California Democrats Rewrite Voting Rules in Their Favor

VotedElection night was painful for California Republicans, but it was nothing compared to the slow torture we’ve endured ever since.

For three agonizing weeks, Republicans have watched registrars update their tallies with late absentee and provisional ballots. From Orange County to the Bay Area, it’s the same story playing out with different candidates: Democrats flipping seats with late ballots.

First, Mimi Walters. Then, Young Kim. Now, David Valadao.

It’s not unusual for late absentee and provisional ballots to break against Republicans. What is unusual is the scale of the carnage. As of this writing, Republicans lost election night leads for five members of Congress, three state Assembly races, two state Senate seats and a Board of Equalization candidate.

Even the Associated Press was caught off-guard by late ballot counting. It has called California’s 21st Congressional District for Republican incumbent David Valadao only to retract its decision three weeks later. If the independent organization “which sets the standard for calling races across the journalism industry” is getting races wrong, something’s changed in California.

Legislative Democrats have rewritten election rules in their favor to expand voter eligibility, automatically register every voter, eliminate voting integrity laws and encourage questionable campaign tactics, such as ballot harvesting.

California has entered an era of near universal suffrage with illegal immigrants, felons, inmates and minors registering to vote. San Francisco now allows “people in the country illegally and other noncitizens the right to vote in a local election,” according to the Associated Press. The city has spent at least $310,000 in tax dollars to register 49 non-citizens to vote. …

Click here to read the full article from the OC Register

Signs of Hope in California?

CapitolRonald Reagan is not coming back, but California may be avoiding a trip to the insane asylum. Yes, the GOP’s lackluster gubernatorial candidate, John Cox, lost by almost 20 points, and the only issue in the legislature is whether the Democrats regain their supermajority in both houses. But it could have been much worse.

The GOP lost only two or three congressional districts in southern California and appeared to be holding its own in the interior. In my own district, to my surprise, Mimi Walters, who was out-campaigned and outspent, managed to win. Others, like the more contentious Dana Rohrabacher, did not.

Without a change in approach, Republican growth potential is limited by changing demographics and an increasingly bifurcated state economy. At best, the GOP, running on its traditional anti-tax platform, can get up near 45 percent—as shown in the failed repeal of the gas tax, Proposition 6—but no further. This strategy still works marginally in places like Orange County and the interior but fails overall.

In a sense, California elections are now about how far left the state is willing to go. Proposition 10, a measure to expand rent control, was soundly defeated by a massive ad campaign targeting homeowners fearful of seeing curbs on the prices that they could charge to rent their homes. The outcome suggests that if the business community appeals to the middle-class without the Trumpian baggage, voters will support more moderate positions. Perhaps even more important was the victory of Marshall Tuck, a Democrat running with Republican support for Superintendent of Education against the candidate of the teachers’ union. But the limits of moderation are always evident.  Steve Poizner, a registered Republican running for State Insurance Commissioner, appears to be falling behind Ricardo Lara, a far-left Democrat best known for leading the fight for single-payer health care.

Despite improved earnings by lower-wage workers, Republicans remain in serious trouble in Latino and African-American communities. Simply put, a competitive California needs a racial realignment that adds to the shrinking base of white GOP voters. The best target for that goal is the Asian community, the state’s fastest-growing and arguably most successful ethnic group. Asians may be repelled by Trump’s immigration rhetoric, but they tend to be middle-class homeowners who care about schools and safety, and they won’t be happy if the Democrats move further left in terms of seizing zoning policy from communities or feeding the public sector with ever more middle-class taxes.

Southern California Republicans have worked hard to appeal to Asian voters; there are three Asian-American assembly members, two state senators, and three supervisors (out of five total), all Republicans. A highlight yesterday was the election of Young Kim in a northern Orange County congressional district. Asians now make up about 20 percent of Orange County residents, and Asian Republicans are common. They seem to be able to win in districts where Trump is unpopular. It’s hard to run on a racism charge against someone born in Incheon.

The question is where this potential white-Asian alliance is going. Michelle Steele, the politically aggressive supervisor in Orange County, where the board is majority-Asian, is considering a run for statewide office. If Republicans can pull Asians away from the Democrats, at least at the local level, they could restore a semblance of political competition in the state.

