians to head to the polls – or drop a ballot in the mail – during lower-profile elections and especially for local races.

There’s much debate over whether a new elections-related law will have a significant effect on the number of Californians who turn out to vote. Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed the “Prime Time Primary Act,” which moves all of California’s primary elections from June to March.

Supporters were concerned that the June date rendered the state’s massive 55 electoral votes largely meaningless because the parties typically know the likely presidential candidate by then. Moving the primary to March – provided other states don’t play leapfrog and move up their dates, also – will make California more of a national player. But it’s uncertain what it might do to voting rates.

“The only other time that a midterm California primary was earlier than June was 2002, when it was in early March,” wrote elections expert Richard Winger in Ballot Access News. “The 2002 California primary had the lowest turnout of any California primary in history, up until that point. Only 34.6 percent of the registered voters cast a ballot.”

The 2014 midterm voting rates were even lower, as noted above. Winger noted that was the first time a midterm primary election was held after California voters approved the “Top Two” primary system in which the primary includes candidates from all parties on one ballot – and then the top-two vote-getters head to the general regardless of their party affiliation.

Supporters of the new system argue that it encourages voter participation because it encourages candidates to reach out beyond their respective parties’ base voters and make an appeal to all voters from all affiliations. But critics of “top two,” including Winger, argue that it suppresses turnout because it keeps smaller parties off the general-election ballot. “Because top-two doesn’t affect presidential primaries or presidential elections, the best evidence that top-two has hurt turnout is the midterm year of 2014,” Winger told me. “Whereas in November 2010, California voters had six parties to choose from for all the statewide offices, in Nov. 2014 all California voters had to vote for a Rep or a Dem or they couldn’t vote at all. That really hurt turnout.”

California lawmakers have passed a variety of other changes affecting voting and registration including laws that “include pre-registration for 16-year-olds, conditional same day voter registration at certain locations, a new Motor Voter program to automate voter registration for individuals when obtaining or renewing identification cards or driver’s licenses with the DMV and a new option for counties to conduct all-mailed ballot elections and use vote centers and ballot drop-off locations prior to election day rather than operate polling places only on election day,” according to the Little Hoover Commission.

Little Hoover, the state’s independent watchdog agency, held a hearing Sept. 28 as part of its ongoing study of statewide voter participation trends and the effect of these recently enacted election reforms. That hearing focused specifically on Los Angeles County, which has more registered voters (5.2 million) than any other jurisdiction in the country. Most testimony centered on the need for “process” changes that make it easier for eligible voters to register and cast a ballot.

“Unfortunately, the lowest voter turnout that we often experience comes during local and municipal elections, which are typically conducted during the odd years,” explained Dean Logan, Los Angeles County’s registrar-recorder and county clerk. “While the importance of local elections is beyond debate, voter participation in these elections has not followed suit.”

He argued that the 2015 passage of Senate Bill 415, the California Voter Participation Act, would eventually help boost these numbers. The measure “prohibits cities, school districts and other special districts from holding elections in odd years if those elections showed worse voter turnout than statewide elections in the past,” according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. The goal is to keep these districts from holding elections when few people are paying attention.

Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, argued in her testimony that problems at polling places – e.g., poorly accessible locations with insufficient parking, poorly functioning ballot readers, an inadequate number of bilingual poll workers, etc. – contributes to the problem. She pointed to a Common Cause study concluding that “California’s declining voter turnout is cause for concern, warranting significant and immediate action.”

The report touted election reforms in Colorado, which include same-day registration along with a vote-by-mail system (every registered voter automatically is mailed a ballot) with plenty of drop boxes and vote centers. Brown last year signed SB450, which beginning in 2018 will require that all registered voters be sent a ballot 28 days before an election, so Californians will soon see whether such an approach does much to boost voter participation.

Some election observers, however, argue the problem is more fundamental than the process by which ballots are distributed and collected. For instance, some election experts blame the state’s poor level of representation for low turnout rates. California has, by far, the largest number of voters for each elected politician, meaning they have far less ability to influence an election or a policy decision.

