As early ballots arrive in mailboxes this week, Golden State voters will arrive at a symbolic and substantial demographic landmark: a so-called majority-minority electorate. 

“For the first time, non-Latino whites will fall below 50 percent of the state’s eligible voters,” as the California Civic Engagement Project predicted in 2014. “From 1980 to 2014, the state’s Latino and Asian American populations grew by 230 percent and 331 percent, respectively, while the white population fell about 6 percent,” the Orange County Register noted, citing a January report from the Civic Engagement Project. 

Despite a clear trend since the 1990s toward political dominance by Democrats, the longer term implications of the demographic shift have remained shrouded in mystery. On the one hand, in-state Republicans have weathered a period of fracture likely to end eventually in a new but familiar rough equilibrium between the two major parties. On the other hand, nonwhite voting patterns, especially in recent immigrant families, have in some respects had a limited impact on California politics. Many nonwhite residents, according to the Register, “are too young to vote or otherwise not registered. So far, the voter rolls haven’t made the minority-majority jump. A Field Poll found that 59 percent of California’s registered voters are white, down from 83 percent in 1978.” 

Low enthusiasm

Another complicating factor involves voter enthusiasm and turnout. Voter rolls have swelled tremendously, with a surge of new registrations pushing the current total to over 18 million. “The new data show California now has more registered voters than the population of 46 states,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Yet registered voters have not coalesced around a consensus political agenda. “Republicans trailed Democrats in registration by more than 18 percentage points,” the Times continued, but decline-to-state voters, “known in California as those who have ‘no party preference,’ were a close third and made up more than 23 percent of the statewide registration.” 

For Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters alike, showing up at the polls has not always been an easy sell — despite consistent measures from Sacramento designed to make voting as easy and popular as possible. (“In California, no law requires voters to show ID. They soon will be registered to vote automatically. Their vote will be counted even if it shows up three days after the election,” as the Sacramento Bee noted.) Many Democrats have rested easy in the knowledge that their party will prevail even with low turnout. Although Loretta Sanchez would be the first Latina U.S. Senator if elected to replace Barbara Boxer, for instance, her candidacy has not ratcheted up projected turnout in November. Republicans, traditionally more likely to vote, have faced sharp intraparty conflicts in recent years, sometimes leaving state and local elections effectively uncontested. Voters who have soured on both parties, meanwhile, have not always had an opportunity to make a decisive difference in election day outcomes. 

Wedge issues

Nevertheless, the determined push by California officials for de facto amnesty for unlawful and undocumented immigrants has only sharpened as an electoral wedge issue. In Santa Ana, as the New York Times recently observed, transformative changes around immigration have raised political questions even as Latino political power has increased only modestly. “Immigrants living illegally in California are entitled to driver’s licenses. Their children can receive state-funded health insurance. Local law enforcement officials generally do not provide information to federal immigration authorities, as they do in many other parts of the country. On a smaller, if no less symbolic, level, the first thing the Santa Ana City Council did when it went all-Latino in 2006 was pass a law requiring simultaneous translation of all of its meetings to Spanish,” the Times reported. 

“The power and presence of Latinos in this community in Orange County — itself once a bastion of Republicanism — is echoed up and down the California coast. Latinos now make up just under 40 percent of the state’s population, projected to increase to 47 percent by 2050. The leaders of both houses of the Legislature are Latino, as is the secretary of state, the current mayor of Los Angeles and the previous mayor.”

Signaling the depth of California’s uncharted political waters this election season, Richard Riordan, the Republican ex-Mayor of Los Angeles, endorsed Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., to replace outgoing U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. Calling her an “independent thinker,” as the Sacramento Bee noted, Riordan helped fuel Sanchez’s strategy — born of necessity — to rally Republican voters against her powerful opponent, state Attorney General Kamala Harris. Driving the point home, Sanchez vowed to “work with leaders across the aisle” in the Senate should she manage to defeat Harris. 

In a sign of momentum among notable California Republicans, influential radio host Hugh Hewitt followed Riordan’s endorsement by throwing his support behind Sanchez, the first Democrat for whom he has done so. 

