IN THIS ISSUE – Governor’s Race Surprise
TOP JOBS SHUFFLE
- Newsom, Villaraigosa Tied in Governor’s Race
- GOP Contenders Assail Dems “Character Stains”
- New State Senate Leader Sets Two “Firsts”
CALIFORNIA: “THE STATE OF RESISTANCE”
- California Moves Farther Left
- Republicans Near Rock Bottom
- Year of the Woman? Not So Much In Golden State
- Legislative Women’s Caucus Leader Accused of Sex Harassment
CALIFORNIA: WATER, SUN & TECH
- Gov. Brown Downsizes Delta Tunnels to Tunnel
- Solar Jobs Dim 14%
- Tech Leaders Alarmed About Social Media Impact
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FOR THE WEEK ENDING FEB. 9, 2018, READ ALL ABOUT IT!!
Newsom, Villaraigosa Tied in Governor’s Race
Antonio Villaraigosa is closing the gap with fellow Democrat Gavin Newsom in the California governor’s race, according to the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll.
PPIC’s statewide survey has Newsom, the lieutenant governor, at 23 percent and Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor, at 21 percent – a virtual tie. The nonprofit organization’s poll out Dec. 1 found similar results, with Newsom leading Villaraigosa by 5 percentage points, 23 percent to 18 percent.
Other public and private surveys, however, have shown more distance between the leading candidates ahead of the June primary. UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, in late December, had Newsom up by nine points, 26 percent to 17 percent. In November, the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll had the race at 31 percent to 21 percent.
In Wednesday’s PPIC poll, Republican businessman John Cox was in third place at 9 percent; Democratic Treasurer John Chiang, 8 percent; Republican Assemblyman Travis Allen, 7 percent; Democratic former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, 5 percent; and Republican former Congressman Doug Ose, 3 percent.
Under the state’s primary election system, the top two candidates, irrespective of their parties, meet in a November rematch. Republican operatives and party leaders have expressed increasing concerns that a split between their three candidates will help a Democrat advance, potentially depressing turnout in the down-ballot midterm races. At a Republican debate Tuesday night, Allen, Cox and Ose all indicated they would remain in the contest, with Allen suggesting that both Cox and Ose should drop out.
In the PPIC poll, Newsom and Villaraigosa are trailed by Chiang, 9 percent, Allen, 8 percent, Cox, 7 percent, Democrat Delaine Eastin, 4 percent and Ose, 3 percent. Nearly a quarter of the likely voters remained undecided.
Newsom and Villaraigosa are tied at 32 percent among Democrats while Allen led Cox, 24 percent to 20 percent, among the Republicans. Meantime, majorities said they have no opinion or have not heard of Chiang, Eastin, Allen, Cox or Ose.
Villaraigosa’s campaign touted the poll as validation for his traveling to “every corner of the state” to share a message focused on expanding economic opportunity.
“Millions of Californians are working harder than ever before and yet, still falling behind,” spokesman Luis Vizcaino said. “While individual polls go up and down, the growth in all aspects of our campaign shows Californians are responding to Mayor Villaraigosa’s call for greater economic opportunity and equality.”
Poll:
GOP Contenders Assail Dems “Character Stains”
Republicans competing for California governor assailed the leading Democrats as immoral philanderers in a debate, pillorying the rivals over their past affairs.
Republicans John Cox, Doug Ose and Travis Allen for the first time addressed what they described as character stains on the records of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Democrats who polls show are holding the top-two positions ahead of the June primary.
Newsom has repeatedly apologized since his affair with his appointments secretary came to light in 2007. Ruby Rippey-Tourk, the aide to the then San Francisco mayor, was married at the time to Newsom’s campaign manager and one of his closest strategists. Newsom himself was going through a divorce.
John Diaz, the debate moderator and editorial page editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, asked the Republicans if they would use the affair against Newsom should they advance to the fall runoff.
Ose, appearing in his first media-sponsored debate, indicated he would, noting that Newsom was in a position of power at the time.
“The husband left the building, and Gavin Newsom somehow or another found himself in a situation alone with this woman doing stuff that shouldn’t have been done,” Ose said, linking the scandal to the new wave of sexual harassment in American life.
“I don’t know what caused the predatory culture to arise in our Capitol or our politics. It’s predatory and it’s corrupt and it needs to stop. And the only way to do it is take them out of office.”
Ose, a former congressman, added that he’s been in the public eye for two decades, and “there’s nothing on me.”
Cox, a Rancho Santa Fe businessman, said Newsom’s apologies, including one issued at a forum Monday in San Francisco, failed to address the fact that he was “engaging in that behavior while he was in an office representing people.”
“I take this responsibility that I’m seeking here solemnly,” he said. “And I take issue with Mr. Newsom just passing it off as an indiscretion of his and a moral lapse. It was far, far more than that. It was an endangerment to his position as a leader of this city.”
Allen took aim at both Democrats. Villaraigosa’s 20-year marriage ended amid revelations of his affair with a TV news reporter while he was mayor.
“Both of them have some pretty serious marital infidelities,” Allen charged. “This is a real issue. What we’re looking at is the moral character of these people. It is extremely well documented. This is not something that is being misconstrued … This is a matter of fact.”
Allen’s name surfaced in the state Legislature’s unprecedented release on Friday of its sexual harassment investigative records. A legislative staff member more than five years ago complained that Allen made her feel uncomfortable by making a practice of being “unnecessarily close” to her. She described incidents in which he slid his foot over to touch hers, and an another incident in which he came up behind her in the cafeteria and squeezed her shoulders.
