SB 51: the California politics thread

What's up this year? Lots!

- The housing crisis, Prop 10 and SB 827 (RIP (for now))
- Prop 5 (and the hope of a split roll measure in a couple of years?!)
- Prop 6 (lol this is going to lose I hope)
- When did Gavin Newsom disappoint you first?
- Feinstein vs De Leon (lol) and the state democratic party
- The state republican party (lol)
- Ballot Measure C in SF (this one seems nuts!)
- What is the deal with all the ballot measures, isn't that what we pay these people for?
- high speed rail (lol)
- single payer (lol)

Let's talk about it!

someone explain SF measure C to me? is it doomed now breed, weiner, etc. are against it?

re: ballot measure 6, is apparently a lost cause at this point, ha, http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-gas-tax-repeal-campaign-cash-20180930-story.html. but prop 10 is not polling well either (and is kind of a mess legislatively as i understand it): https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article219033985.html.

LA measure B (city bank) is cool btw, and the LA times sucks for opposing it.

I have no idea what's going to happen to measure C but I hope it passes. The split on the Dem side (Pelosi and various supervisors for it, bu Breed/Weiner/others against it) is kind of weird but idk how many voters really take their marching orders from Breed and Weiner tbh. Whereas everyone I know thinks bajillionaire companies paying more to house the people they've misplaced is a no-brainer.

uh wtf at the DST prop?

I'm really behind the times, yall are going to have to hold my hand as I fill out my ballot. The only ones that seem clear cut to me on first blush are 6 (NO) and 10 (YES).

agreed on 6 and 10.

the DST prop changes nothing but it gives the legislature the right to consider and in principle make changes. DST kills a few people people every march. vote yes IMO on that one.

the bond measures (1-4) are all yeses for me.

prop 5 extends the infamous prop 13 (i.e. restricts localities ability to fund education by restricting their ability to tax massive real estate wealth). you could make the case that extends it to be fairer, but any extension of prop 13 makes the task of removing it politically tougher. so no on 5 IMO.

8 11 and 12 are classic examples of "What is the deal with all the ballot measures, isn't that what we pay these people for?" i guess i'd be yes on 8, no on 11 and yes on 12?

Sent my ballot in the other day. Yeah C has been worth it just to see Benioff and Jack@Twitter complaining at each other in public.

given the financial structure that tech VC encourage (i.e. avoid making a profit), i like that ballot measure C is a tax on revenue, not profits.

caek did you go and get naturalized or somethin

no i can't vote, so i'm telling as many people as possible how to vote instead

that's very generous of you; if I couldn't vote I don't know how I could stand researching ballot measures

anyway not californian so y'all can do whatever as long as you don't come for our water

also lol at gerry brown's veto statement for the 4am last call option

https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/SB-905-Veto.pdf

"mischief and mayhem".

xp
He's the Frederik B of California!

ha i do live here fwiw

much as I find the Salesforce tower annoying (I work right next to it), I have to say this guy's allright. Or at least better than most.

Benioff and Salesforce have donated to multiple San Francisco Bay Area causes including $250 million to support hospitals, $11 million to help the homeless, and $50 million to public schools. In his talk, he acknowledges that some of city's business leaders haven't been as generous.

"I have gone hat in hand to every high net worth individual in the city," he said. "I know who is willing to give money, and who isn't. I already have the list. I know if we're going to raise money for our schools, the homeless and hospitals, there's a group of people in our city who are willing to give. And there's a group of people in the city who give nothing based on the level of wealth they have. You're either for the kids, the homeless and the hospitals, or you're for yourself."

graded on a curve he is easily the best of the bunch. SFDC has an obscure business relationship with ICE/CBP though.

I have to admit I don't know what Salesforce does.

Aside from putting their name on things around the city and buying Metallica.

Salesforce makes Rolodex-as-a-Service for your entire company.

considering the software they sell is basically a spreadsheet/database combo from the 90s, their research team is also bizarrely good at AI/ML, which is one of their reasons their involvement with CBP is unnerving.

I've used a few Salesforce databases in my job and basically a spreadsheet/database combo from the 90s seems about accurate. tbf there was a huge need/demand for this, so their success is not really much of a surprise.

Also it’s a federal election so off topic but it’s interesting because of the top two primary so: the congressional election where I live is between jimmy Gomez (democrat) and a Green Party guy. I believe this is the only two candidate congressional election involving the greens in the country. Based on the lawn signs and the number of times they’ve canvassed our home, the Green Party guy is going to run away with it. (He won’t. He’ll lose by like 40 points.)