Though Riordan has sustained a reputation as something of a maverick within his own party — having endorsed both Dianne Feinstein and Barack Obama — his endorsement of Sanchez came with a harsh assessment of Harris’s “crazy” ideology. “Riordan cited a case in 2008, while Harris served as San Francisco district attorney, when a recently convicted cocaine dealer, Alexander Izaguirre, avoided prison after being accepted into Harris’ ‘Back on Track’ jobs program,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Izaguirre, an immigrant, was in the U.S. illegally. He later stole a woman’s purse and then drove into her with an SUV.”

A difficult balance

The anecdote perhaps unintentionally underscored Sanchez’s challenges in courting Republicans to make up for lost Democrats in her continued bid against Harris. “If Sanchez, a 10-term congresswoman from Orange County, wants to boost her chances of winning in November, she will probably have to do so by forming an unusual coalition of Latinos and Republicans,” the Washington Post noted. “That could be challenging in a year when Donald Trump, whose derogatory comments toward Latinos are widely known, will be at the top of the ballot.” On the other hand, widespread disillusionment with the Trump campaign among many moderate California Republicans — and even some conservatives — could help limit that adverse effect. 

Then again, some research has strongly suggested that not all anti-Trump Republicans can be counted on to line up behind Sanchez, who is generally acknowledged to be closer to the center on many issues than Harris. “In a Field Poll survey a week before the primary, Republicans were split when asked which Democrat they would vote for in November,” the Post added, with 26 percent voicing an interest in Harris and just 25 percent for Sanchez. “Thirty percent of GOP voters volunteered that they would vote for neither.”

Down to turnout

Mere apathy has been cited as yet another problem facing Sanchez, who did not quite hit half of Harris’s 40 percent support in the primary vote. “If Sanchez tries to spike Latino turnout by aggressively going after Donald Trump, she will probably lose the Republicans. If she stays agnostic on the presidential race, Latinos may lose enthusiasm for her campaign. While Sanchez doesn’t have to worry about losing too many Republican votes to Harris, she should worry about Republicans leaving their ballots blank,” John Phillips observed at the Orange County Register. As Republican consultant John Thomas warned, Phillips concluded, driving those already disaffected voters to the polls could well require a greater investment of resources than Sanchez is capable of raising and making. 

The difference, according to some close analysts, could come down to November’s general-election turnout dynamic. “When there is a much larger electorate, with perhaps 1 million more Latino voters statewide, how will Harris fare if she continues to lose the Latino vote to Sanchez by wide margins? This deficit for Harris could prove to be a critical advantage for Sanchez,” argued Adrian Pantoja, Senior Analyst for Latino Decisions, at the Huffington Post. The “new data on Latino voting strength for Sanchez may provide possible donors with a reason to invest in the second-place finisher, especially against the backdrop of possible record Latino turnout in November when Donald Trump is on the ballot,” Pantoja concluded. 

Donald Trump’s primary victory in California came along with a big cost to his campaign, as the presumptive Republican nominee’s sustained attacks and insinuations against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans roiled the Golden State and slowed the party’s move to consolidate around him.

Although Trump has long put his plans for a border wall at the center of his campaign, he recently drew a fresh chorus of criticism for his invective against the judge involved in the highest-profile lawsuit against him. “Trump implied in interviews last week that U.S. district judge Gonzalo Curiel, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrant parents, is unfit to hear a case involving the candidate’s disgraced Trump University because ‘he’s Mexican’ and thus has a conflict of interest due to Trump’s comments about Mexicans during the presidential campaign,” as Vice News recalled.

Drawing fire

In a shift that had even some Trump supporters concerned, the national news media pounced on the Curiel story, aggressively fact-checking Trump’s vague but pointed charges. “Trump said Curiel belonged to a group that is very strongly pro-Mexican. The California La Raza Lawyers Association does advance the interests of the Latino legal community and works on issues that matter in Latino communities more broadly. However, it has stayed on the sidelines in the immigration debate,” PolitiFact noted. “Trump’s statement is accurate only in the sense that the association’s mission aims to support Latinos, but even that is flawed because he said the group was pro-Mexican and the Latino designation reaches a wider set of people. The claim ignores critical facts that would give a very different impression.”

Trump’s charges, which many leading Republicans have decried as race-baiting or worse, also offered California Democrats a cudgel with which to beat their in-state opponents. “Democrats seeking to unseat several Republican members of Congress from California linked the incumbents to Donald Trump,” the Associated Press observed, “hoping to tap discontent with the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in districts with large numbers of Democrats and Latinos.” Although several GOP incumbents survived handily, the state GOP’s nerves frayed further over fears that massive anti-Trump turnout will sink their failing fortunes come November.

