On Tuesday, voters will determine the fate of redistricting measure Proposition 50. But if you’re eager to vote in person, you don’t have to wait. You can easily pop into the polls a day early in many parts of California.
Where to vote in person on Monday
In Los Angeles County alone, there are 251 vote centers that will be open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday. (They’ll also be open again on Tuesday, election day, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.) At vote centers, you can vote in person, drop off your vote-by-mail ballot, or even register to vote and cast a same-day provisional ballot, which will be counted after officials verify the registration.
“Avoid the rush,” said Dean Logan, the L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk. “Make a plan to vote early.”
Also on Monday, San Diego County’s 68 vote centers are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Orange County’s 65 vote centers from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Riverside County’s 55 vote centers and Ventura County’s nine vote centers between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
All of those vote centers also will be open on election day Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Other counties have fewer in-person polling locations on Monday
San Bernardino County, however, only has six designated early voting poll stations. They’re open on Monday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and also on election day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Otherwise, San Bernardino County residents who want to vote in person on Tuesday can go to their assigned neighborhood polling location.
In Santa Barbara County, if you’ve lost or damaged a vote-by-mail ballot, you can request a replacement ballot through county’s elections offices in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria or Lompoc. Otherwise, voters can cast ballots at their assigned neighborhood polls on Tuesday.
How to drop off your vote-by-mail ballot
All Californian registered voters were mailed a vote-by-mail ballot. There are various ways to drop it off — through the mail, or through a county ballot drop box or polling place.
You can also send your ballot through the U.S. Postal Service. No stamps are needed. Note that your ballot must be postmarked by Tuesday (and received by the county elections office within seven days).
But beware: Officials have warned that recent changes to the U.S. Postal Service earlier this year may result in later postmarks than you might expect.
In fact, state officials recently warned that, in large swaths of California — outside of the metros of Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento area — mail that is dropped off at a mailbox or a post office on election day may not be postmarked until a day later, on Wednesday. That would render the ballot ineligible to be counted.
As a result, some officials are recommending that — at this point — it’s better to deliver your vote-by-mail ballot through a secure drop box, a vote center or a neighborhood polling place, rather than through the Postal Service.
“If you can’t make it to a vote center, you can go to any post office and ask at the counter for a postmark on your ballot to ensure you get credit for mailing your ballot on time,” the office of Atty. Gen. Robert Bonta said.
Most common reasons vote-by-mail ballots don’t get counted
In the 2024 general election, 99% of vote-by-mail ballots were accepted. But that means about 122,000 of the ballots, out of 13.2 million returned, weren’t counted in California.
Here are the top reasons why: • A non-matching signature: 71,381 ballots not counted. • Ballot was not received in time: 33,016 ballots not counted. • No voter signature: 13,356 ballots not counted.
If the voter didn’t sign their ballot, or the ballot’s signature is different from the one in the voter’s record, election officials are required to reach out to the voter to resolve the missing or mismatched signature.
Other reasons included the voter having already voted, the voter forgetting to put the ballot in their envelope, or returning multiple ballots in a single envelope.
SACRAMENTO — Lakers guard Luka Doncic will miss at least one week with a left finger sprain and a left lower leg contusion, the team announced Sunday before a road game at Sacramento.
The star guard suffered the finger injury early in Friday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. It didn’t slow him down at all, though, as Doncic finished with 49 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists in a 128-110 Lakers victory. The 26-year-old is off to a blazing start as his 92 points in the first two games are the most in Lakers history to begin a season.
The Lakers announced Doncic will be reevaluated in about one week, but it will be a busy stretch without the five-time All-Star. Already without LeBron James as the 40-year-old deals with a sciatica injury, the Lakers have four games in six days this week. After Sacramento on Sunday, the Lakers (1-1) return to L.A. to face Portland on Monday and have road games at Minnesota and Memphis on Wednesday and Friday, respectively.
The Lakers will be down to just nine standard contract players Sunday as center Jaxson Hayes was also ruled out with left knee soreness. He will miss his second consecutive game. James and forwards Maxi Kleber (abdominal muscle strain) and Adou Theiro (knee) are also out.
A planned increase in federal immigration enforcement in the Bay Area is now on pause throughout the region and in major East Bay cities, not just in San Francisco, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said Friday.
Lee said in a statement that Alameda County Sheriff Yesenia Sanchez had “confirmed through her communications” with federal immigration officials that the planned operations were “cancelled for the greater Bay Area — which includes Oakland — at this time.”
The announcement followed lingering concerns about ramped up immigration enforcement among East Bay leaders after President Trump and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Thursday that a planned “surge” had been called off in San Francisco.
Trump and Lurie had very specifically addressed San Francisco, even as additional Border Patrol agents were being staged across the bay on Coast Guard Island, which is in the waters between Alameda and Oakland.
At a press conference following Trump’s annoucement about San Francisco, Lee had said the situation remained “fluid,” that she had received no such assurances about the East Bay and that Oakland was continuing to prepare for enhanced immigration enforcement in the region.
Alameda County Dist. Atty. Ursula Jones Dickson had previously warned that the announced stand down in San Francisco could be a sign the administration was looking to focus on Oakland instead — and make an example of it.
“We know that they’re baiting Oakland, and that’s why San Francisco, all of a sudden, is off the table,” Jones Dickson said Thursday morning. “So I’m not going to be quiet about what we know is coming. We know that their expectation is that Oakland is going to do something to cause them to make us the example.”
The White House on Friday directed questions about the scope of the pause in operations and whether it applied to the East Bay to the Department of Homeland Security, which referred The Times back to Trump’s statement about San Francisco on Friday — despite its making no mention of the East Bay or Oakland.
In that statement, posted to his Truth Social platform, Trump had written that a “surge” had been planned for San Francisco starting Saturday, but that he had called it off after speaking to Lurie.
Trump said Lurie had asked “very nicely” that Trump “give him a chance to see if he can turn it around” in the city, and that business leaders — including Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Marc Benioff of Salesforce — had expressed confidence in Lurie.