Allen has said it was an “unsubstantiated complaint.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article198773549.html#storylink=cpy
New State Senate Leader Sets Two “Firsts”
Sen. Toni Atkins becomes the first woman and openly gay leader of the California Senate next month, tasked with guiding the house through an involuntary and overdue culture change after the “Me Too” movement rocked the Capitol.
The challenge for the San Diego Democrat and former Assembly speaker is sizable. As pro tem, she’s expected to clean up the house and win back public trust while defending Senate Democrats’ two-thirds majority at the polls. Sen. Josh Newman is facing a recall election, and two men in her caucus – Sens. Tony Mendoza and Bob Hertzberg – are under investigation for sexual harassment heading into the June primary.
Respected for her pragmatism, Atkins will lead a little differently than Kevin de León, her ambitious predecessor, who was known for jamming through tough legislation and helping lead their party’s resistance to President Donald Trump. Perhaps taking a cue from Gov. Jerry Brown, Atkins didn’t mention the president once in our interview, her first sit-down to discuss her new role and the Legislature’s sexual harassment problem. The 55-year-old rural Virginia native takes the reins of the upper house March 21.
Q: You’re the first woman and first openly gay Senate pro tem in California state history. It’s also 2018. Tell me what this means to you and why you think it’s taken so long.
A: I can’t help but be just really overwhelmed emotionally, particularly in this era of everything going on, to be the first woman and certainly the first LGBT pro tem. I’m really mindful of what it means to people. I’m also someone that doesn’t like to make a big fuss over myself, so it’s a little discomforting for me, when I really need to pause, take it in and appreciate the fact that it’s not about me necessarily. I’m the person that gets to be that, but it’s a big deal. It’s huge for women. I’ve been a feminist from my college days, supported the equal rights amendment, ran a community clinic that provided reproductive health services for women. These issues are near and dear to my heart. So, it’s an incredible moment in time and I’m mindful that I get to be the person that is the face of that.
- What are your priorities as pro tem?
A: I’m going to be internally focused given everything going on. As you know, I got my most important bill done last year, SB 2, housing. My goal is to be, at least in this first year, internally focused, look at some of these issues we have to address because of the “Me Too” movement and relationships between the Senate and Assembly. I’m very excited about the possibilities to do things a little differently. I have to tell you, I’m incredibly looking forward to one more opportunity to work with Gov. Brown in his last year on budget negotiations and legislation. He’s never exactly linear or easy on issues, but he’s fair and I really enjoyed negotiating with him.
Q: You’re coming in under this cloud of sexual harassment hanging over the institution. Some women are still afraid to speak up because they think they could be retaliated against or they think the Legislature has swept these things under the rug. How do you regain public trust?
A: I think that’s our big challenge. It’s going to take real work and time to do it. I can’t look at you today and say I promise you we are going to fix it and you don’t need to be afraid. You’ve got to prove it, and so I think we need to prove it to the employees in this building. Look, we’ve had a zero tolerance policy. Obviously, having a policy doesn’t exactly mean that’s the reality. We have to make the policy a reality. It’s going to take time and proof. We have to evaluate whether our policies are the right policies in the HR world. Then we have to look at our training and re-evaluate. We all have to engage an invest in the training and realize it isn’t just a check on the employment list of things we have to do every two years. It’s real. And there have to be real ramifications, and there has to be more transparency. That’s what proves to people that you’re serious. So, this will take a little bit of time, but I will tell you that I see it as an incredible opportunity that we have never had before to actually change, and I mean that in the context of the big environment. When you see what’s going on in the world of movies and media and the military and the Legislature, this is an opportunity that we have not had before.
Q: Some women see a woman taking over and where you’ve been and are hopeful that you can create change in this institution. Others are a little more cautious because you led the Assembly and problems persisted there. Former Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra had the Democratic Party endorsement while you were there. Should women trust that you will really make a difference on this issue?
A: Well, I think women should see that there’s an opportunity here, that we get another chance to get this right. Did we have the environment to support any of us? I was the third woman speaker. We have fewer women in positions of power. The Assembly has more women than the Senate. You know, critical mass is helpful. I’ve been part of this culture, you’ve been part of this culture, we’ve all been part of this culture that has existed. It’s always been this culture, which accepts, allows, and doesn’t support. So, finally you get a new face, some diversity, some gender diversity, in place. It’s hard to expect that without some kind of support that you’re going to make broad social change in 22 months. Now that doesn’t remove the responsibility I had as speaker to respond. Regardless of who the pro tem would have been or the speaker, it is on our shoulders to do this work.
Q: Speaking of that, there are questions about how the current leadership handled these allegations. The Senate, for example, waited at least 12 weeks to ask Sen. Tony Mendoza to temporarily step down after leadership said it learned about the allegations involving the fellow. He refused. Then it took lawmakers hours of conversation to get him to agree to a leave. Would you have handled the situation differently as Senate leader?
A: I think that’s kind of an unfair question because we’re in the midst of that culture change in which women finally stepped forward and said enough. Enough. There’s plenty of blame to go around for how any of us responded or didn’t respond. But regardless we have an obligation, collectively. It’s hard to point at one person. The system let everybody down. Our process and our system let everybody down. We have an opportunity to correct that and that’s what we have to do.
