Schiff and Porter Increasingly Dominate Race for Senate, Poll Shows

California has more registered Republicans than any state in the union, but that doesn’t mean one of them will make it to the runoff for the state’s U.S. Senate seat.

Six months ahead of the March 5 primary, two Democrats appear likely to face off next year to decide who will replace longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times.

The prospect of Steve Garvey, the former Dodger and Padres legend, entering the race as a high-profile Republican hasn’t scrambled that dynamic, the poll found.

Reps. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank and Katie Porter of Irvine are neck and neck, with support from 20% and 17% of likely voters, respectively, the poll found. The two have opened up sizable leads over their other prominent Democratic opponent, Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who sits at 7%.

Garvey, who has not announced whether he will run, and Republican businessman James Bradley each also had 7% support in the poll. Attorney Eric Early, a perennial GOP candidate, sits at 5%. Roughly a third of likely voters surveyed said they were undecided.

Under California’s top-two system, the two candidates with the most votes in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election.

“The more Republicans there are [in the race], the lower their chances are of getting somebody in the top two, just because they divide each other’s support up,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Times-Berkeley poll and a longtime California pollster.

“You can change that with a lot of campaigning, but they don’t appear to be that competitive right now for the top two positions,” he added.

The GOP’s Early was favored by 18% of likely voters in a Times-Berkeley poll in May but saw his support plummet through the summer. In that survey, Porter was close behind him with 17% support, followed by Schiff with 14% and Lee at 9%.

Garvey was not included in the previous poll but has been weighing entering the race all summer, his advisor Andy Gharakhani said. “Steve is seriously considering entering this race and speaking directly with voters on the issues they care most about,” Gharakhani said.

Despite several months of campaigning, Lee remains less well-known than Schiff and Porter, with half of likely voters having no opinion of her. Although she is the only Black candidate in the race, she trails among likely Black voters with 16% support, behind Schiff’s 30% and Porter’s 21%.

One factor that has the potential to shake up the race is whether Feinstein will be able to finish her term in office. She was hospitalized with shingles for a week starting in late February. The illness kept her in San Francisco for months. The dozens of Senate votes she missed, including several on judges, led some in her party, including Rep. Ro Khanna of Fremont, to call on her to step aside.

Last month, she was hospitalized again after falling in her San Francisco home.

If Feinstein were to leave before the end of her term, Gov. Gavin Newsom would need to appoint a temporary replacement. After he appointed a man to fill the former Senate seat of Vice President Kamala Harris, the governor committed to picking a Black woman if Feinstein’s seat were to become vacant.

Newsom hasn’t endorsed anyone in the Senate race, but some supporters of Lee have said he should appoint her if the seat opens up.

Asked what Newsom should do if Feinstein steps down, 51% of likely voters said the governor should appoint someone who is prepared to run for a full Senate term in the 2024 election.

A quarter of likely voters said he should appoint someone who is willing to serve as an interim appointee and not run for a full term. The rest had no opinion.

Schiff and Porter have remained mum on that issue, simply wishing Feinstein the best in her recovery.

The race between Schiff, a former prosecutor who was first elected to the House in 2000, and Porter, a UC Irvine law professor who was first elected in 2018, is shaping up to be a generational clash.

Likely voters older than 65 favor Schiff over Porter, 29% to 12%, the poll found. Those younger than 50 tend to favor Porter: She leads Schiff 23% to 14% among likely voters 30-39 and 27% to 6% among those 18-29.

That could pose a problem for Porter: She does best among those who, while considered likely to submit a ballot, often don’t show up at election time. A recent Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies analysis of voting in the state found that habitual voters tend to be white and older than the average Californian. Frequent voters were also disproportionately over the age of 50.

But the fact that the election is taking place in a presidential year could mitigate that disadvantage, said Sara Sadhwani, a professor of politics at Pomona College.

“One of the things about younger voters … that we tend to see is an increase in turnout in a presidential election year,” she said.

Porter has done an excellent job during committee hearings of creating viral moments that appeal to younger voters on social media, Sadhwani said. The question, though, is whether those voters will show up for the primary in March.

Schiff has leveraged his prominent role as a top antagonist of former President Trump to boost his Senate run. That appears to be paying off with some Democratic voters. He won additional attention when GOP House Republicans voted to censure Schiff for, in their view, going to too far in his efforts against Trump — a reprimand that Schiff has described as a badge of honor.

“It was an opportunity for Schiff again to remind voters in California about the important role that he has played in attempting to save our democracy,” Sadhwani said, adding that Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had only “helped amplify that profile” with the censure vote.

Schiff is by far the best-known candidate in the field, with only 24% of likely voters not having an opinion of him. He got favorable views from 43% of likely voters polled, while 32% had an unfavorable view.

Porter is less known, with 43% of likely voters saying they had no opinion of her, 38% saying they liked her and 19% saying they had an unfavorable view of her.

She leads among voters in Orange County, where she lives, but Schiff leads in the San Francisco Bay Area. The two are neck and neck in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the state.

The fact that both leading Democrats are from Southern California is a shift from the state’s previous pattern, noted Chris Lehane, chief strategy officer at Haun Ventures, who previously was an advisor to Gov. Gray Davis and Vice President Al Gore.

“Historically, Democratic primaries were won by a Democrat in the north over the Democrats in the south,” Lehane said. “I think it’s a real question of whether that’s still the case.”

“When you think about 30 years ago when Feinstein first ran, it was a purple state. Now it’s a deep-blue state. Everything has become nationalized,” he added. “It looks like there no longer is the Giants vs. Dodgers dynamic.”

Schiff leads Porter 31% to 26% among registered Democrats surveyed. Among likely voters who identify as strong Democrats, he leads her 35% to 27%.