Violence from the left

But Trump’s adversaries confronted a public relations mess of their own in his wake, as protests that spiraled into violence fed perceptions among pro-Trump voters that even peaceful rallies will meet with intimidation and physical retaliation. “Donald Trump supporters leaving the presumptive GOP nominee’s rally in San Jose […] were pounced by protesters, some of whom threw punches and eggs,” according to NBC Los Angeles. “The protesters chased and taunted Trump’s supporters outside the San Jose Convention Center. They surrounded one woman and threw eggs and bottles at her.”

Those attacks have now resulted in arrests. Three juvenile males “were accused of taking part in a number of skirmishes between Trump supporters and anti-Trump demonstrators […] outside the San Jose Convention Center,” where Trump was holding one of his trademark rallies, Reuters reported. “Two of the teenagers, aged 16 and 17, face charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon. The third, also 16, faces a misdemeanor battery charge, the San Jose Police Department said in a statement.”

“Four others were arrested during the protests last week. Two 19-year-olds and an 18-year-old face charges of felony assault with a deadly weapon, while another 19-year-old faces a misdemeanor charge of refusal to disperse. It is unclear whether the seven charged were Trump supporters or among the hundreds of protesters who were seen on news clips waving Mexican flags, chanting anti-Trump slogans, and burning Trump hats and at least one U.S. flag.”

Costly California

Nevertheless, with Hillary Clinton opening a bigger lead over Trump in the polls now that she has all but dispatched Bernie Sanders, analysts doubt that Trump can put California electorally in play. Despite his apparent claim to the contrary, as Slate observed, California’s high campaign cost seems prohibitive barring a dramatic change in his fortunes.

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.

With Donald Trump riding high in statewide polls and Bernie Sanders committed to seeing through his youth-fueled campaign all the way to the convention, California has become a large and unlikely test case for how millennials might vote in the general election — both in terms of ideology and simple turnout.

Although anecdotal evidence has shaped a popular view of millennials as a dejected and politically disconnected generation, some data analysis has complicated that picture. 

“Millennials in 2016 are significantly less likely to vote or try to influence others vote than were the ’80s generation in the 1987 survey, or the first wave of postwar baby boomers in 1967,” according to the Washington Post. “But millennials display about the same level of political interest as the youngest generation did in 1987, and millennials contact local government and work with others in the community at essentially the same rates as did youth in the earlier surveys. And today’s youth are likely to get involved in protests or other political confrontations.”

The data and the anecdotes have been in closer accord when it comes to Trump. As the San Francisco Chronicle surmised, “having Trump at the top of the GOP ticket is political uranium, poisoning any hope that California Republicans had of seeming more palatable to women, millennials and Latinos[.]”

Interpreting Trump

But in the Golden State, where the state GOP has steadily lost registered party members to decline-to-state voters, some millennials appeared to be surprisingly willing to consider Trump anyway. The split could echo the kind of divide that has emerged among Republican-voting Latinos. According to polling cited by the Chronicle, “about 26 percent of Latino Republicans back Trump, 33 percent are for Cruz, 4 percent back Ohio Gov. John Kasich, 27 percent are for another candidate or undecided, 6 percent refuse to answer, and 3 percent will not vote.” Millennials interviewed by the Orange County Register “agreed on this: The political system is broken, and partisanship isn’t helping. If shared by others of their generation,” the paper concluded, “that last agreement might matter a lot.” Pro-Trump millennials compared the candidate favorably to “a stick of dynamite” and a way out of “the left-right divide.”

In Santa Clarita — “one of the few strongholds of conservatism in a state dominated by Democrats,” as KQED noted — the network found millennials at the College of the Canyons gravitating toward Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. “The sentiment that is driving students” on the left “to Sanders is turning others,” whom the state GOP might otherwise bank their future hopes on, “toward Donald Trump.”

“As of the end of February, active registrants who were 18 to 29 years old in California made up 17.5 percent of registered voters in the state, according to an analysis by CIRCLE. They are outnumbered by older voters, who tend to vote for more mainstream candidates.”