In the years ahead, the most important struggle in California will be within the Democratic Party. Two distinct factions increasingly predominate. One, close to the tech community, adopts the gender, environmental, and race agenda of the Left, but rejects income redistribution and is congenitally hostile to unions. Voters in this group tended to back Tuck for education superintendent, and many supported Poizner for insurance commissioner, but they remained cool to Cox’s gubernatorial bid.

The other, now-ascendant faction, comes from the hard Left, and is backed by public-employee unions, nurses, and other service providers. Their constant campaigning—particularly in the face of gross inequality in the Bay Area—has begun to reach the tech hoi polloi. As recent protests at Google suggest, the hard Left may not be ready to embrace the edicts of “the Brahmin Left,” which is fundamentally devoted to looking progressive while preserving, to use the Left’s terminology, their distinct, mostly white and male, privilege. Silicon Valley oligarchs, who have often funded “woke” activists in their native Bay Area, now face being awakened themselves by rising demands for “social justice.”

California’s Left today is not like that of the past. It is not interested in building usable infrastructure, meeting the aspirations of working- or middle-class families, or creating middle-skill jobs. These are exceedingly difficult tasks if you also want to adopt the state’s draconian green agenda. The new Left’s solutions to state problems, like housing, tend toward ideas like turning single-family neighborhoods into “vibrant” (read: crowded) apartment blocks, boosting housing subsidies, and imposing rent control.

Donald Trump’s presence in the White House and the GOP’s control of the Senate creates real problems for California. Under Barack Obama, greens could hope that the rest of the country would follow the California lead. But for the next two years, at least, other states will be busily picking off companies and individual talent eager to escape California’s high prices and regulatory restraints. As a result, the feudalization of the state will proceed, necessitating ever-more expansive subsidies for everything from housing and energy to education. The demographics certainly are in place for a potential lurch leftward. Proposition 10, for example, may have lost the votes of home-owning Democrats, but it was widely backed by their children, who have little choice, if they stay in the state, but to remain renters for life.

Ultimately, California’s battles over rent control — as well as single-payer health care, restrictions on driving, and expanding racial and gender quotas — will only intensify. These policies can be implemented only with huge tax increases, in a state that already imposes one of the highest taxation rates in the country. (Single-payer alone could double the state budget.) Silicon Valley may hold the purse strings and, increasingly, the means of communication, but the California that it has helped shape may soon choose other priorities besides virtue-signaling while the super-rich get still richer.

Resistance to the Resistance and the 2018 Elections

VotingOpposition in Orange County from government bodies to the state’s sanctuary law could serve as a sign of the electorate’s mood and just might influence the hotly contested Orange County congressional races. This resistance to the resistance – the state resisting the federal government, the locals resisting the state – comes against the background of Democratic efforts to take back the House of Representatives. Intense efforts are being made to flip congressional seats in Orange County in which Hillary Clinton outpolled Donald Trump.

The state legislature passed and the governor signed SB 54, the sanctuary state law, which blocks local law officials from working with federal immigration enforcement officers in certain situations. The Trump Administration has challenged the sanctuary state and sanctuary city laws in court. This week, a number of states with Republican governors filed briefs in support of the Administration’s position.

After the city council of Los Alamitos in Orange County voted to oppose the sanctuary state law, other Orange County communities and the county supervisors considered actions to oppose the state law, with the county voting to join a federal lawsuit against the sanctuary laws.

Supervisor Michelle Steel who introduced the resolution against SB 54 argued that safety of citizens is at issue, insisting the county should increase “our cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and stop our county from becoming a sanctuary for criminal illegal immigrants.”

Hints on how this issue might play in the coming congressional elections could be gleaned from polling done by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The Orange County districts targeted by the Democrats are Congressional District (CD) 39 currently held by Ed Royce (who is retiring), CD 45 held by Mimi Walters and CD 48, Dana Rohrabacher – Republicans all.

CD 39, which sits about 60% in Orange County with the remainder in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, has a plurality of Republican registered voters, but barely, 1.5% more than Democrats.

CD 45 and CD 48, both completely within the boundaries of Orange County, have 8% and 11% Republican registration leads over Democrats, respectively.

Last May, PPIC asked likely voters if they supported or opposed the then-proposed sanctuary state law. 43% favored the law; 48% opposed the idea. While Democrats were in favor of the proposal by a 2 to 1 margin, Republicans were opposed by nearly 4 to 1.

In the PPIC survey last month, likely voters were asked if they thought if the federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants is a good thing or a bad thing. In the Republican leaning districts, 61% said it was a good thing, 34% thought it was a bad thing.

