O.C. congresswoman running for top post in the House

Good morning! Happy Tuesday. Let’s dig in with some news from Washington: Congresswoman Mimi Walters is preparing a run for a high-ranking spot in House Republican leadership, the Irvine Republican confirmed on Monday.

The House Republican chair position is not yet vacant, but with Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers reportedly close to being selected to head the Interior Department in the Trump administration, Walters is locking up support for the #4 spot.

Walters lauded McMorris Rodgers’ “tireless” work on behalf of both her constituents and fellow Republicans, confirmed her own intentions to run for the post if and when it becomes available and said she’d already been seeking support.

“I am humbled by the support I have received in preliminary conversations, and I look forward to speaking with all the members of our Conference,” Walters said.

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• Water: “California’s beleaguered farmers had their hopes for a better 2017 rekindled as landmark water legislation delayed for years finally passed Congress. But the political cost to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a key supporter, has been high, with outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer digging in her heels against the bill and pushing for White House opposition. The strife has underscored the difficulty California Democrats have had in smoothing over internal disagreements over core policy issues that have risen to the surface of contention after years of all but one-party rule in the state.” CalWatchdog has more. 

• Another Republican woman on the rise: “The California Republican Party has picked Kristin Olsen, a former assemblywoman from Modesto, to be its vice chair.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• More bills coming: “Just minutes after taking the oath of office last week, new and returning members of the California Assembly received an early holiday gift, one that no lawmakers in Sacramento have been given for more than two decades. They’ll be able to write more bills, an extra allotment totaling as many as 800 new pieces of legislation that could circulate through the state Capitol before the next election in 2018.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

• Women: “At the start of a new legislative season, the number of female elected officials in the state Capitol has dropped to 27 of a total of 120, down from a peak of 37 in 2006. That’s a sharp contrast to Los Angeles County, where the Board of Supervisors, representing the nation’s most populous county, recently installed its first female “supermajority” in history. And just days after four women took their place on the five-member board, the body began tackling a number of key women’s issues.” Politico has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone till January.

Gov. Brown:

• In Coronado at 9:30 a.m. From event announcement: “Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. will join regional leaders from around the world tomorrow in Coronado to launch the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification, which will work to protect coastal communities and economies from the effects of rising ocean acidity.”

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California’s beleaguered farmers had their hopes for a better 2017 rekindled as landmark water legislation delayed for years finally passed Congress. But the political cost to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a key supporter, has been high, with outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer digging in her heels against the bill and pushing for White House opposition. The strife has underscored the difficulty California Democrats have had in smoothing over internal disagreements over core policy issues that have risen to the surface of contention after years of all but one-party rule in the state. 

“A rough five years in the making, the $558 million bill approved by the Senate early Saturday morning steers more water to farmers, eases dam construction, and funds desalination and recycling projects,” McClatchy reported. For state farmers, the bill promised a greater inflow of water from Delta pumps, drought relief and a dose of federalism.

Curtis Creel, Water Agency General Manager for Kern County, told Bakersfield Now the rule requiring an increased role for state and local officials mattered most. “It instructs the (Federal) Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate with state and local agencies who have expertise in dealing with science related to the Delta, as well as operations of the water projects,” he approvingly explained. 

For its part, the Golden State has stuck to a neutral position for now. “In California, the state’s Natural Resources Agency is staying out of the fray and declined comment on the bill,” according to the San Jose Mercury News. 

Long wait

Central Valley farmers have held out for measures like the water bill’s for decades. “All sides agree the California water package marks the biggest federal shift in the state’s water use since the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act, which focused more on protecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,” McClatchy noted. “Farmers hated the CVPIA but, in a mirror image of this year’s water bill, it was included in a bigger package that rolled right over one of the state’s protesting senators.”

“The Republican senator who was left standing alone in fighting the 1992 bill, John Seymour, was subsequently defeated by Feinstein. One of the other big losers in that earlier legislative fight, the Westlands Water District, is among the victors in this year’s bill, after spending more than $1 million on lobbying in the last two years.”