Trump said he told Lurie that it would be “easier” to make San Francisco safer if federal forces were sent in, but told him, “let’s see how you do.”
Lurie in recent days has touted falling crime rates and numbers of homeless encampments in the city, and said in his own announcement of the stand down that he had told Trump that San Francisco was “on the rise” and that “having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery.”
In California and elsewhere, the Trump administration has aggressively sought to expand the reach and authority of the Border Patrol and federal immigration agents. Last month, the DOJ fired its top prosecutor in Sacramento after she told Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that he could not carry out indiscriminate immigration raids around Sacramento this summer.
In Oakland on Thursday, the planned surge in enforcement had sparked protests near the entrance to Coast Guard Island, and drew widespread condemnation from local liberal officials and immigrant advocacy organizations.
On Thursday night, security officers at the base opened fire on the driver of a U-Haul truck who was reversing the truck toward them, wounding the driver and a civilian nearby. The FBI is investigating that incident.
Some liberal officials had warned that federal agents who violated the rights of Californians could face consequences — even possible arrest — from local law enforcement, which drew condemnation from federal officials.
Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche responded with a scathing letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and others on Thursday in which he wrote that any attempt by local law enforcement to arrest federal officers doing their jobs would be viewed by the Justice Department as “both illegal and futile” and as part of a “criminal conspiracy.”
Blanche wrote that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution precludes any federal law enforcement official to be “held on a state criminal charge where the alleged crime arose during the performance of his federal duties,” and that the Justice Department would pursue legal action against any state officials who advocate for such enforcement.
“In the meantime, federal agents and officers will continue to enforce federal law and will not be deterred by the threat of arrest by California authorities who have abdicated their duty to protect their constituents,” Blanche wrote.
The threat of arrest for federal officers had originated in part with San Francisco Dist. Atty. Brooke Jenkins, who had written on social media that if federal agents “come to San Francisco and illegally harass our residents … I will not hesitate to do my job and hold you accountable just like I do other violators of the law every single day.”
Among the small army of prospects who’ve eyed the California governorship, none seemed more qualified than Toni Atkins.
After serving on the San Diego City Council, she moved on to Sacramento, where Atkins led both the Assembly and state Senate, one of just three people in history — and the first in 147 years — to head both houses of California’s Legislature.
She married that expertise with the kind of hardscrabble, up-by-her-bootstraps backstory that a calculating political consultant might have spun from whole cloth, had it not been so.
Atkins grew up in rural Appalachia in a rented home with an outdoor privy. Her first pair of glasses was a gift from the local Lions Club. She didn’t visit a dentist until she was 24. Her family was too poor.
Yet for all of that, Atkins’ gubernatorial campaign didn’t last even to 2026, when voters will elect a successor to the termed-out Gavin Newsom. She quit the race in September, more than eight months before the primary.
She has no regrets.
“It was a hard decision,” the Democrat said. “But I’m a pragmatic person.”
She couldn’t and wouldn’t keep asking “supporters and people to contribute more and more if the outcome was not going to be what we hoped,” Atkins said. “I needed sort of a moonshot to do it, and I didn’t see that.”
She spoke recently via Zoom from the den of her home in San Diego, where Atkins had just returned after spending several weeks back in Virginia, tending to a dying friend and mentor, one of her former college professors.
“I was a first-generation college kid … a hillbilly,” Atkins said. She felt as though she had no place in the world “and this professor, Steve Fisher, basically helped turn me around and not be a victim. Learn to organize. Learn to work with people on common goals. … He was one of the first people that really helped me to understand how to be part of something bigger than myself.”
Over the 22 months of her campaign — between the launch in January 2024 and its abandonment on Sept. 29 — Atkins traveled California from tip to toe, holding countless meetings and talking to innumerable voters. “It’s one thing to be the speaker or the [Senate leader],” she said. “People treat you differently when you’re a candidate. You’re appealing to them to support you, and it’s a different conversation.”
She heard plenty from business owners and, especially, put-upon residents of red California, who griped about Sacramento and its seeming disconnection from their lives and livelihoods. “I heard in Tehama County … folks saying, ‘Look, we care about the environment, but we can’t have electric school buses here. We don’t have any infrastructure.’ ”
Voters seemed to be of two — somewhat contradictory — minds about what they want in their next governor.
First off, “Someone that’s going to be focused on California, California problems and California issues,” Atkins said. “They want a governor that’s not going to be performative, but really focused on the issues that California needs help on.”
The challenge, Atkins suggested, is “convincing people … you’re absolutely going to fight for California values and, at the same, that you’re going to be focused on fixing the roads.”
Maybe California needs to elect a contortionist.
Given her considerable know-how and compelling background, why did Atkins’ campaign fizzle?
“I hoped my experience and my collaborative nature and my ability to work across party lines when I needed to … would gain traction,” Atkins said. “But I just didn’t have the name recognition.”
Or, more pertinently, the huge pile of cash needed to build that name recognition and get elected to statewide office in California.
While Atkins wasn’t a bad fundraiser, she simply couldn’t raise the many tens of millions of dollars needed to run a viable gubernatorial race.
That could be seen as a referendum of sorts. If enough people wanted Atkins to be governor, she theoretically would have collected more cash. But who doubts that money has an unholy influence on our elections?
“I’ve lost parents, but it’s been decades,” she said. “And to lose Steve” — her beloved ex-college professor — “I think I’m going to take the rest of the year to reflect. I’m definitely going to stay engaged … but I’m going to focus on family” at least until January.
Atkins remains optimistic about her adopted home state, notwithstanding her unsuccessful run for governor and the earful of criticisms she heard along the way,
“California is the place where people dream,” she said. “We still have the ability to do big things … We’re the fourth-largest economy. We’re a nation-state. We need to remember that.”
SACRAMENTO — Thousands of rebels gathered outside the state Capitol on Saturday, mindlessly trampling the lawn in their Hokas, even as the autumnal sun in Sacramento forced them to strip off their protective puffer vests.
With chants of “No Kings,” many of these chaotic protesters spilled off sidewalks into the street, as if curbs held no power of containment, no meaning in their anarchist hearts.
Clearly, the social order has broken. Where would it end, this reporter wondered. Would they next be demanding passersby honk? Could they dare offer fiery speeches?
The answer came all too soon, when within minutes, I spotted clear evidence of the organized anti-fascist underground that U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi has been warning us about.
The “Raging Grannies of Sacramento” had set up a stage, and were testing microphones in advance of bombarding the crowd with song. These women wore coordinating aprons! They had printed signs — signs with QR codes. If grandmothers who know how to use a QR code aren’t dangerous, I don’t know who it is.
Ellen Schwartz, 82, told me this Canadian-founded group operates without recognized leaders — an “international free-form group of gaggles of grannies,” is how she put it, and I wrote it all down for Kash Patel.
Within moments, they had robbed Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews of their most famous duet: “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” mutilating it into “super callous fragile racist narcissistic POTUS.”
Ellen Schwartz, 82, is a member of the “Raging Grannies,” a group that protested at the “No Kings” rally in Sacramento on Saturday.
(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)
Not to be outdone by the Silent Generation, 2-year-old Rhea also showed up, first clinging to her mom, then toddling around on her own as if she owned the place. This is a kid to keep an eye on.
Since Rhea cannot yet speak about her political beliefs, her parents gave me some insight into why she was there.
“I’m not sure if we’ll still have a civilization that allows protest very long, so I want her to at least have a memory of it,” said her dad, Neonn, who asked that their last names not be used. Like many Americans, he’s a bit hesitant to draw the eye of authority.
Kara, Rhea’s mom, had a more hopeful outlook.
“America is the people, so for me I want to keep bringing her here so that she knows she is part of something bigger: peace and justice,” she said, before walking off to see the dinosaurs.
Kara holds her 2-year-old daughter, Rhea, at the rally in Sacramento.
(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)
Dinosaurs, that’s right. And tigers. And roosters. And unicorns. Even a cow hugging a chipmunk, which I believe is now illegal in most of the South.
Yes, folks, the Portland frog has started something. The place was full of un-human participants acting like animals — dancing with abandon, stomping around, saying really mean things about President Trump.
Meanwhile, the smell of roasting meat was undeniable. People, they were eating the hot dogs! They were eating the grilled onions! There were immigrants everywhere selling the stuff (and it was delicious).
I spoke to a Tyrannosaurus Rex and asked him why he went Late Cretaceous.
“If you don’t do something soon, you will have democracy be extinct,” Jim Short told me from inside the suit.
Jim Short, left, and his wife, Patty Short, donned dinosaur costumes at the “No Kings” rally in Sacramento.
(Anita Chabria / Los Angeles Times)
His wife, Patty, was ensconced in a coordinating suit, hers brown, his green. Didn’t they worry about being labeled anti-American for being here, as House Speaker Mike Johnson and others have claimed?
“I’m not afraid,” Patty said. “I’m antifa or a hardened criminal or what’s the other one?”
“Hamas?” Jim queried. “Or an illegal immigrant?”
“I think people need more history,” Patty said.
I agree.
And the day millions of very average Americans turned out to peacefully protect democracy — again — may be part of it.
San Diego Democrat and former state Senate leader Toni Atkins dropped out of the 2026 California governor’s race Monday, part of a continued reshuffling and contraction of the wide field of candidates vying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Atkins told supporters in a letter Monday afternoon that during a childhood in rural Virginia, she often felt “too country, too poor, too gay” to fit in. After building a life on the West Coast, where she found acceptance and opportunity, she worked for decades to build on “the promise of California” and extend it to future generations, she said.
“That’s why it’s with such a heavy heart that I’m stepping aside today as a candidate for governor,” Atkins wrote. “Despite the strong support we’ve received and all we’ve achieved, there is simply no viable path forward to victory.”
Atkins began her political career on the San Diego City Council after serving as a women’s clinic administrator. She became the first out LGBTQ+ person to serve as Senate president pro tem, the top position in the California Senate. She was also the speaker of the state Assembly, making her the first legislator since 1871 to hold both leadership posts.
In Sacramento, Atkins was a champion for affordable housing and reproductive rights, including writing the legislation that became Proposition 1 in 2022, codifying abortion rights in the California Constitution after national protections were undone by the U.S. Supreme Court.
With President Trump and his allies “gutting health care, cratering our economy, and stripping away fundamental rights and freedoms,” Atkins told supporters Monday, “we’ve got to make sure California has a Democratic governor leading the fight, and that means uniting as Democrats.”
Under California’s nonpartisan primary system, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election. Votes on the left could be fractured among a half-dozen Democratic candidates, creating a more viable path forward for one of the two high-profile Republicans in the race to make it to the November ballot.
Atkins picked up millions of dollars in donations after entering the governor’s race in January 2024, and reported having $4.3 million on hand — more than most candidates — at the end of the first half of the year. More recent reports from major donations suggest her fundraising had lagged behind former Orange County-based U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former state Atty. Gen. and Biden appointee Xavier Becerra.
Although well-known in political circles, Atkins is not a household name. Recent polls, including one conducted by UC Berkeley and co-sponsored by The Times, showed her support in the single digits.
Nine months before the primary, the field of candidates is still in flux, and many voters are undecided.
At the end of July, former Vice President Kamala Harris made the biggest news of the campaign when she said she would not run. Shortly afterward, her political ally Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis abandoned her gubernatorial bid and announced she would run for state treasurer.
Some polling has shown that Porter, who left Congress after losing a bid for a rare open seat in the U.S. Senate, is the candidate to beat.
Last week, lobbyist and former state legislative leader Ian Calderon, 39, launched his campaign for governor, calling it the advent of a “new generation of leadership.”
Calderon, 39, was the first millennial elected to the state Assembly and the youngest-ever majority leader of the state Assembly. He is part of a political dynasty from southeastern Los Angeles County that’s held power in Sacramento for decades.
His family’s name was clouded during his time in Sacramento when two of his uncles served prison time in connection with a bribery scheme, but Calderon was not accused of wrongdoing.
The acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento has said she was fired after telling the Border Patrol chief in charge of immigration raids in California that his agents were not allowed to arrest people without probable cause in the Central Valley.
Michele Beckwith, a career prosecutor who was made the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California earlier this year, told the New York Times that she was let go after she warned Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that a court injunction blocked him from carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in Sacramento.
Beckwith did not respond to a request for comment from the L.A. Times, but told the New York Times that “we have to stand up and insist the laws be followed.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento declined to comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.
Bovino presided over a series of raids in Los Angeles starting in June in which agents spent weeks pursuing Latino-looking workers outside of Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and other areas. The agents often wore masks and used unmarked vehicles.
But such indiscriminate tactics were not allowed in California’s Eastern District after the American Civil Liberties Union and United Farm Workers filed suit against the Border Patrol earlier in the year and won an injunction.
The suit followed a January operation in Kern County called “Operation Return to Sender,” in which agents swarmed a Home Depot and Latino market, among other areas frequented by laborers. In April, a federal district court judge ruled that the Border Patrol likely violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
As Beckwith described it to New York Times reporters, she received a phone call from Bovino on July 14 in which he said he was bringing agents to Sacramento.
She said she told him that the injunction filed after the Kern County raid meant he could not stop people indiscriminately in the Eastern District. The next day, she wrote him an email in which, as quoted in the New York Times, she stressed the need for “compliance with court orders and the Constitution.”
Shortly thereafter her work cell phone and her work computer stopped working. A bit before 5 p.m. she received an email informing her that her employment was being terminated effective immediately.
It was the end of a 15-year career in in the Department of Justice in which she had served as the office’s Criminal Division Chief and First Assistant and prosecuted members of the Aryan Brotherhood, suspected terrorists, and fentanyl traffickers.
In an interview with Fox News that day, Bovino said the raids were targeted and based on intelligence. “Everything we do is targeted,” he said. “We did have prior intelligence that there were targets that we were interested in and around that Home Depot, as well as other targeted enforcement packages in and around the Sacramento area.”
He also said that his operations would not slow down. “There is no sanctuary anywhere,” he said. “We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to affect this mission and secure the homeland.”
Beckwith is one of a number of top prosecutors who have quit or been fired as the Trump administration pushes the Department of Justice to aggressively carry out his policies, including investigating people who have been the president’s political targets.
In March, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was fired after lawyers for a fast-food executive he was prosecuting pushed officials in Washington to drop all charges against him, according to multiple sources.
In July, Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, was fired by the Trump administration, according to the New York Times.
And just last week, a U. S. attorney in Virginia was pushed out after he had determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute James B. Comey. A new prosecutor this week won a grand jury indictment against Comey on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
The man accused of opening fire on the lobby of a Sacramento ABC television station cited the government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case as a motive and promised several members of the Trump administration would be “next,” according to a federal court filing made public Monday.
Anibal Hernandez-Santana, 64, is charged with multiple weapons offenses and interfering with a radio or communication station for firing several bullets at the window of ABC10’s offices in Sacramento around 1 p.m. on Friday, according to a criminal complaint.
Hernandez-Santana was arrested the same day as the shooting. During a search of his car, detectives found a note that read “For hiding Epstein & ignoring red flags,” according to the complaint filed by prosecutors in the Eastern District of California.
The note referenced FBI Director Kash Patel, his second-in-command Dan Bongino and U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, reading “They’re next. — C.K. from above.”
Sacramento Dist. Atty. Thien Ho said he believed the “C.K.” portion of the note was a reference to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was killed by a sniper in Utah this month. In an interview on Monday, Ho said police also found a book titled “The Cult Of Trump” in Hernandez-Santana’s vehicle.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento said she could not comment beyond what was contained in court documents.
Patel said “targeted acts of violence are unacceptable and will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law,” in a post on X.
Hernandez-Santana was born in Puerto Rico and was not registered as a Republican or Democrat, according to voting records. The Trump administration has faced increasing criticism from both sides of the political spectrum to disclose more information about those who did business with Epstein, the financier charged with trafficking young girls to rich and powerful men before his death by suicide in a federal lockup in 2019.
Hernandez-Santana was a retired lobbyist, according to Ho, who said the shooting was clearly “politically motivated.”
Hernandez-Santana first registered as a lobbyist in 2001. His clients included an environmental justice group, the California Catholic Conference and the California Federation of Teachers, according to state lobbying records.
The day of the shooting, Ho said, a protest was scheduled to take place outside ABC10’s offices over their parent company’s decision to suspend late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about the way Republicans have reacted to Kirk’s killing. Kimmel’s suspension was lifted Monday and he is expected to return to the air Tuesday,
Ho said it was clear the TV station was not a “random target.”
“When it comes to public safety it’s not about going right or left, it’s about moving forward … clearly he was motivated by current political events,” Ho said.
Hernandez-Santana did not have a significant criminal history and was not known to local law enforcement before the incident, according to the prosecutor.
Prosecutors said Hernandez-Santana fired four times at the ABC station, once near the building and three additional times at a window in the station’s lobby, according to court records. No one was injured, but there were employees inside at the time.
In addition to the message invoking members of Trump’s Cabinet, Sacramento Police detectives also found a day planner that contained a handwritten note to “Do the Next Scary Thing,” on the date of the attack, court records show.
In a court filing seeking to deny Hernandez-Santana bail, federal prosecutors said the note referencing Patel, Bongino and Bondi “indicates that he may have been planning additional acts of violence.”
Ho has also charged Santana-Hernandez with assault with a firearm and shooting at an inhabited dwelling. He was expected to make court appearances in both cases on Monday. It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
Santana-Hernandez faces five years in federal prison and an additional 17 years in state prison if convicted as charged, according to Ho.
“When someone brazenly fires into a news station full of people in the middle of the day, it is not only an attack on innocent employees but also an attack on the news media and our community’s sense of safety,” Ho said in a statement.
Times staff writer Laura Nelson and researcher Cary Schneider contributed to this report.
Sept. 20 (UPI) — Sacramento Police officers arrested Anibal Hernandezsantana on Saturday morning for allegedly shooting at the occupied office of a local ABC affiliate.
