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      California voters send mixed messages in high-stakes races amid low turnout

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      California voters send mixed messages in high-stakes races amid low turnoutThemes of inequality, crime, and rising cost of living dominated races, but experts say, turnout a stark sign of political apathy Voters in California returned mixed messages in the state’s midterm primary elections on Tuesday, casting ballots in a series of high-stakes races that were dominated by themes of inequality, crime, and the rising cost of living.Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor, cruised to an easy victory in this deep blue state, advancing to the November general election, where he will be an overwhelming favorite to win a second term.In Los Angeles, the Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass and the billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso qualified for the final vote in November to fill the mayor’s seat.And in San Francisco, residents voted to recall the high-profile progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who was elected in November 2019 on an agenda of criminal justice reform but faced intensifying backlash from law enforcement, conservatives and residents concerned about crime.In a year when they are on the defensive nationwide, Democrats were expected to perform well in the Golden state on Tuesday, outnumbering Republicans 2-to-1 and holding huge majorities in the legislature and congressional delegation.In races up and down the state, crime, policing, the growing humanitarian crisis of homelessness and record gas prices had emerged as central issues. Still, Tuesday’s primary was marked by low turnout, in what experts say is a stark sign of political apathy considering all registered voters in California were mailed a ballot.The turnout left analysts to debate whether the results should be seen as a bellwether of Democratic voters’ broader views on crime and policing. Some more centrist political consultants argued the results were a warning to Democrats to avoid progressive stances on reforming the criminal justice system. Others said the results reflected the media’s coverage of crime and a successful rightwing playbook, more than the reality on the streets.Less than a year after a recall campaign tried to force him from office, Newsom obliterated a field of 25 other candidates with about 59% of the votes. The Democrat will face Republican Brian Dahle, a state senator from the sparsely populated north-east corner of the state, in November.Newsom has been campaigning on a progressive agenda, pitching California as a bulwark against conservative legislation spearheaded by Republicans nationwide.He has vowed to make California a sanctuary for women from other states seeking abortions and has pushed for a new law that would let people sue gun makers and sellers to enforce a ban on some assault weapons.Jessica Levinson, a political commentator and election law professor at Loyola Marymount University, was blunt in her assessment of Dahle’s chances: “The proverbial snowball has a better chance in hell,” she said.Boudin, a former public defender and the son of two leftwing Weather Underground radicals who spent decades in prison for a fatal heist, was one of the most prominent prosecutors in the US fighting to undo the damage of harsh punishments in a country that locks up more people per capita than any other.But he had faced growing headwinds from critics, blaming him for crime, violence, homelessness, retail thefts and other challenges that escalated in the city during the pandemic.Echoing national trends, San Francisco had seen an increase in homicides in past years, though analysts noted overall violent crime decreased during the pandemic, and many categories of crime were down under Boudin’s tenure. But the recall campaign tapped into growing frustration among some voters, and had a huge financial advantage, backed by ultra-wealthy donors.In a speech to his supporters on Tuesday night, Boudin struck a defiant tone, noting that progressive candidates were winning or leading in their races in other parts of California and the US: “The movement that got us elected in 2019 is alive and well. We see the results from coast to coast, from north to south.”In Los Angeles, voters’ decision to send Bass and Caruso to a runoff sets up a race that will present residents in the second largest US city with starkly different options for the future.Bass came to prominence as a progressive community activist in South Central Los Angeles and rose to become the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. She said that she had decided to run for mayor in part because of her concerns that voters’ frustrations over homelessness and high-profile property crimes might lead to the same kind of punitive, damaging policies that California politicians and voters endorsed during the 1990s.Caruso, a luxury mall developer with an an estimated net worth of $4bn, ran with a pledge to “clean up” Los Angeles. His campaign focused on crime and disorder, pledging to strengthen and expand the city’s police department and vowing to aggressively crack down on homeless encampments.Street activist, congresswoman – mayor? Karen Bass reaches for LA’s top jobRead moreCaruso poured more than $38m of his own fortune into his campaign through early June. He was backed by celebrity endorsements from Gwyneth Paltrow, Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk.At his election night party at the Grove, one of his shopping malls, Caruso said the voters supporting him were sending a clear message: “We are not helpless in the face of our problems. We will not allow the city to decline,” the Los Angeles Times reported.Bass told supporters on Tuesday night: “We are in a fight for the soul of our city, and we are going to win,” the Times reported.In another high-profile race, California’s state attorney general, Rob Bonta, a progressive who has backed reform efforts, advanced to the general election, with early results showing he held a substantial lead over three challengers with more conservative platforms.Levinson, the Loyola Law School professor, predicted that Bonta would win in November despite his challengers’ attempts to tap into Californians’ growing unease on crime.