The two are essentially tied among voters who are registered without a party preference or as members of a smaller party.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Trump poised to sweep state’s delegates in GOP primary

But California voters worry about his and Biden’s vulnerabilities,  a UC Berkeley/Times poll finds.

Former President Trump dominates his rivals so heavily that he’s on track to win all of California’s delegates for next year’s Republican convention — a haul that would give him a major chunk of the votes needed to secure his third presidential nomination.

The finding from a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll co-sponsored by The Times highlights a turnabout from earlier this year. In February, Trump faced a serious challenge from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis among California Republicans.

The potential for Trump to win all of the state’s delegates also reflects his campaign’s work to change the rules of the contest to his advantage.

In late July, the California Republican Party changed its rules so that if a candidate wins more than 50% of the statewide vote in the state’s March 5 primary, he or she will claim all 169 GOP delegates — the most of any state in the nation. Previously, the rules allocated delegates by congressional district. A candidate needs just over 1,200 convention delegates to win the nomination.

Trump’s campaign team pushed for the rule change, one of a series of such shifts it has backed in states across the nation. All of the changes supported by his campaign have the effect of helping a front-runner quickly nail down the Republican nomination.

The new poll shows about 55% of likely Republican voters plan to cast their primary ballots for Trump.

DeSantis’ support has plummeted to 16% — less than half of what he had earlier this year.

“Californians have turned away, by and large, from DeSantis,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the UC Berkeley institute’s poll. “The biggest beneficiary of DeSantis’ decline is the former president. There’s no question he’s well-liked by the Republican base.

“It’s a startling development given the fact that over the past year, there appeared to be sentiment among Republicans looking for an alternative to Trump,” DiCamillo added. “That has changed, and Trump is now the odds-on favorite.

“Capturing all of California’s delegates would give Trump a huge advantage over the rest of the field,” he said.

The state party’s rule changes were one factor in the recent decision by a super PAC backing DeSantis to stop major campaign operations in California and several other states, NBC News reported last week.

On the Democratic side, the poll indicated President Biden holds a big lead ahead of California’s primary, with 66% of party voters supporting him, compared with 9% for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and 3% for Marianne Williamson. About 1 in 6 likely Democratic voters said they were undecided.

Biden gets less support from young, Latino and Asian American voters than from white and Black voters. That difference in enthusiasm is unlikely to hurt his chances in California, given his wide lead, but it reflects a problem for the president that could be serious elsewhere in the nation.

Biden also holds a big lead over Trump in a prospective general election matchup in the state, not surprising given California’s cobalt-blue tilt.

Of the state’s 22 million registered voters, 46.9% identify as Democrats, 23.8% as Republicans, 22.5% as no party preference and 6.8% with other parties, according to the California secretary of state’s most recent statistics.

The poll also looked at some important vulnerabilities for each of the two leading candidates.

Among the state’s likely voters, 42% said they believe Biden’s age — he turns 82 shortly after election day — will hurt him a lot in his reelection bid, compared with 32% who think Trump’s legal woes will hurt him a lot in his effort to win back the White House.

Those legal difficulties may be on display just before the state’s primary. On March 4, the former president is scheduled to go on trial in Washington on federal charges that he illegally sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.

California shares its primary date with Texas, North Carolina and about a dozen other states, which together will allocate more than a third of Republican delegates.

The poll was conducted in late August, shortly after Trump was indicted in Georgia over alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.

It was the fourth indictment for the former president. In addition to the Georgia and federal cases alleging efforts to overturn the election, he also faces federal charges over his handling of confidential government documents after leaving the White House, and New York state charges over payments to a porn actor during the 2016 campaign in an attempt to conceal an alleged affair.

The polling began one day after the first GOP presidential primary debate, which Trump skipped.

The survey’s results affirm the dwindling popularity of DeSantis, who shares many of the same beliefs as Trump, but without the former president’s legal and temperamental baggage. The Florida governor has drawn praise from many on the right for his opposition to lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as for his vocal advocacy of the conservative side in the nation’s culture wars.

In February, when many Republicans were focused on Trump-endorsed candidates’ losses in last year’s midterm election, DeSantis had the support of 37% of likely California GOP voters, while Trump was backed by 29%, according to a Berkeley institute poll.

Three months later, a Berkeley survey indicated the former president had rebounded with the support of 44% of the state’s likely GOP voters and DeSantis trailing at 26%.

Former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s performance in the first GOP debate appears to have bumped up her support in the latest poll, though she remains mired in the single digits among likely Republican voters in California.

Haley now has the backing of 7% of the state’s likely GOP voters surveyed, double her support in the February poll. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and conservative talk radio host Larry Elder all trailed behind her. About 9% of the poll’s Republican participants said they supported someone else or were undecided.

Looking ahead at the general election, 51% of the state’s likely voters polled said they would support Biden, the incumbent president, while 31% said they would back Trump. About 13% said they planned to cast ballots for an unnamed third-party candidate, and 5% were undecided.

While California’s general election is unlikely to be competitive — it hasn’t been in the last three decades — voters’ attitudes about each candidate’s potential vulnerabilities provide insight into the overall state of the race.

Neither Trump nor Biden received stellar ratings from voters on their ethical behavior, though the current president outpaced the former; 71% faulted Trump’s personal ethics, compared with 43% who faulted Biden’s.

Nearly half, 47%, of likely California voters surveyed said they would be open to supporting a third-party candidate if the 2024 presidential campaign is a rematch of Biden and Trump’s contest three years ago, with 24% saying they would be “very open” to the idea.

While a candidate not affiliated with either of the nation’s two main political parties has practically zero chance of winning the White House, DiCamillo said those numbers reflect voter frustration, particularly among those who are less ideologically inclined.

