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IN THIS ISSUE – Ballots in the Mail; Recall Becomes “A Roll of the Dice”
- Newsom’s Recall Reality Check: “This Thing is Close”
- Redistricting Begins – New Boundaries for 2022 Elections…Just Around the Corner
- Census Data Released: Congressional Seat Lost; Latino Population Grew
- Energy Commission Mandates “De-Carbonization” in Building Code
Capital News & Notes (CN&N) harvests California policy, legislative and regulatory insights from dozens of media and official sources for the past week. Please feel free to forward this unique service.
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING AUG. 13, 2021
Newsom’s Recall Reality Check: “This Thing is Close”
Politico California Playbook & CalMatters
Just as the first ballots are reaching voters’ mailboxes, Gov. Gavin Newsom is kicking off a brief anti-recall campaign tour.
This isn’t meant to be confused with the statewide circuit the governor took earlier this year promoting this year’s big spending budget, even if that sometimes looked like a campaign tour. This one is the real deal.
The weekend trip, which starts today and will hit San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, is meant to get out the “no” vote amid a series of recent polls that show recall backers are much more eager to vote than Newsom’s supporters.
Team Newsom is hoping a few good words from the best known Democrat in the country might gin up some enthusiasm, too.
Thursday, President Biden reiterated his support for the governor in a statement. Don’t be surprised if you see him in California as Sept. 14 approaches.
Biden: “Registered California voters should vote no on the recall election by September 14 and keep California moving forward.
“Those that think this thing is not close, I hate to disabuse you: it is,” Newsom said on a call with supporters, including Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee and Karen Bass. “The reality is, this is close and it all comes to one fundamental thing. … We know the people more likely to vote at this moment tend to skew the RNC’s direction.”
And observers in the know — like Leon Panetta — agree he has good reason to worry.
HOW PANETTA SEES IT — The former California House member and U.S. Secretary of Defense warned Carla that the looming California recall represents a political “roll of the dice” by angry voters, with huge stakes for Democrats here and across the country.
“People are barraged by crises, Covid, climate change and wildfires,’’ Panetta said in an interview Tuesday. “They’re angry, they’re frustrated, they go to the polls — and what better way to take it out than basically to throw the governor out.”
WRONG FRAMING? Team Newsom’s framing of the election as a Trump-fueled takeover attempt may be a mistake, Panetta said. It’s one that ignores Californians’ worries about their safety, their future and their quality of life, amid rising concerns about crime and the state’s intractably large homeless population.
“This is not just a tornado or an earthquake. … This is something that goes to their survival,’’ he said. “I’m not sure traditional politics works here. I’m not sure the ads on television break through’’— especially those featuring Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and her warnings of Republicans “coming to grab power in California.”
BOTTOM LINE: It’s time for Newsom to have a heart-to-heart with voters, Panetta said. “What he needs to say is: ‘This is about California. It’s about the future of California. This is what I tried to do as governor — and on some things, I have not been successful.’ … He’s got to talk about what it means for them. And their kids.”
Meanwhile, VP Kamala Harris told the San Francisco Chronicle last month that she would be campaigning for the Democatic governor of her home state. We reached out to the vice president’s office on Thursday. “Nothing to announce just yet,” a spokeswoman said.
OUR LUNCH WITH WILLIE: Among those raising the alarm is Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco and sage of the state Assembly, who laid out his concerns during a two-hour lunch at John’s Grill this weekend in San Francisco. Over shrimp cocktails and fish and chips, Brown — who mentored Newsom and appointed him to his first political position — had some stark advice for the governor’s team: Move it.
“As of Election Day, Gavin is behind by 2.1 million votes: the people who signed those recall petitions,” Brown told us. “And they are all going to vote.” Newsom may have a big money advantage with $45 million in the bank, as Jeremy reported Friday. But “money is not going to win this election,” Brown added. “It is not a traditional campaign.”
Brown said his daily conversations with Democrats on the street still show some shocking ignorance about the coming election among Newsom’s base voters. Case in point: He says Democrats at a recent Chinatown gathering told him “they were going to vote ‘yes’ on the recall ballot to help Gavin.’’ He had to school them: “No! You have to vote no.”