I can't believe I am actually going to vote for Gavin Newsom for the first time in like 20 years? ... like I actually voted against him for Lt. Gov. because I hated him so much as SF Mayor and before that as appointed stooge to Willie Brown on the Board of Supes ...

otoh I'm kinda cool with Jerry Brown as governor, and I kinda hated him as mayor,

and actually a lot of the current bullshit in Oakland can kinda be laid at his feet, though not really. Like I don't think any one person can be held responsible for the incompetence, venality, and obstructionist idiocy that is a lot of Oakland government: the people that don't have to run for office, so they can be pretty much awful and stupid with few repercussions to their careers.

There's some new local version of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers sending out mailers to Oakland addresses arguing against voting for various property tax measures on principle.

Oh yeah, Yes on Measure Y -- extending Just Cause protection to people that live in duplexes and triplexes (as opposed to currently where it's like 4+ units)

yeah latimes had a lot of dirt on newsom a few months ago but he was still one of the favorites

i'm still registered to vote but i'm not in the country anymore, but i would vote for newsom

I'm with sarahell on the mixed feelings about Newsom. He is a guy who I *really* don't like or trust, even when a lot of his policy prescriptions and positions line up with mine. He's just a fucking slimeball that wants to be president really badly. Dunno if I will bother voting for him, he's almost certain to be the winner anyway.

i remember being a local blogger about 10 or so years ago and my fave thing was comparing him to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman

I think he is also a big fan of Huey Lewis & the News iirc

I can't hate him, he stepped forward to support same-sex marriage at a time when most of the rest of the country was charging in the other direction

comparing him to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman

yeah you weren't alone in this the similarity is just too eerie

he stepped forward to support same-sex marriage at a time when most of the rest of the country was charging in the other direction when it was most politically advantageous to him personally, handed the GOP a wedge-issue that helped get Dubya re-elected, resulted in the passage of Prop 8 in California actually *banning* gay marriage, and did not actually result in any valid gay marriages

fixed

that whole charade was nauseating, grandstanding at his worst. He knew he didn't have a legal leg to stand on and did it for the purposes of benefiting no one but himself.

xp - even when in practice it was preaching to the choir and a high profile distraction from his pro-development/pro-corporate policies?

^^^

he has a history of this grandstanding, like when he wanted to improve the health of poor & working class San Franciscans by banning cigarette sales from chain stores with pharmacies -- that pretty much affected nothing except the ability to buy fairly low-priced cigarettes at Walgreen's stores. ... as opposed to walking a block or less to a liquor store and buying cigarettes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55cG7EytB7M

omg I pulled up this video to show how fuckin obnoxious he was at the time and the closed captioning is wild

**APPLAUSE BY HOMOSEXUALS**

xp the conversation it started was a huge push forward for gay rights

i don't think he literally tried to feed a cat to an ATM tho

the conversation it started was a huge push forward for gay rights

he didn't start it - Alaska and Arizona already had gay marriage rulings on the books - he just made the splashiest (and emptiest) show about it. which is his modus operandi.

xp Dan -- I'm not saying he's evil incarnate, just that it was a self-serving move. And it is often super useful to be reminded that in the central SF Bay Area, one lives in kinda a political bubble and that there is certain hair-splitting we do here, some more-progressive-than-thou type stuff, that looks ridiculous to most other Americans

Oh yeah, and Oakland has a mayoral election ...

Alaska and Arizona, come on. This *was* a big push forward.

Bush had already given his SOTU pressing for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Massachusetts was on track to start allowing marriages in May of that year. A backlash was going to happen in 2004. And Prop 8 was a direct response to the California Supreme Court recognizing marriage rights in 2008

agree that it was a partly self-serving move, but it was also a very good thing

yeah, on paper he has done all the right things, but you read into the details of his life and he is a total slimeball

thing is, how else would you vote if not on what he has done and the positives more or less outweigh the negatives

i feel like this single payer healthcare program was hyped a lot in california, but like it's crazy when you do the math

i'm not against it though

on paper he has done all the right things

not when he was mayor! he did a lot of not-right things

as mayor his sponsorship of Prop N (Care not Cash) was very controversial

yeah, i know what you mean

i guess i should say given the options

I agree that policy-wise I'm compelled to vote for him, more or less. At the same time, I absolutely hate watching him talk and prior to our current scandal-goalpost-moving POS chief exec I would have assumed Newsom was a lock for doing something scandalously unethical/illegal that would tank his career. I guess we're going to find out soon enough.