Democrats divided

In an ironic twist, Feinstein herself has now found herself at the center of controversy among fellow Democrats. In the unusual position of defending her decision against environmentalist fears, “Feinstein’s office claimed that the legislation does not violate the Endangered Species Act, because it contains a ‘savings clause’ that dictates that nothing in the provision shall violate the act,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “House Democratic aides countered that the courts have ruled that direct instructions from Congress, in this case on how much water can be pumped from rivers, always supersede more general clauses declaring that nothing in the legislation violate bedrock environmental law.” Boxer has suggested that the legislation’s fate will have to be settled in the courts. 

But the momentum in Washington favors its passage, even with President Obama’s cautious disapproval of its current language. Through his press secretary Josh Earnest, President Obama declined to throw Feinstein a political lifeline, but did little to shore up Boxer’s position. “Based on what we know so far, we don’t support the kinds of proposals that have been put forward to address some of the water resources issues in California right now,” Earnest said, as CalWatchdog previously noted. “So, we don’t support that measure that’s being put forward, but we’ll take a look at the bill in its totality.” But the White House did not raise the prospect of a veto — possibly managing expectations in the face of strong support in Congress for the bill’s broad infrastructure reform. 

Poll: State higher education is too darn expensive

Good morning! TGIF. Californians are concerned over the cost of the state’s public colleges and universities, just as two of the state’s three higher-education systems are considering tuition increases.

In fact, only 13 percent of Californians say it’s not a problem, while 57 percent say it’s a big problem, according to a poll released Thursday night by the Public Policy Institute of California. 

Just below half of Californians think affordability is the biggest issue facing California’s higher-education systems, while only 15 percent think quality is the top problem. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “President Obama has decided to side with Sen. Barbara Boxer and California environmentalists in their battle with Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Republicans over Golden State water policy,” writes CalWatchdog. 

• “Following the election, Baird, a leader of a longstanding and improbable effort by several Northern California counties to secede from California, warned fellow property owners about water-related environmental policies he feared ‘are going to heat up’ in the spring. Meanwhile, Baird was preparing to sue the state over its dearth of lawmakers representing rural, sparsely populated counties. The effort is a longshot, but the sentiment underpinning it reflects lingering discord between California’s heavily Democratic population centers and more conservative, rural areas of the state. As California marches on Trump, Republicans in the state’s interior are hunkering down.” Politico has more. 

• “Monday’s legislative swearing-in ceremonies made it official: Democrats had restored their two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature. The achievement rested heavily on millions of special-interest dollars moving to and from political party campaign committees, state filings show, effectively avoiding candidate contribution limits and obscuring the true source of the money.” The Sacramento Bee has more. 

• “For decades, some Malibu property owners have made it hard for the public to reach public beaches. On Thursday, the California Coastal Commission fined two of those property owners more than $5.1 million for denying surfers, sand castle builders, kite flyers, sun bathers, yoga enthusiasts and other beachgoers access to the sand that is theirs by state law.” The Los Angeles Times has more. 

Legislature:

• Gone till December. 

Gov. Brown: 

• No public events scheduled. 

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Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

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President Obama has decided to side with Sen. Barbara Boxer and California environmentalists in their battle with Sen. Dianne Feinstein and House Republicans over Golden State water policy.

On Monday, Feinstein announced that she had reached agreement with legislative leaders to place a provision providing $588 million for California water storage, desalination and recycling projects into the massive omnibus infrastructure bill that’s expected to pass Congress by year’s end. The deal also included a change in water allocation rules that would take some supplies away from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and give it to Central Valley farmers temporarily for five years.

The announcement prompted relief among Central Valley politicians, who had been fighting for just such changes for years only to be turned back by Senate Democrats.

Reflecting this history, Boxer — in her final month as a California senator — was the sharpest critic of Feinstein’s compromise. She said the deal threatened the health of the delta and could harm the salmon fishing industry and kill off the endangered Delta smelt.

But hopes that the logjam might have been broken blew up Tuesday when the Obama administration revealed it shared Boxer’s objections to the California provision.

