The state Republican Party this weekend rejected the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that is trickling down from GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Meeting in Anaheim, party leaders stripped the term “illegal alien” from its platform and embraced a more moderate position on immigration. But with Republicans seen by many as synonymous with Prop 187, and party registration at 28% in the state, will it make any difference? David Siders, Sacramento Bee:
“’It kills us,’ said Assemblyman Rocky Chávez, an Oceanside Republican who is running for a U.S. Senate seat. ‘If you have Trump up there running his message, that would pretty much assure any Republican in California is going to go down. It’s not going to be just me. It’s going to be Assembly members and senators ... Somebody like him would pretty much damage the image of all the good, hard-working Republicans.’
“Even if Trump cannot maintain his early standing in the polls, as many analysts predict, Chávez said, ‘For California, what he brings back is a lot of the rancor of the 1990s, and I think that will hurt us.’”
Supposing Trump does fade – could Carly Fiorina be the candidate to carry the GOP torch? For some, yes, but a bruising 2010 Senate campaign against Barbara Boxer left many California Republicans with respect for Fiorina the candidate, but questions about her ability to connect with voters. Carla Marinucci, San Francisco Chronicle:
“Some party luminaries, such as millionaire Charles Munger Jr., the state GOP’s most generous donor, said they are focused on the present. ‘I am backing Carly,’ said Munger, who has donated $100,000 to her super PAC. ‘I’ve had the privilege of hearing her ... She is whip smart, a person with high integrity, and she brings an important voice to the national scene….’
“Still, many at the convention predicted that Fiorina’s business record, which made its way into damaging ads, will haunt her and the Republican Party again if she continues her ascent.
“[Steve] Frank, who publishes California News & Views, a conservative newsletter, said he talked with Fiorina at length in 2010 and admires her strength. But for most of his readers, ‘the optics don’t make sense,’ he said. ‘She fired 30,000 — and then tripled her salary.’”
While odds of a Republican top-of-the-ticket win are slim in the Golden State, the party has some signs of life- notably in down-ticket races. Cathleen Decker, LAT:
“In hard-fought elections, Republicans have blocked Democrats from holding a supermajority of the Legislature, which would have allowed Democrats to rule at will because the party also controls the governor's office.
“The GOP success mattered when Gov. Jerry Brown recently tried to raise taxes, including some that would have helped finance $3.6 billion in repairs to the state's roads. The plan was quashed when Republicans announced their opposition and remained united — a result not always accomplished in past years.”
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats are seeing party infighting, with the latest – and potentially ugliest – battle setting up between Senator Marty Block (D-San Diego) and termed-out Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego). As Flip Wilson used to say, “Watch Out!”
From Melanie Mason at the Los Angeles Times: “The brewing showdown could cause fractures not just in local San Diego Democratic politics, but in the state Capitol, escalating a long-simmering rivalry between the Senate and Assembly that persists even as Democrats solidly control both chambers.
“’The soon to be ex-speaker knows very well that when one house challenges another, it’s a slap in the face of the leader of the challenged house, [Sen.] Block said. Or put another way, the senator said, ‘This is a direct attack on Kevin De León.’”
“De León, the Democratic leader of the Senate, declined to say if he saw Atkins’ bid as an affront. In a statement, he praised Block’s ‘principled leadership’ in pushing for more higher education funding in the most recent budget and called his colleague ‘an extraordinary senator.’
“’He deserves to be reelected and Senate Democrats are resolutely united behind him,’ De León said.”
Meanwhile, 2016 could be an election of monumental importance in the state Assembly, where 16 of 80 members will be termed out. After that, no members term out for the next three cycles, meaning that 2016 will likely see the last major changes in that house until the mid 2020s. Paul Mitchell in the Bee:
“For the business community, organized labor, environmentalists, education groups and any major interest with business before the Legislature, 2016 is the last election cycle in which they could create any significant change in the composition of the lower house. If the Mod Dems can hold or grow their bloc of votes, then the dynamic we saw this year would solidify into a permanent structure for several years to come.
“This isn’t just an important last stand for conservative and liberal policy interests. For the past several election cycles, groups like California Women Lead and Close the Gap have been focusing on increasing the number of women serving in the Legislature. Similarly, there are groups focused on increasing the number of Asian, Latino, African American, LGBT or other representatives in the Assembly. If they are not successful in this coming election cycle, there won’t be much opportunity for growing their ranks until 2024.”
SB 350 may have been neutered by oil interests, but the bill that ultimately emerged from the legislature sets up a clash between petroleum interests and clean-power generators. Dan Morain, Sacramento Bee:
“In the Assembly, big business-backed Democrats, who had fought the bill when the oil industry opposed it, ended up voting for the measure. Whether they realized it or not, the final bill still targets the oil companies by forcing competition with the utilities.
“To electrify the transportation system, the utilities must provide electrons to tens of thousands of new charging stations at homes, apartments, businesses and malls.
“When it was introduced at the start of the year, SB 350 did not mention the notion of transportation electrification. In the final version, the words transportation electrification are repeated no fewer than 17 times.”
“…Now, fewer than 2 percent of the cars on the road are electric. In 15 years, as many as a fourth of the vehicles will be zero-emission vehicles, most of them propelled by electricity.”
And finally, there are plenty of crazy conspiracies out there, variously promoted by truthers, birthers, anti-vaxxers, etc., but Vox has come up with a conspiracy theory that we just have to take seriously: donut holes used to be smaller.
“At first, it sounds like the plot of a wild pastry-based conspiracy theory: over the course of a couple of decades, our nation's donuts holes dramatically decreased in size. The very shape of the donut changed, in just two decades, from a ring of dough to the pinched dough vessel we know today…
“But let's go back to the past. The year is 1918. A nation at war uses donuts to raise money and promote men at war, and so-called ‘Doughnut Girls’ bring them to soldiers, occasionally on the battlefield. And one poster shows donuts as they were. The size of this man's donut hole may give you chills, because it's gigantic…
“Smithsonian's history of the donut provides a comprehensive look at the food, and from it we can draw a few guesses about why donut holes shrank. Donut holes are shrouded in legend, but they probably exist to help fry the donut more evenly — without a hole, the center of the donut would end up more raw than the outside…
“But for such an iconic American snack, we may never learn the truth…”
