CALIFORNIA POLITICS
SD33 Special Election Update
Our endorsed candidate, Lena Gonzalez, is leading the top-two primary in the Senate District 33 (SD33) special election in Long Beach/Bell Gardens! With a majority of the ballots counted from yesterday’s election, Gonzalez has captured 30.6% of the vote, followed by Republican Jack Guerrero with 14.9% and Democrat Ali Saleh with 9.1%. Lena Gonzalez and Jack Guerrero will almost certainly face off in the run-off election June 4.
California Congressional Races
The Sacramento Bee analyzes voter trends and other factors that played into Andrew Janz’s challenge of Devin Nunes in 2018 and how they look for 2020 in this Central Valley race.
The LA Times looks into how the newly-elected congressional members from Orange County are taking different stances — from progressive to more centrist — as they go into their 2020 re-election campaigns.
Orange County
Republican Don Wagner defeated Democrat Loretta Sanchez (who last ran for U.S. Senate against Kamala Harris) in an Orange County Supervisor special election. Democrats had hoped to capitalize on the “blue wave,” so this loss is sparking “…internal debate about whether the base – which has shifted to the left – will really come out to back a moderate, pro-business Democrat like Sanchez. The traditional thinking was that it would take exactly that kind of candidate to win in the Third District, a place where Republicans enjoyed a longtime registration advantage. Yet traditional thinking is exactly what may have sunk the Democrats here.”
The political shift in Orange County is evident with the new sheriff ending the department’s cooperation with ICE.
POLICY
State legislators are have over 2,500 bills to consider this session, including some led by our endorsed elected officials:
- Assemblywoman Eloise Gómez Reyes (AD47) joined with Senators Nancy Skinner (SD9) and Connie Leyva (SD20) to introduce a package of bills — Assembly Bill 1411 and Senate Bills 44 and 210 — supporting clean vehicles and establishing vehicle carbon emission reduction benchmarks.
- Senator Maria Elena Durazo (SD24) is leading SB29 to expand Medi-Cal access to all income-eligible adults, regardless of immigration status.
This legislative session will be an indication of how a Democratic super-majority translates into policies, and early signs show that there may be more progressive policies. We will continue to highlight the legislative priorities of our endorsed elected officials as the session develops and track the influence of the corporate-backed moderate Democrats.
UNIONS, POST-JANUS
Conservative groups continue their attacks on unions, using the U.S. Supreme Court Janus ruling and recruiting public employees to bring lawsuits against unions. Unions have prevailed in these lawsuits, so far, but as Eric Soto, president of the union that represents state mental health workers, puts it, “This is clearly a continuation of a well funded, well coordinated and sustained effort to cripple and dismantle unions and is an attack on working class families.”