“There’s dissatisfaction. We’ve seen that in other polls,” he said. “It appears to be the most moderate voters, not those on the extremes. Strong liberals and strong conservatives are less open to [a third-party candidate] than those in the middle.”

The Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies’ poll surveyed 6,030 registered California voters online in English and Spanish, Aug. 24-29, with weighted samples of 1,175 likely GOP primary voters and 2,833 likely Democratic primary voters.

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Trump Reportedly Getting Ready to Throw Giuliani and John Eastman Under the Bus

It’s possible that a third indictment is coming for former President Donald Trump for his involvement in January 6, and one legal strategy being hinted at is blaming the lawyers who advised him at the time.

Trump has claimed in his Truth Social posts that he “did nothing wrong” when the January 6 insurrection happened and he allegedly tried to steal the 2020 election, and that he was “advised by many lawyers” at the time. In a new Rolling Stone report by Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley those lawyers could very well turn out to be the scapegoats, specifically John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani:

The attorneys were acting on Trump’s behalf. But in this legal strategy, Team Trump would argue it was the lawyers leading Trump, rather than the other way around.

“It is an argument the [former] president likes, and the team is on board with it,” one Trump adviser bluntly says, then somewhat ominously adding: “John [Eastman] and Rudy [Giuliani] gave a lot of counsel … Other people can decide how sound it was.”

Judging by the testimony given by both Giuliani and Eastman, they knew that the advice they were giving was short of “sound.” In late July, Giuliani admitted in a court filing that statements he made publicly and repeatedly about Georgia election workers allegedly committing fraud were false. And when Eastman testified before the January 6 Committee in June 2022, he admitted that despite knowing that using former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election was illegal, he pushed for it anyway. Eastman even emailed Giuliani requesting that he “should be on the [presidential] pardon list, if that is still in the works.”

But placing blame on “advice of counsel” might not be enough because Trump listens to many other people besides his lawyers, including people who aren’t lawyers at allTim Parlatore, one of Trump’s former lawyers who quit this past May, told Rolling Stone how weak that defense could be:

“To my mind, ‘advice of counsel’ is a much more narrow defense, whereas a more comprehensive view of everything that went into Trump’s state of mind, and would affect the mens rea element of it, is more effective. This would include all of the advice and the information that he received and was basing his decision on — not just the advice from the attorneys who were formally representing him.”

But even with Trump placing the blame on others, that defense could backfire if he’s found to have committed a crime:

“[The ‘advice of counsel’ argument] has its limits. As a lawyer, I can’t tell my client: Look, there’s this obscure, ancient law that I found that says you can kill your wife. If the client goes out and kills his wife, it doesn’t really work if the client turns around and says, ‘Well, wait, my lawyer told me I could do that,’” says Steven Groves, who used to work as an attorney and then as a spokesman in the Trump White House.

Click here to read the full article

Schiff Leads Race in Raising Money

Burbank Democrat is far ahead of Porter and Lee in funding campaign for Senate.

In an early test of strength in the race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Rep. Adam B. Schiff has a notable financial edge over Reps. Katie Porter and Barbara Lee, according to federal campaign documents released Saturday.

While Schiff was widely expected to have a large war chest because he had a relatively easy reelection campaign last year, he also raised millions of dollars more than Porter, who also is known as a prodigious fundraiser.

“Schiff is in a better position than expected. Porter ended up coming shorter than expectations — she’s going to have to demonstrate that she has more fundraising depth than it appears right now. And Lee’s going to have to find another way of doing it other than lots of money, but we knew that from beginning,” said Dan Schnur, a politics professor at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine University. “Schiff has a very strong advantage but it’s not prohibitive. He’s clearly the front-runner, but he shouldn’t be taking anything for granted.”

It’s early — the primary is nearly one year away and the general election isn’t until November 2024.

Schiff, Porter and Lee are the most prominent Democrats among the 18 candidates who have thus far filed to run for the seat. Attorney Eric Early is the best-known Republican, but he entered the race last week, so isn’t required to file fundraising disclosures until July.

While Schiff and Porter both raised millions of dollars in the first three months of the year, Schiff ended the first quarter of 2023 with $24.7 million cash on hand, while Porter had $9.5 million, according to fundraising disclosures posted on the Federal Election Commission’s website Saturday.

The two members of Congress are among the body’s most effective fundraisers, with Porter ranking No. 2 in the last electoral cycle, behind only now-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Schiff ranked fourth, according to federal election records.

But Porter, a former UC Irvine law professor, had a tight reelection contest in her Orange County district last year and spent heavily to narrowly win reelection.

Schiff’s district, which includes Burbank, Glendale and West Hollywood, is heavily Democratic, allowing him to sail to reelection and bank millions of dollars more than Porter. Under federal elections law, both are allowed to transfer money raised for their House elections to their newly formed Senate campaigns.

Schiff raised $6.5 million and spent $2.8 million in the first three months of 2023, while Porter raised $4.5 million and spent $2.5 million, according to federal elections records.

The gap between the amount they could roll over into their Senate campaigns was widely expected. However, the difference between their fundraising was not, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego.

“Katie Porter needed to show the ability to catch up,” he said. “She needed to make up ground, and the fact he’s moving further ahead is an important signal.”

Click here to read the full article in the LA Times

Battle for Congress? Not here. Bay Area Democrats on Average Serve Even Longer Than Supreme Court Justices

The Bay Area has changed radically in the last few decades — new companies, new residents, new energy. But the people we send to Congress? They’ve stayed — remarkably — the same.

