Instead, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, put out a perfunctory statement emphasizing that any such drilling would be subject to “stringent” and “overlapping” state rules as well as federal rules. And Golden State environmentalists and elected leaders pointed to all the different tools with which California could thwart the Trump administration initiative.

The most obvious is that the State Lands Commission controls and has long-established authority over the first three miles off California’s coast. No energy exploration company will pursue an offshore drilling project without certainty that it can get the oil or natural gas it pumps to refineries and related infrastructure onshore. Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, and Sen. Hannah Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, announced that they are preparing legislation to forbid the Lands Commission from approving new pipelines or infrastructure related to new offshore drilling. If the state of California blocks the construction of pipelines offshore and needed facilities onshore, offshore drilling isn’t economically feasible.

Former Coastal Commission lawyer sees plan as ‘grandstanding’

The huge obstacles led Ralph Faust, former general counsel for the California Coastal Commission, to tell the Los Angeles Times that the Trump administration’s plan “just seems like grandstanding.”

The Coastal Commission also has tools that give it a potential veto over what is happening in the federally controlled waters beyond three miles from shore – if it finds federally sanctioned actions are incompatible with the state’s offshore management plan. The federal courts have at times sided with states and at times with Washington when such claims are made.

While California is the third-largest oil-producing state in the United States – after Texas and North Dakota – its untapped potential has frustrated energy exploration companies for decades. No new offshore drilling, such as the facility off the Santa Barbara coast that is pictured on this post, has been approved in more than 30 years.

On land, some geologists think there are vast amounts of oil in the Monterey shale – a massive underground area along the Central California coast and inland – that could be recovered with fracking. Similar finds have yielded billions of dollars for oil exploration firms and substantial new tax revenues in North Dakota, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But while Gov. Jerry Brown initially seemed intrigued by the possibility of drilling in the Monterey shale after taking office in 2011, his interest disappeared after the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2014 decision to sharply reduce estimates of recoverable oil under the Golden State.

Florida’s request for exception quickly granted; California gripes ignored

Instead of grandstanding, as the former Coastal Commission counsel suggested, it’s also possible that the Trump administration and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke are trolling Gov. Jerry Brown and other Democratic leaders in the deep-blue Golden State.

On Tuesday, Zinke announced he was dropping plans to lease drilling sites off Florida at the request of the state’s governor, Rick Scott, a Republican.

Zinke has offered no comment on the far more vociferous objections to his offshore drilling plan from California’s top elected officials.

Democrats are halfway there as the last barrier between them and a two-thirds majority in the Assembly officially crumbled on Tuesday, after the Associated Press determined Democrat Sabrina Cervantes had knocked off Republican incumbent Eric Linder in the Inland Empire.

But to completely enjoy the benefits of a supermajority, Democrats will have to win one more seat in the Senate as well, which means Democrat Josh Newman has to overcome a several thousand vote deficit against Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang.

Currently, Chang leads Newman by about 3,600 votes, a number that changes daily as ballots are still being counted. On Wednesday, Chang’s lead was around 5,000 votes.

The district is split between Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, with Orange having the largest swath of voters. Orange County estimates that there are still 162,778 ballots left uncounted countywide out of 374,397 post-Election Day. 

To get a supermajority, Democrats needed to flip two seats in the Assembly and one in the Senate. Republican Assemblyman David Hadley was already deemed to have lost to former Democratic Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi in a Torrance-area district, which, along with Linder’s loss, gave Democrats the desired two-thirds in the Assembly.

If Chang falls too, Democrats would have the power to increase taxes, override gubernatorial vetoes (which rarely happens) and change legislative rules without Republican votes.

But down the ballot, 10 things stood out.

• Nearly 50,000 people voted for Roger Hernandez, a termed-out Democratic assemblyman from West Covina who had been running for Congress until he suspended his campaign after he was placed under a domestic violence restraining order and was stripped of his committee assignments.