Others blame the state’s dominance by one party, which means that fewer statewide elections have any significant policy ramifications. Most legislative districts have been carved up to so heavily favor one party or the other that there’s little question which party will hold the seat. Still others note that political races and initiatives are dominated by special interests, which breeds cynicism. A 2015 public-opinion survey from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California concluded that “Low trust in government is the top reason for not registering.”

A comprehensive look at California’s voter-turnout situation might also address this question: Are many Californians skipping the vote not because of impediments to receiving and casting a ballot – but because they don’t think their vote really matters?

Steven Greenhut is Western region director at the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Denise Cross / flickr

In an effort to bolster its relevance during the next presidential election, Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a new law moving California’s primary from June to early March.

A March primary gives the Golden State an opportunity to be political flashpoint moving into 2020. In 2016, by the time June rolled around, the presidential primaries were essentially over.

“Candidates will not be able to ignore the largest, most diverse state in the nation as they seek our country’s highest office,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said. “California has been a leader time and time again on the most important issues facing our country – including immigration, education and the environment. The Prime Time Primary Act will help ensure that issues important to Californians are prioritized by presidential candidates from all political parties.”

The move is also seen as a potential boost to possible Democratic candidates like Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, rising stars in the party who would benefit from having their home state vote earlier in the primary process.

The legislation also moves up congressional races, taking effect in 2019. Now, the elections will fall “on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March,” making California part of the so-called “Super Tuesday” states.

Furthermore, an earlier primary will have a significant effect on fundraising, beyond candidates raising money earlier.

“With an earlier primary, our elections could have major national implications in the electoral college and down ballot races,” Los Angeles-based GOP fundraiser Charles Moran told CalWatchdog. “D.C. will have to pay attention to us for more than just our money.”

This isn’t a first for California, as there was a February primary back in 2008, leading to the “highest voter turnout for a primary election since 1980,” according to Padilla.

Joining the “Super Tuesday” fray also appears to be an effort to thwart President Trump, or least give California a greater opportunity to set the anti-Trump agenda for Democrats nationally.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, who authored the bill, hinted at that motivation, saying that “we have a responsibility to drive a different agenda at the national level and promote inclusion and consensus not the politics of division.”

California has positioned itself at the center of the so-called “resistance” against the Trump administration, suing over the travel ban, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the border wall.

SACRAMENTO – Even Republicans admit the state GOP is something of a rudderless ship these days. The party doesn’t control any constitutional offices. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley, is the target of a grassroots effort to force him from his leadership post after he backed a Democratic bill to expand the cap-and-trade system for 10 years.

Meanwhile, the national Republican Party has become anathema to ethnically diverse California, especially after President Donald Trump doubled down on his initial comments about Saturday’s white-supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia. On Tuesday, the president assured the media that there were some “very fine people on both sides” at the protests. Yes, the California party’s predicament is dismal, especially from a recruitment standpoint.

Yet Tuesday night, one prominent GOP official detailed a positive direction for the party. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer says he isn’t running for governor, but gave a major speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco regarding the future of the California Republican Party. He wasn’t there “to offer suggestions about what we ought to do,” he said. “I’m here to tell Republicans what we’ve already done in San Diego.”

He described it as a call to action – an opportunity to rebuild the party centered on the theme of “fixing California.” Faulconer detailed five themes on which the party should unite as a way to win over new generations of voters. The first of them involves freedom. “Not only is individual liberty part of California’s heritage, it’s a classic conservative principle – one that Republicans have watered down to our own detriment,” he said. “People have stopped seeing the GOP as the party of freedom. They see it as the party of ‘no.’”

He even singled out a freedom theme that could be controversial in a socially conservative party: freedom of sexual orientation. But he contrasted his vision with that of the Democratic Party, “which has organized itself around the proposition that an individual’s most defining qualities are gender, sexuality and race.” He calls that a party based on differences, whereas he envisions a “New Republican Party” built around a set of common ideas.

“One of our biggest failures is that Republicans do not communicate our shared values to underrepresented communities,” Faulconer said. He pointed to his successful San Diego mayoral race: “Facing a Hispanic candidate in a city where just 25 percent of voters are registered Republican, I won more than 57 percent of the total vote – and close to 40 percent of the Latino vote. … Why? Because I campaigned in communities Republicans wrote off as lost – and Democrats took for granted.”