As Democrats and Republicans mount a pitched battle across the nation for control of the House and Senate, a Bay Area News Group analysis shows why our political inertia is all but certain to survive election day: Our region is by far the least competitive major metro area in the country for congressional races.

No Bay Area House race outcome is likely to cross the lips of cable news pundits on Tuesday night. Amid nail-biting across the nation, our cluster of the political map will fill in with the deepest blue — once again.

The current slate of 12 Bay Area House members — all Democrats — won their 2020 races by an average of 47 points. In the runner up region of Boston, victors in House races had an average 40-point margin.

And when it comes to job security, our members also come out on top, serving an average of 9 terms, or about 18 years, in office. Lifetime appointment? Well, no. But it’s even two years longer than the average time on the bench for every justice who ever served on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It is extraordinary,” said Dan Schnur, a UC Berkeley politics professor. “If California is a blue state, then the Bay Area is down right indigo.”

Five of the Bay Area’s 12 representatives have each spent more than two decades on Capitol Hill. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, long villainized by Republicans as an enduring symbol of Democratic control, is the longest-serving member of the Bay Area delegation: She won re-election in 2020 by 55 points and is running for her 19th term. Barbara Lee, the Bay Area’s maverick progressive, captured 92.6% of the vote in 2020 and routinely beats her challengers by about 80 points. The Oakland Democrat is running for her 14th term on Tuesday.

No other major metropolitan area in the country comes close to the Bay Area’s longevity. Six terms, or about 12 years in office, is the average for House members in Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Seattle and Southern California’s Inland Empire, the news organization’s analysis found.

But it’s not just our House members who have record-long stays in DC. On Friday, Dianne Feinstein became the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history after crossing the 30-year milestone. At 89, Feinstein has stayed in office so long that even the Bay Area is now wondering whether it’s a good thing, with calls for her to retire over concerns her mental faculties have deteriorated.

Congressman Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, who shocked local Democrats by ousting eight-term Bay Area incumbent Mike Honda back in 2016, experienced full force what it’s like to fight against the Bay Area political establishment.

“Every endorsement was against me, from now-President Biden, to Speaker Pelosi, to every member of Congress,” said Khanna, who is facing a perennial Republican candidate — computer engineer Ritesh Tandon — whom he beat by 43 points in 2020.  “A lot of people were saying don’t run, it was disrespectful to run…. there was a sense that this was somehow not being a team player.”

Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, stayed out of it at the time. But she pointed out that Khanna would now rely on the very same political establishment that attacked him in 2016 to defend him from a future challenger.

“Frankly, he would do the same thing [as Honda] and ask the party to defend him,” said Eshoo, who with 15 terms under her belt is the second-longest serving Bay Area representative. “When you are challenging an incumbent, you have to expect that, otherwise you are a political novice.”

While the challenge to find viable challengers exists in many parts of the country, the Bay Area has a particular issue: the Republican party poses virtually no threat to Democratic incumbents. Only 14% of voters are registered Republicans in our seven counties. In fact, there is no Republican challenger in three of the 12 Bay Area races this year. Republicans have not held a congressional seat in the Bay Area since Tom Campbell left the House in 2000 to launch an unsuccessful Senate challenge against Feinstein.

Campbell, a law and economics professor at Chapman University in Orange County, says that Republicans began to lose control in the region after the national party pivoted in the 1990s to emphasize conservative positions on social issues, such as abortion, gay rights and immigration, which were anathema to the region’s socially liberal identity.

“Many times, I would begin a [debate] answer by saying ‘Well, that’s the national party, not me,’” he said.

What’s just as rare in the Bay Area as an upstart like Khanna upsetting a same-party incumbent like Honda, is when incumbents say they are ready to retire. This year, incredibly, there are two: San Mateo Rep. Jackie Speier and Stockton Rep. Jerry McNerney are both retiring after eight terms. They are the first vacancies in the Bay Area delegation in six years, when Sam Farr gave up his Central Coast seat after more than 20 years, making way for Jimmy Panetta whose father Leon Panetta held the seat for 18 years before Farr.

So, here, longevity begets even longer tenures.

“All the things that were supposed to cure all this, we did them,” said veteran Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, referring to how the state tasked a panel of citizens, not politicians, with the job of drawing congressional districts and created the state’s open primary system that sends the top two vote-getters regardless of party to the general election.

And yet, the trend persists.

In many parts of the country, politicians complain of having to perpetually run for office. While that can force them to spend more time in their districts, tending to the needs of constituents, in today’s political climate it also can drive candidates to feel beholden to party bosses, especially as the GOP fractures.

So does it matter if our incumbent representatives can sit comfortably in office, sailing to easy 50-point wins year after year without even needing to campaign?

Khanna says it matters a lot — and it needs to change. Young challengers often have a better grounding in issues of particular interest to young voters, he argues, ranging from student loan forgiveness to tech reform to tackling climate change.

“Democracy depends on renewal,” said Khanna, who was co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

Eshoo sees it differently. She says that constituents benefit from having long-serving members, who have the experience, expertise, and power to get things done in Congress.

“Someone is half my age, so they’re twice as capable?” she asked rhetorically. “In the Congress, seniority is empowering. The manifestations of that power, together with the experience, really cannot be diminished.”

That experience in crisis was on display in the January 6 hearings with behind-the-scenes footage of Pelosi front and center calling the governor of Virginia to send in the National Guard to quash the rioters overtaking the Capitol. And Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a San Jose Democrat first elected in 1994, has played a key role in some of the U.S. government’s most critical moments of the last half century, from her work as a law student helping the House Judiciary Committee draft impeachment charges of President Richard Nixon to her service as a manager in President Trump’s first impeachment trial and as a member of the House’s Jan. 6 committee.

How exactly the Bay Area has become so immune from competition is a matter of debate.