The “State of Resistance” Moves Farther Left
For those who think California politics is on the far-left fringe of the national spectrum, stand by. The next election season, already well underway here, will showcase a younger generation of Democrats that is more liberal and personally invested in standing up to President Trump’s Washington than those leaving office.
Here in the self-labeled “state of resistance,” the political debate is being pushed further left without any sign of a Republican renaissance to serve as a check on spending and social policy ambitions. Even some Republicans are concerned about the departure of Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who proved to be fiscally cautious after inheriting a state seven years ago in deep recession.
The race to succeed him, as well as contests for U.S. Senate and statewide offices, probably will feature a November ballot exclusively filled with Democrats. The top two primary finishers compete in the state’s general election regardless of party, setting up several races between the Democrats’ left and even-more-left wings in the nation’s most-populous state, races that could signal the direction of the party’s future.
In an off-presidential election year, California will serve as a campaign lab for many national issues, including taxes, immigration, health care, climate change, rural-urban income disparities and sexual harassment. The campaigns will test for national Democrats the most useful positions on issues important to the party’s base and will provide a preview for national Republicans of the popularity of those stands.
“You are going to be talking about Democrat-on-Democrat crime, for the most part,” said Bill Whalen, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. “What also is certain is that the next governor is going to be more progressive than Jerry Brown.”
The prescription here for Democrats in a state where few — if any — will need to moderate their positions for the general election is simple. “You go left,” said Karen Skelton, a Democratic consultant here.
That means staking out the most liberal stance on issues such as single-payer health care in California, a highly expensive initiative that failed in the legislature last year. The push is in response to the uncertainty surrounding health-care revisions in Washington, but it is estimated to cost twice the state’s annual budget.
Candidates will be forced to defend California’s “sanctuary state” status on immigration and push investment in the solar power and electric car industries to reach strict environmental goals. They also will have to address a sexual harassment scandal that, in Democratic consultant Bill Carrick’s description, “hangs like a black cloud” over a State Capitol where two Democratic lawmakers have resigned and another has been suspended.
Then there is Trump, who lost the state by a 2-to-1 margin and has yet to visit as president. Through focus groups, Democratic consultants have found that Trump’s policies occupy voters’ attention to a degree that is overwhelming state races.
“He’s really pulling our ponytail hard,” Skelton said, citing the administration’s recent decisions to open the Pacific Coast to offshore oil drilling, to threaten a crackdown on legal marijuana just as sales began in California and to condemn the state’s immigration policy.
“That’s the zeitgeist, that’s where the energy is, that’s where people are,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor whom polls show leading the gubernatorial race with many still undecided. “They’re not focused on this race, understandably.”
Newsom is running to the left of the popular Brown, who is nearly 30 years older, on Democratic litmus-test issues such as single-payer health care for state residents.
In his final State of the State address on Jan. 25, Brown said California is “prospering,” a nod to a growing economy that is the sixth-largest in the world.
But in an interview after the speech, Brown said that “does not mean all Californians are prospering,” and he made a distinction between the coastal “consulting class” and rural laborers whose “culture of working with their hands” is disappearing.
The state’s December unemployment figures tell the story: The rate in San Francisco County was 2.2 percent; in Imperial County, which borders Mexico and Arizona, the rate was nearly 18 percent.
“The state is more divided,” Brown said. “And it’s divided this way right across the country.”
Brown said he is uncertain whether he will endorse in the race to succeed him, even though Newsom also is a Bay Area Democrat who, on climate change in particular, supports the governor’s policies. Some of Brown’s transportation initiatives, including a high-speed rail project from Los Angeles to San Francisco that is bursting its budget, remain in question.
“I don’t think the people of Tulare County or Modoc County want to hear from Jerry Brown on who to vote for. Maybe the people in Oakland would, I don’t know,” Brown said. “I’ll decide what to do based on 45 years of campaigning in this state.”
Bridging the rural-coastal divide will be a difficult task for Newsom, who grew up in San Francisco’s Marina district with a divorced mother. He spent time with his father in rural Placer County — which stretches through California gold country, from Sacramento to Lake Tahoe — but his politics and well-tailored appearance are distinctly urban.
“There are often two different worlds in the same cities, not just the same state,” Newsom said. “There’s a cultural divide. And we’re not able to communicate on a level that is not seen as arrogant and dismissive. We need a new vernacular.”
His chief rival is Antonio Villaraigosa, a former Los Angeles mayor and state Assembly speaker. With many Latinos on the ballot, Latino turnout is projected to be high, though it usually trails expectations.
“It’s a moment when I’m challenging Latino activists and challenging the population as a whole to make sure that they come out,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Los Angeles-area Democrat.
Rendon stands at the line where the spirit of resistance meets practical politics, the divide within the state Democratic Party. He calls the resistance “an interesting way of marketing stuff and selling T-shirts.”
Last year, Rendon angered the powerful state nurses union by declining to put an unfunded single-payer health-care bill to a vote after it passed the Senate. Recalling last year’s effort as “symbolic rather than substantive,” Rendon said he will try again only if “it becomes a serious piece of legislation, which it still is not.”
“I’m not blind to it,” Rendon said of the energy behind the idea of resistance to Trump. “But these elections ultimately come down to fundamental economic realities, and I think those are the types of things we should focus on rather than labeling things.”
Those economic realities — housing costs, government regulation and the gas tax — are where Republicans hope to make inroads in a state where the cost of living has pushed the poverty rate higher than any other in the country.
