A bill to tighten California’s rules on mental health diversion — a process that allows certain criminal defendants to avoid prison for arrests linked to mental illness — is now on the verge of being signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Assembly Bill 46, authored by Stephanie Nguyen (D-Elk Grove), gives judges much wider discretion to decide whether a defendant should be eligible for diversion. Under the current law, judges must presume mental illness was a factor if a defendant with a legitimate diagnosis seeks diversion. In order to defeat a diversion request, the burden is on prosecutors to prove mental health issues were not a factor in the alleged crime.
The new measure — which moved through the state Senate with no opposition last month and is expected to clear the reconciliation process in the Assembly this week — also gives judges more latitude to block diversion if a defendant poses “a risk of danger to public safety,” as opposed to the higher “unreasonable risk” standard that was passed in 2018. Defendants charged with attempted murder will no longer be eligible for diversion under the new bill.
Proponents of more inclusive diversion policies argue that many people with mental health issues are locked up in California prisons and jails, where they are unable to receive the help they need.
The pending bill’s supporters say its changes are designed to address cases like that of Gilberto Guttierrez, a Los Angeles County man who has been accused of attacking his wife four times over the last 12 years.
In 2014, a misdemeanor domestic violence allegation landed Guttierrez on probation. Three years later, Guttierrez was ordered to take anger management classes after prosecutors brought felony domestic violence charges against him. Last February, prosecutors allege, he carried out a “brutal attack” on his wife with a glass bottle, leaving her with “extensive injuries,” according to a motion filed in his current criminal case. That time, the court filings show, Guttierrez threatened to kill her.
Despite objections from prosecutors and L.A. County probation officials, a judge granted a request to give Guttierrez mental health diversion last July.
A month later, prosecutors allege, he beat his wife until she fell into a coma.
When it passed in 2018, the original mental health diversion law was heralded as a needed off-ramp for defendants suffering from serious psychological issues — offering treatment to those who need it rather than a prison cell. But with voters statewide souring on progressive criminal justice reforms, lawmakers have sought to make it harder for defendants to qualify.
“AB 46 preserves diversion as an important pathway to care while ensuring judges have a clearer and more workable standard when serious public safety concerns are present,” Nguyen said in a statement last month.
Under the existing rules, defendants who successfully argue for pretrial mental health diversion spend two years undergoing a court-appointed treatment plan instead of facing a conviction. Prosecutors must prove the defendant is likely to commit a serious violent crime, a so-called “super strike,” again in order to block diversion.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman, one of many prosecutors statewide who supported Nguyen’s bill, said that has been a nearly impossible standard to overcome.
“Guttierrez being your example: Judge, if you release him, he’s going to probably beat his wife up again, and if he does this time, he could kill her. But for the grace of God, he hasn’t killed her up until now,” Hochman said.
He added that due to the judge’s decision to grant diversion in Guttierrez’s case, “you have three little kids who likely won’t have their mom for the rest of their life.”
A spokesperson for Newsom did not respond to a request for comment about his plans for the legislation.
A 2020 Rand Corporation study found 61% of the nearly 5,500 mentally ill inmates housed in Los Angeles County at that time were “likely appropriate candidates” for diversion.
But a number of troubling incidents have led to pushback against the existing diversion law.
In a letter supporting Nguyen’s bill, the California District Attorneys Assn. rattled off a list of cases in which prosecutors say the law’s shortcomings had deadly consequences. They pointed to a case in Sacramento where a defendant stabbed a 40-year-old man to death after he was granted diversion in a robbery case. In Santa Clara, the letter said, a woman on mental health diversion for carjacking proceeded to steal another car and slam it into an outside table at a restaurant, leaving one person dead and others injured.
Nikhil Ramnaney, a former federal prosecutor who now works as a defense attorney in Southern California, said thousands of people benefit from mental health diversion every year without reoffending and chastised the bill’s supporters for cherry-picking horrible — but rare — cases to muster support for their proposal.
“This is their most effective strategy because it works. Pick up the most visceral, outrageous anecdotes and then repeat them and amplify them as much as possible,” he said. “That’s how we get bad policy.”
Defense attorney Alexandra Kazarian said California politicians are repeating age-old mistakes of trying to arrest their way out of a mental health crisis.
“Without this option, you throw them into prison for a couple of years, they get out, and nothing changes. I’ve seen real change in my clients who have been granted these and who have just been on horrific mental health breaks and who, two years later, fully have their lives together,” she said. “You’re always going to be able to find an outlier. You’re always going to be able to find somebody who ruins what is a great project or program.”
Hochman said the modified mental health diversion law is a “rebalancing” of the scales in California after years of attempts to lower the state’s overcrowded jail populations affected public safety.
“In the end, I’m not looking for pendulum swings,” he said. “I think we did have a pendulum swing when these laws were being passed and people weren’t really discussing, or at least understanding, the public safety impact of laws that seem on their surface to be very — I wouldn’t even use the word ‘progressive,’ but very helpful to people who are suffering.”
A controversial proposal to tax California billionaires to fund healthcare has tenatively qualified for the November ballot, setting the stage for a more intense and expensive battle over whether the state should squeeze the ultra-rich.
Supporters say the proposed tax is crucial to compensate for federal healthcare funding cuts, approved by President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, that will harm millions of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
In April, supporters of the billionaire tax submitted nearly 1.6 million signatures, roughly double the number needed to qualify. The California secretary of state’s office on Wednesday declared that enough valid signatures were submitted. The initiative will officially qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot on June 25 unless the proponents withdraw it beforehand.
The initiative would impose a one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers and trusts with assets valued at more than $1 billion, with some exceptions, such as property. The levy could be paid over five years. Ninety percent of the revenue would fund healthcare programs, and the remaining funds would be spent on food assistance and education programs. The proposal would cost the state’s richest residents about $100 billion if a majority of voters support it.
Opponents of the measure say the proposal is an ineffective attempt to address the long-term effects of the healthcare cuts and would destroy California’s economy and budget.
The state budget in California is already largely dependent on income taxes paid by its highest earners. Because of that, revenues are prone to volatility, hinging on capital gains from investments, bonuses to executives and windfalls from new stock offerings, and are notoriously difficult for the state to predict.
The proposal already triggered a fierce debate, accentuating the divide between the rich and poor in a state that’s expensive to live in.
The Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West and other supporters of the billionaire tax say that it would raise $100 billion, offsetting federal funding cuts to healthcare as well as funding education and state food assistance.
But supporters face strong opposition from billionaires with deep pockets. Tech executives and other business leaders oppose the idea and have threatened to move to other states. Opponents say taxing billionaires would harm California’s economy while not addressing underlying financial issues.
The proposal also has divided politicians within the Democratic Party. California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke out against the billionaire tax, expressing fears that billionaires would move out of the state. But U.S. lawmakers such as California Rep. Ro Khanna and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have backed a billionaire tax, saying the rich should pay their fair share to fund essential services.
Business executives have already poured millions of dollars into groups that oppose the billionaire tax or are promoting alternative solutions to wealth inequality.
Tech executives, venture capitalists and business leaders have donated roughly $118 million to a nonprofit called Building a Better California, according to data on the secretary of state’s website. Most of the funding comes from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who has given more than $82 million to the group. Executives from DoorDash, Ripple, Stripe and other companies also have contributed.
The group says it supports policies such as expanding access to affordable housing, protecting innovation, requiring government transparency and securing more stable education funding.
PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel has contributed $3 million to the California Business Roundtable, which opposes the tax. Former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt donated $1 million to that group as well.
California would probably collect tens of billions of dollars from the wealth tax if it passed, but it could also lose other tax revenue, a December letter from the state legislative analyst’s office said. The office also mentioned that it’s tough to predict the exact amount the state would collect because of factors that can affect a billionaire’s wealth such as fluctuating stock prices.
California billionaires who were residents of the state as of Jan. 1 would be affected by the ballot measure if it passes. Some wealthy residents announced plans to moves out of state. On Dec. 31, venture capitalist David Sacks announced that he was opening an office in Austin, Texas, the same day Thiel publicized his firm had opened a new office in Miami.
From now through July 6, residents and tourists alike can download the California State Parks Historian Passport for free, allowing them access to more than 30 state historic parks across the state through the end of 2026.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the initiative Wednesday in honor of both Juneteenth and the the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“California’s state historic parks preserve some of our nation’s most powerful and meaningful stories, and I’m proud to live in a state that celebrates diversity to connect more people with those stories through this limited-time free pass,” California State Parks director Armando Quintero said in a statement. “I hope the free Historian Passport introduces more Californians to the state’s historic gems and sparks a curiosity and thirst for knowledge that leads to many return visits.”
The pass typically costs $50 and allows unlimited entry for up to four people to state historic parks and museums that charge a per-person admission fee or a vehicle day-use fee.
Historic parks in and around L.A. County that accept the Historian Passport include:
To download a free pass, visit ReserveCalifornia.com and click “Passes” in the upper main menu. From here, you’ll be prompted to either create a new account or log into your existing account. Once logged in, you can use the dropdown menu on the page to select “Special Edition Historian Passport 2026 – $0.00.” You can then check out with your pass and will quickly have it added to your list of passes within your account.
Leaders with the California State Parks Foundation and the California State Railroad Museum Foundation, which helped finance the initiative, said they hope the free Historian pass opens up access to more people to see our public lands.
“California state parks help us understand the history of California, the United States, and the ongoing work of building a more inclusive democracy,” said Rachel Norton, executive director of California State Parks Foundation. “The special edition Historian Passport is a great opportunity to explore state parks for free. We hope access to the Historian Passport encourages more Californians to visit a historic state park and learn about, and reflect on, our shared history.”
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Details are still coming in, but a B-52 bomber has crashed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The base’s official Facebook and X pages have posted the following statement:
“A United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress crashed shortly after takeoff on the Edwards airfield at 11:20 a.m. Emergency crews immediately responded to the scene and the situation is ongoing. More information will be provided as it becomes available.”
ALERT: A United States Air Force B-52 Stratofortress crashed shortly after takeoff on the Edwards airfield at 11:20 a.m.
Emergency crews immediately responded to the scene and the situation is ongoing. More information will be provided as it becomes available. pic.twitter.com/x932d3HXHz
— Edwards Air Force Base (@EdwardsAFB) June 15, 2026
From what we can see, the B-52 appears to have crashed on or at least very near the base’s main runway. Still images and video emerging now show a large fire with black smoke that can be seen from miles away.
How many individuals were on board the B-52 when it went down, and their fate, are currently unknown. However, the bomber ejection seat configuration could have presented complications for escape depending on how soon after takeoff the incident occurred. The B-52 has crew positions that eject downward.
Prior to this crash, the Air Force had 76 B-52s in service.
A stock picture of a B-52 bomber at Edwards. USAF
Though the two incidents are unrelated, this is also the second crash of a U.S. military aircraft in three days. A U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 323 (VMFA-323) went down near Mount Rainier in Washington State on June 13. The two individuals in that jet were able to eject safely. The Hornet did start a wildfire after hitting the ground.
BREAKING – 🇺🇸 Footage showing a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 crashing into a hillside near Rimrock Lake, Wash., on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/yQ4O6UFZOl
A US Navy F/A-18 crashed near Rimrock Lake, pilot ejected and walked out with medics according to reports. This is along the famous VR-1355 low level route in Washington State.
Fox News has now shared a video it says is of the aftermath of the crash, which shows a very large scorched area along the side of one of the runways at Edwards. There is no readily discernible wreckage, pointing to a total loss of the aircraft.
Update: 4:18 PM ET –
Edwards Air Force Base has shared a new update as of 12:48 PM PDT via its social media accounts. The full statement reads:
“The airfield has been closed, and all inbound aircraft are being diverted. All non-commercial visitor passes have been suspended until further notice to allow the installation to focus entirely on emergency response operations.”
Update- 12:48 PDT: The airfield has been closed, and all inbound aircraft are being diverted.
All non-commercial visitor passes have been suspended until further notice to allow the installation to focus entirely on emergency response operations.
— Edwards Air Force Base (@EdwardsAFB) June 15, 2026
We will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
SACRAMENTO — If Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature truly believe that slow vote counting is a horrible problem — which it’s not — right now is the time to fix it.
They’re crafting a new state budget. And they could choose to spend the money needed to help counties hire more temporary election workers, buy more sophisticated vote-counting machines and add space for all of it.
That’s the only way to significantly speed up vote counting and mute the MAGA drivel about California being a national “laughingstock.”
How much money?
“We’ve suggested $55.5 million,” says Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which pushes to improve the election process.
“That’s not a lot in the big scheme of the state budget.”
She’s right. It’s essentially pocket change in a proposed budget still being negotiated that tentatively totals $356 billion.
But don’t bet on much of it being allotted for swifter vote counting.
Regardless of all the potshots at California from cable news panelists about our “embarrassing” elections, faster vote tallying doesn’t seem to be a high priority for the Legislature.
Democrats are justifiably much more concerned about protecting poor people’s healthcare, in-home services for seniors and the unraveling safety net as the Trump administration and GOP Congress slash federal funding.
Federal cutbacks aside, the state for years has been spending more money than it takes in despite tax revenue exceeding expectations. Sacramento has a severe deficit spending problem that is projected to last for a while.
So, allocating more money to speed up vote counting by a few days isn’t very high on the governor’s and legislative leaders’ to-do lists.
“The reality is elections currently are underfunded,” says Assembly Elections Committee Chairwoman Gail Pellerin, a Democrat who was Santa Cruz County’s chief elections official for 27 years.
She also says, referring to demands for faster counting: “The media outlets want to call the races and be the first. And that’s what this is all about.”
I don’t disagree. By our nature, we journalists are anxious to report fresh news, including the outcomes of elections. And we become impatient when vote counts roll in seemingly at a snail’s pace.
But come on, it’s not a horrendous burden on the public to wait a few days for an accurate vote count.
It does, however, provide an excuse for President Trump and MAGA Republicans to regurgitate unfounded accusations that elections won by Democrats are “stolen” from the GOP.
“Look what’s happening in California … it’s a rigged election,” Trump bellowed in a June 7 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker. “They’re cheating on the election.”
When Welker challenged him for evidence, Trump heatedly replied: “They’re crooked just like you’re crooked. Your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked. … You’re either crooked, or you’re stupid.”