UC Merced political science professor Jessica Trounstine, whose work focuses on the impact of incumbency in large American cities, said that the lack of competitiveness in the Bay Area is explainable in part by the unparalleled exodus of lower-income people from the region.

Though gentrification has impacted major metros throughout the country, none have been as heavily impacted as the Bay Area.

That means that incumbent House members have an easier time crafting popular economic policies, since they don’t have to appeal to voters across a wide range of incomes, and thus have an easier time winning re-election.

“It’s not just abortion,” she said. “Anytime a politician can create even a small coalition, it amplifies their presence.”

Campbell says that another reason that California House members generally fail to leave office is that there is no room for advancement. California has 52 House members, but, like other states, just 2 senators. That imbalance leaves House members with few options but to seek re-election until retirement or launch long-shot presidential runs, as Dublin Rep. Eric Swalwell attempted in 2020. This year, Khanna has sparked rumors he’s testing the presidential waters by employing consultants in early primary states.

Click here to read the full article in the Mercury News

Mayoral Contest Tightens

Bass holds slim edge, and negative ads put Caruso within striking distance, poll shows.

The race for mayor of Los Angeles was tightening rapidly as it entered its final week, with Rick Caruso cutting deeply into Rep. Karen Bass’ lead, putting him within striking distance in the contest to run the nation’s second-largest city.

Bass continues to hold an edge, 45% to 41% among likely voters, with 13% saying they remain undecided, according to a new UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times. But Bass’ advantageis within the poll’s margin of error and strikingly smaller than the 15-point margin she held a month ago.

Support for Bass, a longtime elected official, has not significantly declined — she maintains strong backing among key groups of voters, including women, liberals and registered Democrats.

But Caruso, a billionaire businessman and developer, has steadily gained ground as previously undecided voters have made up their minds. His push has been powered by tens of millions of dollars spent on attack ads that appear to have succeeded in raising doubts about Bass in many voters’ minds.

He has maintained big advantages among the relatively few conservative and Republican voters in Los Angeles while also opening up sizable leads among Latinos, moderates and people living in the San Fernando Valley.

Bass leads across the rest of the city, relying on the electorate’s polarized view of Caruso, the backing of the state’s Democratic establishment and the liberal tilt of the city’s electorate. She leads among both white and Black likely voters, the poll found.

The survey comes on the heels of several other public and private polls that have shown significant tightening in the contest.

“This race could go either way,” said Tommy Newman, senior director at United Way of Greater Los Angeles, who is working with a coalition to pass a housing tax measure on the November ballot and is a close watcher of local politics.

“Nobody has this in the bag. There has been tremendous movement with Latino voters. The question is, will that correlate into votes?” Newman said. “[Caruso] is probably running the most robust field campaign we have ever seen in a mayor’s race. In a tight race, that’s when field campaigns matter.”

The tightening of the race has come during a period when the mayoral campaign has been somewhat overshadowed by the scandal that began with a leaked audio recording of three City Council members and a labor leader making racist remarks during a discussion last year about drawing new city council district boundaries.

The resulting furor has focused attention on racial and ethnic tensions in the city. The poll found that 69% of registered voters said relations among various racial and ethnic groups were just fair or poor, while just 23% said they were excellent or good.

The survey doesn’t, however, show a clear impact from the scandal on the mayoral race.

Bass and Caruso called for everyone involved in making racist comments to resign. They also each used the moment to make points they’d been pushing throughout the campaign.

For Caruso the scandal reflected a continuation of what he sees as the corruption that’s run rampant at City Hall and spoke to the need for an outsider to clean up city government. Bass said the scandal offered a moment for the city to come together and talk about its divisions while finding avenues to bridge them.

The poll found that voters who put a high priority on building coalitions among racial and ethnic groups favor Bass.

What clearly has had an effect is Caruso’s money.

With both campaigns now turning to get-out-the-vote efforts, Caruso has spent about $13 million mustering about 300 to 400 door knockers who have fanned out across the city to remind voters about the election. The field operation is designed to spur turnout among people — especially Latino voters — who have shown an interest in Caruso but won’t necessarily cast a ballot unless pushed.

That effort has been aided by the onslaught of advertising. Since the primary, Caruso is slated to spend $26 million on TV, radio and digital ads in the general election through Tuesday. That’s eight times the $3.3 million Bass is scheduled to spend, according to data from media tracking firm AdImpact.

Bass will also be boosted by a number of independent supporters on the airwaves, including unions representing carpenters and electrical workers and a pro-Bass political action committee funded by labor and Hollywood money. Those groups, which can’t legally coordinate with the Bass campaign, plan to spend several million on ads supporting the congresswoman.

A good deal of Caruso’s advertising is in Spanish. Together with the canvassing aimed at Latino voters, that pitch appears to be paying off. In the last Berkeley IGS poll just over a month ago, Bass led among Latino likely voters by 6 points, 35% to 29%; she now trails by 17 percentage points in that group, 48% to 31%. Many of Caruso’s Latino supporters, however, don’t routinely vote in every election, making turnout a challenge for him.

“You got to give Caruso a lot of credit. He’s making big inroads into this segment, but they’re not regular voters,” said Mark DiCamillo, who directed the poll and has been surveying California voters for decades.

“He’s making inroads where he didn’t have those inroads in June” in the primary, DiCamillo said. “The whole question is, will it be enough? It’s definitely going to be close.”

Bass’ biggest advantage remains her overwhelming support among liberals — the voters who define the shape of Los Angeles’ electorate.

In recent elections, liberal voters powered Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who campaigned with Bass last week, to victory in Los Angeles during the Democratic primary in 2020 and propelled progressive candidates to the fore in this year’s primary.