“Based on what we know so far, we don’t support the kinds of proposals that have been put forward to address some of the water resources issues in California right now,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said, according to McClatchy News. “So, we don’t support that measure that’s being put forward, but we’ll take a look at the bill in its totality.”

Prospects for water changes strong under Trump

This could doom the proposal in the short term. But given how popular the omnibus infrastructure has been in recent weeks among lawmakers eager for a big legislative triumph, it may pass over an Obama veto.

Whatever happens in the next six weeks, on Jan. 20, when Donald Trump takes over as president, the Central Valley is likely to have the most sympathetic president it’s had in the 50 years since the environmental movement began racking up victory after victory in Congress and the courts.

Trump made appearances in the Central Valley in May and August, the first time for a rally in Fresno and the second for a fundraiser in Tulare. At the rally, he expressed contempt for policies that he said favored fish over human needs. He also appears to have a good relationship with Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, who has been among the loudest critics of state and federal water policies’ effects on the Central Valley.

Nunes was reportedly under consideration for secretary of agriculture in the days after Trump’s surprise Nov. 8 election, but his name hasn’t been heard as much in recent days.

The favorite for the job may now be former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who recently met with Trump about the position. Perdue, like Nunes, is often skeptical of heavy environmental regulation and comes from a state that has often balked at global warming activism.

Pensions cost taxpayers billions, but weren’t supposed to 

Good morning. Hope y’all had a good weekend. There’s a really interesting story in the Los Angeles Times today about a pension-improvement bill signed by then-Governor Gray Davis and how much the measure is costing taxpayers, despite the sales pitch almost two decades ago that it would pay for itself.

“Proponents sold the measure in 1999 with the promise that it would impose no new costs on California taxpayers. The state employees’ pension fund, they said, would grow fast enough to pay the bill in full.

“They were off — by billions of dollars — and taxpayers will bear the consequences for decades to come.

“This year, state employee pensions will cost taxpayers $5.4 billion, according to the Department of Finance. That’s more than the state will spend on environmental protection, fighting wildfires and the emergency response to the drought combined. …

“Today, the difference between what all California government agencies have set aside for pensions and what they will eventually owe amounts to $241 billion, according to the state controller.

“Davis, who was elected in 1998 with more than $5 million in campaign contributions from public employee unions, says that if he had it to do over, he would not support the pension improvements.

“’If you’re asking me, with everything I’ve learned in the last 17 years, would I have signed SB400 … no, I would not have signed it,” Davis, now 73, said in a recent interview at his Century City law office.'”

The Los Angeles Times has more. 

In other news:

• “A lawsuit served this month against five California Coastal Commissioners could cost them millions of dollars in civil fines if the courts confirm hundreds of alleged transparency rule violations,” reports The San Jose Mercury News.
• “Sneakiness abounded on the last, hectic night of California legislature’s session,” reports The Sacramento Bee. 

• “As cities around the country attempt to regulate the growing home-sharing industry, Airbnb is going on the offensive with a barrage of lawsuits intended to kill local rules it doesn’t like. Airbnb has sued San Francisco, Santa Monica and Anaheim over ordinances that force the company to remove or refuse bookings that violate city laws, and it has threatened to sue the state of New York if a similar bill there is approved.” The San Jose Mercury News has more. 

• “The oddest of Senate odd couples — California Democrat Barbara Boxer and Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe — have accomplished something highly unusual in this bitter election year: significant, bipartisan legislation on the environment that has become law,” reports AP/SF Gate.

Legislature:

• Gone ’til December.

Gov. Brown:

• Continuing his statewide signing tour, Brown will be in Long Beach at 10:30 a.m. to sign a measure fighting “super pollutants.”

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With just a few months remaining in the race to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer, the struggle has sharpened between leading Northern Californian candidate Kamala Harris and the Southland’s Loretta Sanchez. Seeking an edge against her opponent, who’s leading, Sanchez has gone on the attack, drawing Harris into controversies around everything from Donald Trump to their debate schedule. But questions remained as to whether Sanchez would be able to close the gap, at a time when California voters have not been captivated by the race or, according to polls, the candidates. 