To put this in context, the Trump diatribe came immediately after he called police officers attacked by Jan. 6 Capitol invaders “a bunch of dirty cops” and “crooked cops.” The Trump-inspired rioters were trying to prevent Congress from certifying President Biden’s “rigged” election.
It’s constantly puzzling why millions of Americans take this unhinged man’s blatherings so seriously. But they do.
And when the president lies about ballot fraud, it erodes public confidence in the integrity of our election system and undermines democracy. Americans become even more cynical and polarized.
So, the governor, Legislature and counties would do everyone a favor by investing in a faster vote count.
“It’s a problem,” Alexander asserts. “The slow vote count has become the norm in California, but it’s not normal for a democracy. It opens the door for false fraud claims.”
Much of the slow count results from tallying mail ballots, which amount to at least 80% of votes cast. They take longer to process, largely because each voter’s signature on the ballot’s envelope needs to be checked against one on file.
So, California could speed up counting by mailing out fewer ballots. Now, every registered voter gets one. We could go back to requiring voters to request an “absentee” ballot.
But forget that. We’re right to make it easy for people to participate in democracy — as long as safeguards are maintained to prevent fraud.
Some counties have taken advantage of a new law that allows a voter to drop off a filled-in mail ballot inside a voting center. There, it’s handled like an old-fashioned ballot that’s filled out at a booth. This significantly reduces processing time. But many counties say they need more state money to implement the program. I have no idea why.
Counting also is slow, of course, because lots of voters wait until election day — or near it — to cast their mail ballot. That clogs the system.
If the ballot is postmarked by election day, it’s allowed seven days to reach vote processors. Trump and fraud conspirators want to trash all ballots arriving after election day. That would speed up counting. But it’s un-American.
California election officials also try to pressure voters into mailing their ballots early. Rubbish.
Election day should mean something. It’s a day citizens are allowed to vote — whether they hand their ballot to a clerk at a voting center or drop it in the mail. They’ve got a right to take their sweet time in concluding what the wisest voting decisions are.
After all, the government allows us to drop our tax return in the mail on April 15 each year — and is very happy to receive our check a few days later. They process that check plenty fast.
“There’s nothing wrong with a slow count,” says Rick Hasen, a UCLA law professor who specializes in election law. “But it‘s a major problem because, unfortunately, it’s a manufactured crisis that can undermine public confidence. And it has gotten worse.”
So, Sacramento needs to undermine the demagogic manufacturers by stepping up vote counting while keeping elections virtually fraud-free.
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Over the last decade, California became a national leader in voter accessibility and security, expanding options for when and how ballots can be cast while also strengthening election safeguards.
But those reforms came at a cost: speed. And in a political climate where unsupported conspiracies about election fraud can run rampant on social media — pushed, at times, by top political leaders — some fear the slow vote count is becoming a liability.
Election outcomes in recent years have become more drawn out in California, most recently taking about a week to determine the gubernatorial and Los Angeles mayoral candidates advancing to November’s runoff after hotly contested primaries. And in prior years, it’s taken even longer to determine tight U.S. House or state Senate seats.
That trade-off — election accessibility and security over quick results — has long been defended as a byproduct of California’s desire to make it as easy as possible to cast a ballot while ensuring accuracy and integrity, something backers say remains vital to a thriving democracy.
But some experts say the increasing backlash over the slow vote count sows distrust.
“We’ve allowed the long count to be normalized, … but that doesn’t mean it’s normal,” said Kim Alexander, president of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, who has become an advocate for accelerating the state’s vote count. “There’s no question that voter confidence is eroding.”
A slower vote count does not signal any indication of fraud, despite unfounded claims over the last week by President Trump and others. Election officials and nonpartisan groups make clear that voter fraud remains extremely rare in the U.S., and there’s been no evidence of any such issues in California’s latest primary count.
But studies have found that voter trust slides as results lag, and this primary made clear that disinformation gains more traction the longer contests drag on, especially with lead changes.
That came to pass this primary, particularly as reality TV personality Spencer Pratt slowly lost his initial second-place ranking in the L.A. mayor’s race, before later batches of votes bumped him from the runoff — fueling an onslaught of social media hysteria: claims of so-called corruption and vote dumping, misinformed examples of alleged fraud and right-wing disinformation campaigns.
But making any substantive changes — particularly before November’s general election — would be an uphill battle, especially in deep-blue California, where Democrats tend to resist limits to voter access. And some are urging restraint.
“We should never drive policy based on conspiracy theories and lies,” said David Becker, the executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. “That said, are there things California can do?”
Some suggestions, such as increased funding for county election offices and more education about early voting, would probably make some difference.
But the crux of the slow count comes from a flood of last-minute mail-in ballots — in a state with about one-eighth of the U.S. population. When a large percentage of California’s voters mail or drop off these ballots on or just before election day — as they tend to — it creates what Alexander calls the “pig in the python” effect: a major backlog of labor-intensive ballots to process, in a state that already handles the largest-volume ballot counts.
While verification occurs simultaneously during in-person voting, election officials in California are required to confirm a voter’s registration status, verify each voter’s signature and ensure each person did not vote elsewhere for each vote-by-mail ballot. Becker called it an “intensively human process” that cannot be sped through — but could be spread out by more early voting.
“It is a lot easier to report results out faster when ballots come in sooner,” Becker said.
Altering that process significantly enough to ease that bottleneck would likely come with other trade-offs, experts said, such as earlier deadlines to turn in certain ballots or more time-consuming ballot drop-offs — either of which might dissuade some voters from showing up. Mail-in ballots have overwhelmingly become Californians favorite way to vote, with more than 80% of voters using that method in every election since 2020.
But California didn’t become known for slow ballot counting overnight. Since the turn of the millennium, the state has taken several steps to increase voter access by expanding options for how, when and where voters can cast their ballot, while also strengthening its processes to become what the secretary of state’s office calls “the strongest voting security standards in the country.”
Still, that was expected. Election watchdogs and party officials from both parties tried to temper Californians’ expectations about the timing of results from the primary, reminding voters that it would likely take days if not weeks to call close races.
But when that exact process began to play out — particularly in the extremely tight contests for California governor and Los Angeles mayor — it almost immediately brought criticism and concern.
“None of the optics are good,” complained Roxanne Hoge, chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party. “None of this is designed to inspire confidence.”
As Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office tried to dispel misinformation about California’s ballot tabulation process, the statement also said, “For the record: we wish the votes were counted faster, too.”
Not only would a speedier election count improve voter trust, which can often increase participation, Alexander said, it would also decrease harassment of election workers and help newly elected candidates step into their new roles faster — and eliminate a long limbo period for the losing candidate.
“We can get it right and do it faster, and we should,” Alexander said.
A 2023 law allowed counties to provide voters an opportunity to cast their vote-by-mail ballot as an in-person ballot, by submitting it sans envelope and signing for it at a vote center, which reduces the verification process required by election workers. About half of California counties have adopted some option of this expedited process, according to the California Voter Foundation, some calling it “Sign, scan and go!” or the “naked ballot” option, but more widespread implementation of this could help speed up the count, Alexander said. Los Angeles County, which processes more ballots than many states, has not yet implemented this time-saving option.
California also allows ballots, if postmarked by election day, to be accepted up to a week after polls close — though that policy may soon be forced to change depending how the Supreme Court rules on a case challenging ballots arriving after election day. Still, these late-arriving ballots don’t account for a large share of the delays in California: in 2024, only about 2.5% of all ballots arrived in the mail after election day.
But some election observers point out that even when compared with states with similarly run elections, California still lags behind.
“California simply counts the ballots it has too slowly and its elections offices are underfunded,” election analysts Eli McKown-Dawson and Nate Silver recently wrote in a Substack piece. “If you want people to be confident in your electoral system, a good first step is to build one that works properly.”
And while seven other states also automatically mail voters ballots, experts say it’s hard to make direct comparisons with California. Some critics often point to Colorado as an example of a state with similarly ubiquitous mail-in voting, yet a much faster count than California. But the scale of states’ elections are so different: In 2024, California processed about 13 million vote-by-mail ballots; not even 3 million were counted in Colorado.
Some have also pointed out that despite all the ways California has worked to expand voter accessibility, turnout hasn’t dramatically changed. California remains relatively in the middle of the pack when it comes to voter turnout across the U.S., and while the state has seen some spikes in turnout during certain election years, there’s been no noticeable uptick over the last 15 years, according to a review of data from 2008 to 2024.
But Becker contended that there are many factors that can influence voter turnout, in particular, California’s strong blue tilt.
“Perceived competitiveness” — or lack thereof — often keeps voters from the polls, as can uninspiring campaigns or even the weather, Becker said, but he was adamant that shouldn’t be a reason to make it harder for people to vote.
“Accessibility is always worth it,” Becker said.
Hoge, the GOP chair, had a different take, highlighting concerns about the voter registration process as well as the slow count — though she has been clear that the latter doesn’t necessarily signal fraud.
She has continued to push a more tempered narrative to many Republican leaders, including from the White House. On X, she shared a post that fact-checked a photo of vote tabulations from L.A. County, which appeared to — erroneously — show reality TV personality Spencer Pratt receiving no new votes in a daily vote count. And she boosted a video that dispelled rumors about Democrats stealing votes and ones about widespread fraud in California’s process.
“It’s a horrible roller coaster,” Hoge said about California’s election results. “It doesn’t make sense, and the fact that you’re just noticing it today doesn’t mean that it’s newly not making sense. … But until we win, we can’t change it.”
No matter what California might change or improve, Becker said he is confident it won’t stop the criticism or campaigns of misinformation. He also said that most elections in California are called relatively quickly — take the state’s pick for president, which is usually confirmed on election night — but it’s a small share of extremely tight races that take longer, because they require a more complete count to call a winner.
“It doesn’t matter how fast California counts its ballots, … we would be seeing similar conspiracy theories, maybe just with a different framing,” Becker said. “California ends up being a very effective bogeyman.”
Staff writer Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
Reporting from Washington — Most of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ supporters in California say they expect that come November, Hillary Clinton will be elected president — and, by and large, they’re OK with that.
While both Democratic camps prepare for a final battle in the state’s June 7 primary, the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times statewide poll found that just over half of Sanders’ supporters said they expected Clinton to be the next president. About a third of Sanders’ backers said they expected the Vermont senator to emerge the winner, and 12% said they thought Donald Trump would prevail.
Close to 8 in 10 Sanders supporters said in the survey that they would vote for Clinton in a race against Trump, although many said they would do so reluctantly.
Those findings show the reality underlying the still-heated rhetoric of the Democratic primaries: By contrast with the civil war that divides Republicans, Democrats in the country’s largest state have begun to coalesce behind their front-runner.
In the primary race, Clinton holds a modest lead over Sanders, 45% to 37%, among all Democrats and independent voters eligible to vote. Her lead is slightly larger, 47% to 36%, among those most likely to vote. Either way, that’s a significant problem for Sanders.
The poll was conducted before Sanders’ sweep of three Western states — Alaska, Hawaii and Washington — on Saturday, but those victories don’t change the electoral math much. Sanders would need not just a win in California, but something close to a landslide to overcome Clinton’s large lead in delegates before the party’s nominating convention in July.
Something else hasn’t changed: If there’s one blemish in the picture for Clinton, it’s the persistently high percentage of voters who have an unfavorable image of her, 45% in the new poll.
Clinton’s image in heavily Democratic California is more positive than it is in more Republican parts of the country; 52% of the state’s surveyed voters see her favorably. She fares far better than Trump, her most likely opponent in November, who is viewed negatively by almost three-fourths of California voters.
A Democratic voter at a Washington state caucus on Saturday. In the California primary race, Hillary Clinton holds a modest lead over Bernie Sanders, 45% to 37%, among all Democrats and independent voters eligible to vote.
(Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)
But her image with the public lags significantly behind other leading Democrats. That includes President Obama, whose popularity has risen, both statewide and nationally, in recent weeks. He is now seen favorably by 65% of the state’s voters, the highest level since early in his tenure. Gov. Jerry Brown is viewed favorably by 57%. Both men are viewed negatively by about one-third of voters.
The large share of voters who have a negative view of her does not put Clinton in danger of losing California in a general election: She would defeat any of the Republican candidates handily in the state, which has formed the cornerstone of Democratic victories nationally ever since her husband’s win in 1992. Against Trump, in particular, Clinton would win overwhelmingly, the poll indicated, carrying the state 59% to 28%.
But the negative impressions of so many Californians point toward the deeper problem she faces in the country and also to the likely tone of the fall campaign. A Clinton-Trump race, more than any other in recent decades, would feature two candidates who would start the campaign with large parts of the electorate deeply disenchanted with them. Given that, each side is likely to try to focus voters’ attention on the other’s flaws.
“Clinton’s challenge is not one of persuasion, it’s one of motivation,” said Dan Schnur, director of USC’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. “She’s not going to get Sanders supporters to fall in love with her,” he added, but “the other way to motivate your base is to frighten them about the alternative. Against Donald Trump, that should be very doable.”
That’s certainly the case for Gretta Whalen, a 32-year-old freelance writer and communications consultant from Los Angeles, who leans toward Sanders. Clinton, she said, “has been around for so long, and we know so much about her, and not all of it is positive.” Sanders, by contrast, seems attractive, and his ideas feel new, even if “some of them are very pie in the sky and would be very difficult to get the rest of the country on board with.”
But, she added, as she paused from feeding her newborn son, the contest is different “now that we’re looking at a likely race against Donald Trump.” She and her friends, most of whom back Sanders, “are all so shocked that we’re in this place where Donald Trump is a serious contender for president,” she said. Compared with past elections, this campaign “feels a little more surreal.”
“I was much more excited about Bernie” earlier in the campaign season, she added. “We love him as a candidate. We also recognize that he’s not the most realistic winner.”
Just under 1 in 4 voters in the state have a negative image of both of the likely contestants. That group would hold its nose and side with Clinton over Trump, 38% to 23%, with a significant share of them saying they would not vote at all, the poll found.
Sercan Ersoy, a 33-year-old substitute teacher in Oakland, has much more negative feelings about Clinton than does Whalen. A former member of the Green Party who changed his registration in order to vote for Sanders in the primary, Ersoy feels Clinton is “too much of a war hawk” in addition to having too many ties to Wall Street. “I don’t want to vote for her,” he said.