Hernandezsantana, 64, was arrested on charges that accuse him of assault with a deadly weapon, shooting into an occupied building and negligent discharge of a firearm, KXTV reported.
“Thanks to the diligent work of our responding officers and investigators, the suspect vehicle was identified, leading to a resident in the 5400 block of Carlson Dr.,” the police department posted on X.
Police officers responded to reports of shots fired in the 400 block of Broadway in Sacramento just after 1:30 p.m. PDT on Friday and found evidence of at least three gunshots into a window of the KXTV building.
The FBI assisted the police department in determining a suspect and locating him, according to the Sacramento Police.
They made the arrest at about 6:15 p.m. on Friday, according to KCRA.
Hernandezsantana was booked at the Sacramento County Main Jail near midnight with bail set at $200,000 and was released on Saturday, according to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.
The motive for the shooting is under investigation, but it occurred within days of ABC announcing it was suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! over comments that Kimmel made during an opening monologue on Monday regarding the alleged shooter of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
SACRAMENTO — A Riverside County lawmaker accused of driving drunk after a car crash, but cleared by a blood test, took the first step Monday toward suing the Sacramento Police Department, saying officers had tarnished her reputation.
After Sen. Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside) was broadsided by an SUV near the Capitol in May, Sacramento police interviewed the 37-year-old lawmaker for hours at a Kaiser Permanente hospital before citing her on suspicion of driving under the influence. Prosecutors declined to file charges after the toxicology results of a blood test revealed no “measurable amount of alcohol or drugs.”
In an 11-page filing Monday, Cervantes alleged that officers had retaliated against her over a bill that would sharply curtail how police can store data gathered by automated license plate readers, a proposal opposed by more than a dozen law enforcement agencies.
The filing also alleges that the police treated Cervantes, who is gay and Latina, differently than the white woman driver who ran a stop sign and broadsided her car.
“This is not only about what happened to me — it’s about accountability,” Cervantes said in a prepared statement. “No Californian should be falsely arrested, defamed, or retaliated against because of who they are or what they stand for.”
Cervantes, a first-year state senator, has said since the crash that she did nothing wrong. She represents the 31st Senate District, which covers portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, and chairs the Senate elections committee.
Cervantes’ lawyer, James Quadra, said the Sacramento police had tried to “destroy the reputation of an exemplary member of the state Senate,” and that the department’s “egregious misconduct” includes false arrest, intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation.
A representative for the Sacramento Police Department declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
After news broke of the crash, the Sacramento Police Department told reporters that they had “observed objective signs of intoxication” after speaking to Cervantes at the hospital. She said in her filing that the police had asked her to conduct a test gauging her eyes’ reaction to stimulus, a “less accurate and subjective test” than the blood test she requested.
The toxicology screen had “completely exonerated” Cervantes, the filing said, but the police department had already “released false information to the press claiming that Senator Cervantes had driven while under the influence of drugs.”
The filing alleges that one police officer turned off his body camera for about five minutes while answering a call on his cell phone. The filing also said that the department failed to produce body camera footage from a sergeant who also came to the hospital.
John L. Burton, the proudly liberal and pro-labor lawmaker who shaped California politics and policy over six decades on topics as varied as welfare, foster care, auto emissions, guns and foie gras, has died. He was 92.
With his brother, Rep. Phillip Burton, and college buddy, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Burton was integral to the organization that dominated Democratic politics in San Francisco and the state starting in the 1960s.
Burton was elected to the Assembly in 1964 and Congress a decade later. Laid low by cocaine addiction, he did not seek reelection in 1982. But he returned to Sacramento after getting clean and became the Capitol’s most powerful legislator as Senate president pro tem from 1998 until term limits forced him to retire in 2004.
“I think government’s there to help the people who can’t help themselves. And there’s a lot of people that can’t help themselves,” Burton said, describing his view of a politician’s job in an oral history interview by Open California.
Burton’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his family on Sunday.
“He cared a lot,” said Kimiko Burton, his daughter. “He always instilled in me that we fight for the underdog. There are literally millions of people whose lives he helped over the years who have no idea who he is.”
An L.A. Times writer described Brown, always dapper and cool, as a piece of living art. In contrast, Burton was performance art — rumpled, often rude, too fidgety to sit in long policy meetings. Some people sprinkle conversation with profanities. Burton doused his sentences with expletives, usually F-bombs.
John Burton with then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2011.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)
He was quick to yell but could also be charming. He bought pies from a fruit stand off Interstate 80 between San Francisco and Sacramento and delivered them as apologies to targets of his rants. An aide once gave him a T-shirt with the phrase: “I yell because I care.”
Unlike most politicians, who dress to the nines, Burton wore ties reluctantly and showed up at meetings with governors wearing guayaberas, rarely with his hair in place. When cameras weren’t around, he drove through San Francisco delivering blankets to homeless people.
One of Burton’s many intensely loyal aides was Angie Tate, whom he hired to be his political fundraiser in 1998 knowing she was pregnant with twins. After she gave birth three months early and tried to return to work, Burton insisted that she take a year off, fully paid. She worked with him for the rest of his days.
In later years, he created John Burton Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit group to mentor foster youth and seek policy changes. One such bill extended services for foster youth until age 21, rather than the previous cutoff of 18.
“I don’t think there is a person who has done more for foster kids than John Burton,” said Miles Cooley, a Los Angeles entertainment attorney who was in foster care when he was a child and sits on the board of Burton’s foundation. “He wasn’t speaking truth to power. He was yelling it.”
From his early days in public life, Burton, a lawyer and Army veteran, advocated for greater civil rights, opposed the death penalty, and was an antiwar activist, protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam in October 1963, when the U.S. had fewer than 17,000 troops there.
As state Senate leader four decades later, Burton joined folk singer Joan Baez at a protest of President George W. Bush’s impending invasion of Iraq. As California Democratic Party chair from 2009 to 2017, he presided as the party changed its platform to oppose capital punishment.