“Because this is not just about prosecuting crime, which mostly happens on the county level,” she said. “This is about what is going to be our legal policy with respect to reproductive rights, what’s going to be our legal policy with respect to second amendment rights, what’s going to be our policy with respect to immigration?”The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsCaliforniaGavin NewsomUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      California governor skipped Cop26 to spend more time with his kids

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      CaliforniaCalifornia governor skipped Cop26 to spend more time with his kidsAfter canceling his trip for ‘family obligations’, Gavin Newsom said he chose to take his children trick-or-treating Dani Anguiano and agencies@dani_anguianoWed 10 Nov 2021 15.14 ESTLast modified on Wed 10 Nov 2021 15.31 ESTCalifornia’s governor made his first public appearance in nearly two weeks on Tuesday, after days of mounting speculation about his decision to abruptly cancel a trip to Cop26 and largely recede from public view.Gavin Newsom said he chose to take his children trick-or-treating on Halloween rather than travel to Scotland to discuss the climate crisis with world leaders, explaining his decision was driven by the simple desire of a working parent to spend more time with his kids.Newsom’s comments, delivered Tuesday at an economic summit in Monterey, came after increasing media coverage and criticism from Republicans about his whereabouts and what he was doing. His last public event had been on 27 October when he got a coronavirus booster shot. Two days later his office issued a brief statement saying he was canceling his travel plans for unspecified “family obligations”.California town declares itself a ‘constitutional republic’ to buck Covid rulesRead moreHis staff would not answer questions about where he was or what he was doing for much of that time, sparking criticism from conservatives who spread rumors that Newsom was experiencing difficult side effects after his booster shot and rallied on social media around the hashtag #wheresgavin.Photos over the weekend published in Vogue showed Newsom attending the lavish wedding of Ivy Love Getty, the granddaughter of the late billionaire oil tycoon J Paul Getty, whose family members have been large donors to Newsom’s campaigns.Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Newsom’s wife, added to the intrigue on Sunday night with a since-deleted tweet telling people to “please stop hating and get a life”.But Tuesday, Newsom said his absence was nothing more than a chance to recharge with his family after a frenetic three years in office that included an unprecedented pandemic, record-breaking destruction from wildfires, a drought and fighting for his political life in only the second gubernatorial recall election in state history. Newsom beat back the recall in September and then spent the next several weeks considering hundreds of bills passed by the legislature.Newsom, who routinely has multiple public appearances each week, relishes his role as leader of the nation’s most populous state, which if it were its own country would have the world’s fifth-largest economy, making his absence after the sudden withdrawal from the climate conference so unusual.And the climate crisis is a signature issue for the governor, who many believe has aspirations of running for president some day. Attending the conference would have given him the opportunity to tout his climate change initiatives, which include banning sales of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035, and would raise his profile with world leaders. But as the trip neared, his children took the initiative, he said.“I’ve been on this damn treadmill, we’ve gone from crisis to crisis,” Newsom said. “The kids, literally, they kind of had an intervention. They said they couldn’t believe that I was going to miss Halloween.”Newsom said for his kids, who range in age from 5 to 12, missing Halloween is worse than missing Christmas. “I had no damn choice; I had to cancel that trip,” he said. Newsom’s comments earned applause from the audience and praise from his fellow Democrats in the state legislature, many of whom blamed the governor’s political opponents and the media for blowing the story out of proportion.Assemblyman Ash Kalra tweeted that had Newsom attended the conference, he would have been criticized “for traveling overseas instead of staying home attending to the state”.“He just can’t win,” Kalra said.Wesley Hussey, a political science professor at Sacramento State University, said Newsom could have prevented much of the fuss if he had simply said at the outset why he wasn’t attending the conference and taking a step back from public appearances.