Well when the alternative is John Cox...

i was listening to an interview with scott weiner and he mentioned that brown had vetoed the 4am last call thing but he would bring it back next year and didn't expect any problems with newsom on that issue. there was then a weird moment where the interviewer and weiner acknowledged that yes, newsom is a known partier.

a friend of mine/former journalist wrote a semi-autobiographical novel that briefly features an obvious Newsom character riding around in a limo drinking champagne, doing blow and engaging in bisexual hijinks

"That, in turn, should be the opening line of your novel.

god damn i need a voter guide who tf are all these yahoo local judges speaking in code

i forget, are you in LA?

I think so... a lot of people who worked with him in the Biden admin are baffled by this - apparently he was kind of a nonentity

He does seem to be the 2020 Biden in the governor race, everyone is settling on him

well it *is* kind of crazy that we've never had a latino/a governor

FALSE NEWS!

Post-Mexican-American War, Jose Antonio Romualdo Pacheco briefly served as CA Governor for ~10 months in 1875:

I found this rather rich factoid buried in his wiki:

In 1882, he broke from his silence on national issues when he argued in favor of the Chinese Exclusion Act, citing concerns that Chinese immigrants who worked in mines and on railroads in California were stealing the jobs of White Americans and degrading the morality of Chinese cities. The bill was passed as Pacheco joined the 60 Republicans as well as all the Californian representatives in voting in the affirmative.

Touché, I stand cofrected

fucking idiot

Steve Hilton, the British political strategist seeking the state’s top office, drew derision after posting a video outside a southern California location of the fast food chain Del Taco while holding the hard-shell tortilla concoction that he referred to as a “street taco”.

“We just did a great town hall here in Barstow,” Hilton said in a video shared on social media in which he could be seen holding a “Barstow street taco” that he had bought from a “historic location”, the “original Del Taco”.

His description drew swift criticism in the state where tacos are practically the official dish.

I dunno. I kinda like it when politicians just set themselves on fire like that.

Ok I don't know where everyone else is, but I kind of think I am voting for Steyer and then Josh Fryday for Lt Gov.

I will probably vote Steyer now that it’s clear a 2 republican general isn’t going to happen. becerra is so mid, just the definition of non inspiring

Yeah thats where I am too.

I haven't voted yet. Since Becerra (who I agree is mid) is running away with it, I think I will vote for Porter or Mahan.

I think Becerra or Steyer or both will be in the top two. I could vote for either of them

Steve Hilton could very likely be in the top two. Then it will be an easy decision. I'm thinking this jungle primary thing is super risky

voting for steyer too, but what a weak slate. almost as depressing as LA mayor

From the outside, the jungle primary seems like it has more pitfalls than benefits. In the same way nonpartisan districting commissions do in super-polarized partisan warfare. Nice ideas ill-suited to the moment.

it’s almost unreal how bad the gov and LA mayor races are, they come off like the last several presidential elections in microcosm. Esp LA mayor.

I'm confused about the LA mayor's race. Don't progressives like Nithya Raman? I don't understand what's going on in that race at all, it seems like there are a lot of complicated issues

I think she's tied with Bass and both of them barely lead Prattdaddy

oh you're right, Raman seems like she's in a dead heat most recently. I am behind

I'm voting at the last minute, and handing my ballot in to my neighborhood voting place at the Norwegian Seaman's Church in SF on Tuesday

Those last day votes probably won't get counted until days later, given the plodding (but fair) counting in our state

I thought they don't count any votes until the close of polls time (8 pm Tuesday)?

Xp — will probably hold my nose/cross my fingers and vote for Steyer … locally we just have yet another parcel tax on the ballot, which I will vote for, because at least it’s not another sales tax increase.

SF has more exciting shit to vote for.

Yeah Pelosi's seat (most of SF) has been quite a lively race. Either one of the three will be basically OK with me. There's stuff I don't like about all three.

I voted for Katie Porter, mostly because I was tired of Steyer's ad onslaught

I'm sick of it too but I did wind up voting for him

I also just saw somewhere that polling for the billionaire tax was at 60% yes.

Re: the counting, we probably won't really know anything for sure for a couple of days because there don't seem to be any landslides in the state or local elections.

I voted for the LA sales tax increase. not the biggest sales tax fan, but it was endorsed by LADSA and the state can use the funds

Not looking forward to having to vote for increasing sales taxes in the bay to support mass transit. Shouldn't businesses with RTO policies be footing more of this bill? Why not drivers via a gas tax or registration fee bump??!