“John Burton was liberal when it was popular to be liberal and he was liberal when it was not popular. I always admired that,” said former state Sen. Jim Brulte, a Republican who tangled with Burton in the Legislature and later when they chaired their respective political parties.
A party chair’s job is to win elections. That requires money. In 2008, the year before Burton took over the state Democratic Party, the California Republican and Democratic parties raised and spent roughly equal sums. By 2016, his final campaign as chair, the Democrats were outspending the Republicans $36.2 million to $17.7 million.
He promoted a ballot measure in 2010 that allows the Legislature to pass the annual budget by a simple majority rather than the previous two-thirds supermajority, allowing the Democrats to pass a legislative session’s most important measure — the budget — without Republican votes, further marginalizing the GOP in Sacramento.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), then-Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Treasurer Fiona Ma were among the politicians, most of them women, who joined Burton on the convention stage in 2017 for his farewell as party chair. Former state Sen. Martha Escutia serenaded him with a rendition of “Bésame Mucho.”
“John is the chief architect of the Democrats’ dominance in California,” Pelosi said at the time.
Burton paid tribute to the people who had helped him, saying, “You’re only as good as your staff,” and closed by exhorting party loyalists to raise their middle fingers and give a Burton-like cheer to then-President Trump.
Although Burton was a partisan, his closest friend in the Senate was Ross Johnson of Fullerton, who was Senate Republican leader. Sharing a quirky love of song, the unlikely duet interrupted a Senate floor session with a rendition of “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”
They also shared a distrust of authority and collaborated to curb law enforcement’s ability to seize individuals’ assets without a trial. Burton and Johnson shaped campaign finance law with a ballot measure permitting political parties to accept unlimited donations, enhancing parties’ power. As a sweetener for voters, the measure required rapid disclosure of contributions.
John Lowell Burton, born in Cincinnati in 1932, was the youngest of three brothers. After his father completed medical school in Chicago, the family relocated to San Francisco, where Dr. Burton cared for patients whether they could pay or not.
Burton lettered in basketball at San Francisco State College and kept a clipping of a newspaper box score showing he scored 20 points against a University of San Francisco team that included young Bill Russell, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He met Brown at San Francisco State and they became lifelong friends. A bartender in his younger days, Burton was arrested for bookmaking in 1962, but was cleared.
The Burton brothers reflected a dichotomy in California politics, rising from the left while Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan ascended from the right, against the swirl of the Bay Area’s brand of radical politics. John Burton and Brown won their Assembly seats in 1964, the same year that voters approved a ballot measure backed by the real estate industry giving property owners the right to refuse to sell to people of color. Courts later overturned it.
The Burton-Brown organization spawned a who’s who of leaders, including two San Francisco mayors — George Moscone, who was a high school friend, and Brown, the most powerful Assembly speaker in California history. Burton was a friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s father, a state appellate court justice, and watched young Gavin’s high school sports games. Brown gave Newsom his start in politics with an appointment.
Barbara Boxer worked for John Burton during his time in Congress, before succeeding him in 1982 and winning a U.S. Senate seat a decade later. When Boxer retired in 2016, Brown helped promote Boxer’s successor, Kamala Harris.
Pelosi is most consequential of all. Phillip Burton’s widow, Sala Burton, succeeded him in Congress. As she was dying of cancer, Sala Burton told John that she wanted Pelosi to succeed her, and he used all his connections to help Pelosi win the congressional seat in 1987.
Outgoing California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton at the California Democratic State Convention in 2017.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
In November 1978, Burton declined an invitation from Rep. Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Mateo, to accompany him to Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult, once a force in San Francisco politics. On Nov. 18, as Ryan’s plane was about to depart with cult defectors, one of cult leader Jim Jones’ followers assassinated the congressman. Jones led a murder-suicide resulting in more than 900 deaths.
On Nov. 27, 1978, with the city convulsed by the Jonestown cataclysm, Dan White, a former San Francisco supervisor, sneaked into City Hall and assassinated Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.
Burton fell hard in the months and years after, drinking heavily, huffing nitrous oxide and freebasing cocaine. He missed congressional votes, and aides feared he would be found dead. In 1982, he checked into a rehab facility in Arizona and did not seek reelection.
Burton’s eclectic circle of friends included national political figures, Hollywood glitterati, football coach John Madden, North Beach topless dancer Carol Doda and, from his bartending days, Alice Kleupfer, a cocktail waitress.
In this small world, Kleupfer’s son James Rogan won an Assembly seat from the Burbank area as a Republican in 1994, was elected to Congress in 1996, and helped lead the impeachment of President Clinton. Politics aside, Burton and Rogan shared a connection through Kleupfer.
That friendship mattered on May 30, 1996, when Republicans, holding a short-lived 41-39 seat advantage in the Assembly, rushed to approve tough-on-crime bills. One bill would have made it a crime for pregnant women to abuse drugs, a response to accounts of babies born addicted to cocaine. The GOP-led Assembly seemed certain to pass it when Burton stood to speak.
Though not a commanding orator, Burton spoke from the heart about how cocaine “takes total control of your life,” and how he spent days freebasing in hotel rooms, refusing maid service because he didn’t want anyone to see him.
“It took me, somebody who at least has got a fair set of brains sometimes, who comes from a background that is not deprived, who at the time I was doing it — and I’m not proud to say — was a member of the House of Representatives, and it took me two years to get off this drug, which is the most insidious drug you can imagine,” Burton said.
Floor speeches rarely change minds. But after Burton pleaded with Republicans not to “turn these young women into criminals,” Rogan, then-Speaker Curt Pringle and a few other Republicans withheld their votes. With the bill pending, Republicans conferred behind closed doors and quietly dropped the bill.
“It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t scripted. It was pure John Burton,” said Rogan, who went on to become a Superior Court judge in Orange County. Burton was the only Democrat who had the relationships and gravitas to derail the bill.
For most of his time in office, Burton served under Republican governors. He butted heads with them and on occasion won them over.
When young Assemblyman Burton sought to decriminalize marijuana, Reagan, implying that Burton was a nut, quipped that the San Franciscan was the one man in Sacramento who had the most to fear from the squirrels that populate Capitol Park. Burton answered by calling reporters to the park and trying to feed squirrels a copy of some Reagan-backed legislation.