Republican risk

Influential GOP stalwarts in California have found it hard to surmount the Trump insurgency, with many supporting Ted Cruz. Although the mogul has attracted a significant slice of younger Republicans disillusioned by the party’s national old guard — and the more mainstream candidates that have competed for the GOP nomination — broader trends have painted a picture of a generation with sharply decreasing enthusiasm for Republicans of any stripe. “The GOP is poised to permanently lose a generation of voters, and not (only) because of its odious and uncommonly disliked presidential front-runner,” the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell suggested, referring to Trump. “New survey data suggest that young people have become increasingly averse to just about every plank in today’s creaky Republican Party platform.”

Heavyweight liberals, by contrast, have seized on the energy around Sanders as a way to leverage increased participation in the already Democrat-heavy state. “Young voters have a terrible record for actually going out to the polls, but billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer thinks spending $25 million will change that,” Southern California Public Radio observed. Steyer, one of the Democrats’ biggest spenders, underscored that the cash infusion would be spread across a number of battleground states — which inherently excludes California — but vowed that his organization will “be doing more in California than in any other state.”

Division and disagreement

Falling victim to their extreme dominance in statewide politics, an increasing number of Democrats have sharpened their blades against one another this election season — driving uncomfortable wedges between minority groups that have long formed the bedrock of the Democrats’ broad coalition. “The racial and ethnic overtones of politics in California, the country’s most diverse state, surfaced again last week,” the Sacramento Bee observed. “Two Democratic Assembly incumbents, Mike Gipson and Cheryl Brown, both of whom are black, are facing challenges from Latina opponents within their own party.”

“The challenges to Brown and Gipson are motivated by their stances on environmental legislation, not race. But the prospect of unseating two black incumbents, with African Americans’ share of the state’s population dwindling, stirred concern.”

Elsewhere, some Democrats have found themselves in hot water for departing too far or too often from party orthodoxy — a dangerous move in increasingly partisan and populist times. In California’s 7th District, for instance, Rep. Ami Bera has begun to lose key support within his own party, thanks to votes roiling labor and other elements of California Democrats’ liberal base. “Bera’s votes on issues such as Syria refugees and trade are coming under intense examination as local Democrats debate withholding endorsement from him in his re-election race against Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, a Republican,” McClatchy reported. “Last week, the Elk Grove-South County Democratic Club, Bera’s home club, voted against endorsing him.”

Brown’s balancing act

In his State of the State speech this month, Gov. Jerry Brown sought to ameliorate some intraparty divides while holding fast to others. “Legislative Democrats say they can spend some of California’s budget surplus on expanded government services without disrupting Gov. Jerry Brown’s push for fiscal restraint,” as the Sacramento Bee also reported, while Brown urged them “instead to focus on paying down debts and liabilities incurred in the past.” But Brown didn’t mention the multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project that has been one of his marquee projects, despite arousing the frustration of environmentalists to his left who believed cap-and-trade money should not be spent on the system.

A recent Field poll revealed that a modest but sharply critical segment of Democrats appear to have turned their backs on Brown. Fully 17 percent said a description of Brown as having “the right experience to deal with the problems facing California” applied “not at all,” while 18 percent took the same dim view of the claim that Brown “has the vision to lead California into the future.” At the same time, over 40 percent of Democrat respondents agreed at least somewhat with the idea that Brown favors too many unaffordable projects and isn’t doing enough to help average Californians.

But Brown has consolidated support, despite sometimes unorthodox policies, to an unprecedented degree in California politics. At a time when Democrats nationwide have become increasingly split over whether to embrace Hillary Clinton as their nominee, Brown’s name has perennially appeared in conversations about where they might look for an alternative to both Clinton and Sanders. Despite Brown’s refusal to play along, he has been floated once again — by New York City liberals, according to Hoover Institution fellow Bill Whalen. “Their pet conspiracy theory is that President Barack Obama so detests Hillary Clinton — and worries about her ability to win in November and preserve his agenda — that his Justice Department will indict her this spring on charges of breaching national security in the email scandal,” he wrote at the Sacramento Bee. “Exit a wounded Hillary, enter a prominent Democrat to rescue the party — none other than California’s governor.”