The Trump card

When it comes to Trump, a figure immensely unpopular with many California Democrats, it transpired that Harris once received $6,000 in donations from the mogul, but did not follow the lead of other attorneys general in bringing suit against him around allegedly fraudulent practices at Trump University. 

“Trump donated to several state attorneys general in recent years, including New York’s Eric Schneiderman, who filed a lawsuit against the school for ripping off students,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “Harris’ office has also investigated the school, but so far has not filed charges. Several Trump University students filed a still-pending civil suit six years ago, which Sanchez insisted should have been enough for Harris to have immediately rejected Trump’s donations in 2011 and 2013.”

Debating the debates

Meanwhile, as befits a underdog, Sanchez has zeroed in on the prospect of a robust debate schedule as a way to boost name recognition on the cheap and land some high-profile blows against Harris. As the Los Angeles Times noted, Sanchez “wants to have four debates — seeking to double the two proposed by her rival in the November election, Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. The two campaigns traded barbs in early August after the Harris campaign announced she would participate in two forums, including one in Sacramento that Sanchez later rejected. At the time, Sanchez political consultant Bill Carrick criticized the Harris campaign in early August for ‘arrogantly announcing’ her terms.”

With Sanchez looking to Republicans to put her over the top, her need to make a positive impact among a broad and disillusioned audience in a short amount of time has grown acute. Although Sanchez “regularly receives 100 percent ratings from NARAL and Planned Parenthood, and has a lifetime 95 percent rating from the AFC-CIO,” New York Magazine observed, “she doesn’t have much choice” in courting whatever slice of the Golden State GOP electorate she can get. “A recent USC/L.A. Times poll showed Sanchez trailing Harris 30 percent to 16 percent,” the magazine added, “with three-fourths of self-identified Republicans declaring themselves either undecided or unwilling to vote for either of the surviving Democrats.”

Wavering voters

Driven by Republican discontent, California voters as a whole have again shown little enthusiasm for turnout on election day. The USC poll indicated that “16 percent of registered voters, mostly self-described Republicans and independents, have decided to skip the first open U.S. Senate race that California has seen in 24 years — the same percentage of voters who favor Sanchez,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

In today’s volatile campaign climate, however, analysts have cautioned against writing off Sanchez: “More than a third of California voters indicated they still ‘don’t know’ which Senate candidate they’ll pick on Nov. 8, according to the poll,” the Times concluded — a figure that, if it breaks Sanchez’s way in the home stretch, could help produce another upset victory in an election year defined by them. As Thomas Elias recalled at the Los Angeles Daily News, about 40 percent of the electorate was undecided until the final days before the primary” election that landed Sanchez a second-place finish, “just as about 35 percent are similarly perplexed, undecided, uninterested or turned off today. One poll showed 28 percent of voters don’t plan to cast any ballot in this race.” The key difference between the primary and the general election? Unlike this time around, Republicans were able to cast votes for Republicans. 

While the bill received nearly unanimous support in the Legislature — the measure was in response to the Brock Turner case, where the former Stanford University swimmer received a few months in county jail and probation after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman — law and order is a basic tenet of Republican ideology.

“All victims of sexual assault deserve equal treatment regardless of socio-economics, education or immigration status,” the Orange County Congresswoman wrote to Gov. Brown. “However, the reality is that the law can and has failed victims by giving well-connected and affluent predators like Brock Turner an advantage with an alumni judge who will neglect the crime and ultimately disregard the victim.”

In the letter, Sanchez also highlighted her work on the House Armed Services Committee, where she pushed for policies that cracked down on how the military deals with sexual assaults. 

“As the highest-ranking woman on the Armed Services Committee and the founder and chair of the Congressional Women in the Military Caucus, I understand from testimonies that sexual assault can happen anywhere, anytime and by anyone,” Sanchez wrote.