“There’s some benefit to people thinking you’re nuts,” Burton said in an interview.
Though he was a relatively junior legislator, Burton took a lead role in Reagan’s 1971 welfare overhaul, pushing for annual cost-of-living adjustments for welfare recipients, something he fought to protect over the years.
He disparaged Gov. Pete Wilson, a Marine Corps veteran, for his efforts to limit welfare by calling him “the little Marine.” Burton had a “wicked sense of humor and a “colorful” way of expressing it” but was “a straight shooter,” Wilson said.
“With respect to legislative leaders, as Democrats, I would say that the combination of John Burton and Willie Brown negotiating budget and policy solutions during a time of crisis in the Reagan Cabinet Room was some of the finest policy and political talent California has ever seen,” Wilson said.
Voters elected Burton to the state Senate in 1996, and senators elected him Senate president pro tem in 1998, the year Gray Davis was elected governor, the first Democrat to hold that office after 16 years of Republicans. The relationship was strained.
In appearance, temperament and approach, they were opposites, and they clashed. Davis was a centrist who tried to be tightfisted. Burton, often dismissive of Davis, tried to pull him to the left. When it suited their interests, however, Davis signed legislation that Burton advocated, and Burton carried administration legislation.
“It ain’t brain surgery,” Burton said in 2021 of the art of turning a bill into a law. But few legislators could handle a lawmaking scalpel like Burton.
As Senate leader, he shepherded legislation to buy the last large stands of old-growth redwoods, increase public employee pensions, restrict guns and expand the right to sue, including for victims of sexual harassment. He was the target of such a suit in 2008. It was settled a few months later.
Burton routinely blocked legislation that increased the length of prison sentences but was a favorite of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., which represents prison guards. He was, after all, pro-labor.
In 2002, Burton carried legislation ratifying the prison officers’ contract negotiated by the Davis administration granting officers a raise of roughly 35% over five years, and boosting their pensions. Later that year the union, run by the fedora-wearing Don Novey, celebrated Burton’s 70th birthday by donating $70,000 to his campaign account.
Often, Burton sought no credit for what he helped others accomplish, as Fran Pavley discovered. In 2001, her first year in the Assembly, Pavley, an Agoura Hills Democrat, proposed far-reaching climate change legislation to authorize the California Air Resources Board to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes.
Lobbyists for automakers shifted into overdrive, airing ads warning California that AB 1058 would dictate what cars people could own. The oil industry, drive-time talk radio hosts, and even Cal Worthington and his dog Spot piled on. AB 1058 looked like roadkill.
Burton’s solution: Hijack another bill and insert the contents of Pavley’s bill into it. With that bit of legerdemain, AB 1058 died, AB 1493 was born, and the auto industry’s campaign crashed.
Burton didn’t attend the ceremony when Davis signed the bill. Nor did he accompany Pavley a decade later when President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony embracing the California concept in nationwide fuel-efficiency standards.
Pavley said she had never seen a politician work so hard for a bill for no credit, ”and I haven’t seen it since.”
Burton took special interest in certain issues. He was, for example, appalled at the force-feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers to produce foie gras. In one of his final bills, he battled restaurant owners and agricultural interests to ban the practice. It passed the Senate by one vote.
In a letter urging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign the bill against the wishes of some chefs, he included Burtonesque doggerel: “Save Donald Duck. F— Wolfgang Puck.”
Schwarzenegger signed the bill and sent Burton a photo of himself and Burton in the governor’s office looking at the bottom of the governor’s shoe with a note: “I got duck liver on my shoe!” In the background of the photo, there’s an image of Reagan, smiling with his head tilted back as if he’s having a good laugh.
Burton, who was divorced twice, is survived by his daughter, attorney Kimiko Burton, and two grandchildren.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) on Wednesday brushed aside questions about whether he might jump into California’s 2026 governor’s race, but declined to rule out the idea.
Padilla instead said he was wholly focused on promoting the special election in November when voters will be asked to redraw California’s congressional districts to counter efforts by President Trump and other GOP leaders to keep Republicans in control of Congress.
“I’m focused and I’d encourage everybody to focus on this Nov. 4 special election,” Padilla said during an interview at a political summit in Sacramento sponsored by Politico.
The 52-year-old added that the effort to redraw congressional districts, championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in response to similar efforts in GOP-led states, is not solely about the arcane process known as redistricting.
“My Republican colleagues and especially the White House know how unpopular and damaging what they’re doing is, from gutting Medicare, nutrition assistance programs, really all these other areas of budget cuts to underwrite tax breaks for billionaires,” Padilla said. “So their only hope of staying in power beyond next November is to rig the system.”
In recent days, Padilla’s name has emerged as a possible candidate to replace Newsom, who cannot run for another term. The field is unsettled, with independent polling conducted after former Vice President Kamala Harris opted not to run for governor showing large numbers of voters are undecided and with no clear front-runner.
Padilla pointed to his more than quarter-century history of serving Californians at every level of government when asked what might be appealing about the job.
“I love California, right?” he said. “And I’ve had the privilege and the honor of serving in so many different capacities.”
In 1999, the then-26-year-old was elected to Los Angeles City Council. At the time, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology grad still lived with his parents — a Mexican-born housekeeper and a short-order cook — in Pacoima.
Padilla continued his steady climb through the state’s political ranks in the decades that followed, serving in the state Senate and as California secretary of state. Newsom appointed him to fill Harris’ Senate seat in 2020, making him the first Latino to represent California in the Senate, and Padilla was elected to fill a full term in 2022. His current Senate term doesn’t end until 2029, meaning he wouldn’t have to risk his seat to run for governor.
Now, Latinos once again hold the power to make or break American politics, thanks to redistricting fights shaping up in Texas and California. And once again, both Democratic and Republican leaders think they know what Latinos want.