Yeah I can't answer the tradeoff of sales tax vs gas tax/registration fees for this, but I'm not sure that targeting companies with RTO policies is quite right.

There's a huge set of folks at the lower end of the economic ladder that have to work in person and rely in public transit. I don't think asking their employers to shoulder the burden is fair.

For me, I rely on public transit although I could drive. If way more people commuted like me, it would probably be beneficial broadly for a number of reasons.

I voted for all the tax increases, didn't think too much about it

As sarahell mentioned, we have a parcel tax on the Oakland ballot... I voted for it just because the NO side was so annoying and duplicitous

for Nancy Pelosi's seat in congress I voted for Scott Wiener. He is an incredibly thoughtful and hard-working state senator who has kind of ruled the state senate in the last couple of years authoring many bills. Connie Chan is a progressive SF supervisor who is actually in favor of no progress at all and seems to have no interest in national politics, and Chakrabarti, well...

for Nancy Pelosi's seat in congress I voted for Scott Wiener. He is an incredibly thoughtful and hard-working state senator who has kind of ruled the state senate in the last couple of years authoring many bills. Connie Chan is a progressive SF supervisor who is actually in favor of no progress at all and seems to have no interest in national politics, and Chakrabarti, well...

how did that post twice?

Mods are trying to figure out what's going on with the dupe posts

not the biggest sales tax fan

one of the greatest varieties of taxes

Chakrabarti really didn't manage to get very many votes in SF. I think the AOC non-endorsement helped kill his chances.

Yeah his whole thing seemed like vaporware. Chan's election night party was at the El Rio essentially a short block away from me so last night was pretty noisy when I was going to sleep.

not a great set of preliminary results for LA/state

seems insane to me we're going to be stuck with bass

has she sucked? I haven't paid that much attention. being mayor of LA seems like a completely doomed job

she def sucks from most Angelenos i know, but obv my pals are hard left etc

The battle for second in the primary race for Los Angeles mayor tightened even more on Saturday, with Councilmember Nithya Raman trailing former reality TV star Spencer Pratt by about 7,500 votes, the latest election results show.

Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who NBC News projected will advance to the November runoff on election night, was still in the lead with 34.81% of the vote, according to data from the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. Pratt had 27.32%, while Raman was a little more than 1 point behind with 26.21%.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-mayoral-race-raman-pratt/3900764/

Last update I’d seen was with 71% in and Pratt had 28.2 to Raman’s 24.9.

Raman now in 2nd. I wonder if Pratt will jump on Trump's "rigged vote" train.

He already has, of course. I like Nithya Raman

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman will advance to the runoff election for Los Angeles mayor, slated to face the incumbent Karen Bass, NBC News projected Monday.

With more than 92% of the votes counted, Raman surged past Spencer Pratt and picked up over 28% of the votes. Pratt, who maintained second place for several days, began to lose stream and picked up fewer votes as days went on.

NBC News had projected on Election night that Bass would advance to the November general election.

Shortly after NBC News released its projection, Bass' reelection campaign released a statement, with Douglas Herman, campaign strategist, saying, "A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning.”

From what I've read none of that is true about Raman. I get it though, it's a position to take

The Republican conspiracy theory that the LA election was fucked with to advance two Democrats is so preposterous. Karen Bass would be much happier to face Pratt than Raman

I've lived in SF for a long time. It has always taken them a really long time to count all of the votes, and results sometimes change in the end. It is kind of amazing that the results of all of the close elections in California become kind of an afterthought within the week(s) it takes to count the votes. It’s like everyone forgets after the first couple of days

anyway it was just announced today (6 days later) that Prop D failed in SF

I kind of like Trump gnashing his teeth about something he has absolutely no control over, have at it bro

Still no word about Prop B, term limits for SF supervisors. Aaron Peskin has won two non-consecutive 8-year terms as my District 3 Supervisor, he has ruled over us for 16 years. He has always been against any progress, no building at all, no new businesses, no bringing the subway through, just trying to preserve North Beach as it was decades ago. The burnt out building on Union St at Washington Square Park has sat empty since 2018. It is an eyesore and has become dangerous for anyone passing by. He has had no interest in trying to fix it.

When he was termed out two years ago Danny Sauter vigorously campaigned and was elected. I have met Danny and I really like him. He has prioritized a solution to that building and to the other problems we face

The idea that Peskin could swoop in two years from now to be elected again (since he is the most recognizable politician in SF) for another 8 years to make it 24 years - I really don't like that idea

I hope Prop B passes