If their sway holds, Bass will likely win.

Bass leads by 40 percentage points among likely voters who identify as somewhat liberal (64% to 22%) and about 60 percentage points among those who are strongly liberal (74% to 12%).

Those liberal voters are the bulwark that could block further growth of Caruso’s support in the San Fernando Valley, where he now leads by 9 points (45% to 36%). Bass remains ahead in every other part of the city by nearly 20-point margins. The one exception is the South L.A. and Harbor region, where Bass leads 48% to 43%.

“It’s problematic for Caruso,” said Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, political science professor at USC. Bass “has her base of support. We’ll see if the structural advantage for Bass holds.”

In the last several weeks, the campaign has featured a volley of attacks on issues including each candidate’s ties to USC. Caruso has lambasted Bass for taking a $95,000 scholarship to attend a graduate program, while Bass has attacked him for his involvement in the response to a sexual misconduct scandal.

But Caruso’s ads have been far more frequent. Their effect can be seen in the rise in the share of voters who have an unfavorable view of Bass and in an erosion of her standing among registered Democrats.

About half the electorate still has a favorable view of Bass, but the share of likely voters who see her unfavorably is up 10 points since September to 35%.

Among Latino voters, one-third now have an unfavorable view of Bass, compared with one-sixth in September.

Bass continues to have a more favorable image than Caruso, however. In the current survey, 43% view him favorably and 42% unfavorably, compared with 38% to 40% last month.

Caruso has gained some support among Democrats, who make up the majority of Los Angeles voters. In September, just 19% of Democratic likely voters backed him. Now, 28% do. That’s still much less support than Bass, who is backed by 56% of Democrats, with 14% undecided, but it represents a significant inroad by the businessman, who was a Republican much of his life and only changed his party registration to Democrat in January.

About 20% of voters surveyed had already voted. Caruso had a slight lead among them — 49% to 46%. He also leads heavily among voters who said they planned to cast ballots in person on election day. Bass was doing much better with voters who plan to mail or drop off their ballots, leading 50% to 33% among them, the poll found.

Beyond the negative ads, the central policy arguments of the race have been over homelessness and public safety. These two issues along with the economy and education are what voters say the next mayor must prioritize.

Addressing climate change and coalition building between people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds are seen as less important by most voters, although they are top priorities for Bass’ backers.

Even though Caruso is trailing, voters believe he would do a better job addressing crime, the economy and homelessness. They believe Bass would do a better job tackling education, climate change and coalition building.

The Berkeley IGS poll was conducted Oct. 25-31 among 1,437 Los Angeles registered voters, of whom 1,131 were deemed likely to vote in the November election. The sample was weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks.

Click here to read the full article at the LA

Sharp Swing in Momentum Toward GOP Sparks Democratic Angst

Angst is growing among Democrats that the momentum they saw earlier this year in their bid to keep control of the Senate is beginning to wane as towering inflation and deepening economic unease supplant issues like abortion rights atop the list of voters’ concerns.

As recently as a few weeks ago, Democrats were bullish about their chances of defying harsh historical and political headwinds, believing that voter anger over the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and lingering GOP concerns about the quality of Republican candidates might allow them to not only hold, but expand their paper-thin Senate majority.

But the political winds appear to be shifting once again in the GOP’s favor. Recent polling has found Republicans regaining an edge on the so-called generic ballot, a survey question that asks voters which party they plan to vote for in November. Meanwhile, the data website FiveThirtyEight’s Senate forecast shows Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate dropping by 11 percent over the past month.

“A month ago, it looked like not only were the Democrats poised to hold the Senate, the question was: were they going to be able to get, you know, two extra seats?” said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster who worked on former President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “Now I think the hope is just to hang on.” 

With fewer than three weeks to go before Election Day and early voting already underway in key battleground states like Georgia and Arizona, the tightening contest for the Senate has some Democrats fearing that the party may have peaked too early.

“If you look at the Dobbs decision — that seems to have come a little too early for the Democrats,” Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said, referring to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned the constitutional right on abortion. 

“And I think there [are] other currents — inflation is probably the biggest one — that have kind of interfered with the singularity of that argument.”

Indeed, Republicans have hammered Democrats relentlessly on inflation, the economy and crime throughout the fall campaign season, betting that those issues would eventually outmuscle Democrats’ core themes: that abortion rights are at risk, the future of American democracy is in jeopardy and that they’re capable of governing in a volatile moment in the country’s history.

The New York Times-Siena College poll of 792 likely voters nationwide showed the economy and inflation topping the list of problems facing the country, while only 5 percent of voters said that abortion is the most pressing issue. Even among Democratic voters, economic challenges took precedence over reproductive rights. 

In one of the poll’s more alarming findings for Democrats, women who identified as independents said they preferred Republicans by an 18-point margin, a stark reversal from September, when those voters favored Democrats by a 14-point margin. Democrats have sought relentlessly to sway those voters by warning of threats to abortion rights.

“The voters who would be most susceptible to the Democrats’ messaging on abortion are shifting,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist and former congressional candidate.

“As long as the Republicans stay focused on two things — my money, my family — then they’ll win in 2022,” he added. “They’ll win in 2024. Because the Democrats aren’t showing any sign of changing their approach.”

To be sure, Democrats still stand a decent chance at holding their Senate majority in spite of the recent shifts. Their Senate candidates are outraising Republicans across the board, the GOP is seeking to wrangle a roster of untested candidates and, as of Thursday, FiveThirtyEight’s forecast still gives Democrats a 60 percent chance of winning the Senate.

At the same time, Democratic incumbents who were considered some of the most vulnerable have solidified their positions in key races. 