But “if you ask me in late October,” he added, “and there’s a real possibility of a President Trump, I might say, ‘OK. I’ll vote for Hillary.’”
This USC/L.A. Times poll was conducted March 16-23 by telephone, both cellphone and landline, among 1,503 registered voters in California, including 832 Democrats and non-party voters eligible to take part in the June primary. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points for the full sample and 3.7 percentage points for the Democratic primary sample. It was conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a Democratic polling firm, and the Republican company American Viewpoint.
The poll found the race between Clinton and Sanders dividing along lines that have become familiar during nearly two months of primaries: Sanders overwhelmingly wins voters younger than 30; Clinton does better with older voters. She leads among women by 11 percentage points, among men by 5 points.
Clinton leads narrowly among white voters but has a much larger edge among blacks and Latinos. In a surprise, given her family’s long-standing popularity with Asian voters, Clinton appears to be trailing Sanders with that group, although his edge, 43% to 35%, is within the poll’s margin of error for such a subgroup.
Clinton’s lead among minority voters is “much more muted” than her edge in previous contests in Texas and across the South, said pollster Anna Greenberg. That’s largely a result of a generational divide, with Sanders leading among younger Latinos, much as he does among young white voters. The other minority groups are too small to allow a detailed breakdown by age.
The other significant division in the primary is by party. California’s Democratic primary is open to registered Democrats as well as voters who decline to state a party. Clinton leads Sanders by 14 percentage points among registered Democrats; Sanders leads by 9 percentage points among the nonpartisan voters — again a pattern seen repeatedly in other states.
Among Sanders voters, 80% polled said they would vote for Clinton in November, although the share saying they would do so “reluctantly,” 45%, outnumbers those who would do so “enthusiastically,” 35%.
About 1 in 8 Democratic primary voters surveyed said they would refuse to vote for Clinton if she is the nominee. That’s half the level of rejection that Trump faces among Republican primary voters.
Among the Democratic primary voters most resistant to backing her in the fall are white men 65 and older, according to the poll. By contrast, only 4% of people who identified themselves as students said they would refuse to vote for Clinton — another indication that Sanders’ core supporters are unlikely to reject her candidacy.
By 72% to 21%, Democratic primary voters said in the survey that they are excited about the prospect of voting for the first female president.
Sanders has centered his campaign around the belief that the U.S. economy is unfairly rigged by Wall Street and big corporations. Not surprisingly, a large majority of his voters share that view.
The poll asked people if they thought that in today’s economy “everyone has a fair chance to get ahead in the long run if they work hard” or if “it’s mainly just a few people at the top who have a chance to get ahead.” By more than 2 to 1, Sanders’ voters said that only those at the top could get ahead.
Clinton’s supporters were more evenly divided, with 52% saying that everyone had a fair chance and 42% saying that only those at the top could get ahead. That reflected, in part, the feelings of Latinos, who are more likely than other Americans to say that hard work still pays off in the long run.
Those who backed Clinton were also more likely than Sanders’ backers to say that “when it comes to good jobs for American workers, our best years are ahead of us.” More than 6 in 10 of Clinton’s voters agreed with that statement, compared with just under half of Sanders’.
Neither group of Democratic voters was as pessimistic as Trump’s supporters, however. A majority of them said that when it comes to good jobs, “America’s best years are behind us.”
First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli — President Trump’s loyalist federal prosecutor in Los Angeles — has not been shy in recent days about his intention to ferret out voter fraud in California’s primary election and criminally charge those responsible.
He has announced that his office “has multiple election fraud investigations underway” in coordination with the FBI, urged Californians on social media to submit evidence of “potential election fraud” directly to his office, and said flatly he “will be charging some people” with election fraud — just as soon as California certifies its vote count and his office “can prove some of the allegations.”
Essayli’s public callouts and promises are highly unusual and in direct conflict with Justice Department guidance on ballot fraud investigations at the federal level, which states federal prosecutors should not publicly pursue such claims amid of vote counting.
The Justice Manual — which regulates the actions of federal prosecutors nationwide — says the department “should not engage in overt criminal investigative measures in matters involving alleged ballot fraud until the election in question has been concluded, its results certified, and all recounts and election contests concluded,” in part because doing so “runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest.”
Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for Essayli’s office, said neither Essayli nor the office had any comment.
Essayli has repeatedly acknowledged in other interviews that he has no evidence of widespread fraud that could sway the results of races, and he even shot down one prominent online conspiracy that falsely alleged Democratic cheating in the Los Angeles mayoral race.
But he has also pointed to more isolated instances of fraud as potentially indicative of bigger problems. He added that there’s no proof such rampant fraud isn’t occurring, partly because of resistance from California to a federal audit of its voter rolls.
Essayli’s remarks are part of a much wider battle to frame fraud in California as pivotal or not, in which Republicans cite individual instances of alleged fraud as evidence of some grand scheme by Democrats to steal the election from them, and Democrats — along with many elections experts — say there is no evidence that isolated crimes reflect fraud on a scale large enough to impact election outcomes.
His remarks have added fuel to baseless claims from Trump and other influential conservative voices that California’s elections have been poorly compromised by coordinated Democratic “cheating.” They have made Essayli one of the most prominent Trump administration figures in the nationwide debate around election integrity — which election experts expect to intensify ahead of November’s midterms.
A public campaign
Essayli has made his case in recent days on various alternative and right-wing news programs and podcasts, arguing that California’s slow process for counting votes had undermined public trust and needs to be audited.
On One America News Network, Essayli said his office has been “sounding the alarm on California’s election system” because it’s ripe for fraud.
“We believe that it has major vulnerabilities. We believe California does not have sufficient safeguards to make sure only eligible U.S. citizens are voting in elections in California, and that is why we’ve been demanding an audit of the California voter rolls,” he said.
On NewsNation with Chris Cuomo, Essayli said he doesn’t “care what the outcome of the election is,” but wants voters “to have confidence in the systems, and that the laws are being followed.”
“I guarantee you, when we do bring cases, we will have plenty of evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, in a court of law — that is how we work,” he said.
On the podcast of conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Essayli said he was “prohibited from discussing ongoing investigations,” but that “election fraud is not a theory” but “a real thing” — noting his office recently secured a guilty plea from a woman who paid homeless people to register to vote.
He said California is “a fraudster’s paradise,” accused the state Legislature of “going out of their way to make it as easy as possible for people to commit fraud,” and repeated oft-cited complaints about California’s voter ID policies being lax, its universal mail ballot policies sending ballots to the wrong places, its ballot collection policies allowing “harvesting” and its voter rolls being “dirty,” or filled with ineligible voters.
Essayli said all of that makes his job “incredibly difficult,” because “California has removed the paper trail, they’ve removed the chain of custody, they’ve removed any meaningful way for us to basically have a forensic audit of where a ballot came from,” but that he will nonetheless be bringing election fraud charges in the next “one to two months.”
State and local elections officials in California have defended the state’s policies as facilitating voting by as many eligible voters as possible, which they say is more important than a quick count. They’ve said there are robust procedures in place to ensure ballots are cast fairly and counted accurately, and to identify any problems and audit the results.
Elections experts say instances of fraud do exist, both in California and everywhere else in the country, but that robust efforts in past years to investigate and identify widespread fraud that could sway an election — including by Trump and his lawyers but also outside organizations — have always failed.
Essayli’s efforts have drawn sharp criticism from elections experts, leading Democrats and former prosecutors in the office.
Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy adviser on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said what Essayli is doing — throwing out unspecified claims of fraud amid an ongoing election and before he has built a case — is “absolutely nuts” and “not a thing that real prosecutors do.”
Before the current administration, the “mantra” of federal prosecutors, he said, was that “you only hold a press conference about a not-yet-concluded investigation when the public is already aware of a large crime,” such as a mass shooting. “Absent that, you wait for the facts to come in, and you see whether there has been a legal violation, and then and only then do you issue a press release — usually hand in hand with an indictment or a conviction.”
In an election, Levitt said the standard is even higher, and “the ethos of a federal prosecutor should be to never become the story, and to never make the prosecutorial job itself an impact in the election you are investigating.”
In an MS NOW interview, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in the L.A. office, blasted Essayli as wildly searching for fraud to please Trump — despite it and other efforts to please Trump, including on immigration, causing an exodus of experienced career prosecutors from the office.
Schiff said Essayli was “basically making a plea to the public: ‘Please send me evidence. I’m asserting there’s fraud. We don’t have evidence of it, but please send me something. I need to make the boss happy.’”
Another former prosecutor in the office, who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation, said Essayli is pursuing alleged election fraud cases as hard as he is only because “Trump told him to,” and he’s “constantly auditioning for a bigger D.C. job in case he gets kicked out of his current one.”
Essayli is not the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles — only the “first assistant” — because he has been unable to win confirmation from the U.S. Senate and has only remained in charge through a legal loophole.
Investigations in the works
It’s unclear what specific issues or incidents Essayli’s office is investigating.
Essayli has said his investigations so far lean toward individuals rather than networks, and he told the California Post that he would be investigating a report that thousands of people were registered to vote at homeless shelters with far fewer beds.
His office also looked into false claims that an election night ballot update in Los Angeles County include no votes for Spencer Pratt, the Republican candidate. He said his office “reviewed official county records” and determined the claim was false.
“My office will continue monitoring the election counting process and will follow the evidence wherever it leads,” he said.
One person involved in investigating the latter case was Assistant U.S. Atty. Robert Renner, who joined the office in March after previously serving as deputy general counsel for the Center for Individual Rights, a nonprofit Washington, D.C., law firm where he worked on lawsuits focused on conservative free-speech issues, according to his LinkedIn page.
A worker carries ballots at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Renner, who referred questions to the office spokesperson, visited an L.A. County ballot processing center as part of the investigation, where he questioned election officials about the ballot update, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Election officials have said their numbers were always correct and that the discrepancy was based on a one-minute lag in vote updates for Pratt by The Associated Press, which also confirmed the lag.
Renner also grilled election officials about whether or not post office officials had backdated postmarks on mail ballots sent after election day so they could still be counted, the source said.
Essayli’s elevation to the top prosecutor position in L.A. was part of a broader push by the Trump administration to fill key Justice Department roles with people loyal to the president and open to his election skepticism. Earlier this year, a Times investigation detailed how disgraced ex-L.A. County prosecutor Eric Neff was named “acting chief” of the Justice Department’s voting section.
Neff led a bungled election integrity case at the L.A. County district attorney’s office that was thrown out after an internal review revealed it hinged on the word of “Stop The Steal” activists who had pushed Trump’s discredited theory that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”
It was one of two election integrity cases Neff tried in his entire career before being elevated to the voting chief post by Asst. Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, another proud Trump loyalist from California.
Michael Sanchez, a spokesperson for Dean Logan, head of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said the office has not received any formal document requests or investigation notices from Essayli’s office, only “routine questions about operations.”
What will come of Essayli’s investigations is also unclear. He will have to prove whatever allegations he makes in court — which he has repeatedly appeared to begrudge in recent interviews.
“Instead of putting the burden on the system to reassure the people [that] only legal citizens are voting, one person one vote is the law of the land, and the burden on the system to assure us that there’s integrity and we can believe in it,” he complained to Beck, “they’ve flipped it and now it’s on us to prove every allegation of fraud.”
This being California, Hollywood celebrities sometimes jump into battles over state legislation in Sacramento.
Last week, a group of singers and actors went up against the plastics industry over a bill that would have banned single-use plastic grocery bags from California stores.
“I’ve been bombarded by phone calls by folks who live in Malibu and stars who live in Hollywood,” Sen. Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) told colleagues during the floor debate.
An aide to the senator said he was contacted in support of the bill by entertainers including singers Bonnie Raitt, Bette Midler and Jackson Browne, and actress Rita Wilson, the wife of Tom Hanks.
Midler also went to Twitter before the vote, writing “California getting ready to vote on a statewide ban of non re-usable plastic bags! HELP BAG BAN SB 405!!!!!!”
But De Leon said he opposed the bill because it could cost 500 jobs in his district, many of them, he said, held by immigrant women — “Women head of households, women who have to work to put food on the table.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), the bill’s author, countered that working families are already paying a cost as government agencies have to spend money removing bags littering beaches, streets and the oceans.
This round went to the industry. The bill fell three votes short of the tally needed for passage, killing it for the year.
In a statement to The Times after the vote, Midler was critical of the legislators who voted against the bag ban. “Plastic bags are a scourge to the planet and everything that tries to live on it,” Midler said. “Shame on them all for caving.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down part of a historic California law inspired by Cesar Chavez and the farm workers union, ruling that agricultural landowners and food processors have a right to keep union organizers off their property.
The justices by a 6-3 vote said the state’s “right of access” rule violates property rights protected by the Constitution, which states private property shall not be “taken for public use without just compensation.”
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said “the access regulation is not germane to any benefit provided to agricultural employers or any risk posed to the public…The access regulation grants labor organizations a right to invade the growers’ property. It therefore constitutes a per se physical taking,” he wrote in Cedar Point Nursery vs. Hassid.
He cited as precedents a pair of California cases. One ruled for the owner of a beachfront home in Ventura who objected to giving the public access to the shore and a second from 2015 which ruled for a grape grower from Fresno who objected to giving his grapes to a government-sponsored cooperative.
“The upshot of this line of precedent is that government-authorized invasions of property — whether by plane, boat, cable, or beachcomber — are physical takings requiring just compensation,” Roberts said.
The three liberal justices dissented. They described the rule as a regulation, not a taking of property.
The California Legislature in 1975 became the first in the nation to extend collective bargaining rights to farm workers. Months later, a new agricultural labor board adopted the “right of access” rule to allow organizers to seek out those who were working on farmland.
Earlier this year, the state’s lawyers said the rule was still needed because farm laborers often worked in remote areas and were not fully aware of their rights to join a union.
It has come under attack in recent years by agribusinesses that have called it a “union trespassing” rule that violates their property rights.
A lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the farm owners, cheered the ruling as “a huge victory for property rights.” It “affirms that one of the most fundamental aspects of property is the right to decide who can and can’t access your property,” said Joshua Thompson, a senior attorney for the group, based in Arlington, Va..