Brian Dahle, a seed farmer and the Assembly’s Republican leader who represents the northeastern corner of the state, argues that business regulation is too strict, fuel prices due to the recent state gas-tax hike too high, and housing too scarce.
“You know people don’t pay attention when everything’s working, only when it breaks,” Dahle said of a growing state economy. “But right now, we’re on the way to tipping over.”
For Republicans, the question is how to get back into contention statewide, which not even the most optimistic believe is possible this year.
Assembly member Chad Mayes, who was ousted as Republican leader last year after he supported a Democratic environmental initiative, has started a moderate GOP movement called “New Way California.” The group is running ads on the Internet celebrating immigration and diversity, and confusing a GOP caucus that has yet to determine how much to associate itself with Trump.
“We are in a death spiral,” said Mayes, an evangelical Christian who represents a mixed urban-rural district east of Los Angeles. “If you look at the way voter registration trends are going, we are, as Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a speech 10 years ago, dying at the box office. And that is still the truth. The question is: What do we do about it?”
The last time a Republican won statewide in California was in 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was reelected governor and tech entrepreneur Steve Poizner won the race for insurance commissioner.
But Schwarzenegger’s success was viewed more as a testament to his movie-star name recognition than to the strength of the state party, which since embracing a harsh anti-immigration ballot measure in the mid-1990s has failed to gain traction with young voters and Latinos, now the state’s single-largest ethnicity and a vibrant strain of the resistance.
Republicans Near Rock Bottom
There is something worse than seeing your political party lose — yet again — the race for one of California’s most prominent offices.
It’s when your party’s voters simply don’t show up on election day. And if enough of them simply sit out due to a lack of interest, it can endanger the party’s power for years to come.
That brings us to the U.S. Senate race, where Sen. Dianne Feinstein is seeking a fifth full term. With only days to go before the formal filing season opens, there’s not a single California Republican with any name I.D. who seems prepared to run against her.
If re-elected, the venerable Democrat will almost certainly set the record for the longest Senate tenure of any Californian in history. She won her most recent three races — in 2000, 2006 and 2012 — by an average of almost 23 percentage points. The only close contest was her 1994 nail-biter victory over Republican Michael Huffington. No doubt that weighs on the mind of any would-be GOP challenger.
But 2018 has some unusual markings, none more striking than the challenge mounted by a prominent member of her own party, state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León. His strategy seems clear: Try to outflank the often centrist, pragmatic-sounding Feinstein by fanning the liberal flames set by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 and kept burning by the words and actions of President Trump.
That probably won’t work if a Republican with state party support can motivate their base. “Republicans desperately need a viable statewide candidate in November to bring out their voters,” wrote GOP analyst Tony Quinn in an online column last month.
If Republican voters skip the race, Feinstein and De León could both advance to November — a replay of the U.S. Senate primary in 2016, although that was caused by a multicandidate field that splintered the GOP vote.
Here’s what also is different: There’s no presidential election to bring out voters this November, though Trump has hardly shown his ability to help. He only received votes on 30% of the ballots cast in California in 2016 — down from the roughly 40% received by recent Republican candidates for president and governor.
This year’s race for governor has three visible GOP hopefuls: Orange County Assemblyman Travis Allen, businessman John Cox and former U.S. Rep. Doug Ose of Sacramento County. But what if they split the June vote and Democrats take the top two slots? That, plus a barren Senate race, would mean no Republican standard-bearer come November.
Under that scenario, Quinn argued in his analysis, “Republicans could easily lose half the congressional delegation and a third of their legislators to a fired up high turnout Democratic base.”
That creates the kind of anxiety that motivated Republicans last summer to embrace a novel idea, to put their money and muscle behind a November ballot measure to repeal California’s new gas tax increase. The theory is that an anti-tax vote could fire up the base and tip the scales just enough for the party to hang on to most, or all, of its seats in the House.
Still, a strong Senate candidate couldn’t hurt. Not that this unselfish player-to-be-named-later would have much of a chance of actually winning the job. At this point, it’s hard to see how enough wayward Democrats or unaffiliated “independent” voters would be persuaded in the fall to shift the balance of power in a legislative body that could decide the fate of the Trump presidency.
And so the question is whether there’s a Republican out there with the right résumé who also is willing to take one for the team in 2018. If so, he or she needs to step up soon.
Year of the Woman? Not So Much In Golden State
If 2018 is The Year of the Woman, nobody told California.
In the biggest blue state on the map, the only woman running for governor, former state schools chief Delaine Eastin, is polling in single digits. London Breed, the interim mayor of San Francisco and the first black woman to hold the post, was bounced from her position last month by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She was replaced by a white man.
And in a round of caucus meetings last weekend, Democratic Party activists in three competitive Southern California House races overlooked three EMILY’s List-endorsed candidates and threw their support, by wide margins, to three men.
Sara Jacobs, one of the snubbed candidates, took to Twitter to vent following the vote: “This election won’t be decided in back rooms by the old boys clubs, it’s going to be decided by the 1000’s of energized voters who are literally marching in the streets demanding a Rep who will stand up to the Trump admin and defend our values.”
Jacobs, who’s seeking to succeed Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, won just six of 107 votes cast in the pre-endorsement caucus leading up to the California Democratic Party’s annual convention in February. Mike Levin, an attorney, earned 10 times the number of votes.