Matchmaker for strange bedfellows

According to reports, Sanchez’s insurgent bid faces an intertwined political and demographic challenge that has suddenly turned GOP voters from foes into potential allies. “To survive the state’s top-two primary election in June, Sanchez needs two of her biggest bases of political support, Southern Californians and Latinos, to defy their historically lackluster turnout at the polls,” said analysts, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Support from California’s growing group of independents and moderates — Republican moderates, in particular — may also be essential.”

That kind of coalition would require no small amount of political jujitsu. In recent months, the state and national political scene has frequently been dominated by acrimonious debates on immigration — often fueled by conservatives frustrated with the selective nonenforcement of current law. But that issue hasn’t exhausted the ideological differences that often keep Republicans from crossing over in California. “Crafting a campaign that appeals to this patchwork of voters, many with divergent views on taxes, immigration and other divisive issues, could be difficult,” noted the Times, although “Latinos and moderate Republicans do align on certain issues: creating jobs, strengthening the middle class and improving schools with such actions as weeding out bad teachers and embracing charters.”

Fractured opposition

In this sense, the challenge for Sanchez has less to do with bringing Latinos and Republicans together than convincing Republicans to cast their vote for a Democrat. That’s why her hopes have centered around the prospect of squaring off again against Harris after primary season. “If Sanc­hez makes it to the gen­er­al elec­tion, al­lies of the Or­ange County Blue Dog Demo­crat say her more mod­er­ate pro­file could help her pick up sup­port from in­de­pend­ents and maybe even some Re­pub­lic­an voters who wouldn’t have a can­did­ate on the bal­lot,” National Journal reported.

Here, the deep personal and political fissures in the California GOP could be decisive. “At the state Re­pub­lic­an Party con­ven­tion in Ana­heim last month, there was talk about con­sol­id­at­ing be­hind one can­did­ate if he pulled ahead of the oth­ers,” National Journal added. “But each of the men run­ning spoke zeal­ously about his own path to vic­tory, and Re­pub­lic­ans have not been op­tim­ist­ic about end­ing up with one stand­ard-bear­er — es­pe­cially be­cause oth­er can­did­ates con­tin­ue to eye the race.”

Moneyball

Sanchez’s scramble for a path to victory comes at a moment when the comparative size of her campaign war chest has also become the focus of horserace handicapping. Harris has outraised her by a significant margin. “Sanchez reported raising almost $1 million in contributions this year for her U.S. Senate campaign, well behind the $6 million” raised by Harris, according to financial filings reported by the Times.

But Harris has also been quick to allocate her resources, “burning through campaign cash nearly as rapidly as she raises it,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “She is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on mail fundraising appeals, a large campaign staff anchored in Los Angeles and prominent fundraisers scattered across the country.” Between July and September, the Bee added, Harris spent $1.4 million out of $1.8 million raised, tacking on $400,000 of debt. Separately, the Bee reported, Harris also availed herself of some $300,000 in loans.

Republicans, for their part, have come in far under the fundraising level of either Democrat. Although some of the three GOP Senate contenders have gotten off to a relatively late start, none have exceeded $250,000 since entering the race, according to the Bee.

The state Legislative Analyst’s Office, which produces nonpartisan studies of ballot initiatives, has unveiled a new report considering the fiscal impact of marijuana decriminalization in the Golden State. Although partly mixed, its conclusion offered the possibility of a fresh line of argument in favor of freer pot laws.

“The report says California could add millions of dollars to state coffers if it legalized marijuana by reducing the number of marijuana offenders in prisons and jails, reducing probation supervision costs, reducing criminal court cases, and increased sales-tax revenue,” according to CBS Sacramento.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office did warn, however, that legalization would likely incur substantial trade-offs  that were harder to quantify or predict. The study, CBS noted, “could bring unexpected costs, with a potential increase in state-funded rehabilitation programs.”

Spiking support

The findings came at a potentially significant time in the run-up to activists’ push for statewide legalization in 2016. Public opinion has made a sustained shift toward support for such a measure, as the most recent round of polling from the Public Policy Institute of California underscored. “A record-high 54 percent of residents favor legalizing marijuana, while 44 percent are opposed,” PPIC reported.

The PPIC results proved notable for several reasons. Traditionally, restricting polling to likely voters results in a more conservative outlook. But in this case, the situation was reversed. “Among California likely voters, 56 percent favor legalization and 41 percent are opposed,” PPIC observed.