Karla Walter, a director of employment policy for the liberal Center for American Progress, called it a major setback for union organizing.
“Today the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned nearly a half-century of progress for California’s farm workers, who have struggled to exercise their right to bargain for decent wages and to protect their health and safety,” she said. “Reaching farm workers — the overwhelming majority of whom are Latinx and migrant workers — where they work is critical to protecting their rights and interests.”
The case decided Wednesday began in 2015. The owners of the Fowler Packing Co. in Fresno, which produces grapes and citrus fruit, refused to allow union organizers onto their property.
A few months later, union organizers entered a strawberry packing plant near the Oregon border and disrupted the work, according to Mike Fahner, owner of the Cedar Point Nursery.
The two companies then joined in a lawsuit seeking to have the California union access regulation declared unconstitutional. They lost before a federal judge and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, but the Supreme Court voted to hear their appeal.
Lawyers for the Pacific Legal Foundation representing the farm owners argued the Constitution “forbids the government from requiring you to allow unwanted strangers on to your property.”
In defense of the rule, California officials called it a temporary regulation of property, not a taking of the grower’s land. Union organizers may enter a farm for one hour before the start of the workday or for an hour at the end of the day.
The state’s lawyers said the rule is similar to federal and state laws that allow meat and poultry inspectors to go into packing plants or health and safety inspectors to visit warehouses, manufacturing plants or construction sites.
I wanted to know more the moment I read “Sister Elsie Peak” on an old map.
I discovered the name while researching trails around Mt. Lukens, the highest peak in Los Angeles proper. Looking at the peak’s location on a historical map of L.A. County’s mountains, I noticed that it was previously named for a woman I’d never heard of.
Few of Southern California’s mountain peaks are named after women, so Sister Elsie Peak stuck with me. Who was she? And why was her mountain renamed to instead honor local leader Theodore Lukens?
In this edition of The Wild, our weekly outdoors newsletter, I will take you with me on my arduous journey to find the origins of the first known name for Mt. Lukens. Over the past week, I enlisted help from multiple librarians, map experts and one gracious historian (who you’ll meet later). We all scoured newspaper archives and history books, catching the fever of curiosity that seems to consume anyone who tries to find out who Sister Elsie was.
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What we collectively found was this: Sister Elsie was most likely not a real person, and her legend was most widely shared in the early 20th century by a local landowner who was known to embellish, including claiming that Josephine Peak near Mt. Lukens was named after his daughter. (It wasn’t.)
There appears to be no record anywhere — in newspapers, in history books, in Catholic Church records — as to the existence of a Sister Elsie or, as you’ll learn more about below, an alleged orphanage, ranch or school that she ran in the Tujunga area for Indigenous children or the broader Indigenous community.
In that same vein, I want to call something out before we begin: Stories about the relationships between colonizers and Indigenous peoples often get romanticized (see: Thanksgiving), with storytellers and early historians intentionally leaving out any details of forced assimilation or the American genocide. I cannot report anything concrete about how Sister Elsie actually treated Indigenous people in large part because I don’t believe she was real.
The sunset as viewed from a trail near Mt. Lukens in the San Gabriel Mountains.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
OK, I’ve held you in suspense long enough. Let’s jump into everything under the actual sun that I could find about Sister Elsie Peak.
To begin my reporting, I contacted Times editorial library director Cary Schneider, who is always eager to help me with prospective stories (i.e. highly specific internet rabbit holes I’ve fallen down).
Cary found what might be the earliest mention in a local newspaper: A story in the Monrovia Daily News on April 23, 1910, in which a writer mentions a new trail leading to Sister Elsie Peak, but tragically gives no details of its namesake.
Next, we jump 20 years into the future when The Times and the Pasadena Star-News covered the dedication of Sister Elsie’s Well in Tujunga. Both publications described the well in their stories on April 28, 1930, as named after “the Catholic nun” who ran a school for Indigenous children “in the days of the Spanish missions.” The Times called her a “pioneer nun and teacher.”
Multiple radio towers and other infrastructure sit at the top of Mt. Lukens, as seen on a 2022 hike there.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The dedication occurred on the land of Philip Begue, a crucial character to understand in the Sister Elsie legend, as he’s believed to have either spread or made up the story, according to a local historian. Begue’s family bought land around Tujunga and La Crescenta in 1882, and later, Begue was an early pioneer and one of the first forest rangers in what would later become Angeles National Forest.
Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s, Begue seemed set on sharing the story of Sister Elsie. In 1934, he told the Pasadena Star-News that the sister “ministered to the sick and needy” Indigenous people.
A Times story on Sept. 29, 1935, announced a barbecue fundraiser for a local Catholic institution at the “old Basque rancho” owned by Begue. “The ranch on Honolulu avenue was famous in early days when Los Angeles was a pueblo and Sister Elsie had a children’s home where the ranch now stands.” The Begue family planned to cook “hundreds of pounds of meat for the affair.”
Times columnist Harry Carr offered in his column, the Lancer, a completely different take. Carr wrote on April 3, 1935, that Sister Elsie Peak was named “for a nun who lost her life trying to walk from San Fernando to San Gabriel.” No, he doesn’t provide a source for where he learned that information. Trust me: I too shook my fist at the sky.
The last rays of sun blanket across Mt. Lukens, as seen from Dunsmore Canyon in Deukmejian Wilderness Park near Glendale.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
I would be remiss to mention that the oldest reference to a “Sister Elsie” in The Times’ archives appears to be an 1889 story about — buckle up — a psychic medium in Azusa. For a brief and beautiful moment, Cary and I hoped Sister Elsie Peak would turn out to be named after Elsie Wheeler, a spiritualist medium whose own story relates to an astrological tool. Alas, the peak was named before she was born (which doesn’t work unless she was a really good psychic). That said, a peak named after a mythical nun and a clairvoyant feels arguably appropriate for the highest point in L.A.
Cary also discovered one of my favorite facts about the Sister Elsie legend — that it was turned into a play titled “Sister Elsie in Tujunga.” It was written by Frances Muir Pomeroy, superintendent of summer school at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church. It was said to be about “the experiences of Sister Elsie when she conducted an orphanage here many years ago,” according to a 1938 Times story.
There are other references to Sister Elsie in The Times’ archives over the next several decades, but nothing that gives concrete evidence that she actually existed.
Cary advised me to contact the Los Angeles Public Library. Librarian Kelly C. Wallace, who specializes in California history, quickly got back to me.
Knowing that Cary had already scoured The Times’ archives, Wallace sifted through the agency’s Los Angeles Area Historical Newspapers database, which contains the Los Angeles Daily Star (1870-1879), the Los Angeles Evening Post-Record (1896-1936) and the Los Angeles Star (1851-1871), along with community newspapers such as the Eagle Rock Sentinel and the Highland Park Herald. She found little there.
The trail through Stone Canyon to reach Mt. Lukens.
(Mary Forgione / Los Angeles Times)
This is especially puzzling if Sister Elsie did exist because, before the advent of television, newspapers reported seemingly everything that we now post on social media — detailed trip reports, the attendees of parties, birth announcements, and even basic road repairs.
Wallace did discover a few interesting tidbits in books, but curiously nothing before 1930.
The earliest reference that Wallace found was in the 1938 book “History of La Crescenta-La Canada Valleys” by Grace J. Oberbeck. She spoke to Begue, who spun quite the yarn:
“On El Rancho de las Hermanas, the ranch of the sisters, a group of nuns who had an orphanage not far distant, kept a herd of cows which was looked after by” local Indigenous people “who supplied milk to the school whenever needed. Sister Elsie was the much loved nun in charge of” the Indigenous dairy workers, “and her name was given to the well. Almost directly north from here towers a high peak of the Sierra Madre range and this bears the name of Sister Elsie Peak.”
Legendary outdoors writer and historian John W. Robinson, Wallace found, told the Sister Elsie story in his 1977 book “The San Gabriels,” but followed it up with a correction in his 1983 tome, “The San Gabriels II”: “The derivation of Mt. Lukens’ original name, Sister Elsie Peak, is clouded in uncertainty. Exhaustive research into Catholic Church records fails to find any evidence of a nun named Sister Elsie nor an orphanage named El Rancho de Dos Hermanas.”
You’re telling me, John!
Wallace also found an entirely different story about Sister Elsie on page 47 of “The San Fernando Valley” by Jackson Mayers, published in 1976.
“Sister Elsie, a Sister of Charity, came to Tujunga from Los Angeles between 1850 and 1875 to work with” Indigenous people “at a school and orphanage. Near Haines Canyon was Sister Elsie’s well; Sister Elsie’s Peak was named, it is said, because when troubled she would gain strength by raising her eyes to that eminence, one whose top she was to be buried. Others held that two nuns on their way from Mission San Fernando to Mission San Gabriel lost their way in Tujunga and died atop the peak.”
There is tragically no footnote on the page, so I have no idea who Mayers’ source was.
I hoped that finding out when Sister Elsie Peak was named would help, but that also proved to be a dead end.
Local historian Mike Lawler, former president of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, told Realtor Sharon Hales in a 2016 interview that cartographer George M. Wheeler and his team named the mountaintop Sister Elsie Peak during their survey of California in the late 1800s.
“We don’t know why he named it Sister Elsie Peak,” Lawler said. “The reasons why he named everything are lost to history. They were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.”
This led me to contact the staff at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University Library, as its collections are vast, and I hoped maybe they’d somehow find half a charred page of notes with Sister Elsie’s biography scrawled in quill pen.
Instead, Kristina Larsen, the center’s associate curator, came up short, finding only that a misspelling, “Sister Else Pk” was on the 1881 land classification map from Wheeler.
Evan Thornberry, the center’s head and curator, unearthed “Vignettes of California Catholicism,” a 1988 book by Monsignor Francis J. Weber, longtime archivist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles at the San Fernando Mission.
Weber conducted an exhaustive search for the existence of Sister Elsie and found no proof of any existence of Sister Elsie or a Catholic orphanage in the Tujunga area at the time.
Weber offered my favorite suggestion for why no one can find any hint of Sister Elsie’s existence: “Maybe the good Sister was kidnapped by Martians!”
If so, I hope someone there takes better care to protect knowledge regarding the names of that planet’s mountains.
You’d think I’d give up here, right?
Instead, I contacted historian Kristine Gunnell, who wrote “Daughters of Charity: Women, Religious Mission and Hospital Care in Los Angeles, 1856-1927” (Vincentian Studies Institute).
I hoped Gunnell would have an answer, as Sister Elsie was said to be in the Sisters of Charity, an American version of the Daughters of Charity, a group that was founded in France in the 1600s with an aim of serving low-income and sick people.
The Daughters group eventually inspired American Catholic women to serve in a similar way, first forming the Sisters of Charity until the groups essentially merged. In the 1850s, as more people moved to the American West, a bishop in the L.A. area requested that Daughters of Charity come to L.A., Gunnell said.
But, there’s no Sister Elsie referenced in Gunnell’s book.
Gunnell said after hearing from me, she contacted a history professor from DePaul University who is compiling a database about all the Daughters of Charity who served in California. He found no one referred to as “Sister Elsie” between 1850 and 1900.
A 1931 news story references that Sister Elsie treated Indigenous children diagnosed with typhoid fever.
Tujunga “was only a day’s wagon ride from Los Angeles, and if these Tongva were Catholic or had Catholic connections, the sisters may have considered their request,” Gunnell wrote to me. “I was hoping that I’d be able to find a record of the typhoid outbreak in Tujunga in the 1860s or 1870s and cross reference it with the Daughters’ records. It’s a good story, and the sisters likely would’ve reported it if it’s true. However, I can’t isolate a specific outbreak.”
Later, Gunnell and I hopped on a Zoom call to commiserate.
With all of our research before us, we reached the same conclusion: A Catholic sister could have feasibly traveled to Tujunga at the request of a bishop to help Indigenous people, but currently there is no record of a woman known as Sister Elsie who did so. There’s no record of much of anything told in the Sister Elsie story. It seems, instead, to have been an urban legend of its time.
At least for now.
Hikers in Elysian Park.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
3 things to do
1. Reach for the rainbow in L.A. One Down Dog, an L.A. yoga and fitness studio, will host a Pride hike from 10:30 a.m. to noon Saturday in Elysian Park. Guests will hike a loop trail through the park. For more details, register at eventbrite.com.
2. Marvel at mollusks in Malibu The Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation will host a tidepooling event from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 19 near the Wishtoyo Chumash Village (33904 Pacific Coast Highway) in Malibu. Guests will learn about Wishtoyo Village, which is typically not open to the public. All experience levels welcome. Learn more at the foundation’s Instagram page.
3. Learn along the L.A. River in Downey The California Native Plant Society and Friends of the L.A. River will host a guided bike ride along the L.A. River. Naturalist Cris Sarabia will teach participants about local ecology during the ride. Binoculars will be provided. Guests should bring safety gear and water. Learn more at the group’s Instagram page. Register at folar.org.
The must-read
Burn damage to the Torrey pine grove at Santa Rosa Island.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
The length of time that it will take for Santa Rosa Island to recover after a blaze scorched about one-third of the island remains unclear, Times staff writer Grace Toohey wrote after a recent visit to the island. The fire, which grew to 18,379 acres, is now fully contained. Firefighters faced vicious winds and, at times, 30-foot flames. “They held the line, and we have them to thank for saving housing, saving the island, saving the history of the Santa Rosa Island,” said Ethan McKinley, superintendent of Channel Islands National Park. The island has long been a respite for hikers and backpackers, including Times staff writer Lila Seidman, who shared her experiences on the island and her grief that came in the wake of the blaze. “Now fear clouds the memories: Does the rugged, magical place of my mind’s eye still exist?” Seidman wrote.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
I have a flurry of good California animal news to share. First, three mule deer were the first animals to walk over California’s first wildlife crossing over State Route 97 in Siskiyou County. Second, scientists have feared that the population of endangered steelhead trout in the Santa Monica Mountains were killed in massive debris flows after the Palisades fire. However, researchers recently spotted the fish — and their babies — in Topanga Creek. And finally, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife shared earlier this week that five orphaned black bear cubs that were rehabilitated and released into northern California in November successfully hibernated through the winter and returned to the landscape this spring healthy and active, according to recent data reviewed by the agency’s scientists.