“Yeah, I mean, we knew that there were going to be challenges,” Jacobs, 29, told POLITICO. “I’m obviously a young woman, and it’s not the kind of candidacy that the old guard and the boys club really knows what to do with.”
n an election year rocked by sexual harassment scandals and the emergence of the “Me Too” movement,” women in California politics are still running at the margins. The phenomenon is especially striking in this heavily Democratic state, where no woman has ever held the governorship and women account for only 26 of the 120 state legislators.
“It is a lost opportunity that the California Democratic Party is not supporting more women in congressional and state races,” said Debbie Mesloh, an adviser to U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and, now, Buffy Wicks, a woman credited as a key architect of Barack Obama’s 2008 grass-roots campaign who is now seeking a highly competitive San Francisco Bay area seat in the state Assembly.
EMILY’s List spokesman Bryan Lesswing said, “It is extremely disappointing that the state party has not recognized the incredible women candidates running in California seats that represent the best pick-up opportunities in the country.”
California is not entirely without women in top positions of political power — and Democratic activists here have rallied around women in politics before. Fully a quarter century ago — in 1992, the original Year of the Woman in politics — Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer both beat male opponents in races for the U.S. Senate. The state still has two women in the Senate, Feinstein and Harris, and women have made gains in local offices. The powerful Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors installed its first female supermajority in 2016, with women holding four of five offices.
“I think we’ve got a good pipeline, and I think there are bright spots,” said former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994. “But women have to get out there and run. It’s not easy.”
Brown, the sister of Gov. Jerry Brown, said female candidates are still forced to contend with gender stereotypes that disadvantage them — and with supporters unaccustomed to writing women large checks. Recalling campaign appearances former Texas Gov. Ann Richards made on her behalf, Brown said, “She’d tell women to add up what you have on, and write a check for that. … Women would be very, sort of ‘Girl Scout cookie’ about writing small checks.”
Christine Pelosi, chairwoman of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus and daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, said, “It’s very hard to get women to run in these races because they don’t have the same connections, they don’t have the same financial support. And as we always say in the Women’s Caucus, ‘Women don’t give to women candidates, and men don’t vote for women candidates.”
In many cases, including the gubernatorial race, women running for office in California are competing against men who have far higher profiles, and Pelosi said it is not fair to judge first-time female candidates against those better-established men.
“I think it’s going to be the year of the feminist — and some men are great feminists,” she said.
Pelosi and other advocates of women in politics often point to California’s lieutenant governor’s race as a high-profile contest in which a woman, Eleni Kounalakis, could break through this year.
Kounalakis, a longtime Democratic activist and Obama-era U.S. ambassador to Hungary, said her campaign has dramatized women’s struggles to break glass ceilings in every state office.
“We feel this every single day, this idea that people are saying, ‘How come we’re over a generation since the feminist movement of the ’60s and ’70s, and we still don’t have equal numbers of women in the highest offices of the country?’” she said.
Kounalakis said she decided “it can only be the ‘Year of the Woman’ again if women are actually running. You have to be on the ballot.”
Kounalakis, who is competing against a roster of male candidates — including state Sen. Ed Hernandez and the former head of the California Bar Association, Jeff Bleich — said female candidates are forced to work harder just to get attention for their campaigns.
For some women, Kounalakis said, navigating the complex landscape of fundraising is a cultural shift that can be uncomfortable.
“My poor mother cringes at the idea that her daughter is asking people to give her money. It seems so ungracious,’’ she told POLITICO in a recent interview. “But what I’m finding is people are trying to make it easier by stepping up and helping women to run.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/04/california-elections-midterms-388521
Legislative Women’s Caucus Leader Accused of Sex Harassment
Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia — whose high-profile advocacy of the #MeToo movement earned her national media notice — is herself the subject of a state legislative investigation in the wake of a report that she sexually harassed and groped a former legislative staffer.
In December, when Time magazine announced that “Silence Breakers” who spoke out against sexual harassment were its Persons of the Year, Garcia’s face was prominently included in the art accompanying the cover story.
But Daniel Fierro of Cerritos told POLITICO that in 2014, as a 25-year-old staffer to Assemblyman Ian Calderon, he was groped by Garcia, a powerful Democratic lawmaker who chairs the Legislative Women’s Caucus and the Natural Resources Committee.
He said she cornered him alone after the annual Assembly softball game in Sacramento as he attempted to clean up the dugout. Fierro, who said Garcia appeared inebriated, said she began stroking his back, then squeezed his buttocks and attempted to touch his crotch before he extricated himself and quickly left.
Fierro said he never reported the incident, which occurred years before the current #MeToo movement and new whistleblower legislation to protect legislative staffers. But after he mentioned the issue last January to Calderon, his former boss, the matter was then referred to the Assembly Rules Committee, which launched an investigation.
Fierro is not the only one claiming improper advances by Garcia. A prominent Sacramento lobbyist says she also accosted him in May 2017, when she cornered him, made a graphic sexual proposal, and tried to grab his crotch at a political fundraiser. He spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
The lobbyist, who represents a major industry association, said that Garcia appeared to have been drinking heavily at a fundraiser hosted by Governor Jerry Brown for state Senator Josh Newman at the de Veres bar in Sacramento. He said he was heading out the door in part to avoid the assemblywoman — who had been increasingly “flirtatious” and had called him on a few occasions before for late night drinks which he repeatedly declined.
She spotted him and said,“Where are you going?” the lobbyist said.
“She came back and was whispering real close and I could smell the booze and see she was pretty far gone,’’ he said. “She looked at me for a second and said, “I’ve set a goal for myself to fuck you.”