The Times called it

Earlier Thursday morning, the Los Angeles Times published a story headlined: “Hurting for support in her own party, Rep. Loretta Sanchez tilts her Senate campaign to the right.” Only a few hours later the letter to Brown was released to the news media. 

Sanchez has made it no secret that she is hoping to ride a coalition of Latinos, some Democrats, independents and Republicans to victory over the Democratic establishment candidate, Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is the frontrunner. There is no Republican in the race as the two women seek to replace Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, who is retiring. 

Sanchez has drawn several high-profile Republican endorsements. And the Times article focused on recent boasting of her record against “Islamic extremists” on a conservative radio show, a recent trip to Shasta Lake (in the deeply red, proposed State of Jefferson) to discuss water issues and a joint appearance at Camp Pendleton with conservative firebrand Darrell Issa, the Vista congressman. 

Mark Petracca, chair of the Department of Political Science at UC Irvine, said the play to the right seems “desperate” and is “highly unlikely” to work for fears of Republican undervoting.

“It’s intended to attract GOP voters who do not have a dog in the fight,” Petracca said. “(GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump) is losing the state right now at least handily and there’s no excitement at the top of the ticket to mobilize GOP voters on Election Day. Is Loretta going to get them out to vote for her? Highly unlikely.”

Will it work?

In fact, of all the groups she’s hoping to win, she’s only performing strongly among Latinos, although there’s plenty of time to change that as the campaign ramps up. Harris led among the rest, according to a July poll from the Public Policy Institute of California.

However, Sanchez has a history of upsets. Sanchez was first elected to Congress two decades ago after defeating Republican Congressman Bob Dornan, who was heavily favored. But Sanchez walks a fine line now, trying to win Republicans while not alienating Latinos and Democrats in an extremely partisan era when the space between the two sides widens each day.

California Republicans emerged from a bruising primary election day without a candidate in the runoff race to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer — triggering an unprecedented new political calculus in which GOP voters will be courted by the underdog Democrat. “Democratic Orange County Rep. Loretta Sanchez survived Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary election, but finished so far behind front-runner Kamala Harris that her chances of a surprise victory in November may depend on a disparate patchwork of California voters, including a bevy of Republicans,” the Los Angeles Times noted. 

“Out of a field of 34 Senate candidates, Harris won 40.4 percent of the vote Tuesday compared with Sanchez’s 18.6 percent. The Democratic state attorney general bested Sanchez in all but five of California’s 58 counties and almost beat the congresswoman in her home county, according to preliminary election returns.”

Although a range of factors compounded to create the disappointing result, California’s newfangled “jungle primary” system bore primary responsibility. The arrangement, pitched via Proposition 14 “as a way to force politicians to campaign toward voters in the middle rather than at the extremes,” appeared instead to pull the electorate to the left, not the middle, as the San Jose Mercury News reported: 

“GOP candidates failed to advance in many of the Bay Area’s premiere contests as well as the race for the Golden State’s first open U.S. Senate seat in more than two decades. Two Democrats will compete in that contest as well as the races to represent the 14th Assembly District, which covers northern Contra Costa and southern Solano counties, the 24th Assembly District, which straddles San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the 27th Assembly District, which covers most of south San Jose and the Evergreen area, among others.”

In at least some instances, however, these bad-news outcomes for the state GOP will come with a perverse silver lining. “With Democrats Sanchez and Harris squaring off for the Senate seat, Republicans will have no one other than Trump at the top of their ticket. And his presence will ripple to every congressional, state Senate and Assembly race,” the Sacramento Bee’s Dan Morain surmised. “You could have historic low turnout for Republicans,” one Democratic consultant told Morain, having blown his prediction that at least one Republican would make it onto the ballot for Senate in November. During an election cycle when long-festering disagreements among Democrats could have presented some problems in the voting booth, Trump’s potential to disorganize and demoralize California Republicans has restored confidence among party leaders. But Republicans desperate to avoid being tarred with Trump’s brush will be spared in districts where they’re not fielding a candidate thanks to the jungle primary.