His second theme involved immigration. Faulconer said that Republicans are doing a poor job inviting new Americans to join the party of freedom and limited government. In fact, he said he wouldn’t even need to give such a speech if the GOP weren’t failing at that message. He called for welcoming immigrants, while acknowledging that the party can’t ignore the issue of illegal immigration. “We must push for efficient ports of entry and get smarter about border security,” the mayor said, while emphasizing the importance of treating nearby Mexico as “neighbors and economic partners.”

Faulconer’s third theme involved the environment, about engaging responsibly on conservation and climate-change issues with “plans that don’t plunder the middle class.” He again used his city as an example. “San Diego is now on a path to slash greenhouse gases in half and shift to 100 percent renewable energy – without a tax increase,” he said.

His fourth theme is for California leaders to focus on California issues, rather than “chasing the latest soundbite out of Washington, D.C.” He chided Sacramento Democrats, who he says “are suffering from what I like to call ‘outrage FOMO’ – a Fear Of Missing Out on the latest controversy that will allow them to score political points on social media and TV.” By contrast, Faulconer said the “New Republicans” need to focus on “the fundamentals of government service.”

That includes infrastructure. “The fact that 50 percent of California’s roadways are in poor condition is an absolute failure,” he said. “We have the nation’s second highest gas tax but some of the worst roads, with no guarantees that the taxes we pay at the pump will actually go toward fixing the problem.” But, for his fifth and final point, he focused on the overall need for “reform.” This theme involved the role of the state’s powerful unions in resisting reform.

“Too often Sacramento politicians are unwilling to say ‘no’ to entrenched special interests – at our expense,” he said. “California ranks in the bottom 20 percent of K-12 schools nationwide. Yet Democrats continue to side with unions against meaningful changes to improve student achievement.” He noted that “California falls dead-last in housing affordability in the continental United States” but “Democrats are blocking revisions to housing rules that were designed to protect the environment but that labor has hijacked for its own gain.”

He noted that California was “rated the worst state for business” because “lawmakers keep layering regulation on top of regulation until budding entrepreneurs are crushed, and only the biggest businesses survive.” He also pointed to the state’s massive pension debt and, again, used San Diego as an example, given that city’s successful voter-approved pension reform.

These reform themes echo talking points Republican leaders have traditionally made. And he was predictably pointed in his critique of Democrats, noting that their policies have resulted in “economic inequality; troubled schools; sky-high housing costs; failing infrastructure; and crippling pension debt.” Those problems have festered, he added, while Sacramento “pursues the kind of political fantasies that grip a party when it gains complete and total control.” But his approach signified a break from typical Republican efforts.

To break that one-party control, Mayor Faulconer’s blueprint focuses heavily on repackaging the party’s long-held ideas and reaching out to communities that the party hasn’t successfully appealed to in the past. He envisions a day “when San Francisco’s Republican mayor is standing before you, she isn’t talking about how California Republicans are endangered, but rather how we are ushering in a government that is uniting our people and looking out for the middle class.” It’s a bold challenge for a party that seems to be collapsing, but his ideas received a warm reception.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

The California progressive movement’s summer of discontent continues, with anger still on display over the abrupt withdrawal of a single-payer health care bill and over the May election of a party insider as California Democratic chairman.

This week, the Associated Press reported that progressives remain interested in pursuing a recall campaign against Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount, (pictured) for his decision to kill Senate Bill 562, the Healthy California Act. Los Angeles activist Steve Elzie is a lead organizer.

The California Nurses Association last month paid for two mailers to be sent to constituents in Rendon’s Los Angeles County district blasting him for “holding health care hostage” and “protecting politicians, not people’s health care.” The mailers urged constituents to complain to Rendon’s offices over the decision, but did not advocate a recall.

That decision may reflect that CNA President RoseAnn DeMoro – who initially led the criticism of Rendon – has realized how difficult it would be to ultimately remove him from office.