• Congressman Darrell Issa seems to have won re-election. Although it’s still close and the Los Angeles Times had not yet called the race, Issa maintains a nearly 4,000-vote lead over Democrat Doug Applegate. This isn’t noteworthy because Issa was vulnerable and squeaked out a win. It was noteworthy because Issa, the richest member of Congress, wasn’t seen as vulnerable. The Vista Republican, in his 15th year in Congress, has been one of the most high-profile Republicans over the last few years as a constant thorn in the side of the Obama administration. But as national money started flowing to Applegate and an endorsement of Donald Trump appeared to be weighing Issa down, the race tightened.  

• As long as these results hold, Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, will be the only incumbent in California’s 53-person congressional delegation to lose. Fellow Democrat, Ro Khanna of Fremont, finished what he started in 2014, when he first challenged Honda.

• A reminder that California is not as uniformly progressive as it often seems: Voters upheld the death penalty as the maximum sentence for murder. Even more surprising is that a measure to speed up death penalty appeals is clinging to a two-point lead in the returns.

• Republicans appear to have held their seats in the state Senate, beating back a Democratic supermajority. Everything hinges on a Southern California district that extends from Cypress to West Covina to Chino Hills, where Republican Ling Ling Chang, a sitting assemblywoman, is holding an almost two-point lead over Democrat Josh Newman. 

• But in the Assembly, Republicans lost three seats, dipping below one-third of the chamber. In the Los Angeles South Bay, David Hadley was knocked out by former Democratic Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi. In Orange County, Young Kim trails former Democratic Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva. And in the Inland Empire, Eric Linder is losing to Sabrina Cervantes.

• While no Senate incumbents of either party were defeated, five incumbent Assembly members either lost or trail. That includes the Republicans, Linder, Kim and Quirk-Silva, along with two Democrats who lost intraparty challenges. Cheryl Brown, the Inland Empire incumbent, lost to Eloise Reyes in a proxy war between environmentalists and unions that opposed Brown and Big Oil and charter schools that supported her. In the San Fernando Valley, Patty Lopez was ousted after the Democratic Party endorsed her challenger, former Democratic Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, who also had major support from outside business interests.

• Orange County, the traditional Republican stronghold, voted for Hillary Clinton for president. According to The Orange County Register, the county hadn’t supported a Democrat for president since the Great Depression. That result reflects a consistent slide in Republican registration in the county, which has persisted for decades.

• Speaking of Orange County, Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez lost her home county in the U.S. Senate race by 9.6 points. Sanchez has represented Orange County in Congress since she was first elected in 1996.

• And speaking of the U.S. Senate race, more that 1.1 million people sat it out. The race made headlines after the June primary, when no Republicans advanced to the general election — a byproduct of the state’s relatively new primary system where the top two candidates advance regardless of party. Sanchez lost to Attorney General Kamala Harris, a fellow Democrat.

With a supermajority, Democrats would be able to increase taxes, override gubernatorial vetoes and send measures to the ballot without Republican support. Democrats need two seats in the Assembly and one in the Senate in order to hold a supermajority — both chambers are a must.

Holding in the Senate

Around 2 a.m., Republicans were holding their seats in the Senate. The biggest question mark was the Southern California seat held by Bob Huff, the termed-out, former Republican leader. However, Republican Assemblywoman Ling Ling Chang led Democrat Josh Newman, 51.6 percent to 46.4.

But Republicans were behind in their best chance to pickup in the Senate, in the seat held by termed-out Sen. Carol Liu, D-La Cañada Flintridge, where Mike Antonovich, a termed-out Los Angeles County supervisor, trailed Democratic former Assemblyman Anthony Portantino by almost nine percentage points.

Losing in the Assembly

In the Assembly, Democrats were ahead in a few competitive interparty races. In the Los Angeles South Bay, Republican Assemblyman David Hadley trailed the man he knocked out of office in 2014, Al Muratsuchi, by almost seven points.