With local elected officials standing up on the side that the polling seems to indicate likely voters in the district support, this could be a positive sign for those hoping the contested districts will remain in Republican hands.

However, the California Target Book publisher, Darry Sragow, thinks the Republicans will have a hard time turning this issue into a winning formula. “If the Republicans in the three threatened Orange County Congressional seats seize on this issue, the poll numbers confirm that they will be preaching to the choir.  Whether it will produce a boost in GOP turn out is one question.  A second question is whether it will be counterproductive, driving Democrats, particularly Latinos, to the polls.”

Sragow continued, “Beyond 2018, the data tells an interesting story.  Back in 1980, Latinos were a little less than 15 percent of the population in Orange County.  In 2010 that number was almost 34 percent.  In 1994, the year Proposition 187 was on the ballot, Republican registration in Orange County was more than 52 percent.  Today, it’s less than 38 percent. Which raises the question of whether the California Republican Party is destined to repeat history, once again trading short term incumbent protection for long term alienation of many Latinos, who now outnumber every other ethnic group in the state.”

How California goes in the coming mid-term elections in the challenged races very well could determine who controls Congress in January.

ditor and co-publisher of Fox and Hounds Daily.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

All 14 California Republicans in House Hold the Line on Tax Reform

Kevin McCarthyAll 14 California Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to pass the Senate’s version of a new budget bill that prepares the way for tax reform.

They did so even though one of President Donald Trump’s proposed reforms is an end to the state and local tax deduction (SALT), a $1.8 trillion boost that would hit high-tax, Democratic-dominated states like California, whose high earners benefit disproportionately from the deduction.

On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had warned California’s Republican delegation that they would be hurting their own state if they voted for the budget. According to the Sacramento Bee, she called them potential “accomplices” in hurting California taxpayers, describing tax reform as “really an urgent time for the state of California.” She advised them they would have more leverage over the final legislation if they voted no.

But House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) disagreed, telling the California Republican Party convention in a speech over the weekend: “I don’t think it’s fair that somebody else subsidize poor management of California or New York policies. … No longer can Sacramento say, I’m gonna raise the rates, just cause I’ll have the federal government subsidize it. They will have to be held accountable for when they want to raise taxes higher.”

Some representatives, like vulnerable Mimi Walters (R-CA) of Orange County, seemed undecided. Capital Public Radio quoted her spokesperson as saying: “The Congresswoman’s top priority is putting more money back into the pockets of middle class Californians. …  She will carefully review any change to the SALT deduction to determine the impact on hard working taxpayers in need of tax relief.” In the end, however, Walters, too, held the line.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

2015 State Senate Elections Triggered by Vacancies

The Nov. 4 vote didn’t end this election cycle, but sparked a new round. Three sitting state senators won seats in the U.S. House of Representatives: Sens. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Walnut Creek; Steve Knight, R-Antelope Valley; and Mimi Walters, R-Irvine.

They will resign their positions in the state Legislature sometime before Jan. 5 to take their places in Congress.

Within 14 calendar days of each resignation, Gov. Jerry Brown must, in accordance with the California Elections Code, call a special election between 126 and 140 days later. If no candidate claims 50 percent of the vote plus one in the first round, a run-off election will be held between the top two candidates. Two years ago, when state Sens. Juan Vargas and Gloria Negrete McLeod resigned to take their seats in Congress, on Jan. 7 the governor called for March 12 special elections.

A fourth state Senate seat is already open from a vacancy created by the conviction and resignation of state Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood. That special election in the 35th Senate District is scheduled for next Tuesday, Dec. 9, with a potential run-off on Feb. 10.

Special elections routinely cost county elections offices nearly a half-million dollars each. In 2013, the special election for Senate District 32 cost Los Angeles County $483,240, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Here at CalWatchdog.com, we’ve assembled your go-to guide for the 2015 special elections.

State Senate 7: Mark DeSaulnier heads to Congress

With DeSaulnier heading to Washington, his open seat speeds up the timeline for what would have been a 2016 showdown, because he was term-limited, between a former and current member of the Assembly, both Democrats.

For six years, Joan Buchanan represented the 16th Assembly District, portions of which overlap with the open seat. She’ll face stiff competition from Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla of Concord, the largest city in the district.

Bonilla has a long history in the district. Prior to joining the Legislature, she served as a Contra Costa County supervisor as well as Concord mayor and council member.