Obtaining the 20,000-plus signatures needed to trigger a recall election might not be much of a problem, given that single-payer champion Bernie Sanders got 44 percent and 48 percent of the vote in the June 2016 Democratic presidential primary in California’s 38th and 47th Congressional Districts, respectively. The districts cover much of Rendon’s 63rd Assembly District district which includes parts or all of Commerce, Bell, Lynwood, Paramount and Lakewood.

But Rendon has gotten at least 69 percent of the vote in his three Assembly bids. He also has more than $1.2 million in his campaign war chest and has the support of other influential unions, meaning ready access to more donations and help campaigning.

Rendon killed SB562 because he said it failed to adequately identify how it would pay its $400 billion in annual costs to provide health care to every Californian.

‘Berniecrat’ still won’t accept loss in party chair vote

The other flap pitting the party establishment against “Berniecrats” also flared this week when Bay Area political organizer Kimberly Ellis launched a new salvo over her narrow loss for state party chairman to Eric Bauman, a nurse who has long been a fixture in Los Angeles County Democratic politics and was deputy to the last state chair, former Congressman John Burton.

At May’s state Democratic convention in Sacramento, Bauman held off a late surge from the lesser-known Ellis to win 51 percent to 49 percent. Ellis immediately challenged what she said were election irregularities, leading to a July recount in which 47 of about 3,000 ballots were thrown out but Bauman’s margin of victory was unchanged.

Ellis and her fellow Sanders’ supporters, however, still don’t accept the results.

On Tuesday, she called on the California Democratic Party to accept binding arbitration to determine who really won the May election. She hinted it was the only way the party could head off a lawsuit that she suggested last month was forthcoming if she were unhappy with how party officials handled her appeal, which continues this month with a hearing of the Democratic Party credentialing committee.

California Democratic Party spokesman Mike Roth said the party would stick to its rules, which don’t provide for arbitration.

“Ms. Ellis is now deep in her own end zone and throwing a desperate Hail Mary pass in hopes of changing the outcome of an election that she lost fair and square,” Roth said.

But Ellis’ “Vote for Kimberly” website remains unchanged and continues to feature sharp – if indirect – criticisms of Bauman for allegedly close ties to corporate interests.

While maintaining a marked edge in legislative representation across the state, California Democrats notched a different but familiar distinction against Republicans in the 2016 election cycle, new data showed. Consistent with the results of previous races since the implementation of the so-called “jungle primary” law, Democrats spent far more in intra-party primary races than did GOP candidates. The pattern also held in contests for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. 

High-cost competition

Under the current primary system, all registered voters can participate in a single “open” primary including all candidates regardless of party identification. The top two vote winners then square off in a general run-off election. Last year, according to tabulations made by Forward Observer, Democrats spent a total of $91,518,355 on 23 same-party races – 11 in the state Assembly, five in the state Senate and seven in the House, for an average of $3,979,059 per race. That compared starkly to the $2,784,596 spent by Republicans over four same-party races for state Assembly seats, an average of just $696,149. 

Fundraising among the two parties reflected the lopsided totals. Altogether, the Democrat candidates contending for the 11 Assembly seats “raised $49.4 million including independent expenditures, for an average of approximately $4.5 million per race,” Forward Observer noted. 

Among Democrats vying for one of the five same-party state Senate seats up for grabs last year, “candidates raised $23.3 million including independent expenditures, for an average of approximately $4.6 million per race,” while those pursuing one of the seven same-party races for seats in the House of Representatives “raised $33.9 million including independent expenditures, for an average of $2.7 million per race.” 

Unexpected consequences

For Democrats, therefore, the cost of winning seats has climbed steadily under the nonpartisan blanket primary system passed as Proposition 14 by California voters in 2010 – increasing by about $3 million from 2012 to 2014, then by more than $37 million from 2014 to 2016.

“Since the first implementation of Prop. 14 in the 2012 election cycle, there have been a total of 80 same-party races in California for seats in the state Senate, Assembly and U.S. House of Representatives – 60 races between Democrats and 20 between Republicans,” the Forward Observer report summarized. “In total, Democrats have spent a total of $197.4 million on same-party races since Prop. 14 first went into effect in 2012, compared to $34.5 million spent by Republicans. Democrats have thus spent $5.72 on same-party races for every dollar spent or raised by Republicans.”