Although Republicans tend to oppose looser drug laws more than Democrats, California Democrats’ traditional strength among minority voters has not translated directly into more substantial support among those groups for marijuana legalization. “A majority of whites (60 percent) favor legalization,” said PPIC, “while a similar proportion of Latinos (60 percent) oppose it.”

Economic arguments

The legislative analyst’s report also promised to feed into broader economic arguments now being made by legal marijuana advocates. Already, some 100,000 California residents have found work in the medical marijuana industry, California Cannabis Industry Association Executive Director Nate Bradley told ABC Sacramento.

Reflecting a growing perception that the industry was here to stay, a new piece of legislation designed to bring order to the industry has attracted bipartisan support — with police and labor lining up behind the bill. “Assembly Bill 266 would create what’s called a dual-licensure system, with cannabis entrepreneurs needing to secure permits both from local authorities and from one of a few state agencies,” according to the Sacramento Bee. “The Department of Public Health would oversee testing, the Department of Food and Agriculture would deal with cultivation and the Board of Equalization would handle sales and transportation — all under the auspices of a new Governor’s Office of Marijuana Regulation.”

At the same time, it would mandate that businesses employing 20 or more persons must establish a so-called “labor peace agreement,” while allowing municipal officials some discretion in curbing medical pot.

For pot advocates, the sudden alignment of interest groups indicated an upcoming boom time for the marijuana business. Activists such as Bradley haven’t hesitated to build that prediction into their case for a legalization vote. “With recreational marijuana expected to go on the ballot in 2016, the industry is primed for rapid expansion,” ABC Sacramento continued. “Bradley said the market could produce as many as 1 million jobs in eight years.”

“As the cannabis market matures, it’s beginning to see more innovation, creating jobs that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Nestdrop, a Los Angeles-based startup, has a smartphone app facilitating medical marijuana orders and deliveries between patients and dispensaries. Since its launch in late April, the company has gained roughly 30,000 users in cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Stockton and Pasadena, as well as areas like Orange County.”

As pro-pot forces have increased their legitimacy, Californians have also grown more skeptical toward excessive policing of marijuana businesses. Most recently, Santa Ana cops who raided an allegedly unlicensed dispensary were caught on videotape ridiculing a disabled volunteer working at the shop. One officer could be seen eating something from a countertop — alleged by the volunteer’s lawyer to be a marijuana edible.

Although the slump in signups is not enough to derail Obamacare or California’s exchange, the figures have sparked concern — and confusion. “Covered California has 1.2 million people who renewed from 2014 or newly enrolled since mid-November,” the Los Angeles Times notes. “The state wants to hit 1.7 million by Feb. 15.”

One reason last year’s total makes for such a high hurdle relative to this year is because, out of those sign-ups, only 1.14 million, or 81 percent, ever submitted a payment. Still, Covered California set a goal of 1.7 million paid enrollees this year and it doesn’t appear it will reach that target, even if a last-minute surge materializes.

The explanation for why Covered California’s projections were apparently so wide of the mark will take time to emerge. As Investors Business Daily reports, about 85,000 paid enrollees from last year switched to Medi-Cal, bringing down the numbers a bit. Meanwhile, because California “hasn’t released information about the age of people signing up, it’s not clear if the shortfall is across the board or concentrated among young adults, which would be a negative for the exchange’s future.”

That’s because most young people need health care less often than older people, helping to reduce average costs.

Targeting Latinos

The Latino experience with Covered California also seems to be falling short of expectations. Overall, the Obama administration is on track to meet its overall goals for nationwide enrollment this year, which hinge on increasing the number of signups among America’s many uninsured Latinos.

But the picture in California reveals a stubborn set of challenges. As FiveThirtyEight observes, the most recent reported data show that, in the Golden State:

“50 percent of people determined eligible to purchase a plan were Latino. But among people who took the next step and actually chose a plan, the Latino percentage remained steady at 28.

“Last year saw a 30 percent increase in Latino enrollment during the final month of the enrollment period. If that trend holds this year, California could be on track to reduce the disproportionate share of its uninsured who are Latino. But with the undocumented representing 13 percent of the state’s uninsured, it could take new legislation, in the form of a new insurance stream for the undocumented or an act of Congress, to get the numbers where officials want them.”