In Arizona, for example, Sen. Mark Kelly (D) has a distinct polling and financial lead over his Republican rival Blake Masters. Likewise, New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) is leading her GOP challenger Don Bolduc by nearly 8 points in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. Both races lean in Democrats’ favor, according to The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper.

But with the Senate divided 50-50 between the two parties, Democrats have no room for error. If Republicans net even a single seat in the upper chamber next month, it would deliver them the majority.

In Nevada, the race between Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) and Republican Adam Laxalt remains in a dead heat. And despite facing a spate of scandals and questions about his personal history, Republican Herschel Walker has managed to stay within striking distance of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) in Georgia. 

Democrats still stand a chance at flipping a GOP-held Senate seat in Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz are vying to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), though polling has shown a tightening race in recent weeks following a barrage of attacks against Fetterman accusing him of being soft on crime.

“A lot of these races — they were always going to tighten,” one Democratic strategist said. “I think a lot of folks just got ahead of themselves over the summer, thinking they had some kind of silver bullet.”

“I still say advantage Democrats for now,” the strategist added. “But yeah, no doubt the Republicans are catching up a little bit.”

Some Democrats expressed frustration with the way key Senate races have tightened. Amandi, the pollster, said that Democrats need to focus their closing message on sharpening the contrast between themselves and “extreme, unhinged Republican candidates.”

“Perhaps Democratic messaging hasn’t been as strong as it could be,” Amandi said. “But we’re talking about things tightening when the choice is between chaos and competency. The Democrats have governed with a competent, steady hand in a very volatile environment. What we’ve seen from the Republican Party over the last six years has been wholesale unhinged chaos. And what they’re offering is more chaos.”

Others, however, said that the party simply hasn’t done enough to campaign on meaningful legislative accomplishments and the pocketbook issues that could ultimately decide the midterms.

“How is it possible that seniors don’t know about the reduction in drug prices because of the ability of Medicare to negotiate?” Jonathan Tasini, a former national surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2016 presidential bid, said, referring to a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law this summer.

“It’s obviously going to be very close, but it shouldn’t be,” he added. “Control of the Senate will be decided by probably a seat or two. And it just shouldn’t.” 

Keith Naughton, a veteran Republican strategist with deep experience in Pennsylvania politics, said that the improving environment for the GOP isn’t necessarily surprising. Rather, it’s the result of more voters tuning into the political conversation as Election Day draws nearer.

Click here to read the full article in The Hill

Bay Area Counties Defend Use of Election Software Ensnared in China Data-Sharing Probe

Three of the Bay Area’s largest counties will continue to use polling station software that was ensnared in a Los Angeles data breach investigation and resulted in at least four other election jurisdictions ditching the software amid allegations of embezzlement and Chinese data sharing.

Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties all use the PollChief software – produced by the company Konnech – to manage poll worker schedules and track voting equipment, but not to tabulate votes. Unlike Los Angeles, local elections officials in Contra Costa and San Francisco say sensitive data on election workers was never shared with Konnech and they are confident that other polling station information stored on Konnech servers was kept within the United States. Alameda County did not return multiple requests for comments.

Last week, prosecutors in Los Angeles accused Konnech CEO Eugene Yu of storing the personal data of thousands of Los Angeles election workers on servers in China, where it was accessed by Chinese contractors.

One Konnech project manager called the situation a “huge security issue,” according to the criminal complaint filed in Los Angeles. Prosecutors said Yu violated Konnech’s agreement to store data in the United States thereby embezzling public funds.

An attorney for Yu, who was released on bail, denied the allegations saying they are based on “discredited election deniers,” according to a National Public Radio report, which added that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office launched the probe after a tip from Gregg Phillips, a leading election conspiracy theorist.

The criminal investigation has sent election officials around the country scrambling to reassure voters amid heightened scrutiny of election administration spurred by false claims that voter fraud cost President Donald Trump his reelection bid in 2020. Under California legislation signed into law last month, election workers can now hide their home addresses from the public amid concerns of harassment and threats driven by election fraud claims.

Just weeks ahead of the November general elections, Bay Area election clerks on Monday sought to reassure voters that their continued use of PollChief poses no security risks to election workers’ private information or voters’ ballots. Officials cautioned that the software plays no role in scanning ballots or vote tabulation and the Los Angeles district attorney emphasized that PollChief has had “no impact” on election results in Southern California.

But as local officials continue to use the PollChief software, at least four other jurisdictions around the country have halted use of the software. Detroit’s election chief told the radio station WDET the city is no longer using PollChief “out of an abundance of caution.”  Even election administrators that did not use Konnech’s election software have issued news releases seeking to calm voters’ worries and clarify their relationship with the company.

In the Bay Area, elections officials are reluctant to ditch the software, which provides key logistical support for poll station management. Among the uses are scheduling poll workers at voting locations, sending communications to poll workers, and tracking voting equipment and supplies.

Election clerks in Contra Costa and San Francisco counties said unlike Los Angeles, they do use the software for payroll, which would require them to store the private identification information of poll workers using the Konnech servers. Alameda County appears to only use the software for ballot box tracking, according to a 2022 poll worker manual.

“We’ve protected our poll workers. We’re not concerned that our poll workers’ data has been breached or shared,” said Helen Nolan, an assistant registrar in Contra Costa County. She said the county’s IT department reviewed their servers to ensure there was no data breach and they have also received assurances from Konnech that Contra Costa data is being stored in Michigan, as required under the company’s contract with the county.

John Arntz, director of San Francisco elections, said PollChief is used only to track warehouse inventory and there is “no information indicating our warehouse inventory is being stored on a server in China.”