At that point, Garcia “stepped in front of me and reaches out and is grabbing for my crotch,’’ he said. That was “the line in the sand,” according to the lobbyist, and he stopped her. “I was four inches from her, eyeball to eyeball — and I said, ‘That ain’t gonna happen.’”
The accusations against Garcia come at the close of months of high-profile activism on the issue of sexual harassment by the assemblywoman, who became one of Sacramento’s leading voices on #MeToo issue.
Garcia was one of hundreds of Sacramento women who signed a letter with the hashtag #WeSaidEnough protesting harassment, and told the New York Times that she had been the repeated victim of sexual harassment by men in the Capitol in the course of her legislative work.
“Multiple people have grabbed my butt and grabbed my breasts,” she told the Times. “We’re talking about senior lobbyists and lawmakers.”
When Time magazine included her photo in its Persons of the Year issue, Garcia tweeted, “I didn’t know I was part of the story,’’ saying it was an “awkwardly humbling experience. I’m proud of this work, and proud of the company I’m in.” She added the hashtags #MeToo and #WeSaidEnough.
Jessica Levinson, a professor of law and political ethics at Loyola Law School of Los Angeles — and the current president of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission — said that, if proven true, the accusations against Garcia threaten to seriously damage the nationwide movement that has been credited with bringing the issue of sexual harassment into the open.
“Hypocrisy knows no bounds and no partisanship, it crosses all party affiliations,’’ she said. “To the extent that these are substantiated claims, there’s a picture of Cristina Garcia as a hypocrite in the dictionary.”
The stories underscore how “sexual harassment is not OK, period — regardless of whether it’s by a man, or a woman. And frankly, this threatens to set the movement back — because when you have one of the faces of this movement facing these allegations, that’s a real problem.”
Fierro provided POLITICO with copies of his correspondence with Elizabeth H. Foster, the human resources coordinator for the committee regarding the case. He said he sat for a lengthy interview last Friday with attorney Vida Thomas of Weintraub Tobin, the law firm hired by the Assembly Rules Committee to investigate sexual harassment complaints.
“Every complaint about sexual harassment should be taken seriously and I will participate fully in any investigation that takes place,”said Garcia in a statement Thursday. “The details of these claims have never been brought to my attention until today. I can confirm that I did attend the 2014 legislative softball game with a number of members and my staff. I can also say I have zero recollection of engaging in inappropriate behavior and such behavior is inconsistent with my values.”
Teala Schaff, spokeswoman for Garcia’s office, said the assemblywoman was aware of the report to the Assembly Rules committee, but was not made aware of the details of the complaint.
In coming forward, Fierro said he felt the same doubts that women have expressed in similar situations. “I thought, ‘What did I do?’” to bring on the sexual aggression, he said.
Unlike many women, he said he never felt physically threatened, and always felt supported by Calderon, his boss. But he said he feared repercussions from an influential assemblywoman who could affect his fledgling communication business.
“Who wants to be that guy that Cristina Garcia is going after?” he said.
Fierro said he would not be surprised if Garcia does not even remember the groping incident, saying she was so intoxicated that when he saw her later that night at another event, “she had to have other people hold her up.”
Two Assembly staffers who were Sacramento colleagues with Fierro, who is now president of his own Southern California firm, Presidio Strategic Communications, confirmed to POLITICO that he related the incident to them immediately after the episode.
Lerna Shirinian, the communications director for Calderon, said “I remember it very clearly, he told me as soon as it happened..he was in shock, I was in shock — but the culture was very different back then,’’ Shirinian said, noting the admission was in confidence and she had to respect her friend’s decision not to report it.
Another former legislative staffer, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said Garcia was known to speak about sexual issues to young staffers in the office, sometimes in graphic detail, and occasionally to be a hard drinker in Sacramento.
He confirmed hearing Fierro’s account, saying he remembered the incident because Garcia was partying and drinking more heavily at the legislative softball game in celebration of her birthday. Records show the Assembly Legislative Softball game was August 20, 2014; Garcia’s birthday is August 22.
The Sacramento lobbyist never formally reported the matter out of concern for his clients.
But his account of the groping incident was corroborated by another high profile political operative in Sacramento, who declined to be named for publication. She said at the time the lobbyist was both angered and “humiliated” by the encounter, and disturbed that his sexual rejection of Garcia could have implications for his industry.
Both she — and the lobbyist — believe it may already have.
The lobbyist said he has seen Garcia in an intoxicated state on several occasions around Sacramento, sometimes appearing to need help; he cited an evening late in 2016 when he said she emerged from an Old Town Sacramento bar with staffers, and urged him to come with them on “a pub crawl.”
He said he’s been particularly been bothered by the incident in the wake of Garcia’s national fame as a feminist leader on the #MeToo movement.
“I watched her jumping into this, and she’s Joan of Arc,’’ he said. “She’s pushing against people who have done a lot of things — some worse than her, and some not.”
Fierro also pointed to the rise of the #MeToo movement as the impetus for finally admitting the incident to Calderon. He said he was assured by Assembly Rules that his complaint would be confidential — but within 48 hours of it reaching the committee, “I was getting calls” from outside sources who heard about it. “There was clearly a a leak.’’
Soon, he said, “people were starting to ask me about it….I was getting nervous.”