In another rematch from 2014, Young Kim, the Orange County Republican incumbent, trailed Sharon Quirk-Silva by just a few hundred votes. 

Democratic challenger Sabrina Cervantes had a slight, two-point lead over Eric Linder, the Republican incumbent, in this south Inland Empire district.

But some Republican incumbents were holding their ground. In yet another rematch, this time in the Antelope Valley, Republican Assemblyman Tom Lackey led Democrat Steve Fox, who Lackey bested in 2014 by 13 points. 

In San Bernardino County, Republican incumbent Marc Steinorth was pulling away from challenger Abigail Medina, a Democrat. Steinorth led by five points.

And Catharine Baker, the only Republican incumbent in the Legislature from the Bay Area, beat back challenger Cheryl Cook-Kallio by nearly a dozen points to retain her seat.  

The Baker seat was considered a the top target for Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount. In fact, President Barack Obama endorsed Baker’s Democratic challenger, Cook-Kallio, as well as three others: Newman, Medina and Muratsuchi. 

None of these competitive seats were called by the time this story was published, so the results may change. We’ll update accordingly. 

It’s what Republicans fear and Democrats embrace: How the controversial presumptive nomination of Donald Trump as the GOP’s presidential candidate will affect races further down the ballot.

Democrats are hoping to tie Trump around the necks of Republican candidates throughout the state, particularly among Latino voters who have so far largely rejected Trump in polling — and the ads are just beginning. 

Democratic PACs announced one such ad yesterday for a coastal congressional race, while another ad has been floating around online for an Assembly seat in Los Angeles County. 

Much of Trump’s strength is derived from his “outsider” status — a strong personality untainted by Washington. He’s mastered the art of winning headlines by making brash statements often seen as anti-immigrant and misogynistic. 

But it’s those outlandish comments that may make it hard to paint a fellow member of the GOP with the same brush, absent an endorsement, which neither of the two attacked candidates have done. 

“The problem for them is Trump is not transferable that way,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant who specializes in Latino issues. “No one believes someone is a Trump Republican. Trump’s whole rise is that he’s not a typical Republican nor a typical politician. Very little evidence to suggest this will work.”

Ads

The House Majority PAC and CHC BOLD PAC are spending almost $300,000 in an ad campaign attacking Republican Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian as a Trump-like, anti-immigrant demagogue.

The ad supports Democrat Salud Carbajal. Both men are running to replace the retiring Democratic Congresswoman Lois Capps in a district that runs from Santa Barbara to north of Morro Bay. 

The district is more than one-third Latino, but has a close partisan split — Democrats have 39.79 percent of registered voters to Republicans’ 33.65 percent, with 22.87 percent declining to state. 

In Los Angeles County’s South Bay, former Democratic Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi is trying attacks like www.hadleytrump.com against the man who knocked him out of the Legislature in 2014, Republican David Hadley. Slightly different than the Achadjian ad, Muratsuchi is attacking Hadley for not denouncing Trump.

Hadley won by only 1 percent of the vote in the 21-percent Latino district. Democrats have nearly an 8 percent voter registration advantage, with 22.74 percent declining to state a preference. 

“These ads are exactly what Trump exposes Republicans to in swing districts,” said GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, who launched a campaign to stop a Trump nomination earlier this year. “Hadley’s answer is savvy though. I’m not convinced there’s a huge liability for ‘refusing to denounce’ him in general. But Trump will surely get trounced in (Hadley’s) district.”

Polling

A Field Poll last month showed 83 percent of Latino voters in the state had an unfavorable view of Trump, with even 69 percent of white voters having an unfavorable view (which is the most favorable of all the ethnicities).

And tying a candidate to an unpopular figure is a successful technique, to the extent that it can drive voter turnout. In 1996, President Bill Clinton tied his Republican challenger, Sen. Bob Dole, to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The Trump connection will be successful to the extent that it can drive voter turnout. 

“When it comes to motivating Hispanic turnout, Trump is the greatest gift that Democrats could want,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.