Prop. 14 was billed as a way to help ensure greater quality and competition among candidates without regard to party affiliation and, implicitly, with a mitigating effect on large campaign war chests. But for Democrats, the new system has had the more pronounced effect on pitting party members against one another at cost – neither clearing the field for dominant candidates who can win clean or uncontested victories on the cheap, nor giving upstart or insurgent candidates a clear opportunity to shift power away from established or establishment-backed contenders. “In nine of the 28 same-party races in 2012 election cycle, the second-place primary finisher won in the general election,” the report noted. “In six of the 25 races same-party races in the 2014 election cycle, the second primary finisher won.” Showing a similarly disproportionate ratio, second-placers scored general election victories in just six of the 2016 cycle’s 27 same-party races.

In fact, over the past three election cycles, primary winners have fared better and better on the whole against their second-place rivals, whether despite their increased campaign fundraising and spending or because of it. The ratio of victorious second-placers decreased from nearly a third to about a fourth to just over a fifth. 

Perceived as the most vulnerable of the legislative Democrats who passed Gov. Jerry Brown’s gas and vehicle tax package by a razor-thin margin, freshman state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, faced an intensifying campaign to turn him out of office, potentially depriving his party of the two-thirds majority that allowed them to pass Brown’s infrastructure bill in the first place. 

Targeted politics

“State election officials formally approved the recall campaign against Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton on [May 8]. The recall is promoted by radio hosts Karl DeMaio of KOGO in San Diego and John and Ken of KFI in Los Angeles,” noted the Associated Press. “Recall organizers have until Oct. 16 to collect signatures from 63,593 voters.” 

Newman was singled out thanks to his narrow victory last year, in a district Republicans held before and believe they can reclaim with voter frustration on their side.” After besting favored Democrat Sukhee Kang last June, Newman squeaked out a surprise 3,185-vote win over Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang in November,” the Orange County Register reported.

“The seat had been held by termed-out Republican Bob Huff and the win gave Democrats the two-thirds majority they needed to pass tax increases without a single GOP vote. They took advantage of that on April 6, passing a $52-billion transportation package to be paid for by increased gas and vehicle registration fees. While there was one Democratic defection in the Senate, Democrats picked up the support of Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Modesto, in exchange for $500 million in projects for his district.”

High stakes, big names

Although sinking Newman would be victory enough, DeMaio set his sights on breaking the two-thirds supermajority in Sacramento with room to spare. “After Newman is gone, DeMaio and his allies hope to pick off other Democrats, even those in rock-solid Democratic districts,” wrote Steven Greenhut at the Register. “He’s more than happy to help replace tax-supporting Democrats with those who oppose these transportation-tax increases. In fact, he doesn’t see this as a partisan issue at all, but as a ‘working-class families’ issue. And he doesn’t care who replaces Newman or others, as long as the new legislator opposes these increases.”

“No doubt, if Newman is bounced and the political lions start circling another vulnerable legislator, we might see a change in strategy within the Capitol herd. For now, Democrats and their interest groups are trying to protect Newman, as evidenced by recent comments by Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon. This is an important seat for them given the implications for their supermajority, which is why even former President Barack Obama endorsed Newman in the November race.”

Lending an additional hand was Gov. Jerry Brown himself, who helped shore up Newman’s shaky fortunes by throwing a special event for the lawmaker. Brown “thinks it is unfair that some activists are trying to recall Newman for his vote favoring an increase in gas taxes to pay for road repairs,” the Los Angeles Times reported, citing top aide Nancy McFadden. “The Brown camp also is skeptical that opponents of the gas tax bill will be able to carry out their threat of qualifying an initiative to repeal Senate Bill 1 but are prepared to do battle if it makes the ballot.”

“It is unusual for him to do an individual legislator’s fundraiser because if he did one he would have do to lots, but Josh is under unfair attack and so the governor wants to make sure he knows that he’s got his back – that’s why he is stepping out and doing this for him,” McFadden said.