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
SACRAMENTO — State Treasurer Fiona Ma and former California Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero have been declared the two winners of a crowded primary election for lieutenant governor, securing themselves spots on the November ballot.
Ma is a Democrat. Romero is a former Democrat who said she registered as a Republican after splitting with Democrats over the push to oust President Biden as the party’s presidential nominee in 2024.
Both were declared as the top-two winners by the Associated Press. Under California’s primary system, the first and second place finisher advances to the November general election, regardless of their political affiliation.
Ma is a certified public accountant serving as state treasurer. She previously sat on the California Board of Equalization and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She also served three terms in the California Assembly.
Romero is an adjunct professor at Pepperdine School of Public Policy. She served as a Democrat in the Assembly and state Senate, becoming the Senate’s first woman majority leader in 2005.
Other notable candidates included former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs and Josh Fryday, a member of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s cabinet. Both are Democrats.
The position is largely ceremonial. The lieutenant governor serves on various boards that oversee the University of California, California State University and community college systems, and can be called upon to break a tie in the state Senate. If the sitting governor dies, resigns or is removed from office, the lieutenant governor would assume the role.
Ma and Romero have offered some similar viewpoints. Both candidates previously expressed support for the death penalty and opposition to the state’s plan to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
Neither candidate supports the controversial Billionaire’s Tax Act. Romero, however, has further vowed to shun all potential tax increases.
Ma and Romero will now face off in November. The winner will replace Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who is finishing her second term and could not seek reelection. Kounalakis instead ran for state treasurer.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials announced a new lawsuit against the Trump administration that aims to block a planned immigration facility near Gilroy.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. district court in San Jose, alleges that the leased land is zoned elusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring state and county notification, as well as procedural steps required before beginning construction.
The agency told the San José Spotlight that the project is an ICE office and denied that it would be a detention center. But state and local officials believe the facility will be used for short-term detention of up to 150 people at a time.
“The administration is trying to jam through a new facility on a community that does not want it, bulldozing over laws, shrouding their plans in secrecy and ignoring calls from the community to stop,” Bonta said during a news conference in San José, adding that it marks the 71st lawsuit filed by his office against the Trump administration.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The suit also argues that the property is in an area known to support several endangered and threatened species and that a facility there would strain the limited waste disposal and drinking water infrastructure.
Santa Clara County officials said they weren’t notified last year when the federal government, intending to build a facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leased nearly 25 acres of unincorporated land just outside of Gilroy. The parcel includes three buildings, greenhouses and a large agricultural field, according to the lawsuit.
Community members alerted the county about the forthcoming facility earlier this year and have protested the plans. Construction began early last month, according to the lawsuit.
The plot of land sits 3 miles southeast of the Gilroy Premium Outlets, at 7240 Holsclaw Road, federal procurement records show. The Department of Homeland Security secured a 20-year, $26.5-million lease from a subsidiary of the Beverly Hills-based Elmwood Capital Group, a real estate investment firm.
ICE also has a processing facility in nearby Morgan Hill.
According to the lawsuit, agricultural research companies that previously occupied the property generated hazardous waste that wasn’t properly disposed of.
“The federal government’s apparent failure to address — much less mitigate — these risks endanger the construction workers building the site, detainees and employees who will be located at the site, and the environment beneath and surrounding the site,” the lawsuit said.
According to the lawsuit, the federal government’s only formal communication with the county regarding the project was a one-paragraph letter dated June 21, 2023, and forwarded by an Elmwood Capital representative. The letter said the federal government was planning “office and operations space” there and that it should be exempt from local zoning and planning review.
“Part of the problem here is that they are trying to move forward with this project with as little transparency as possible, and hoping that nobody notices, nobody catches on to the details,” said Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti. “So, part of what our lawsuit will do is it will force that transparency to occur.”
ICE holding facilities have been the subject of multiple lawsuits since the start of the Trump administration over alleged overcrowding, poor conditions and confinement that went on for days and weeks.
Bonta and LoPresti said that the building of an ICE facility in Gilroy signals a desire by the federal government to increase enforcement in the area.
Advocates and local leaders have raised similar concerns in Dublin, another Bay Area city where federal officials are working to transfer ownership of a former prison. Congressional Democrats sent a letter earlier this month opposing the possibility that it could reopen as an immigrant detention facility.
The looming impact of federal Medicaid cuts has reignited a long-simmering, costly battle between California’s medical industry and one of its largest health worker unions.
SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, with about 120,000 members, has put forward two ballot initiatives to cap the pay of medical executives and require community clinics to spend the bulk of their revenues on patient care.
The California Hospital Assn. has responded with its own ballot proposal that would make it tougher for unions to spend money on political initiatives in the future. It would require approval by a union’s rank-and-file membership for any spending of $1 million or more on statewide measures, or $100,000 or more on local ones.
The competing measures, which have drawn enough verified signatures to qualify for the November ballot, come at a time when the rising cost of healthcare is emerging as a top voter concern.
The Service Employees International Union affiliate has seized upon affordability angst to resurrect a proposal for a cap on healthcare executive compensation, which it has failed to achieve multiple times before. The proposed measure garnered more than 1 million petition signatures.
“This initiative reflects the serious crisis we face and that affordability is a real thing,” said Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute, a Massachusetts-based healthcare think tank. “I think it also reflects grassroots anger and a desire to do something.”
Mikey Vaughn, a certified nursing assistant at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said the hospital often lacks supplies and staffing levels that he and his colleagues need in order to do their jobs effectively and without undue stress, despite its reputation as the go-to place for the rich and famous.
“The executive pay initiative would, I hope, be used to hire staff and to actually provide better resources for our patients,” he said. Vaughn is also a member of SEIU-UHW’s executive board and political committee.
Thomas Priselac, then-president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, made $8.8 million in fiscal year 2024, according to the organization’s most recent available federal tax filing. Kaiser Permanente’s CEO, Gregory Adams, made nearly $13 million in 2024. Warner Thomas, head of Sutter Health, made just under $12 million.
Cedars-Sinai spokesperson Duke Helfand said the hospital would be unable to recruit and retain physicians, nurses, and specialists if the measure passed, dramatically impairing its ability to provide healthcare.
“Such a scenario would be disastrous not only for Cedars-Sinai but for hospitals across Los Angeles and California,” Helfand said.
The union wants to cap compensation at $450,000 a year for senior hospital and medical group executives, as well as other administrative and managerial staff. However, the initiative does not stipulate how dollars diverted from payroll must be spent.
Carmela Coyle, CEO of the hospital association, called the measure a cynical political ploy.
“It’s bad policy and it’s going to have bad consequences across California,” she said.
Glenn Melnick, a healthcare economist at the University of Southern California, said even if the initiative were fully implemented and pay cuts enacted, he doubts it would reduce the cost of healthcare for patients.
SEIU-UHW does not have an estimated total amount the initiative would claw back from pay packages that exceed the limit.
Opponents of the initiative note that it doesn’t just target executive pay; it would affect medical practitioners who are also managers. That could include chief medical officers and chief nursing officers, as well as heads of surgery, emergency rooms, oncology, obstetrics, cardiology and other specialties, they say.
It would be up to each hospital, health system and physician group to report which staff members exceed the cap and by how much.
Ultimately, who is subject to the pay cap “probably will have to be battled out in court,” Coyle said . “That’s why we are throwing everything we can at it.”
The second SEIU-UHW ballot initiative, on community clinics, is already in court. The California Primary Care Assn., which represents clinics, filed a federal lawsuit in April seeking to invalidate it before it reaches the November ballot.
The proposed measure would require federally designated community clinics to spend at least 90% of their revenues on activities directly related to their mission of providing care for low-income populations. If it were to pass, more than 90% of those clinic organizations would be on the hook for penalties totaling $1.7 billion in the first year alone and “would face similarly crippling penalties every year,” according to a report commissioned by the primary care association and conducted by the Berkeley Research Group, an international consulting company.
Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Assn. of Los Angeles County, said many pivotal services the clinics provide — such as translation and transportation — would likely not be counted toward the spending requirement.
“They are targeting a group of what they see as employers and we see as the safety net,” she said.
The lawsuit cites the harm to clinics and claims the proposed spending requirement would interfere with federal authority.
Renée Saldaña, a spokesperson for SEIU-UHW, characterized the lawsuit against the initiative as “a really desperate attempt by the clinic industry to try and avoid accountability.”
SEIU-UHW, proud of its political activism, is also behind a controversial billionaire tax proposal that would impose a one-time 5% levy on California residents with fortunes over $1 billion to backfill the funding gap created by federal cuts coming down the pike under Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law, passed last July and signed by President Trump, is projected to squeeze nearly $1 trillion from the Medicaid health coverage program for low-income people by 2034, including as much as $30 billion annually in California.
The hospital association, the community clinic group and the California Medical Assn., which represents physicians, are neutral on the wealth tax proposal thus far. But Saldaña said all three of the union’s ballot proposals tie into an overarching strategy to counter the widening healthcare disparities caused by the federal law.
“We believe the primary concern of healthcare providers, including executives, should be to serve the community, heal patients, and not be in healthcare just to enrich themselves,” she said on the proposed pay cap.
Over the years, the union has submitted dozens of local and statewide ballot initiatives, including ones to cap the pay of hospital executives, regulate dialysis clinics, and raise the minimum wage of healthcare workers.
The hospital association calculates that SEIU-UHW has spent nearly $125 million on local and statewide initiatives since 2012. But healthcare industry groups have spent far more opposing them. The hospital association data shows that the union spent nearly $36 million on three ballot proposals to regulate the dialysis industry, but dialysis companies poured in $302 million to defeat them, according to state campaign finance records.
The union’s ongoing political efforts “threaten patient access to quality health care,” according to the hospital association’s ballot initiative, which could limit how much unions spend on future ballot measures.
Saldaña hinted at a possible lawsuit should that measure pass, saying “we don’t see the legal viability” of it. The proposal, she said, is an attempt “to silence the front-line healthcare workers.”
Ultimately, a ballot initiative won’t cure the ills that plague healthcare in the United States, said the Lown Institute’s Saini. What’s needed, he said, is “an evaluation and reimagination of healthcare.”
Wolfson writes for KFF Health News, anational newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.
Californians couldn’t escape billionaire Tom Steyer’s political ads — during newscasts, sitcoms, or sporting events; on streaming services, YouTube, influencers’ social media feeds, or their mailboxes. Even the Puppy Bowl.
Yet despite spending a record-shattering $216 million of his wealth on his run for governor, the Democrat failed to win enough votes in last week’s primary to advance to the November general election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Money isn’t everything, even though it obviously helps,” said Andrea Godfrey Flynn, a marketing professor at the University of San Diego. “It boosted Steyer way up. … But there are so many other factors at play that it may not have been enough.”
Steyer, a hedge fund co-founder turned environmental warrior, polled at 1% shortly before he entered the governor’s race in November, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
He climbed in subsequent polls, hitting 19% in the same poll shortly before the June 2 primary, putting Steyer in contention for winning one of the top two spots in the contest that would allow him to advance to the November election. But then he hit a ceiling, and on Tuesday, it became official that he failed to advance.
Steyer emailed supporters Tuesday expressing gratitude for their efforts backing his campaign, endorsements and votes.
“Together, we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day, and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people,” he wrote. “I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.”
He pointed with pride at major corporations such as Chevron and Meta spending heavily to oppose his bid, and said their tens of millions of dollars spent attacking him shows the flaws in the electoral system. And he acknowledged that may be part of the reason some voters were skeptical of voting for a billionaire.
“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said. “This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back. We must continue to fight for a system where democracy serves Californians, not corporations — and where you do not have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or on breaking up monopolies, or on calling out a corrupt system when you see it. Because people are fed up with a system rigged to benefit billionaires and leave them behind.”
As of Tuesday evening, Steyer had received more than 1.9 million votes of the more than 9 million cast, lagging behind the two candidates who will appear on the November ballot: Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a longtime elected official who most recently served in President Biden’s cabinet. Steyer was trailing Hilton, the second-place finisher, by just over 200,000 votes.
Steyer immediately endorsed Becerra, whom he had relentlessly attacked in the closing weeks of the campaign as beholden to corporations with business in front of the governor.
California has a history of unsuccessful self-funders. Former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi spent more than $40 million of his money on an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary campaign in 1998, which broke records at the time.
More than a decade later, former EBay chief Meg Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on her bid to become California’s governor, setting a new national record for spending on a state election. She won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election.
Sheri Sadler, a veteran Los Angeles-based Democratic media buyer, said Steyer’s 2026 gubernatorial deluge was notable.
“I literally saw his spots ad nauseam,” she said. “They left almost no stone unturned.”
Sadler worked for Steyer in the final weeks of his presidential bid and scheduled $50 million of billionaire Rick Caruso’s money on ads during his unsuccessful 2022 Los Angeles mayoral campaign.
She believes that Steyer hit a ceiling because voters who are bombarded by ads eventually feel that the candidate is trying to purchase their affection.
“It’s one thing to give me a message I can resonate with. If they’re just trying to buy my vote, that feels different to me,” she said, adding that Steyer’s wealth undermined his platform, which included support for raising taxes on billionaires. “That’s my gut. And I feel like that’s what happened to us on Caruso and possibly why he didn’t run” for governor this year.
Steyer, 68, made his fortune founding a hedge fund that included investments in fossil fuels, private prisons and other businesses that are controversial among Democrats. He told voters that he walked away from the firm 14 years ago, leaving an enormous amount of money on the table, because it did not align with his morals. Steyer adds that he and his wife have pledged to give away most of their wealth before they die.
And unlike many wealthy self-funders, Steyer did not leap into a campaign as a political neophyte who assumed their business skills would translate into being an effective elected official.
Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, are longtime donors to Democratic candidates, but for well over a decade, they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on liberal causes such as fighting climate change, mobilizing young voters, urging the impeachment of President Trump, opposing an effort by oil companies to suspend California environmental standards, increasing the state cigarette tax and supporting last year’s redrawing of the state’s congressional districts to counter Trump.
Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who advised Checchi, said that Steyer’s focus on such causes had the potential to be meaningful to voters who are often skeptical about the sincerity and motives of rich candidates.