ANGER AND INDIFFERENCE: Then there’s the problem of Democrats who are angry with Newsom about school closures or a myriad of other issues, indifferent about the election’s outcome or just plain unmotivated. “You don’t have to convince them to be for Gavin,’’ he said. “You just have to convince them to vote.”
What to do, with time running out? “This election is all about turnout,’’ Brown said.
Brown is not alone among Democrats who think Newsom’s team miscalculated by tapping Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as lead spokesperson in commercials. “She’s too liberal, even for a lot of Californians,’’ one leading Democrat told us. Others say she simply doesn’t connect with many of the Democratic and independent voters, who still need to be convinced Newsom is worth their support.
Redistricting Begins – New Boundaries for 2022 Elections…Just Around the Corner
CalMatters commentary by Dan Walters
The Census Bureau will release results of the 2020 census this week, setting the stage for the decennial process of redrawing California’s legislative, congressional and Board of Equalization districts to equalize their populations for the 2022 elections and beyond.
Thousands of cities, counties, school districts and other units of local government also will use the data to reconfigure their own districts.
However, the “legacy format” release is four-plus months later than the original date, the Census Bureau says, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the delay squeezes California’s independent redistricting commission to finalize maps in time for the 2022 election cycle.
As redistricting expert Paul Mitchell points out, “the legacy format of the census is like the IKEA furniture version of the census: The bureau will give us all the pieces, but it’s unassembled and will require a little bit of time — we estimate a few days to a whole week — before the census data will be usable for the purposes of redistricting.”
Mitchell also notes that while other states can get on with redistricting, “for California’s statewide commission, counties and cities, there is still an additional step to go.”
State prison inmates are counted in the locality where they were incarcerated on April 1, 2020, but under California law, they must be subtracted from those communities and reassigned, for redistricting purposes, to the communities where they resided at time of arrest.
That’s no small task, will take upwards of a month “and only then will California’s agencies have in hand the final dataset they can use to redraw the lines for congressional, legislative, county supervisor, and city council lines,” Mitchell says.
Originally, the commission was to have delivered its final maps by August 31, but with the four-month delay in releasing census data, the state Supreme Court advanced that deadline by four months to December 31, which created a small conflict with the 2022 election calendar. Filing by candidates for state offices is, under current law, scheduled to open on December 16.
The conflict will become a major one if the Supreme Court agrees to another two-week delay to January 14 that the commission is seeking.
“We’re tasked with getting meaningful public input” on the maps, commission chairman Russell Yee said.
“Because of the census delay, the whole public comment period on draft maps gets shifted to the holidays.”
Were the Supreme Court to approve the shift, the Legislature would probably be forced to alter the election calendar accordingly. Obviously, candidates can’t seek offices if they don’t know the parameters of their districts.
As deadlines and candidate filing periods move forward, if they do, they squeeze the campaign period for the June 7 primary election that will set the stage for the November 8 general election.
Meanwhile, the compressed period for the redistricting commission to do its work carries its own uncertainties. For example, the state will have one less congressional seat, thanks to its very slow population growth during the last decade, so there will be more movement than usual in the boundaries of the 52 remaining districts.
As commission members go through the districts one by one — and even block by block — they will be under increasing pressure to preserve what are called “communities of interest” due to heightened sensitivity about racial, ethnic, economic and gender disparities.
Finally, political conflicts these days frequently wind up in court. Those who believe the new maps disadvantage them will not hesitate to seek redress in the courts — a factor that could add even more hitches in the electoral system.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/08/census-delay-squeezes-californias-redistricting/
Census Data Released: Congressional Seat Lost; Latino Population Grew
Sacramento Bee
California grew more diverse over the past decade as substantial increases among its Latino and Asian American residents accounted for nearly all of the state’s population gains, according to 2020 census data released on Thursday.
From 2010 to 2020, the number of Latinos in California grew by about 1.6 million, or 11%, much higher than the statewide rate of 6% growth. Even so, the rate of growth was slower than the state saw from 2000 to 2010, when it added about 3 million Latinos. As of 2020, there are about 15.6 million Latinos in California.