“I think this is an example of where the governor and his press operations need to be aware of social media and distortions and always being in front of the story,” he said. “I think we should know what the governor is up to and give the governor space when he needs family time. And I think that those can go together.”Neither the governor nor his representatives said why they didn’t offer details about Newsom’s whereabouts before this week. On Monday, Newsom’s office said the governor had been working in the Capitol on “urgent issues, including Covid-19 vaccines for kids, boosters, ports, the forthcoming state budget and California’s continued economic recovery”.When he emerged Tuesday, Newsom added details of his week out of the spotlight. He went to his childrens’ soccer tournament and took them trick-or-treating, having quickly found a pirate costume to join them. He said he brought his children to the Capitol last week, participating for the first time in tourist traditions like taking a selfie with the statue of a grizzly bear – the animal that appears on the state flag – outside the governor’s office.The children also got coloring books that are regular handouts from the senate president pro tempore’s office.“It’s been probably the most productive week I’ve had since I’ve been governor,” Newsom said.TopicsCaliforniaGavin NewsomCop26US politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      California town declares itself a ‘constitutional republic’ to buck Covid rules

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      CaliforniaCalifornia town declares itself a ‘constitutional republic’ to buck Covid rulesOroville’s city council adopted a resolution stating it would oppose state and federal orders that it deems to be government overreach Dani Anguiano in Los Angeles@dani_anguianoFri 5 Nov 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 5 Nov 2021 10.00 EDTA northern California town has declared itself a “constitutional republic” in response to Covid-19 health restrictions imposed by the governor, in the latest sign of strife between the state’s government and its rural and conservative regions.The city council in Oroville, located at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills about 90 miles from the capital of Sacramento, adopted a resolution this week stating it would oppose state and federal orders it deems to be government overreach.Oroville leaders said the designation was a way of affirming the city’s values and pushing back against state rules it doesn’t agree with, although a legal expert said the designation was merely a gesture and did not grant the city any new authority.Religious exemptions threaten to undermine US Covid vaccine mandatesRead moreTensions have existed throughout the pandemic between the rural north and California’s leadership, which has been among the first to implement lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccination requirements.In Butte county, fierce opposition to Covid lockdowns and school closures drove support for recalling the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, with 51% of voters in the county backing the ultimately failed effort. Newsom’s policies, however, appear to have worked and the state had the lowest Covid infection rate in the US last month.Last year, Oroville refused to enforce state requirements prohibiting indoor dining. Butte county, where Oroville is located, declined to recommend a mask mandate earlier this fall, even as cases surged and a a local medical center reported treating more patients than at any other point during the pandemic.Before passing the resolution, council members argued they were taking a stand and advocating for residents to make their own health choices.“I assure you folks that great thought was put into every bit of this,” the city’s mayor, Chuck Reynolds, said. “Nobody willy-nilly threw something to grandstand.”But the city’s declaration does not shield it from following federal and state laws, said Lisa Pruitt, a rural law expert at the University of California, Davis, who said it was not clear what the designation meant.“A municipality cannot unilaterally declare itself not subject to the laws of the state of California,” Pruitt said. “Whatever they mean by constitutional republic you can’t say hocus pocus and make it happen.”Leaders in the city of 20,000 say the resolution is an effort to push back against state government and affirm the city’s values and commitment to the constitution. Oroville drafted its resolution from scratch after not finding any examples of other cities with similar resolutions, said Scott Thomson, the city’s vice-mayor.“I proposed it after 18 months of increasingly intrusive executive mandates and what I felt to be excessive overreach by our government,” said Thomson. “After the failed recall in California, our state governor seems to [be] on a rampage and the mandates are getting more intrusive. Now he’s going after our kids and schools.”The majority of speakers at the Oroville city council meeting expressed their support for their resolution – applauding its introduction and calling council members “heroes” – with several specifically citing the state’s vaccine requirement for schoolchildren.“We’re hoping that becoming a constitutional republic city is the best step in order to regain and maintain our inalienable rights protected by the constitution of the United States. What will be left if we don’t have that? if we don’t have bodily autonomy?” one speaker said in tears. “What else are they gonna want me to let them do to my kids? Where does it stop?”The resolution does not affect local schools, which fall under the purview of the school district, Thomson said, but is a way for the community to declare it will not use city resources to implement state rules it does not agree with. “We’re not ignorant that there are serious issues at hand, we just do not agree with the way it’s being handled.”One council member argued that mandates were “political theater” and that the immune system is the best defense against disease. The best protection against against Covid-19 is vaccination – Butte county has a vaccination rate of 48%, according to New York Times data.The council approved the resolution by a 6-1 vote on Tuesday, even as one member who voted in favor of it warned residents it had “no teeth” and was a “political statement”.The city’s efforts tap in to a common sentiment in rural northern California that the region is ignored, but also over-governed by the state, Pruitt said. Signs for the state of Jefferson, a movement to secede from California, are common here. But, Pruitt says, the city’s gesture does not grant it more power or the ability to ignore state law.“It seems to make the people of Oroville feel better that their city council has made this gesture but as a practical matter it doesn’t make any difference,” Pruitt said.TopicsCaliforniaCoronavirusUS politicsGavin NewsomnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans overplayed their hand in California – and Democrats are laughing | Lloyd Green