After relating his experiences to the Assembly’s hired attorney last week, Fierro said he was also concerned that a significant part of the questioning appeared to be focused on about “How did it get out? Who did you tell?”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/08/cristina-garcia-california-metoo-398985?lo=ap_c1
Gov. Brown Down-Sizes Delta Tunnels to Tunnel
The troubled Delta tunnels project was officially downsized, as Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration announced it would attempt to build a single tunnel in its effort to re-engineer California’s elaborate water-delivery system.
Unable to secure enough money from California’s water agencies for the original twin tunnels concept, the California Department of Water Resources said it would now try to build the project in phases: one tunnel now and a second tunnel years down the road.
The long-awaited announcement doesn’t appear to immediately solve the financial questions looming over the project, known officially as California WaterFix.
A letter to water agencies from DWR Director Karla Nemeth says the first tunnel would cost $10.7 billion. That’s much less than the price tag for building two tunnels, now officially pegged at $16.3 billion. But the one-tunnel option also is considerably more expensive than the estimated $6 billion to $6.5 billion that’s been pledged so far by participating south-of-Delta water agencies.
The administration, which has been eager to get the project on track before Brown leaves office at year’s end, believes it can convince additional water agencies to pitch in. Wednesday’s announcement is expected to trigger months of horse trading in which enthusiastic backers of the project would commit additional money to WaterFix, essentially “buying out” reluctant water districts.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which has already pledged more than $4 billion to the project, has indicated it might be willing to put more money in. Nemeth said Wednesday she thinks other agencies will contribute, such as the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
“We have information that the benefits are there and there’s enough willing buyers for this first stage of the project,” Nemeth said in an interview.
The state hasn’t completely abandoned the twin-tunnels concept, said spokeswoman Lisa Lien-Mager of the Natural Resources Agency, which oversees DWR. But Wednesday’s announcement gives the state the ability to move quickly on a one-tunnel approach once all permits have been obtained, she said.
Nemeth said DWR will supplement the environmental impact studies conducted on the project to reflect the change in scope, but it won’t have to start that laborious process from scratch and can wrap it up by October.
The phased approach “would allow work to begin on WaterFix, as soon as all necessary environmental review and permits are complete, which is anticipated near the end of 2018,” she wrote.
Critics of the project, including Delta landowners and many environmental groups, say even one tunnel would damage the Delta’s fragile ecosystem. They have vowed to continue fighting WaterFix in court and in regulatory proceedings. They also argue that the necessary environmental analyses must be completely redone, a process that could add a year or more to a project that has already been in the planning stages for a decade.
“We still have all the same issues,” said Russell van Loben Sels, a prominent Delta farmer and tunnels critic. “It creates a whole host of problems for the Delta.”
The anti-tunnels group Restore the Delta said, “We remain convinced that a fifth reiteration of the project will not save … WaterFix from failure and will ultimately deal a devastating blow to the health of the ailing San Francisco Bay-Delta estuary.”
The announcement acknowledges what had become obvious in recent months: Brown’s administration has been unable to raise the nearly $17 billion necessary to build two tunnels beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. An unofficial count by The Sacramento Bee shows that the south-of-Delta water districts have pledged about $6.5 billion toward the project, and many of those commitments are tentative. Since October, the Brown administration has openly floated the idea of scaling back the project, or building just one tunnel as a first phase.
The tunnels are designed to fix a problem that has festered for decades. Water pumping by the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project has irrigated the southern half of the state but caused considerable harm to the Delta’s ecosystem. Several fish species, notably the smelt and Chinook salmon, face possible extinction.
DWR Letter:
http://water.ca.gov/docs/DWR%20ltr%20to%20PWAs%20participating%20in%20WaterFix%20Feb%207%202018.pdf
Solar Jobs Dim 14%
Solar jobs in California were down 14 percent in 2017, dragging down national numbers for the industry, according to an annual report.
- Nationally, there was a 3.8 percent decline, marking the first year jobs have decreased since the survey was first released in 2010.
- Among the reasons: 2016 was a banner year for the industry, the institution of time-of-use rates and concerns about solar tariffs.
- The survey predicts a 5.2 percent increase in jobs in 2018.
- Solar employment dropped 14 percent in California last year, which was largely responsible for a 3.8 percent decline nationwide, according to the National Solar Jobs Census released earlier this week.
- California lost 13,636 jobs in 2017, more than any other state.
“Being the biggest solar state, it’s not surprising that California takes the biggest hit,” said Ed Gilliland senior director for The Solar Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. that supports solar energy adoption and releases the census each year.
California is home to about 40 percent of the country’s solar capacity and employs almost eight times more solar workers than any other state.
The census results did not surprise Barry Cinnamon, CEO of San Jose-based Spice Solar, which specializes in residential installations.
“I’m definitely seeing a little bit of a slowdown from the standpoint of jobs for solar in California,” he said.
One of the biggest reasons for the decline stemmed from the fact that 2016 was a banner year for the industry. Nationally, 51,000 solar jobs were added that year and California accounted for almost half of them.
New installations in the U.S. doubled from 7.5 gigawatts in 2015 to 15 gigawatts in 2016, in many cases from customers who feared Congress would get rid of the federal government’s 30 percent tax credit for solar projects.
That led to a rush to sign up for projects before the end of the year. As it turned out, Congress extended the tax credit in December 2015 but many projects were already under contract for 2016.
Specific to California, last year’s extremely wet winter also led to a reduction in installations.
“That puts a big crimp in the residential market, especially,” Gilliland said, “because who wants to buy solar in the rain?”
