Tag: Politics of California

It was one of those horrific events — everyone remembers where they were, if they were anywhere. Fifty years ago, I was sitting at a typewriter and writing the lead story for the next morning’s Sacramento Union, Mark Twain’s old newspaper that, like so many print dailies, no longer exists. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy kept his presidential hopes alive Tuesday by winning the California primary….” Kennedy was leaving through the kitchen when Sirhan Sirhan shot him with a .22-caliber revolver. The senator died 25 hours later on June 6. The assassination altered California politics and American history. Experts differ about whether Kennedy would have beat out Vice President Hubert Humphrey for the Democratic presidential nomination and gone on to capture the White House over Republican Richard Nixon. I’ve always thought he would. It sparked antiwar protests across the nation. A month after Johnson bowed out, Humphrey announced his presidential candidacy. The GOP then coughed up the seat in November when Democrat Alan Cranston beat Rafferty and began a 24-year Senate career.

“They want to be treated like every other business, and part of that is making campaign contributions so they can get access to politicians and have their voice heard,” said Jim Sutton, an attorney who represents cannabis businesses organizing political campaigns. Since then, the industry has donated more than $600,000 to California political campaigns—more than four times as much as it spent on politics in the state during the 2013-14 election campaigns. Cannabis money is flowing to Democrats and Republicans running for re-election to the Legislature, as well as to Democratic candidates hoping to be elected governor and attorney general. It was one of three marijuana companies that donated to the state party for the first time this year, for a total of $45,000. “It’s a legal industry in California. So we welcome their dollars.” The party prohibits donations from tobacco and oil companies. Newsom championed the legalization ballot measure and now talks about California rejecting the “war on marijuana” as part of his gubernatorial campaign. A Democrat who has received at least $10,100 from marijuana interests, Chiang has highlighted his interest in creating a state bank that could serve cannabis businesses. Cannabis businesses in California now have several trade associations and a political action committee for raising money to dole out to politicians. Sen. Mike McGuire, a Healdsburg Democrat, took a $4,000 check from a marijuana delivery company last year but sided with the local governments that opposed limits on their power to ban delivery services.

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s decision to retire from Congress didn’t just send shock waves through Washington and his home state of Wisconsin. One likely successor to Ryan as head of the House’s GOP contingent is a Californian — he could become speaker if Republicans keep their House majority in the November elections. McCarthy seemed to have the inside track on the job then, including backing from Silicon Valley. Should Republicans retain control of the House — a big if — and McCarthy wins the job, “it could mean more money for California. Kevin McCarthy has forgotten more about California than the previous speaker knows,” Brulte said. “If one is the speaker and the other is party leader, that’s heads we win, tails we win,” said Carl Guardino, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which represents 400 tech executives. San Francisco billionaire activist Tom Steyer, who has pledged to spend $30 million registering 250,000 voters this year, said Wednesday that because of the tax plan, “history will not be kind to Paul Ryan.” New target: With Ryan fading as a party leader, expect Democrats to seize on Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, as the next bogeyman. With Paul Ryan out of the way, he will be a face of the party,” said Miller, the Republican strategist. There are few better fundraisers on the GOP side than Ryan, who brought in $44 million for Republican candidates in 2017 — a record for a House leader in a non-election year. While (Ryan) may not have been a big motivator for donors, he was for the donor class.” Joe Garofoli is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer.

California’s Latino community has lost its greatest voting rights gladiator. Today, many of us in politics or those sitting as judges owe a tremendous debt to Joaquin Avila’s lifetime of trailblazing advocacy. He successfully won landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases challenging discriminatory electoral systems that diluted minority political power throughout California and the Southwest. He joined the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) in 1974. His leadership quickly led him to MALDEF’s top position as president and general counsel in 1982. Three Latino plaintiffs and Avila claimed that the at-large elections system was unconstitutional and violated the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. District elections, on the other hand, would divide Watsonville into geographic districts in which each would vote for its own representative. It stated that Latinos in California had been subjects of “ubiquitous historical and current racial discrimination.” Avila would use the Watsonville case to successfully challenge other electoral systems and redistricting plans, including the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in the early 1990s. But what is probably Avila’s most transformative work was designing the California Voting Rights Act of 2001, authored by then-state Sen. Richard Polanco. That law now has resulted in nearly 300 cities, school boards and other local governments switching to district elections, most without litigation, to allow more Latinos and other people of color to have more equitable representation.