“Tom Steyer has done a good job in that respect, because if you’re going to overcome that skepticism, it’s very helpful for the candidate to show that he or she has actually been involved in the world of public policy and politics for an extended period,” and Steyer has, Sragow said.
Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who endorsed Steyer, argued that he promoted proposals that were against his personal interests, such as the proposed billionaire’s tax that is expected to appear on the November ballot.
“Interestingly enough, Tom Steyer is also the only candidate who’s talked about campaign finance reform and wanting to get money out of politics, including his money, to return power to the people and have publicly financed elections,” Bryan said after a Steyer rally near downtown L.A. on May 31.
Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also campaigned on limiting the influence of corporate PAC money in elections, or implementing publicly financed elections in California. Porter often criticized Steyer for running as a “change agent” while spending millions he earned from investments in oil and gas.
“You paid the lowest tax rate on this stage and yet you made the billions that you’re using to fund your campaign off fossil fuels,” she said to Steyer during an April 28 debate in Claremont.
Political experts argue that messages that seem contradictory to a candidate’s background, as well as drowning voters with incessant ads, can be jarring and off-putting to the electorate.
“It can be an overload to voters where they hit that tipping point where they’re no longer interested,” Flynn said.
Despite Steyer’s foundational argument that his wealth meant he was not beholden to anyone, she said voters may be unable to reconcile a billionaire’s ability to understand or empathize about an average Californian’s needs.
“The messaging still is a giant factor,” Flynn said. “I’m curious [about] how believable it came across to voters — can you trust a billionaire to really care about affordability, someone who made money working with business or in business not to care about special interests?”
While Steyer campaigned as a hard-left liberal, he failed to be the top pick for progressives. Steyer had the support of 35% of likely voters who identified as strongly liberal while Becerra was backed by 37%, according to Berkeley’s May poll.
After talking to college Democrats at UCLA on the eve of the primary, Steyer said regardless of what happens in the primary, he will remain politically involved, though he would not run for president in 2028.
“I’m going to keep working on these issues, because I’ve been working full-time on these issues for 14 years,” Steyer said. “There’s no question what I’m going to do. How I do it is a little bit up in the air.”
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, clinched one of the top spots in California’s gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, earning him the right to challenge veteran Democratic politician Xavier Becerra in the November election to determine the state’s next governor.
The contest offers voters two starkly different politicians. Hilton was endorsed by President Trump and has wooed his MAGA supporters, blaming Democratic policies for California’s homelessness crisis, high cost of living and other entrenched ills. Becerra campaigned as a battle-tested warrior against the Republican president and a champion of affordable healthcare. He could make history as the state’s first elected Latino governor.
Hilton’s victory was declared by the Associated Press on Tuesday, days after Becerra secured one of the top spots and a week after the June 2 election. Under California’s primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary advance to the November general election, regardless of their party affiliation. According to the latest vote count, which is ongoing, Becerra has a slight edge over Hilton.
California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, center, flanked by lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero, left, and California Republican Party Chairwoman Corrin Rankin, right, hold a press conference to discuss election and voting reforms at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk headquarters on Tuesday in Norwalk.
(Gary Coronado / For The Times)
Democrat Tom Steyer finished in third place. The hedge fund founder and environmental activist spent $216 million of his own money on his campaign, and now joins the legion of other high-profile, self-funding candidates rejected by California voters.
Becerra heads into the Nov. 3 election with a distinct advantage — Democratic voters in California outnumber Republicans by an almost 2-to-1 margin, a telltale reason why no GOP candidate has won a statewide race since 2006.
The contrast between Becerra and Hilton, both on policy and political personas, couldn’t be more pronounced.
A British immigrant and former political advisor to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Hilton, 56, embraces traditional conservative ideals that have echoed across the country since the days of President Reagan — cutting taxes, weeding out government fraud and waste and promising to unbridle entrepreneurs and homebuilders from stifling state regulation.
But he’s also ventured into MAGA territory, declining to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and promising to extradite California doctors who provide abortion pills to other states for prosecution.
Becerra, 68, came up in Los Angeles politics in the 1980s and has long supported policies to expand protections and resources for immigrants with or without legal status. Married to Harvard-educated OB-GYN Carolina Reyes, Becerra has also staunchly opposed abortion restrictions throughout his career.
In Congress and other positions, Becerra earned a reputation as a cerebral, analytical politician who would fully commit to his positions after taking time to mull them through.
A straight-laced family man with a Catholic upbringing, Becerra was more reserved during the debates — a quiet confidence that drew some voters to support him. He also faced criticism from his rivals for failing to offer detailed housing and healthcare policies.
Hilton, who cuts an unmistakable image with his bald crown and clipped English accent, proved himself as a polished communicator during the debates, skills honed by his years as a Fox News analyst.
Television hosts must translate complex issues into easily digestible sound bites, said Republican strategist Matt Klink. “Most voters want a CliffsNotes version of the issues,” Klink said.
Republican strategist Kevin Spillane credits Hilton’s TV show, “The Next Revolution,” which ran for six years, with boosting his profile, calling Fox News the most important media vehicle within the conservative and Republican framework.
Hilton “understands how politics and how communications work,” Spillane said.
He often appeared relaxed during the gubernatorial debates, at points even complimenting or joking with his rivals as they parried on stage.
At a CBS debate earlier this year, Becerra referred to President Trump, who endorsed Hilton, as the Republican candidate’s “daddy.” Hilton responded with a quip that quickly deflated the attack.
“It would be rather amazing,” said Hilton, at the possibility of being Trump’s son. “My daddy was the goalie for the Hungarian national ice hockey team.”
In an interview last week, before the election, Hilton said he enjoyed the debates. “In a weird way, I was sad when we had the last one,” he said. “I’m looking forward to debating whoever it is.”
As a former political advisor to Britain’s Conservative Party, Hilton helped usher in a green, socially liberal strain of conservatism.
He also infuriated colleagues in the coalition government, the British press reported, proposing a stream of unconventional ideas: scrapping maternity leave, abolishing job centers, even buying cloud-bursting technology so Britain would have more sunshine. In 2012, he moved full time to the Bay Area.
Hilton, who founded a nonprofit on California policies, was known for his frequent visits in the last couple of years to the state Capitol for discussions with legislators.
By contrast, Hilton presented himself as the “more cosmopolitan” candidate who “can talk to the hedge fund manager or the small-business owner or the Sacramento lobbyist,” said Klink said.
“Hilton was more energized at the end, when it mattered,” said Spillane, contrasting the two Republicans.
Past Republican candidates, including businessman John Cox in 2018 and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman in 2010, have self-financed their campaigns with their vast fortunes.
By contrast, Hilton spent just a few million dollars on media advertising, he said in an interview last week.
He said he ignored advice from consultants who told him to do a launch announcement and then unleash a wave of ads in the last month of the campaign.
“I just said, ‘I want to do it the old-fashioned way,’ and that’s what we’ve been doing,” said Hilton in the interview before the election. “We’ve been to nearly every single county…. stepped it up with our town halls.”
Nina Royal, 83, who lives in Los Angeles and is a community advocate for her Tujunga neighborhood, voted for Hilton, saying that he understands California’s problems.
“He’s a realist,” said Royal. “He has a clear view of what needs to be done.”
Times staff writer Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.
As President Trump pushed unfounded allegations that California’s elections are rigged, the security of the ballot box became a major flash point in the state’s 2026 race for governor on Tuesday.
Republican Steve Hilton called for major reforms to how Californians cast ballots and how their votes are tallied, while sidestepping questions about the president’s claims that the state’s elections officials “were cheating.” Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the integrity of the state’s elections and argued that proposed restrictions would disenfranchise many voters.
The men appeared less than 20 miles apart in Southern California one week after a contentious primary election that prompted Trump to repeatedly make unfounded claims about the integrity of California’s slow vote-counting process, allegations triggered as Democrat Nithya Raman was about to overtake Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the race for Los Angeles mayor.
Hilton, whose endorsement from Trump pushed him to the front of the GOP gubernatorial field, said he has not seen any evidence of impropriety in this month’s election results.
“We’re very, very focused on making sure that everything’s OK,” Hilton told reporters in Norwalk. “We’ve got teams standing by, we’ve got lawyers standing by, very focused on that. We don’t want to let anyone down, we don’t want to let anything slip away, and we’ve seen nothing.”
The two men emerged from a crowded field of candidates in the most unpredictable governor’s race in more than a quarter of a century. While Becerra on Friday nabbed a spot in the June 2 primary and will advance to the November general election, Hilton has not officially been declared a victor by the Associated Press, as of Tuesday afternoon.
Hilton, however, appears on the cusp of clinching the second spot on the ballot. Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer is in third place in the current ballot tally, and the odds of him overtaking Hilton appear increasingly unlikely.
“I’m very pleased to say that we remain confident that I will make it into the top two and that California will have a real choice for change in November,” Hilton said at a news conference outside the Los Angeles County elections headquarters. “We’re not popping the champagne yet, but we’re very confident.”
Hilton called for electoral reform, including supporting a voter identification requirement that will appear on the November ballot, ending mail ballots being sent to every registered voter, no longer counting ballots that are received after election day — all of which are being pushed by Trump — and increasing resources at county vote counting centers.
“Voter ID [is] not the only thing, but it’s the biggest, quickest, simplest thing we can do to restore faith in the system and to have these elections completed quickly in a way that inspires confidence, and that’s why I hope that Xavier Becerra will join me in campaigning for it, so we can have a united front,” the former Fox News commentator and British political strategist told reporters.
Hilton did not directly address Trump’s unfounded claims of voter fraud in California. However, he noted that Bill Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, has the full resources of the Department of Justice and has found no proof of wrongdoing.
Essayli said Monday on NewsNation that his office is investigating voter fraud but doesn’t have a case. However, the voter rolls need to be audited, Essayli told host Chris Cuomo.
“That, to me, is the best way to alleviate most of people’s suspicion. We have a system that breeds skepticism and distrust,” Essayli said. “We should have a little transparency and confidence in our system.”
Becerra, a longtime elected official and a former Biden administration Cabinet secretary, questioned whether Hilton could be trusted to protect the state against Trump’s fraud claims.
“That’s who’s endorsing Steve Hilton,” Becerra told reporters at a South Los Angeles food hall, referring to Trump. “That’s who Steve Hilton is aligning himself with.”
Becerra, who was met with cheers of “Si se puede!” from diners, criticized the proposed voter ID ballot measure, arguing that it would create hurdles for many Californians to participate in the democratic electoral process. Led by Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio from San Diego and others, the measure would require elections officials to verify that voters are U.S. citizens to be eligible to cast ballots.
“I’m against voter suppression. I’m against anything that would try to limit a Californian’s right to vote,” said Becerra, who formerly served as California’s attorney general.
Told by reporters that Hilton wanted Becerra to campaign for the ballot initiative, Becerra responded, “Come join me here, where the real people are,” gesturing toward the packed food hall.
Becerra acknowledged his concern over the lengthy time that it takes to count votes in California. He suggested one issue is a lack of workers and equipment at county vote-counting centers.
Another problem is that the “votes get backlogged” because so many people wait until the end of the election to cast ballots, he said, likening last-minute voters to shoppers who go to Costco at the end of the day.
“If you wait till 7:00 p.m. when they’re getting ready to close, you’re probably gonna find more people there,” Becerra said.
The attacks on the elections process by Trump and his supporters appear to have a major effect on people’s confidence in the system. For years, Trump has made baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, which led his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers were scheduled to certify the election results. Additionally, Trump’s allegations about California’s elections, as well as an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling about ballot tallying, could have a significant effect on the midterm elections that will decide which party controls Congress for the final two years of Trump’s presidency.
A poll released Friday by the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley found that 41% of California voters were “not confident” that this year’s elections would be free of federal interference. Although 48% had confidence that there would be no meddling, the concerns expressed were still significant, said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the institute.
Among Democratic registered voters, 79% said they trusted elections officials to provide an accurate vote count. Among Republicans, 55% said they were not confident that would occur, the survey found.
California’s slow vote counting process — still underway and causing friction after last week’s primary — may be forced to change before November’s midterm elections, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether mail ballots must be received by election day to count.
Whether those changes will speed things up — and help tamp down baseless claims from President Trump and others that the slow count is evidence of fraud — will depend on a variety of factors, election experts said, including how the high court rules, how state lawmakers and local elections officials respond, and whether they push any additional steps to quicken the count.
“We’re all on the edge of our seats, waiting to see what the Supreme Court does,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.
“We’re certainly planning for a bad Supreme Court decision in this case, but we don’t really know all of our options for how to respond until we see the court’s decision,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), chair of the Assembly Elections Committee and a former top elections official in Santa Cruz County.
Pellerin said she has been working on contingency plans with other state officials — including some from the offices of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta — and has requested $35 million in state funds to educate voters on any new midterm deadlines, though that funding has not been appropriated.
Federal law has, since 1872, set “election day” as the first Tuesday following a Monday in November, and gives Congress oversight over elections for the president and members of Congress. However, most authority for running elections falls to the states.
California currently provides a grace period for ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by and received within seven days of election day. More than a dozen states have similar laws that allow for counting late-arriving ballots, and most states accept such mail ballots from members of the military who are stationed overseas.
In March, the nation’s high court heard arguments about a five-day grace period in Mississippi, with the court’s conservative majority appearing skeptical. Many observers expect from those arguments that the high court will rule, by the end of this month, that ballots — at least for federal races — must be received by election day to count.
That outcome — in the case Watson vs. Republican National Committee — is considered likely but not assured, and some elections experts believe the high court has little legal precedent to support such a conclusion.
“That is a bogus interpretation of the statute,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law. “It violates what the statute says as a matter of text and history, and just how it’s been understood since the Civil War basically.”
Hasen and others also doubt that such a change would have much impact on the speed of California’s vote counting process, given that huge volumes of mail ballots that are placed in ballot drop boxes or arrive at processing facilities on or just before election day would still count — and would still drag the counting process out for days after the election.
In 2024, California counted more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots, but they represented only about 2.5% of the statewide total.
“The main bottleneck is really not ballots that arrive after election day. The bottleneck is ballots arriving before or on election day,” Hasen said. “So I don’t think the Watson case — however it comes out — is going to appreciably change California’s timing on when they’ll get enough ballots counted in a close race for it to be able to be called by news organizations.”