The number of Asian residents grew by 1.2 million, or 25%. The state added about 1.1 million Asians from 2000 to 2010. There are about 6 million Asians in California.
The breakdown of California’s ethnic makeup gives a closer look at a historic census for California. For the first time in state history, California, with 39.5 million residents, is expected to lose a congressional seat because its population grew more slowly than other states. By the end of next year, it will have a delegation of 52 members in the House of Representatives, down from 53.
The census unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some worry that its findings may undercount certain groups that were less likely to participate in it though online surveys.
Eileen Ma, director of affiliation of voting rights strategy at the Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Asian Law Caucus, said the numbers show what many have known for a long time: California is growing and diversifying. Still, she has questions about the count’s accuracy.
“It’s an ongoing challenge I think for Asian communities to make sure that we’re seeing that we’re represented … so we’ll be looking out for whether these numbers seem to accurately reflect communities” she said.
The 2020 census also followed former President Donald Trump’s efforts to place a citizenship question on the census, which immigration advocates argue might have discouraged people from participating even though Trump ultimately was unsuccessful in shaping that question.
Advocates who fought Trump over the citizenship question were not surprised by results showing an increasingly diverse and Latino California.
“In the last decade, 65% of growth in California’s population has been Latino. … When you’re pointing to a population, but you account for 65% of the growth, that tells you that Latino California is growing. It’s the rest of California that’s not,” said Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
He expects that population growth will turn into political power in California and across the country as congressional districts are redrawn to reflect changes since 2010.
Similar population trends occurred across the country, with the nation becoming increasingly diverse. The number of Americans identifying as white declined for the first time, falling by 8.6% to 235.4 million people.
By contrast, the number of Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latino surged by 23% to 62.1 million people.
Since the 2010 count, the U.S. Census Bureau has adjusted its questions regarding people who identify as multiracial. That change contributed to a jump in the number people identified as multiracial, increasing from 9 million Americans in 2010 to 33.8 million people in 2020, a 276% increase.
Nicholas Jones, director of race and ethnicity research and outreach for the U.S. Census Bureau, said the results show the improvement in the quality of the survey, allowing people to self-identify.
“These results are not surprising as they align with our expert research and corresponding findings this past decade about the impacts of the decennial census question format on race and ethnicity reporting,” he said.
Some organizations plan to parse the data further to gauge how the pandemic might have contributed to an undercount of certain groups. A previous release of 2020 census data, for instance, showed smaller-than-expected population increases instates with large Latino populations, including Arizona, Florida and Texas.
Eric McGhee, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said even though there’s an open question about the quality of the U.S. Census, it will be difficult to determine its accuracy.
“There’s only so many ways to gauge whether it’s bad or not, and some of those methodologies are themselves compromised by the pandemic,” he said.
Ron Jarmin, acting director at the U.S. Census Bureau, said it’s too early to tell if the 2020 count missed certain groups of people. The new data will shape political redistricting in the coming year.
“While no census is perfect, we are confident that today’s redistricting results will meet our high data quality standard,” he said.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article253446644.html?#storylink=cpy
Energy Commission Mandates Solar in Revised Building Code
CalMatters & California Energy Commission
The California Energy Commission moved the state closer to its hoped-for decarbonized future via significant proposed revisions to the statewide building code mandates.
The commission unanimously voted to update California’s already-strict building efficiency standards, which have so far achieved greenhouse gas reductions that equate to taking more than two million cars off the roads annually.
Among the updates:
- Require certain types of commercial buildings to have rooftop solar and battery storage
- Implement stricter standards that improve indoor ventilation
- Ensure that homes using natural gas are “electric-ready”
- Encourage efficient electric heat pump technology for space and water heating
The state has focused on finding ways to operate buildings across the state more efficiently — 70% of California’s electric power is consumed by homes and businesses.
Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild: “Decarbonization is the issue of our time.”
The new code must be submitted to the California Building Standards Commission in December. If approved, the update will take effect on Jan. 1, 2023.
California Energy Commission media release & access to full report: