By Los Angeles Times staff
California’s general election takes place on November 3. Here is information Times reporters gathered about the races:
Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond. In your inbox twice per week.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
Sign up for our L.A. City Hall newsletter to get weekly insights, scoops and analysis.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
WASHINGTON — Long before he was the top official at the U.S. Postal Service, David Steiner was a corporate executive surfing mid-oughts television when he came across Donald Trump on “The Apprentice.”
He was unimpressed.
“If that is leadership, if that’s what we’re telling people that our culture and our media portrays as leadership, we’re screwed,” Steiner, then the CEO of Waste Management, said during a 2007 speech at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. “If that’s leadership, count me out.”
“And for God’s sake,” he added to laughter, “if I have to get my hair to look like that, if I have to do that to be a leader, you can definitely count me out.”
Nearly two decades later, Trump has migrated from reality television to the presidency. And onetime detractors — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, for example — now loyally execute his agenda.
Trump’s effort to use the Postal Service as a tool to reshape American elections is testing whether Steiner will follow a similar path.
When Trump signed an executive order restricting mail ballots this year, Steiner moved quickly to finalize a rule implementing the measure, arguing he had little choice. But after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the effort, Steiner told The Associated Press that work had stopped on one of the plan’s most controversial elements, a government portal for voter rolls.
He refused to endorse the Republican president’s order as sound policy, saying he was focused on implementation and letting the courts ultimately decide the matter.
“I don’t get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept,” he said. “We are an independent agency of the executive branch.”
The episode prompted fierce criticism of Steiner for allowing Trump to deploy an agency designed to be shielded from politics.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, called him a “Trump lackey.” Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, a Democrat, recently asked Congress to deploy observers to ensure postal workers can scan envelopes holding mail ballots without disruption, saying the Trump administration “has attempted to weaponize federal agencies to interfere in our elections, and the leadership at USPS is going along with it.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., accused Steiner of being a Trump “pawn” during a congressional hearing this summer. Dozens of congressional Democrats have pressed Steiner to reveal his interactions with the White House during the development of the mail ballot rule.
Some Republicans have joined in the criticism. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, incensed by abandoned mail, called for Steiner’s resignation and introduced legislation to block him from receiving a bonus.
During a lengthy interview, Steiner seemed surprised at points by his reception in Washington. He insisted he wasn’t a “political person” and said he had no intention of stepping down despite the criticism. He dismissed heated congressional appearances as “theater” at odds with more substantive private interactions on Capitol Hill.
Steiner was chagrined, however, at the mention of his 2007 remarks on Trump, delivered well before he launched a political career. Steiner recalled speaking at the university but said he didn’t remember his comments, acknowledging a tendency to be “flippant.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recall it.”
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Steiner’s remarks or his stewardship of the Postal Service.
The Postal Service dates to Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general, whose portrait and bust are displayed in Steiner’s office overlooking the Washington Wharf. The agency has more than 630,000 employees, dwarfing many Cabinet departments.
While the quickest way to top jobs in Trump’s Washington is often by writing big checks, the 66-year-old Steiner doesn’t appear to have followed that course. He has largely donated to Republicans but also gave to John Kerry’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2004. Unlike his predecessor as postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, Steiner was not a major GOP donor or Trump backer.
Born in Oakland, California, as one of eight children to a father who spent his career at Chevron, Steiner worked in corporate and securities law before moving to Waste Management in 2000. He became CEO in 2004 and ran the company for 12 years. He was also a longtime director at FedEx, where board chairman Brad Martin recalled him as “outcome oriented” and rarely political.
“He’s going to follow the rules. He’s going to follow the law,” Martin said. “I don’t recall us ever talking politics.”
By the time a headhunter contacted Steiner about the postmaster general job, he was largely removed from daily corporate life and initially demurred.
“I talked to my wife, and we both agreed I was happily retired,” he said.
He changed his mind, he said, during a visit to the beaches of Normandy, feeling a sense of civic duty.
Now at the Postal Service, he earns about $346,000 in annual salary along with a relocation bonus that amounts to half his salary, far less than the $17 million in compensation he earned during his final year at Waste Management. His current role is designed to exist one layer removed from the political process, reporting to a board of governors that is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
He was hired in 2025 by a board that was made up of five members, three of whom were Democrats. All but one were appointed by President Joe Biden. That makeup could change as four Trump nominees — all Republicans — await Senate confirmation. Steiner can be fired only by the board.
Steiner said he first met Trump along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the board’s urging after he was already selected as postmaster general. Since then, he described a minimal relationship with the White House.
“We don’t fly on the radar,” he said.
That is, until Trump revived his effort in March to crack down on mail voting. Steiner said he “wasn’t in on the development piece” of the order and first saw it about a month before it was signed.
“They gave it to us to say, ‘Have your lawyers look at it, and how do you operationalize it?’” Steiner said.
The portal spurred a massive development effort inside the Postal Service while some states criticized it as federal overreach. A whistleblower report released by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., argued the system was hastily built and riddled with errors, though Steiner said he was confident it could have been unveiled around Sept. 15.
“The heavy lifting was clearly, clearly the IT work,” Steiner said.
Though the Supreme Court dispensed with the rule, the dynamics for the Postal Service don’t get easier.
The agency posted a $9 billion net loss last year, and Steiner has warned it could soon run out of cash unless Congress lifts a $15 billion borrowing cap. Political hurdles have prevented potential cost savings from cutting service or closing some post offices.
And while Trump’s executive order won’t take effect, the Postal Service will still play a critical role in this year’s elections. There are mounting concerns that mail ballots could be rejected for late postmarks. Steiner encouraged voters to get their ballots in a week before the election to avoid problems.
The Postal Service is a rare corner of government still viewed favorably with more than half of Americans, 56%, saying it was doing an “excellent” or “good” job in a Gallup poll conducted last year. That could change if the agency is seen as increasingly political.
Steiner, however, said Americans will judge the Postal Service by their experience of it.
“What they care about is when they get that wedding invitation after the wedding or when they send a package and it disappears,” he said. “If we want to have the trust of the American public, let’s be the best service provider. Everything else is noise.”
Sloan writes for the Associated Press.
By Mike Catalini and Hannah Schoenbaum
SALT LAKE CITY — A U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in Utah threw out more than 300 mail ballots that were being sent to voters for the state’s June primary, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter said during a news conference that Damon Matai Seei was arrested Tuesday and appeared in federal court in Salt Lake City to be arraigned.
The 34-year-old from Payson, Utah, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of destruction or delay of mail. If convicted, he could face up to five years in federal prison. A message seeking comment was sent to his attorney.
Seei was delivering mail in Eagle Mountain, a conservative suburb of Provo, when he threw the ballots and other mail into a dumpster in a church parking lot not long after his shift started, McCotter said.
Melissa Holyoak, the U.S. attorney for Utah, said Seei indicated to authorities that he had no political agenda and did not intend to discard the ballots. He told investigators in an interview that he acted out of “laziness,” throwing away mail to “lighten his workload,” according to court documents.
In a written statement quoted in court filings, Seei said he felt overwhelmed that day by the quantity of mail, and he decided to toss out advertisements so he could focus on other deliveries.
He told law enforcement he had set aside the ballots at the beginning of his shift, prosecutors said, arguing it was implausible that Seei didn’t know they were in the discard pile.
Most voters in Utah cast ballots by mail or deposit them in drop boxes. Nationwide, nearly a third of voters use mail-in ballots.
All active registered voters in Utah are automatically sent ballots by mail, though that system is set to end in 2029 under a new state law requiring voters to opt in.
Several Eagle Mountain residents complained to Utah County Clerk Aaron Davidson that they never received their ballots, leading him to investigate. He determined that the rate of voter participation in the community was unusually low and learned through outreach that the number of voters who did not receive ballots was in the hundreds, according to court documents.
Seei is no longer employed by the Postal Service. The investigation remains ongoing, officials said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s attempts to impose new Postal Service rules that would have restricted mail voting for the midterm elections.
Catalini and Schoenbaum write for the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s plan to restrict voting by mail, ruling it is too late to impose new postal service rules for the November election.