San Mateo County does not use the software. Santa Clara County inked a contract with Konnech in June, but South Bay officials were not planning to implement the technology until after the November general election, the registrar’s office said, adding that the county is currently “reviewing the situation for appropriate action.”

Nolan said Konnech has provided “services without a problem for us since 2018,” and at the moment there is not “enough information or evidence to warrant canceling a contract.”

Click here to read the full article at the Mercury News

Hundreds of voter guides found in Tower District dumpster, Fresno election officials say

Hundreds of Fresno County voter guides were recovered Friday from a Tower District recycling dumpster, election officials reported. The Fresno County Registrar of Voter’s office was notified shortly before 4 p.m. Friday that about 200 copies of county voter information guides and four copies of state voter guides were found in the recycling dumpster. No ballots were discarded, the registrar’s office said.

The voter guides were properly mailed through the U.S. Postal Service. Elections officials were working to determine which voters were affected to quickly send new copies of the Fresno County voter guides in the coming days. The Registrar of Voters is working with local, state and federal officials to determine how the voting materials ended up in the dumpster and to prevent similar incidents from occurring again.

The Fresno County incident comes on the heels of ballot errors discovered in Merced County. There, 40ballots in the cities of Merced, Los Banos and Gustine were missing certain local races or included incorrect candidates. The Merced County Elections Office said the errors occurred because of mapping issues after new district lines were drawn earlier this year. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.

Click here to read the full article at the FresnoBee

Susan Shelley’s Guide to State Ballot Measures

Election Day has arrived.

It’s now the law in California that a ballot will be mailed to every active registered voter, and the state’s 58 counties have already begun to mail them. Voting begins this week and continues through November 8. Verifying and counting all those ballots will take a month beyond that.

Many people ask me how they should cast their ballot — by mail, dropped off, in person, early or on Election Day. My advice is just to be sure to vote, however and whenever it’s convenient. If you have concerns about whether your ballot has been sent or received, sign up for the ballot tracking notification service on the Secretary of State’s website at WheresMyBallot.sos.ca.gov.

If you’re eligible but not registered to vote, your secret is safe with me, but really it would be better if you helped out. You’re an intelligent person reading a column about what’s on the ballot. Come off the sidelines and get in the game at RegisterToVote.ca.gov, or register at any vote center or polling place right through Election Day.

Here are my recommendations on the statewide ballot propositions.

Proposition 1 — NO. The most important thing to understand about Proposition 1, which “enshrines” the right to abortion in the state constitution, is that it’s going to create a constitutional right to late-term abortion, no questions asked. It does this by overriding conflicting state laws, such as Health and Safety Code Section 123466, which says, “The state may not deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose or obtain an abortion prior to viability of the fetus, or when the abortion is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman.” Instead, Prop. 1 guarantees the “fundamental right to choose to have an abortion” without any limits on when or why. The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade did not change California law at all but Proposition 1 will, and not in a good way. It’s not needed to protect current law, and it will have unintended consequences. Vote NO on Proposition 1.

Proposition 26 — NO. This measure would legalize in-person sports wagering exclusively at tribal casinos and a handful of racetracks. It includes a particularly nasty provision aimed at harming the tribes’ competitors in the gambling space, card clubs. Prop. 26 authorizes private lawyers to file lawsuits against cardrooms for alleged violations of state gaming regulations. This sets up a potential shakedown, because it can cost more in attorney fees to fight these lawsuits than to settle them. There’s no good reason for this provision, which is designed to harass competitors. The whole initiative seems designed to eliminate all competition in a lucrative new business. Vote NO on Proposition 26.

Proposition 27 — NO. This measure would legalize online and mobile-device sports betting in California, but its provisions would allow only a few very large companies to offer it, freezing out potential competitors. Problems with this measure, in addition to the anti-competitiveness, include a creepy authorization to snoop on people’s gambling habits and report data to the attorney general of California. The proponents say some of the tax revenue from the measure will fund homelessness services. You may remember that the California Lottery was going to fund education. Vote NO on Proposition 27.

Proposition 28 — YES. This measure directs about $1 billion per year from the state’s General Fund to arts and music education in public schools. It is not a tax increase, and it does not diminish other funding for the schools. Instead, it orders the legislature to spend money on this particular priority. This will end the game of politicians crying that arts and music programs will be cut from the schools unless you agree to the next tax increase. Vote YES on Proposition 28.

Proposition 29 — NO. Rejected by voters twice before, this is once again a union’s pet project, placed on the ballot to harass the companies that operate (non-union) kidney dialysis clinics and make them spend money to defeat it. There’s no reason for this measure other than that. Vote NO on Proposition 29.

Proposition 30 — NO. This is a tax increase. It would raise the state’s top income tax rate from the highest-in-the-nation 13.3% to the even higher 15.05% on income of $2 million or more. The money would be spent on subsidies for the purchase of electric cars, on construction of charging infrastructure, and on enough wildfire fighting efforts to make it look appealing on the ballot. Here’s the problem: a small fraction of California residents pay most of the personal income tax revenue in the state’s General Fund. If enough of those people move to a lower-tax state (49 choices), there will be less tax revenue for schools, health care and other state priorities. Ride-share company Lyft is financing this campaign because state regulators ordered ride-share companies to have 90% of the miles they drive be zero-emission by 2030, and nobody wants to pay for the cars or the charging stations. We could slow down the mandates and then we don’t need the damaging tax increase. Vote NO on Proposition 30.

Proposition 31 — NO. This is a referendum on a law that banned the sale of flavored tobacco products in California. Vote yes if you want to keep the law, vote no if you want to dump it. In my view, this law would create a thriving black market that enriches criminals instead of bringing in tax revenue. Vote NO on Proposition 31.

Click here to read the full article in the OC Register