Local attorney Mark Meuser, the Republican candidate who lost to DeSaulnier by 23 points in 2012, has also jumped into the race, according to the Antioch Herald.

Another candidate that could benefit from a Buchanan vs. Bonilla slug-fest is moderate Democrat Steve Glazer. An adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown, Glazer was Public Enemy No. 1 of the state’s powerful labor unions in the June 2014 primary for the 16th Assembly District. He finished in third place, with just 22 percent. In a close election on Nov. 4, Republican Catharine Baker beat Democrat Tim Sbrianti.

State Senate District 7 voter registration numbers:

  • Democrat: 43.6 percent;
  • Republcian: 28.7 percent;
  • Decline to State: 22.0 percent.

State Senate 21: Replacing Steve Knight

Knight’s win in the 25th Congressional District will trigger a special election in Los Angeles County. But the strongest candidate to replace Knight has already decided not to enter the race. KHTS reported last month that Assemlyman Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, already has ruled out a run for the seat.

“I love the district that I represent and I expect to be named vice chair of a very important committee that I want to be a part of” in the Assembly, Wilk said. “And I believe that we can find a very electable Republican that can do a great job. We’ve got a lot of momentum and we want to keep it going.”

There’s buzz that former Assemblyman Tim Donnelly is mulling a bid for the seat, according to the Desert Dispatch. In the June primary election, the Republican lost a bid for governor.

However, Donnelly doesn’t live in the district, which could be a big problem with voters. The district sent Knight to Congress over better-funded opponent Tony Strickland, a former Republican state Senator, who did not live in the 25th Congressional District.

Victorville businessman Sal Chavez has already launched his campaign for Knight’s seat. So has Hesperia City Councilman Eric Schmidt. Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford has formed an exploratory committee, but isn’t formally committed to the race. Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris is similarly toying with the idea of running for the seat. All are Republicans.

Democrats now hold an edge in voter registration, which could help a lone Democrat reach a run-off. Star Moffatt, the 2012 Democratic nominee who lost to Knight by 15 points, has also announced for the seat.

State Senate District 21 voter registration numbers:

  • Democrat: 38.3 percent;
  • Republican: 35.7 percent;
  • Decline to State: 20.2 percent.

State Senate 35: Special to fill Rod Wright’s seat

Wright’s resignation kicks off the state Senate Special election season on Dec. 8. Former Assemblyman Isadore Hall is expected to cruise to victory after forcing his toughest competition, Assemblyman Steven Bradford, out of the race. Both are Democrats.

Hall has come under fire from his opponents for frequent junkets and lavish campaign spending, which included a trip with lobbyists to the 2014 Kentucky Derby.

Hall’s opponents are businessman James Spencer, a Republican; and two Democrats, retired teacher Louis L. Dominguez and Harbor Planning Commissioner Hector Serrano. “We are a working-class community, and we don’t live that type of life of luxury, taking trips all over,” Serrano told the Los Angeles Times.

State Senate District 35 voter registration numbers:

  • Democrat: 61.0 percent;
  • Republcian: 14.2 percent;
  • Decline to State: 20.4 percent.

State Senate 37: Succeeding Mimi Walters

Walters, who cruised into a safe Orange County congressional seat, will see at least two Republicans duke it out for the remainder of her term in Sacramento. As reported by CalWatchdog.com, outgoing Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach has announced his candidacy for the 37th state Senate District. He’ll face current Assemblyman Don Wagner. If Wagner were to prevail, it would result in yet another special election to fill the remainder of his term in the Assembly.

Another big-name Orange County politico, GOP party chairman Scott Baugh, briefly flirted with a run for the seat. He is a former Assembly Republican leader. However, he now says he doesn’t intend to run.

A potential Moorlach vs. Wagner match-up could turn into a nasty intra-party feud. Wagner has recently run into trouble with conservative Tea Party activists.

“Wagner was one of two local Assemblymen out of a total of 15 Legislators statewide who were signatories to a letter encouraging Congress to pass an amnesty bill,” wrote Kelly Hubbard, a Tea Party activist in Orange County. “The letter has never received too much media attention, but has no doubt been a very hot topic with local activists and with many members of the Tea Party grassroots in Orange County!”

State Senate District 37 voter registration numbers:

  • Democrat: 28.7 percent;
  • Republcian: 42.6 percent;
  • Decline to State: 23.9 percent.

(H/T to AroundtheCapitol.com for providing voter registration data.)

This article was originally published on CalWatchdog.com