By Howard Wayne
SAN DIEGO — Seven of the 23 Republican-held House seats carried by Hillary Clinton are in California. That is nearly a third of what Democrats need to win if they are to take the House of Representatives. This is the dominant competitive factor at play in the California 2018 election.
The Republicans’ Challenging Situation
President Trump is deeply unpopular in the Golden State. He lost the state in the 2016 election by millions of votes, and his favorability rating is well underwater. In the run-up to the 2018 election Trump is demonizing California.
California has moved sharply Democratic from what had been a fairly reliable Republican state. Republicans won the presidential vote in every election from 1952 to 1988, except for the Goldwater debacle. No Democrat not named Brown was elected governor from 1942 through 1994 (and only one since then). Now, GOP voter registration is less than the number of voters choosing not to affiliate with a party –and well behind Democratic registration.
To compound their difficulties, as 2018 began no viable Republican was running for the U.S. Senate seat up this year, and there was a strong possibility no Republican would make it past the top-two primary into the race for governor. So how was the GOP going to turn out their voters to save their seven vulnerable House seats and hold onto the House?
They concluded nothing turns out conservatives like a chance to vote against taxes. In 2017 the Legislature passed an increase in gasoline taxes and vehicle registration fees to fund transportation – primarily road maintenance and improvements. As popular as infrastructure is, taxes are not, and the Republican Party launched an initiative to repeal the measure and prohibit the Legislature from approving similar measures. It was not a surprise that early funding for the initiative came from House Speaker Paul Ryan and gubernatorial hopeful John Cox.
Initially the Republicans succeeded. The tax measure, Proposition 6, qualified for the November election. In June they were able to recall a Democratic state senator who had voted for the increases, and Cox survived the primary to make the fall vote. Since then both Ryan and Cox have stopped funding the measure, Cox is a heavy underdog in the race for governor and Proposition 6 is, depending on the poll, trailing. The fate of the House seats is very much up in the air. However, two of the incumbents, perhaps reading the tea leaves, decided against running again.
Democrats have closed out the race for United States Senate and Lieutenant Governor because their candidates finished first and second in the June primary. They are favorites to win the other state-wide offices with two possible variances. Steve Poizner, elected on the Republican ticket as Insurance Commissioner in 2006, is seeking his old office. For this race he re-invented himself as a No Party Preference, seemingly concluding the Republican brand is toxic in the state. When Poizner ran for governor in 2010, he campaigned on an anti-immigrant platform but lost the Republican nomination to Meg Whitman. Republicans are his major donor base this year. Poizner came in first in the June primary and has received endorsements from the state’s major newspapers. Perhaps he has found the formula for Republicans to win in California – stop being Republicans.
The low-key position of Superintendent of Public Instruction has become a proxy war between charter school advocates and teachers’ unions. Charters have drawn fire from unions because, in their efforts to change the education rules, they have “at-will” employment contracts with their teachers. That means teachers can be fired without cause and without appeal rights. Critics also view charter schools as diverting public funds to the private businesses that run them. Democrat Tony Thurmond is supported by the unions and the California Democratic Party, while Democrat Marshall Tuck is the candidate of the charter school supporters.
California’s legislature is expected to remain overwhelmingly Democratic, with the major question being whether Democrats can flip a Central Valley district and achieve a two-thirds supermajority in the State Senate.
San Diego in Flux
Closer to home, some change seems on the way in San Diego. Democratic attorney Mike Levin is seen as likely to win one of the seven “Clinton-seats” in a district that is shared with Orange County. It is the only one of the seven districts where Democratic candidates won a majority of votes in the June primary.
In an inland district, Duncan Hunter, who inherited this GOP dominated seat from his father, is in trouble. He is under federal indictment for raiding his campaign account for personal expenses – and has blamed his wife. The indictment contains information undermining his image as a traditional values family man. Hunter has responded by a Trump-like attack on the Justice Department and the media, and a character assassination campaign against his Democratic opponent Amar Campa-Najar. Hunter claims he is part of Muslim effort to take over the government (Campa-Najar is a Christian), that he is a security risk (Campa-Najar had a security clearance in the Obama administration) and that his grandfather, who died long before Campa-Najar was born, was a leader of the terrorist Black September organization that murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics (Campa-Najar has denounced the attack). Hunter is still favored, but not by much. Re-election may give him the plea bargaining chip of resignation.
Jewish Republican Bonnie Dumanis, who has been elected judge and District Attorney may find that she has run one time too many. In 2012 she finished a distant fourth in the race for mayor, and was forced to support the Republican candidate by the threat she would not be supported by the GOP when she sought re-election as DA. In 2017 she resigned that job and the all-Republican Board of Supervisors appointed her hand-picked successor. This year Dumanis is running for an open seat in a highly Democratic Supervisorial district. Although five Democrats split the party’s votes in June, she finished second to Nathan Fletcher (who also finished ahead of her in the mayor’s race). Given those dynamics, the Republican party may have given up on her. In 2020 another supervisor seat is likely to go Democratic when the incumbent is forced out by term limits.
The most interesting City of San Diego battle is over the former home of the San Diego Chargers. Even before the Chargers’ stadium initiative failed and the Chargers left town, investors coveting the 166 acres located in the middle of the city and along a trolley line began meeting with Mayor Kevin Faulconer. They came up with an initiative to redevelop the site with commercial and residential uses, and by the way, build a soccer stadium and bring a Major Soccer League franchise to town. It was initiative designed not to go to the voters, but rather to be approved by the City Council. Under a court-created legal loophole, measures that qualify as initiatives and are adopted by a council are not subject to environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act. However, the Council balked at approval and instead the matter will go to the voters as Proposition E. In response, supporters of San Diego State, which desires to expand from its land-locked campus and to build a football stadium, came up with its own initiative, Proposition G.
The Landscape After the Election
Two things are certain after the ballots are counted. Democrats will dominate in California and Trump will be president. The struggle between the state and the president will carry into 2019.
There are several California Democrats who are at least being mentioned for president in 2020. No California Democrat has ever been nominated for president or vice president, but that may change soon.
There will be a new governor, most likely Gavin Newsom. He will find his in-box filled with challenges. Among those are the lack of affordable housing, the drought, the extending fire season, and decisions to be made on the Brown legacies of the bullet train and the proposed Delta tunnels. Will he be willing to take on the thankless task of addressing California’s narrow revenue base that is highly dependent on the personal income tax?
California is always interesting.
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Howard Wayne, a Democrat, is a former three-term state assemblyman.