The justices on Monday turned down an emergency appeal from Trump’s lawyers, who argued the government needed a new and untested system of unique bar codes to track all the ballots of the tens of millions of people who vote by mail.
Instead, the justices left in place a judge’s order that prevents the U.S. Postal Service from enforcing the new rules for the midterm elections.
Concurring, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed it was too late to enforce the new rules for this election.
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The decision in USPS vs. California is a victory for California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and the attorneys general for 22 other Democratic-led states who sued to block the new rules.
Last week, they warned there would be chaos and confusion if Trump’s rules were put in effect now.
Bonta cheered the decision late Monday, calling it “a victory for our democracy and a powerful affirmation of the rule of law” in a case where the stakes “could not have been higher.”
“Voting is the fundamental right from which all other rights flow, and all 50 states allow ballots to be cast by mail in some form. In California and several other states, mail voting is the primary way elections are conducted,” Bonta said. “Had this rule been allowed to take effect, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”
He said his office “will remain vigilant in safeguarding our elections,” and urged voters to make their voices heard.
Under the proposed rules, state and county election officials across the nation would be required to enroll each voter with a unique bar code and submit this data to a new online portal that, as of last week, was not yet functioning.
Without the individualized bar codes, states could not send ballots through the mail. In California, that would mean election officials would have to enroll 23 million voters with new bar codes before state ballots could be mailed.
“Compliance with the USPS’ rule would be impossible ahead of the midterms, meaning that millions of voters would be unable to vote by mail and some would not be able to vote at all,” the state attorneys general told the court last week.
The impact would not be limited to Democratic-leaning states. Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson said it would be “an unmitigated disaster” if the new rules were put into effect now. About 30% of the nation’s voters — and 80% of Californians — cast ballots by mail in 2024.
But Trump has maintained, without providing evidence, that voting by mail leads to widespread cheating and fraud.
In March, he issued an executive order that called on the postal service to do more to “enhance election integrity.”
“Unique ballot envelope identifiers, such as bar codes, enable confirmation that only citizens receive and cast ballots,” he said.
Elections experts say there is no evidence of such widespread fraud, despite robust audits and other searches for it.
State attorneys general argued that the Constitution entrusts states, not federal officials, to conduct elections. While Congress may impose new rules, it is not done to limit voting by mail or to empower the postal service to do so, they said.
Trump and his lawyers maintained the administration had a duty to combat fraud, including in elections.
Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer described the new rules as “modest measures that will help prevent and restrain potential gross abuses of the mails to perpetrate a fraud on the Nation.”
And he said the federal government, the states and the voting public would face irreparable harm if the new Postal Service rules were not allowed to be applied to the coming election.
But U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, in Boston, ruled the postal service may not put its new regulations into effect for the Nov. 3 election. She found the Trump administration had presented no evidence to the court of widespread fraud existing, while the states had presented ample evidence that implementing such a system on such a fast timeline posed tremendous risk.
The 1st Circuit Court affirmed her order and said the administration’s lawyers “have not even seriously challenged the … detailed findings about the chaos and widespread disenfranchisement that would occur between now and November 3 should the USPS rule take immediate effect.”
On Sunday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — also blocked the new Postal Service rules from being implemented in separate cases brought by the NAACP and Democratic groups, finding they clearly exceeding the Postal Service’s authority in elections.
What the future will hold is unclear. The courts did not declare the new rules to be illegal or unconstitutional, though multiple lower courts have suggested that parts of the plan likely would be — including by exceeding the Postal Service’s authority to intervene in elections.
Much of the debate before the appellate and high court related to the rushed timeline under which the Postal Service was seeking to implement the changes. With that set aside by the Supreme Court’s ruling that the rules will not apply this election, the debate in the lower courts may shift focus to whether the new regulations can be applied to the 2028 elections.
Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar, chair of the Democratic Assn. of Secretaries of State, said the high court’s ruling was a clear loss for Trump, and that state election officials are ready to continue their fight to protect U.S. elections if necessary.
“This ruling affirms what our Constitution has always held: Elections belong to the American people, not a desperate man in Washington,” he said.