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      OpinionUS politicsRepublicans overplayed their hand in California – and Democrats are laughingLloyd GreenLarry Elder just discovered that his brand appeals to a tiny fraction of voters. Republican governors in Texas and Florida may learn similar lessons Wed 15 Sep 2021 09.39 EDTFirst published on Wed 15 Sep 2021 09.31 EDTOn Tuesday, Gavin Newsom, California’s embattled governor, convincingly beat back a Republican-driven recall effort. Once projected to be a nail-biter, the contest degenerated into a nearly 30-point blowout. Indeed, Newsom may have even outpaced Joe Biden’s 2020 margin in California.Larry Elder: defeated California recall challenger takes a page from Trump’s big lie playbookRead moreTen months later, Donald Trump’s name was no longer on the ballot, but his spirit still lingered. Before the polls had closed, the former president was carrying on about the recall being rigged. Meanwhile, Larry Elder, Newsom’s leading Republican opponent and a rightwing radio host, had tentatively planned a post-election legal challenge.In the end, the threat of Elder in the governor’s mansion galvanized Democrats. To put things in context, Elder, who is black, has argued for reparations for slave owners. Let that sink in.On 18 July, on the Candace Owens Show, Elder opined: “Their legal property was taken away from them after the civil war, so you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people but also the people whose ‘property’ was taken away after the end of the civil war.”Also, Elder separately confided his support for “appointing judges and regulators who respect the constitutional right to life”, and announced that “the ideal minimum wage is $0”. Not surprisingly, little more than a third of California’s voters held a favorable opinion of Elder.As framed by John J Pitney, the Roy P Crocker professor of politics at California’s Claremont McKenna College, “in a heavily Democratic state Newsom was probably going to survive anyway”. But Elder “helped him turn surviving into a triumph”, Pitney told the Guardian. Elder was a gift to the governor.To be sure, it wasn’t just about Elder. More than 60% of Californians hold an unfavorable view of the Republican party, seven in 10 support mask mandates for students, and more than three-fifths categorized vaccination as a public health responsibility rather than a personal choice. The ethos of what could be called “live free and die” had a limited number of takers.Meanwhile, talk of a foregone electoral outcome led Republicans and conservatives to stay home. Apparently, the 45th president and his minions forgot about how that same gambit cost them both of Georgia’s Senate seats in last January’s runoff elections. Sometimes, history repeats itself.Fortunately for the Democrats, the liabilities that Elder and the Republicans displayed will not vanish in the coming weeks. Rabid Republican resistance to Covid vaccination, Florida’s needless deaths, and Texas’s draconian abortion law are not going away. They are now baked into the Republican party’s creed and DNA.In that same vein, the pledge by Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, to make rape magically disappear, and the embrace of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, of Covid conspiracy theorists, will not be forgotten anytime soon.By the numbers, self-described moderate Californians opposed the recall by better than a three-two margin. Opposition to the recall ran broad and deep. To be sure, what happens in California doesn’t usually stay in California. All this may yet make a difference in Virginia’s upcoming governor’s race.There, Democrat Terry McAuliffe holds a small but steady lead over Republican Glenn Youngkin, a former equity management executive. According to a recent Monmouth poll, Covid is the leading issue in the state followed by public schools.Earlier this summer, Youngkin was captured on video telling supporters that he had to remain quiet about abortion lest it cost him the support of independents and suburbanites, but once in office he could “go on offense”. Youngkin has also opposed vaccine mandates and labeled the jabs a matter of personal choice.Once upon a time, Virginia was home to Robert E Lee, the commander of the Confederate army and Trump’s favorite general. These days, no Republican holds statewide office there. The Commonwealth last voted Republican in a presidential election in 2004.Democrats can momentarily exhale. Gloating, however, is strongly discouraged. Their relative weakness among Latino and Asian American voters persists.In California, Biden bested Trump by more than 50 points among each of those two demographics. Yet less than a year later, opposition to the recall among Latinos and Asian Americans was just 16 points and 24 points, respectively.Late Tuesday night, Elder conceded the election, saying: “Let’s be gracious in defeat,” but adding: “We may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war.” One thing is certain: the embers of America’s cold civil war continue to burn red hot. California’s recall was one more scrum.TopicsUS politicsOpinionGavin NewsomCaliforniaRepublicansDemocratscommentReuse this content More