Nonetheless, state and local elections officials are preparing for changes — and looking for other ways to speed up the vote count, which, as of Monday, had resulted in more than 7.7 million ballots counted from last week’s primary, but more than 1.7 million left to process.
State plans unclear
If the Supreme Court were to rule that votes cast in federal elections must be received by election day, California would need to respond quickly.
It would need to craft a messaging campaign to inform millions of voters of the new rules, and determine when to tell voters they must mail their ballots by in order for their votes to count, experts said. That calculation may be shaped in part by efforts by the Trump administration to assert federal control over the mail ballot process through the U.S. Postal Service, which California and other states are fighting in court.
California officials may also need to determine whether they will create a “bifurcated counting process” with different rules for primary and general elections and different rules for federal races and state and local races on the same ballots, Alexander said, as a narrow Supreme Court ruling may not apply to them all equally.
“That’s a big policy decision that lawmakers will need to make, and I’m not sure how that would go,” Alexander said, citing a lack of detailed public plans from state and local elections officials.
Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor’s office doesn’t comment on “hypotheticals,” but that Newsom “is planning for all eventualities, including but not limited to attacks on our democracy and disruptions in our elections.”
Bonta’s office said it is “in communication with election officials and actively preparing for the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court could require changes to California’s election procedures,” but that it could not provide details.
Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said he was “not in a position to discuss specific contingency planning details” given the high court has yet to rule, but that his office “is closely monitoring the case and has begun evaluating potential impacts to election administration.”
If changes are required by the court, Logan said his office “is prepared to undertake a comprehensive voter education and outreach effort to ensure voters understand any new requirements, deadlines, or voting options,” which would be “multilingual, multi-channel, and designed to reach voters directly across Los Angeles County, particularly in communities that rely heavily on voting by mail and those that have historically done so.”
Funds needed for faster count
Alexander’s group has backed Pellerin’s request for $35 million for a marketing campaign to encourage voters to send midterm ballots in early, and advocated for another $55 million in state funding to support county efforts to build up their vote processing capabilities.
H.D. Palmer, a spokesperson for the California Department of Finance, said it would be “premature” to comment on those requests, but “discussions have been underway and are continuing.”
Both Alexander and Hasen said California should be investing more in its ballot processing capabilities even if the current process is fair and secure and the claims of fraud are baseless, because those claims have succeeded in diminishing trust.
“On the one hand, this is a manufactured crisis. There is nothing that is intrinsically bad about a slow count for a race,” Hasen said. “On the other hand, we live in an era of profound distrust in institutions and in the integrity of elections, in no small part because of Donald Trump.”
In 2012, slightly over half of all California votes were cast via mail ballots. However, that number has increased dramatically since, thanks in part to an expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic, and nearly 89% of ballots were cast by mail in last year’s special election.
Alexander said that throughout that same period, California lawmakers have passed new laws to expand access to the ballot but have not provided counties with the necessary funding to keep up with the volume — meaning “counties are left holding the bag.”
Alexander said California should fix that by providing consistent state funding for new ballot counting machines, more modern and efficient county processing facilities, and an expansion of a program backed by Pellerin and available in some counties already that allows voters dropping off ballot envelopes in person to essentially convert those ballots into in-person votes on the spot — which Alexander called a “hybrid” option that saves counties a huge amount of processing time.
She said the state spent millions to educate voters on new COVID-related vote-by-mail protocols and deadlines in 2020, and it led to both record turnout and a faster count — proving access and speed are not mutually exclusive.
“We’re being asked to make a false choice,” Alexander said. “It is possible to have accessible, secure, reliable and verified elections, and also an accelerated vote count.”
Times staff writer David G. Savage in Washington contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — Disability rights advocates on Monday gathered outside the state Capitol to push back on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed cuts to in-home supportive services.
“These aren’t just numbers in a budget; these are real people,” said Assemblymember Jeff Gonzalez (R-Indio). “These are children, seniors, veterans and individuals with disabilities whose independence and quality of life depend on these services every single day.”
The In-Home Supportive Services program helps disabled and elderly people remain in their houses by providing in-home care. It pays assistants to help with tasks such as showering, cooking or attending doctor appointments. Newsom’s revised budget proposal, which was unveiled last month, would cut $367.7 million from the program and shift some of that financial burden onto counties.
Gonzalez explained that the issue hits close to home for his family. He said his son has cerebral palsy and a seizure disorder, and relies on assistance to live with dignity.
“Families should not have to wonder every budget season whether the support they rely on will be taken away,” Gonzalez said. “These services should not be treated as bargaining chips in budget negotiations.”
Assemblymember Laurie Davies (R-Laguna Niguel) questioned why a successful state like California would need to enact such cuts.
“It’s hard to go a day without hearing the governor or the administration brag about how we are the fourth-largest economy in the world and yet we can’t fully fund [this program for] the most vulnerable?” Davies said.
The governor has previously explained that difficult decisions must be made as the state could soon face an economic downturn. The budget proposal relies on a tax windfall, largely attributed to the stock market success of artificial intelligence companies, to erase California’s deficit — but some analysts have warned that the AI bubble could burst.
H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs for the California Department of Finance, on Monday said some of the proposed cuts are a byproduct of the federal government’s changes in funding and eligibility for health and human services programs.
The so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” signed by President Trump last year shifted federal funding away from safety-net programs, he said.
Palmer stressed that state budget negotiations are ongoing.
“Until we land on an agreement, speculation regarding the resolution of any specific differences between the Governor’s budget plan or the Legislature’s respective budget proposals would be premature,” he stated by email.
Monday’s event drew some bipartisan support. Brody Fernandez, communications director for Assemblymember Esmeralda Z. Soria (D-Fresno), said the legislator had been fighting for In-Home Supportive Services funding since she was elected.
Fernandez said his daughter has special needs and her mother had to give up her career to become a full-time caregiver. “This is personal for us and for many of the incredible individuals standing behind me,” he said.
Graham Knaus, chief executive of the California State Assn. of Counties, told The Times that he appreciated efforts to raise awareness about the burden these changes would place on counties.
“We applaud the Senate and Assembly for recognizing counties’ concerns and rejecting this proposal,” he said. “We ask them to hold the line in final negotiations.”
Elizabette Guecamburu, a bookkeeper who has a rare neuromuscular disorder, spoke at Monday’s rally and implored the governor to remember the teachings of their shared alma mater Santa Clara University, a Jesuit-led private school.
“I want him to remember where he came from,” she said, adding that students were taught to value compassion and community. “Don’t forget your Jesuit roots.”
SACRAMENTO — Even before President Trump’s latest wave of unfounded claims of election fraud in California, a significant share of voters in the state expressed concerns about federal interference in the electoral process, according to a new poll.
Trump on Monday claimed on his social media site that the race for Los Angeles mayor was a “Rigged Election,” an allegation that came after Democrat Nithya Raman overtook Republican Spencer Pratt for second place in the ongoing primary election vote count.
Raman’s lead had prompted Rep. Abe Hamadeh, an Arizona Republican, to call for the election to be federalized, or run by the federal government rather than the state, a message Trump reposted.
Earlier Sunday, Trump had alleged during an interview with NBC News that California elections officials “were cheating.” That came after a debunked social media conspiracy theory claiming that a lag in an update of electronic voting data by the Associated Press showed Pratt was being cheated. On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the elections process in the L.A. mayoral race “stinks to high heaven.”
The ongoing attacks by Trump and his supporters continue to erode confidence in the nation’s elections, especially among Republicans, threatening a pillar of American democracy, said political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.
“The president … wants to use those claims to make changes in the election process that could make it harder for people to vote, and that certainly is a threat to our democratic institutions,” Schickler said.
“One thing we’ve learned in recent years is that we just cannot take the voting process for granted, cannot take for granted that both sides will accept as legitimate the outcome, and can’t take for granted the idea that there won’t be efforts to essentially manipulate the vote counting process,” he added.
A new poll released Friday by the institute found that 41% of California voters were “not confident” that this year’s elections would be free of federal interference. Although 48% had confidence that there would be not meddling, the concerns expressed were still significant, Schickler said.
More telling was the partisan divide among voters when asked whether they have confidence that local officials would conduct fair and secure elections and that the vote count would be accurate. Among Democratic registered voters, 79% said they trusted elections officials to provide an accurate vote count. Among Republicans, 55% said they were not confident that would occur.
California voters who don’t belong to either party said by a 2-1 margin that they had confidence in the vote count, the poll showed.
“The positive is that local officials are still widely trusted by Democrats, no-party-preference voters, and at least a share of Republicans, though a lot fewer than I think in the past, and a lot fewer than you know we would want for a really healthy democracy,” Schickler said.
That growing mistrust among certain parts of the electorate comes after years of baseless claims by Trump that the 2020 election was stolen from him, as well as Republican-led efforts to restrict the use of mail-in ballots and impose new requirements for voters to show identification and proof of citizenship.
Recent rulings by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court also have rolled back federal protections under the Voting Rights Act. In April, the court sharply limited a part of those protections that had forced states to draw voting districts to help elect Black or Latino representatives to Congress, as well as state and local boards.
Trump and his allies have used California’s slow vote-counting process to allege cheating. The day after the June 2 primary, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to “steal” the gubernatorial and L.A. mayoral primaries. The next day, he alleged that California Democrats had “found” mail-in ballots and were “rigging the election” with them.
Secretary of State Shirley Weber and other officials have said California’s voting system prioritizes voter accessibility and security over speedy results. The state has more than 23 million registered voters, and ballots go through numerous verification steps, including verifying signatures on mail-in ballots.
“Over 97% of our folks actually vote by mail. They want to keep that system. That system demands more contact, more touching of the ballot, more verification of the individuals who are voting. All of those things take time,” Weber said during a recent interview with ABC10 in Sacramento.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called Trump’s claims during the recent “Meet the Press” interview the “most severe case of California Derangement Syndrome we’ve ever seen.”
Newsom is considering a 2028 run for president and has consistently warned that Trump may try to interfere in both the 2026 and 2028 elections.
The Berkeley poll found that California voters overall — 74% — want candidates running for president in 2028 to prioritize defending democracy and making voting more accessible. Among Democratic voters, 95% said that was important; among Republicans, 41%.
Funding for the poll was provided to IGS by the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, a private foundation based in San Francisco that aims to increase civic participation and improve the state’s democratic processes.
The poll of 8,578 registered California voters was conducted between May 19 and 25 online in English and Spanish and has a margin of error of about 2 percentage points in either direction.
Times staff writers Alene Tchekmedyian and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.
The first rule of a primary election is: Don’t make too much of the results.
The intrepid folks who bother to cast a ballot in these first-round races are largely a group of engaged voters, and drawing conclusions from such a narrow minority is a losing game.
So however the final June results tally out, the lessons learned won’t easily translate to the larger electorate that will almost surely show up in November. But if this election doesn’t tell us much about what fall voters will do, it does tell us something about the Democratic Party that dominates this state: It’s chaotic, to put it gently. And no, that’s not entirely the fault of the “jungle” primary.
Traditional rules seem to have broken down (not a bad thing) and new ones haven’t yet emerged. The old guard has lost control, and maybe vision, and the result is more candidates willing to sidestep seniority and a wait-your-turn mentality to try their luck — especially younger progressives.
Sometimes that chutzpah works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s a mirror of the national trend of Democratic infighting and a glimpse into just how fragmented the party has become as it tries to figure out who it stands for and who it supports before the 2028 presidential election.
“I feel like I’m definitely running against major institutional forces, but that’s how it is,” state Sen. Scott Wiener told me recently. “At times we see sort of a little bit of a fortress mentality, and other perspectives are not welcome, and younger folks, newer voices are not welcome, and and that’s a dynamic that plays out in a lot of different places.”
Wiener, who could be considered king of the line-jumpers, just took the top spot in the San Francisco-centered race to represent the 11th Congressional District, the seat held by Nancy Pelosi since 1987, when Wiener was 17.
By most accounts, Pelosi and Wiener had a mostly cordial relationship until last year, when he entered the race before she announced her retirement. Though Wiener had been clear for years that he planned such a run when Pelosi stepped down, Pelosi is an icon in the city, beloved by constituents and uncontested as queen of the old guard.
Announcing his campaign before she officially made that decision — or had the chance to choose her successor — sent shock waves through the political firmament. When Pelosi endorsed Supervisor Connie Chan in May, it was seen by many as a sign of her displeasure. Chan, who had struggled to gain traction in the primary, came in second with the Pelosi boost and will face Wiener in November.
Across the state, there were other races with upstart contenders. In Southern California, Jake Levine, a progressive Democrat who served in the Obama White House, took on incumbent Brad Sherman. Sherman, who at 71 has served almost 30 years in Congress, resoundingly beat out Levine by more than 20 points.
In Sacramento, there is Mai Vang, a progressive City Council member, who is challenging Rep. Doris Matsui, another member of the old guard royalty. Vang is in a tie for second place with a Republican contender as remaining votes are counted.
And of course, there is the governor’s race itself, which included a field so determined and uncontrollable even before the fiasco of Eric Swalwell’s sexual misconduct scandal that the state Democratic Party started putting out its own polling in a seeming bid to convince some blue contenders to drop out. It didn’t work. Notably, progressive Katie Porter and moderate San José Mayor Matt Mahan stuck in until the bitter end. But old guard candidate Xavier Becerra came out on top.
If these races have a lesson, it’s that different Democratic voters want different things, but the party hasn’t figured out how to embrace that other than offering up the moderate middle ground.
“This is a big question to this Democratic establishment, about how big of a tent they want to build,” said Irene Kao of Courage California, a progressive advocacy organization.
She said that it “bodes well” that so many strong progressive challengers came out for the primary, because it allows a chance for candidates outside the party power structure to find an audience with voters, even if they are ultimately unsuccessful.
And where voters go, the party will eventually be forced to follow. That doesn’t necessarily mean a more progressive Democratic Party, but it likely means a more inclusive one if they want to lure the kind of low-information and low-propensity voters who make or break a general election.
“People are sick of the games, and sick of people trying to just maneuver things to get their own person in,” Wiener said. “People want to have choices.”
You can’t own the beach in California. Our shoreline is public — thanks to the Coastal Act and the Coastal Commission — even when everything around it gets expensive and complicated. You can live next to it, monetize it and build a personality around proximity to it, but the wet sand itself belongs to everyone.