California utilities instituting what are called “Net Metering 2.0” rules that affect solar customers on the residential as well as the commercial side.
About 70 percent of the state’s electricity is provided by investor-owned utilities such as San Diego Gas & Electric. Utilities are moving customers to time-of-use pricing to encourage consumers to run appliances and devices that consume a lot of energy — such as air conditioners and washer/dryers — when demands on the power grid are not as high.
The peak, or most expensive, rates occur in the evening.
Time-of-use rates affect solar customers because one of the primary reasons to install a solar system is to generate solar energy and sell any excess amounts back to the grid.
“If peak time shifts to the evening, that means when you’re selling it in the afternoon you’re not getting as good a rate,” Gilliland said.
The Solar Census was conducted in October and November, when the industry was very concerned about the Trump administration imposing tariffs on imports of solar modules, especially from Asia.
Two manufacturers called for the tariffs, saying the imports were unfair, but the U.S. solar industry in general was opposed to them, saying higher costs would hurt the domestic market.
President Trump had not made a ruling at the time the census was taken but 71 percent of the respondents said the pending case had already negatively impacted their businesses.
Last month, President Trump imposed four years of tariffs, starting at 30 percent and stepping down each year. The tariffs were not as bad as some in the solar industry had feared but they are expected to weigh on the sector — especially on utility-scale projectsbecause of their size.
Despite the headwinds, the businesses taking part in the Solar Census projected job growth of 5.2 percent (263,293 jobs) for 2018, citing figures that indicate more growth for the industry in the long-term.
In the past five years, the solar workforce in the U.S. increased 110 percent (16 percent annually), adding 131,000 jobs.
Twenty-nine states reported increases in solar jobs in 2017. Utah, Minnesota, Arizona and New Jersey reported the largest gains.
Information for the census came from 2,389 establishments, of which The Solar Foundation said 77 percent “completed or substantially completed” the survey. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.25 percent for the national employment numbers.
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-solar-census-20180208-story.html
Tech Leaders Alarmed About Social Media Impact
SAN FRANCISCO — A group of Silicon Valley technologists who were early employees at Facebook and Google, alarmed over the ill effects of social networks and smartphones, are banding together to challenge the companies they helped build.
The cohort is creating a union of concerned experts called the Center for Humane Technology. Along with the nonprofit media watchdog group Common Sense Media, it also plans an anti-tech addiction lobbying effort and an ad campaign at 55,000 public schools in the United States.
The campaign, titled The Truth About Tech, will be funded with $7 million from Common Sense and capital raised by the Center for Humane Technology. Common Sense also has $50 million in donated media and airtime from partners including Comcast and DirecTV. It will be aimed at educating students, parents and teachers about the dangers of technology, including the depression that can come from heavy use of social media.
“We were on the inside,” said Tristan Harris, a former in-house ethicist at Google who is heading the new group. “We know what the companies measure. We know how they talk, and we know how the engineering works.”
The effect of technology, especially on younger minds, has become hotly debated in recent months. In January, two big Wall Street investors asked Apple to study the health effects of its products and to make it easier to limit children’s use of iPhones and iPads. Pediatric and mental health experts called on Facebook last week to abandon a messaging service the company had introduced for children as young as 6. Parenting groups have also sounded the alarm about YouTube Kids, a product aimed at children that sometimes features disturbing content.
“The largest supercomputers in the world are inside of two companies — Google and Facebook — and where are we pointing them?” Mr. Harris said. “We’re pointing them at people’s brains, at children.”
Silicon Valley executives for years positioned their companies as tight-knit families and rarely spoke publicly against one another. That has changed. Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist who was an early employee at Facebook, said in November that the social network was “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
The new Center for Humane Technology includes an unprecedented alliance of former employees of some of today’s biggest tech companies. Apart from Mr. Harris, the center includes Sandy Parakilas, a former Facebook operations manager; Lynn Fox, a former Apple and Google communications executive; Dave Morin, a former Facebook executive; Justin Rosenstein, who created Facebook’s Like button and is a co-founder of Asana; Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook; and Renée DiResta, a technologist who studies bots.
The group expects its numbers to grow. Its first project to reform the industry will be to introduce a Ledger of Harms — a website aimed at guiding rank-and-file engineers who are concerned about what they are being asked to build. The site will include data on the health effects of different technologies and ways to make products that are healthier.
Jim Steyer, chief executive and founder of Common Sense, said the Truth About Tech campaign was modeled on antismoking drives and focused on children because of their vulnerability. That may sway tech chief executives to change, he said. Already, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, told The Guardian last month that he would not let his nephew on social media, while the Facebook investor Sean Parker also recently said of the social network that “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”
Mr. Steyer said, “You see a degree of hypocrisy with all these guys in Silicon Valley.”
The new group also plans to begin lobbying for laws to curtail the power of big tech companies. It will initially focus on two pieces of legislation: a bill being introduced by Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, that would commission research on technology’s impact on children’s health, and a bill in California by State Senator Bob Hertzberg, a Democrat, which would prohibit the use of digital bots without identification.
Mr. McNamee said he had joined the Center for Humane Technology because he was horrified by what he had helped enable as an early Facebook investor.
“Facebook appeals to your lizard brain — primarily fear and anger,” he said. “And with smartphones, they’ve got you for every waking moment.”
He said the people who made these products could stop them before they did more harm.
“This is an opportunity for me to correct a wrong,” Mr. McNamee said.