Limited options

Latinos aren’t the only Californians whose participation in the health insurance exchange is critical. But across the state, limited plan choice is putting a damper on residents’ enthusiasm. As the Times reports that, taken together, “[T]he exchange’s four biggest health plans control 94.5 percent of the Obamacare market in California.”

And as The Daily Signal observes, in 22 Northern California counties, “[T]here are zip codes where there is only one choice of insurer,” with only one carrier available in the Monterey and Santa Cruz areas as well.

Blue Shield of California told The Daily Signal “it had to stop selling individual plans in areas where it didn’t have a contracted hospital nearby.” Blue Shield said “it offered doctors certain rates to keep the premiums low, but not enough doctors accepted those payment rates.”

According to The Daily Signal, Covered California believes 28,896 customers are stuck with one insurance carrier — “slightly more than 2 percent of the total exchange membership as of November 2014.”

Cost struggles

Perhaps the most prominent deficiency in California’s Obamacare coverage, however, has to do with the most expensive patients to cover. For patients with severe disabilities and chronic illnesses, Obamacare seemed to offer a reliable, guaranteed way to manage the costs of their treatment.

For officials, the new health care program promised something similar — a more truly affordable approach to those often sky-high costs. In California, however, the reality has been much different, as the Times confirms:

“The Obamacare program was designed to reduce medical costs by putting more of the nation’s 11 million most challenging and expensive patients into tightly managed care. 

“But the rollout in California — one of the first states spearheading the effort — has been marred by widespread confusion, enrollment glitches and a revolving door of health officials. Sixty percent of eligible patients have rejected the program, and state leaders are demanding to see financial savings in a year.”

All told, Covered California’s fortunes are still up in the air. Officials hoping to master the implementation of Obamacare through a smooth, robust California exchange will have to wait until next year, or longer.

This is no surprise. California was home to the largest protest over police brutality in U.S. history: the 1992 riots after a Simi Valley jury mostly cleared four LAPD officers for their videotaped beating of Rodney King.

But do the Democrats these Californians elect to office ever do anything about it? Do they pass laws cracking down on police misconduct or encouraging outside investigations when there are credible examples of a police department treating minority communities with hostility?

I know of no substantive policies of this kind enacted by the Democrat-dominated Legislature in the past 20 years. After a 2006 court decision (Copley Press v. Superior Court) further insulated law enforcement officers from accountability, activists attempted to get the Legislature to rewrite state law. They got nowhere. The result:

An investigation by ColorLines and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute has found that the decision, combined with state laws that protect police privacy, has blocked the public from knowing whether local police officers have engaged in misconduct, or a pattern of misconduct, even when such misconduct involves officers inappropriately shooting civilians. …

“Now, you don’t have to worry that your dirty laundry or allegations about your dirty laundry will be on the front page of the newspaper,” the attorney representing the local Deputy Sheriff’s Association, Everett Bobbitt, said at the time. In her dissent, Justice Kathryn Werdegar argued in a dissenting opinion that the ruling “overvalues” police officers’ privacy concerns, and “undervalues the public’s interest in disclosure.”

Combined, Copley and the Bill of Rights mean California has the tightest restrictions on public access to police disciplinary information in the country. “Copley differs greatly from laws in the rest of the country,” said Philip Eure, the head of the District of Columbia’s Office of Police Complaints and a former president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Copley, Eure said, is “rather extreme” in its public records restrictions and has “caused alarm in the oversight community.”

Issue a focus of elected Dems in New York

Now of course not just Democrats but Republicans and independents should be worried about police misconduct or mistreatment of minority groups. But in California, it is Democrats who have the political power and Democrats who have a strong hold on the support of African-Americans and Latinos — the groups most likely to cite systemic police mistreatment.

So why don’t elected Golden State Dems do anything about this issue?

One reason is plain: The huge political power of police unions, which are courted by both parties.

One reason should be plain but isn’t: The assumption of California’s elected Democrats that African-Americans and Latinos will always vote for them, so they don’t have to tend to their concerns about cops.

Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York after a campaign in which he directly addressed the concerns of black voters about police behavior. He may not be following through on his rhetoric, but he at least he brought up the issue. It remains a big issue with the progressive bloc on the New York City Council.

Will an elected California Democrat take the issue and run with it? We shall see.