Jackie Snow takes a selfie by the new public stairs at Escondido Beach, also known as Hidden Beach.
(Jackie Snow)
In 2024, my colleague Jaclyn Cosgrove walked 27.4 miles of Washington Boulevard in a single day, from Whittier to the ocean. I read it in awe of the shape of it. One street. One day. A city revealed in a straight line.
And then a thought occurred to me, I could do something like that. What if I walked the entire L.A. shoreline? What would happen if I went to the beach and just kept walking along the crest of its waves? Except the shore does not reward this approach. It closes. It opens. Erosion pushes you onto the road and lets you back when it feels like it.
I set out to walk the 75 miles along the Los Angeles coastline anyway. I started at the mouth of the San Gabriel River and worked north toward the Ventura County line, taking 10 trips from the end of November to the second week of January, mostly waiting on tides and weather to cooperate.
Being a surfer helped. I already knew that wet sand means public access in California, that satellite view tells you things the default map doesn’t, and that tides can make or break an outing. For someone wanting to do a similar journey, the California Coastal Trail website is a valuable resource. You can walk long stretches and return back, but I went point to point, which means figuring out how to get back to your car. I usually Ubered, although public transit exists on some stretches. The slickest option is going with a friend who has a car: leave their car at the end, drive yours to the start, and walk. Their car is waiting at the finish to bring you both back to yours. Beyond that, bring more water than you think you need to especially as most stretches have no fountains, no services and no shade. Pack snacks that will sustain you throughout the journey, wear a hat and put on sunscreen, then reapply it. Even on gray, marine-layer days, you’re exposed for hours with nothing overhead.
If you’re inspired by this mega-trek but want to instead do a micro version, I suggest the 5.7 miles from Malibu Pier to Escondido Beach. You can park at one end and take a picturesque bus back where a tasty lunch at the pier’s Malibu Farm awaits at the finish. One last tip I picked up: be nice. People sometimes will give you water, or offer help, wanting to see you get to your destination too.
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1.A red-tailed hawk perched on a coastal access sign along the boardwalk in Long Beach.2.A bench off the Long Beach boardwalk, near the start of the 75-mile walk.3.Birdhouses located near the Long Beach boardwalk.(Jackie Snow)
Alamitos Beach to Port of Long Beach: 4.9 miles
I start at the mouth of the San Gabriel River at Alamitos Park at about 10 a.m. on a busy Sunday at the end of November, walking with a friend. The first stretch is a flat, easy boardwalk. We stop at the Long Beach Museum of Art, which sits on the bluffs overlooking the water, and grab lunch at Claire’s, the museum’s outdoor cafe. From there, we walk toward the mouth of the Los Angeles River, passing through the marina, where boats sit quietly and a pirate ship is inexplicably for sale. We don’t make it up the man-made pier to the Queen Mary. Instead, we turn around just short of it, one river book-ending the other.
Looking back toward the marina near the mouth of the Los Angeles River, one river bookending the other.
(Jackie Snow)
Cabrillo Beach to Portuguese Bend Beach Club: 8.7 miles
I park at Cabrillo Beach, along the Port of Los Angeles, around 6:30 a.m. People are already playing ping-pong. Someone is dancing alone on the sand.
I start along the Cabrillo Beach Walking Path, which you enter at the south end of the beach where the sand ends and the bluffs start. In what feels like two seconds, I’m up on the cliffs, which quits partway and dumps me onto the residential streets of Coastal San Pedro, a neighborhood that looks quintessentially California. The houses are probably a few million dollars each, but they’re tidy bungalows, not the kind of aggressive beachfront wealth that makes you feel like you’ve wandered somewhere you’re not supposed to be.
I pass through Point Fermin Park, home to a lighthouse perched above the water. Down below, the beaches are rocky and loud. The waves are being sucked forcefully back out between the rocks, a sound that feels more industrial than oceanic. There’s more neighborhood walking on West Paseo Del Mar, interrupted by a Little Free Library stop where I add a few books to my bag. I hit the San Pedro hike trails, and the coastline turns dramatic, and suddenly I can’t step two feet off the path without risking a fall, but it’s breathtaking in its beauty.
Cabrillo Beach at the Port of Los Angeles, where the second walk began.
(Jackie Snow)
I hit another closed section, this one bordering Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. Not wanting to end up on a Secret Service list that bars me from flying, I find another way around, on a surprising trail that curves between holes that’s part of the Ocean Trails Reserve. I climb down to the beach and start picking my way along the rocks toward the Portuguese Bend Beach Club, moving slowly and trying not to break my neck. You can definitely skip this part.
A security guard named Gilbert Blair waves me over and explains to me what I already know: I’m allowed to walk on the wet sand, but everything else is private. When I tell him what I’m doing, he starts offering advice, pointing out places on my Google map he thinks are closed because of last year’s heavy rains. This area is some of the shiftiest parts of all of California, with landslides going back all through the geographical record. In 2024, areas were moving 9 to 12 inches a week, although it has slowed down to 1 to 2 inches a week. He tells me the unstable land actually created a new beach, which the coast almost never does. People came from all over to see it, he says, gesturing toward a new form of sand that locals have called “unreal.”
Blair is nice, but not nice enough to wave me off the wet sand and through Portuguese Bend’s private roads so I can call an Uber. I have to backtrack, spending more time than I’d like carefully navigating the rocks. I briefly consider stopping at the nearby Trump National Golf Club to eat and use the bathroom, but I’m hot, sweaty and not in the mood to test my welcome.
The trail descending toward the rocky beaches below Point Fermin, where waves get sucked back out between the rocks with a sound more industrial than oceanic.
(Jackie Snow)
Terranea Beach to Palos Verdes Estates Shoreline Preserve: 5.4 miles
Based on Blair’s advice, I skip a section that isn’t open to the public and probably not safe. I drive Palos Verdes Drive South, a rutted, uneven road that skirts the area and feels vaguely off-roading. I park at Terranea Resort, which charges a fee, but there is also nearby free public parking. I pick the walk back up at the charming tucked-away Terranea Beach. As I head north, the trail climbs. I can see stretches of shoreline closed off, tantalizingly visible with no way to reach them.
I stop at the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, a modest but free museum perched above the water. Several people are gathered outside with binoculars, scanning the horizon. They tell me humpbacks were spotted farther out earlier, feeding. It’s easier to see them on the far side of Catalina, they explain, but they still watch from here, every day, sunrise to sunset, December through May. This is the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project, run by the American Cetacean Society. Volunteers have been coming here for 43 years, counting whales as they migrate past the point.
The Point Vicente lighthouse, perched above the water where Gray Whale Census volunteers keep watch.
(Jackie Snow)
Volunteers with the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project scanning the horizon. They’ve been counting whales here for 43 years.
(Jackie Snow)
After I peel myself away from looking for whales, the tides won’t allow me to climb down to Honeymoon Cove. I stay on the cliffs and admire the impressive houses around me. I continue until I round the Palos Verdes Estates cliffs, on Paseo del Mar, and see the long, flat stretch of built-up beaches unfurling ahead, South Bay-style, Malibu faint in the distance.
I’ve only done about 15 miles of my walk and suddenly I see how much more there is to go. I’m hot. I’m tired. I packed bad snacks. The sheer expanse of it, frankly, stresses me out. I had planned to make it to Rat Beach in Palos Verdes Estates, but I call it early.
The small coves that punctuate the Palos Verdes coastline, visible from the cliffs above.
(Jackie Snow)
Palos Verdes Estates Shoreline Preserve to El Porto Beach: 7.9 miles
I start back at Palos Verdes Estates cliffs. A couple of turns in, I come across my first real surf spot of the walk. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a surf break from this high up. The waves look less like waves and more like pulses of energy moving under the skin of the ocean.
When I finally hit Rat Beach and see how flat the coastline stretches ahead, I feel like dropping to my knees and kissing the ground. After days of cliffs and detours, the openness feels generous.
Hermosa Beach is busy with volleyball nets in use at a level that suggests Olympic aspirations. Forty minutes later, I stop atErcole’s in Manhattan Beach two blocks off the boardwalk and demolish one of its famed burgers. Instead of stopping where I planned, I keep going and end at my familiar surf spot El Porto.
Surfers walking out to the break at El Porto.
(Jackie Snow)
El Porto Beach to Ballona Creek Jetty: 4.8 miles
I’m back at El Porto Beach, this time walking a paved boardwalk through a thick, foggy marine layer with my husband and a friend who’s in town visiting.
Suddenly, my friend realizes he’s dropped his wallet somewhere north of El Segundo. Cue a round of retraced steps and mild panic. An angel named Dr. Gaz finds it, looks up my friend, and bikes it over so we don’t have to retrace any further. The wallet is returned. Our trio survives. We keep walking, stopping at Ballona Creek Jetty.
A dog and his man relaxing on the beach in Marina Del Rey.
(Jackie Snow)
Marina Del Rey to Will Rogers Beach: 7.4 miles
In this classic boardwalk stretch, we eye the muscle men of Muscle Beach, pause for a quiet break atSmall World Books in Venice and walk next to skateboarders (including one dressed as a Santa) in Santa Monica, before ending at Will Rogers State Beach.
The rocks and tide pools just past Malibu Lagoon, where the king tide pulled the water back farther than usual.
(Jackie Snow)
Will Rogers Beach to Malibu Pier: 7.7 miles
I do this stretch with my husband on New Year’s Day, parking at Will Rogers Beach Lot Three and timing it to a king tide. The highs are higher, but the lows are lower too, which is the part we’re interested in.
Even with the king tide low, the beach opens up and pinches closed without warning, and we move between wet sand, rocks we feel like traversing, and the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway when we don’t.
Soon enough, we hit the section of burned-out houses that still haunt the beach nearly a year later. I think I can still smell the smoke. It’s the quietest stretch of the whole walk, and the only place the emptiness feels like loss instead of calm.
The Malibu coastline near Escondido Beach.
(Jackie Snow)
When we finally reach the Malibu Pier, it feels like stepping back into civilization. People are on the beach. Nobu is packed. We eat at Malibu Farm and sit indoors, grateful for chairs, shade and food that isn’t trail mix.
Afterward, we take the bus back to the car from a stop near the Pier on the PCH, which turns out to be one of the most beautiful bus rides in existence, with the coastline framed perfectly by wide windows.
Malibu Pier to Escondido Beach: 5.7 miles
We come back the next day for another king tide, despite rain in the forecast. I start on the other side of Malibu Lagoon State Beach, which looks like nothing else on this walk. It’s swampy and green and quietly buzzing, reminding me of Florida, my home turf. Birders are out, rain jackets zipped, binoculars already up.
There are still rocks and little rivers to navigate, but the tide is so low it’s exposing tide pools I didn’t know existed up here. The sand is packed and forgiving, and we cover distance quickly until the rain really starts coming down.
We exit using the new stairs at Escondido Beach, also known as Hidden Beach, which were installed in 2023 after a multidecade battle over access. I take them slowly as I celebrate a mostly triumphant walk.
The Malibu coastline just south of Point Dume.
(Jackie Snow)
Escondido Beach to Zuma Beach: 6.7 miles
I head back to Escondido Beach, a few days later at low tide, though the tide is already coming in. That turns out to be a mistake. My second mistake is coming alone. As I scramble over rocks helpfully labeled with a sign warning not to climb on them, it’s dangerous, I notice my phone has no service. I decide the safest option is to soak my hiking boots instead along the incoming tide.
With my shoes sloshing and Google Maps satellite view looking deeply uncommitted to the stretch just south of Point Dume, I try to exit. Nope. Gated community. Not ready to give up, I keep going.
The surfer south of Point Dume whose companions offered to unlock the gate.
(Jackie Snow)
I spot a woman surfing and stop to take a photo. Her non-surfing companions start chatting with me. When they hear what I’m doing and where I’m trying to go, they offer to unlock the gate. It’s a genuinely kind gesture. But since I’m doing this for you, reader, I ask if there’s an exit farther along. They say there are stairs up ahead, probably reachable. I tell them, in the nicest way possible, that I hope I don’t see them again, and keep going.
My shoes are now collecting water on every step, the bottoms of my pants are wet, and everything underfoot is baseball-sized rocks, which I think is the worst possible rock size for walking. I round the curve. I spot the stairs.
If I had turned off satellite view, the stairs would have been obvious. So much for trying to read the coastline.
I climb out and walk to the tip of Point Dume and look south. I can see the South Bay, where I called it early weeks ago, hot and tired and hating my snacks. I’m still hot. I’m still tired. My snacks are still crummy. But standing here, salty and damp, I realize I don’t want this to walk to end.
The view from the cliffs near Point Dume.
(Jackie Snow)
Zuma Beach to county line: 5.3 miles
Today I timed the hike with a tide going out and my husband joins me so I don’t have a repeat from last time. We park along the PCH at Zuma. The first stretch we go by “Hannah Montana’s View,” a very persistent Google map label. It’s calm until a curve, where a gaggle of adolescent boys, shirtless and shoeless, are trying but failing to climb over the mussel-covered rocks ahead of us. For the second time on this walk, I have to turn around and back-track to the last exit, maybe a quarter mile back.
Luckily, the sighting of a Little Free Library makes the detour feel less like a failure and more like a reward. We cut through a small gated community that turns out to have a door for exactly this purpose, a quiet acknowledgment that people do, in fact, want to walk through here. There is so much rock walking. So much. Eventually we reach Leo Carrillo State Beach, where Los Angeles actually ends and Ventura County begins. Despite the name, County Line Beach is another mile or so away.
Gated Lechuza Point neighborhood has a beach access road that lets walkers get to the shore.
(Jackie Snow)
I watch people walk across the county border without noticing it at all, no fanfare, no announcement, no sense that anything has changed. They keep going. I stop. They are not done walking, but I am.
I haven’t seen every inch of the Los Angeles County coastline. I double-checked my walking distance and I’m still not at 75 miles, more like 65. The number I found online is probably not entirely accurate (the coastline is constantly changing). Maybe it’s closer to 70. But I have seen whale-watch perches, burned-out Malibu lots, crowded boardwalks and magnificent waves. The coastline is both fragile and welcoming — and walkable — if you’re willing to chase the tides.