California Republicans could also find themselves with a paradoxical opportunity to find common ground with Latino voters. Both blocs, analysts have agreed, are especially inclined to throw their support toward Sanchez and away from Harris. Latinos have more than ethnic affinity at play in their preference for Sanchez: California’s longstanding geographic divide has left Southern Californians, including many Latinos, without as much influence in and around Sacramento as Bay Area Democrats. 

But in addition to the opportunity to pull the lever for Sanchez, Latinos have also been projected to turn out in droves for another reason. “Latino voter registration in California has nearly doubled this year, according to the secretary of state’s office,” the New York Times observed. “Many believe those newly registered voters will turn out on Tuesday, driven in large part by anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump. In a poll released in late May, Ms. Sanchez had the support of roughly 48 percent of Latinos, compared with 19 percent for Ms. Harris.”

Although Trump won California’s Republican primary, party leaders generally fear his impact on their political fortunes. In joining forces with Latinos for Sanchez, the state GOP would gain a chance to rebuild bridges Trump could otherwise destroy.

The state’s primary system pushes the top two candidates into the general election, regardless of party. As it stands now, Republicans will likely be out of the running after next Tuesday when voters submit their ballots.

If Republicans could coalesce around one candidate, they’d have a shot at one candidate making the November runoff. Republican candidates account for 20 percent of the vote among likely voters, with Sanchez, of Santa Ana, polling at 14 percent. 

However, the five highest-polling Republican candidates are between three and four percent a piece, with each having little incentive to drop out in favor of another. And none of the Republican candidates are well known and have raised little money to increase their name ID.  

“Republicans probably wish that someone could clear the field and unite the party behind one candidate,” said John J. Pitney, Jr., a Roy P. Crocker professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College. “But nobody has that power.” 

Harris leads with 30 percent, having the backing of the California Democratic Party. But a large percentage of respondents are undecided —  27 percent said they either hadn’t made up their minds or are not voting — meaning a lot can happen on Tuesday.

Top Two

The top-two system, approved by voters in 2010, theoretically favors more moderate candidates by removing partisan primaries.

While Sanchez is widely viewed as the more centrist candidate, as one of the few remaining members of the fiscally-conservative Blue Dog Democrat coalition, Harris has nearly double the support among those who have declined to state a party preference, 16 percent and 32 percent, respectively.

But neither Harris nor Sanchez are polling well with Republicans, five percent and four percent, respectively. It’s unclear which way voters would lean after June, once the field narrows.

“It’s always a fallacy to extrapolate from a primary to tell what’ll happen in the general,” said Democratic strategist Garry South, who is not working with any of the candidates.

Voters want a dealmaker 

Another poll from last week showed 69 percent of voters prefer someone who “is willing to make compromises to get legislature passed over one who holds true to their beliefs without compromise.”

Despite her liberal philosophy and voting record, Boxer long ago mastered the art of legislating. Even at a time when Congress is getting little done, she managed to broker a deal last year on a highway bill with her ideological opposite, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.

Harris does not have legislative experience for voters to draw from. Sanchez has run heavily on her reputation as a dealmaker, having made Congressional Quarterly’s recent list of the 25 most influential women in Washington, for being a “debate shaper and swing vote.”

With her legislative abilities, Sanchez changed how sexual assaults in the military are reported and tracked, thereby increasing accountability and consistently helped secure federal funding for Orange County’s groundwater replenishment system which provides water to millions of residents.

Yet the polls show voters still turning to Harris in larger numbers. South attributed this to Harris’ statewide name recognition, compared to Sanchez’s limited reach to mainly within her congressional district.

“She is a representative of one of the 53 seats in California, nobody knows her in the other 52,” South said, adding that a Democrat on Democrat race in the general could change the dynamic. 

Republicans

Arguably the two most well-known Republicans in the race are two former state party chairmen, Tom Del Beccaro and Duf Sundheim. Ron Unz, who ran for governor against fellow Republican Governor Pete Wilson and is an outspoken critic of bilingual education, seemed to raise his profile substantially during the two debates.

None of the three have raised enough money to compete though. Sundheim has raised $621,000, Del Beccaro has raised $365,000 and Unz has raised almost $52,000. All of that is nominal compared to Harris, who has raised almost $10 million, and Sanchez, who has raised $3.5 million.  

In a state with several expensive media markets and without any noteworthy amount of name ID, the financial shortcomings of the Republican candidates is holding them back.

“Nobody knows who any of them are and none have two nickles to rub together,” said South.

Particularly for a seat that’s rated “Safe Democrat” by The Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, Republican donors will largely look to spend money elsewhere on more competitive races. 

“Even if they could get a GOP candidate into the top two, that person would still lose the general election,” said Pitney. “The GOP leadership has to focus its very scarce resources on races it might win.”

A push by current and former sex workers in San Francisco to legalize prostitution has been rebuffed by a California judge.

“Erotic Service Provider Legal, Education & Research Project — a San Francisco-based advocacy group — sued Attorney General Kamala Harris and district attorneys of four counties in March 2015,” Courthouse News reported, “claiming that prosecuting sex that is ‘part of a voluntary commercial exchange between adults’ violates the state and U.S. Constitutions.”

“But U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White on March 31 agreed with the state’s claims that ‘there is no fundamental right to engage in prostitution or to solicit prostitution’ and that ‘any relationship between the prostitute and the client is not expressive association protected by the Constitution.'”

The Harris factor

The case had taken on an added edge as Kamala Harris has forged ahead with her campaign to replace outgoing Sen. Barbara Boxer. White’s ruling came as a relief: his language largely mirrored her own in a brief filed against plaintiffs. “There is no fundamental right to engage in prostitution or to solicit prostitution,” wrote Harris in her motion to dismiss the case, as the Washington Blade recalled. “Neither is prostitution or solicitation expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.” But shortly after Harris filed, the Supreme Court ruled, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that same-sex marriages were constitutionally protected — a decision that plaintiffs sought to use to their advantage against Harris.

In a court brief filed in January, plaintiffs argued that the logic in Obergefell ought to lead to a ruling in their favor. “Plaintiffs commenced this lawsuit to challenge California’s intrusion upon their fundamental liberty interest in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex. Obergefell continues the Supreme Court’s jurisprudential theme of shielding private, sexual relationships from governmental oversight,” they wrote, claiming that the ruling’s treatment of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause “allows individuals to engage in intimate conduct without unwarranted governmental intrusion.”

No protected interest

White rejected that argument. “He said the high court, in the 2003 ruling, disavowed any intention to legalize prostitution,” the San Francisco Chronicle noted, and “cited a 1988 ruling by the federal appeals court in San Francisco that observed the relationship between a paid escort and a client ‘possesses few, if any, of the aspects of an intimate association. It lasts for a short period and only as long as the client is willing to pay the fee.'”

“Established legal authority ‘dictates that the intimate association between a prostitute and client, while it may be consensual and cordial, has not merited the protection of the Due Process Clause,’ which requires the government to follow legal standards when restricting individual liberty, White said.”

White went on to hold that “criminalizing prostitution serves legitimate government interests of promoting public safety and preventing injury and coercion,” according to the Associated Press. Prostitution has been illegal in California since 1872, with a 1961 update increasing the state’s $500 fine to $1,000 — while leaving in place the original punishment of six month’s time in jail. Rounding out his decision, the Chronicle added, White also rejected plaintiffs’ claims that their rights to free expression and to earning a living did not extend to using illegal activity to do so.

Last chance

As has sometimes been the pattern with similarly high-profile lawsuits, the current case could take on a second life through the appeals process. “White gave the group an opportunity to amend its lawsuit,” as the AP noted. “D. Gill Sperlein, an attorney for the group, said he’s not certain he will file an amended lawsuit, but he will appeal the decision.” But the clock has been ticking. If plaintiffs fail to amend their complaint by May 6, Courthouse News observed, White “will dismiss it with prejudice.”