In the Lone Star State, the GOP-dominated Legislature last week approved the redrawing of congressional districts at the behest of Trump, upending the traditional process, to help Republicans gain up to five seats in the 2026 midterms. Their California counterparts landed on the opposite side of the gerrymandering coin — their maps, which will go before voters in November, target Republican congressional members.
Texas Republicans and California Democrats are both banking on Latinos to be the swing votes that make their gambits successful. That’s understandable but dangerous. If ever a voting bloc fulfills the cliche that to assume something makes an ass out of you and me, it’s Latinos.
Despite President Reagan’s famous statement that Latinos were Republicans who didn’t know it yet, they rejected the GOP in California and beyond for a generation after the passage of Proposition 187 in 1994. When Hillary Clinton supporters whispered during the 2008 presidential race that Latinos would never vote for a Black candidate, they gladly joined the coalition that put Barack Obama in the White House. Trump increased his Latino support each time he ran — to the point that in 2024, a bigger proportion of Latinos voted for him than for any previous Republican presidential candidate — even though Democrats insisted that Latinos couldn’t possibly stomach a man that racist.
Many Latinos hate being taken for granted and don’t like the establishment telling them how to think. It’s classic rancho libertarianism, the term I created in the era of Trump to describe the political leanings of the people with whom I grew up: Mexican Americans from rural stock who simultaneously believed in community and individualism and hated the racist rhetoric of Republicans but didn’t care much for the woke words of Democrats, either.
Such political independence exasperates political leaders, yet it’s long been a thing with Latino voters across the U.S. but especially in Texas and California, where Mexican American voters make up an overwhelming majority of each state’s Latino electorate. As Republicans in the former and Democrats in the latter launch their initial redistricting volleys, they seem to be forgetting that, yet again.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), poses for a portrait in the Rayburn House Office Building in 2021.
(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)
The GOP is hoping voters in South Texas, one of the most Latino areas of the U.S., will carry their Trump love to the 2026 congressional races. There, two of the three congressional seats are held by Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, despite a swing from most of the region’s 41 counties supporting Hillary Clinton in 2016 to just five going for Kamala Harris eight years later.
In their new maps, Texas legislators poured more Republican voters into those South Texas districts. They also configured new districts in the Houston area and central Texas so that Latinos are now the majority, but voters favored Trump last year.
But a lawsuit filed hours after the Texas Senate moved the maps to Gov. Greg Abbott for his approval alleged that all the finagling had created “Potemkin majority-Latino districts.” The intent, according to the lawsuit, was to dilute Latino power by packing some voters into already Democratic-leaning districts while splitting up others among red-leaning districts.
The legislators especially threw San Antonio, a longtime Democratic stronghold that’s a cradle of Latino electoral power, into a political Cuisinart. Three Latino Democrats currently represent the Alamo City and its metro area: Cuellar, Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar. Under the new maps, only Castro is truly safe, while Casar is now in a district represented by Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who has announced he will retire.
“We have three Hispanic-predominated districts in South Texas that we believe we can carve out for Republican leadership,” state GOP Rep. Mitch Little bragged on CNN this month. “It’s good for our party. It’s good for our state. And we need to ensure that Donald Trump’s agenda continues to be enacted.”
The thing is, fewer and fewer Latinos are supporting Trump’s agenda. In Reuters/Ipsos polls, his Latino support dropped from 36% in February to 31% this month. Only 27% of Latinos approved of his performance in a Pew Research Center poll released this month.
If this slide continues through next year and Latinos continue to reject MAGA, Texas Republicans would have done Trump’s gross gerrymandering and sparked a nationwide legislative civil war for nothing.
In California, Latino voters are also crucial to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting push — but Democrats are hoping they’ll be GOP spoilers, despite their recent tack to the right.
Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley’s district would swing into Sacramento, picking up many more Latino voters than he now has in the majority white Eastern Sierra.
Powerful Latinos in the state have already come out in favor of Newsom’s so-called Election Rigging Response Act, and the governor is counting on them to convince Latino voters to approve the maps in November.
But all this shuffling is happening a year after those very voters jolted state Democrats. Although the party still holds a super-majority in Sacramento, Democratic legislators serve alongside the largest number of Latino GOP colleagues ever. The biggest swings to Trump happened in areas with larger Latino populations, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report published last month.
The president’s popularity is especially souring in California due to his deportation deluge — but whether Latinos will support redistricting is another matter.
Although 51% of Latinos support Newsom’s performance, only 43% said they would vote yes on his redistricting push — the lowest percentage of any ethnic group, according to a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. The poll also found that 29% of Latinos are undecided on redistricting — the highest percentage of any group.
Such skepticism is the bitter fruit of a generation of Democratic rule in Sacramento, at a time when blue-collar Latinos are finding it harder to achieve the good life. Politicians blaming it all on Trump eventually created a Chicken Little situation that pushed those Latinos into MAGAlandia — and Newsom, by constantly casting redistricting as a necessary uppercut against Trump, is in danger of making the same mistake.
California Latinos have helped to torpedo liberal shibboleths at the ballot box more often than Democrats will ever admit. A Times exit poll found 45% of them voted to recall Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 while 53% voted yes on the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in 2008 even as a bigger majority voted for Obama. So egghead arguments about how redistricting will save the future of democracy won’t really land with the rancho libertarians I know. They want cheaper prices, and Trump isn’t delivering them — but neither is Newsom.
Latinos, as another cliche goes, aren’t a monolith. They could very well help Republicans win those extra congressional seats in Texas and do the same for Democrats in California.
But any politician betting that Latinos will automatically do what they’re expected to … remind me what happens when you assume something?
SACRAMENTO — After a long string of losses in California, the tobacco industry is on the verge of some rare victories as industry allies in the Legislature prepare to block new restrictions on smoking and perhaps even succeed in easing current laws.
Aiding the industry are Republican allies who control the Assembly and oppose new limits on tobacco. At the same time, the industry has shifted its political strategy, and it now doles out far more campaign money to Republican legislators than Democrats, especially in the Assembly.
Consider, for example, the Republican chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, Brett Granlund. A first-term lawmaker from Yucaipa, Granlund accepted a $20,000 check last month from Philip Morris Inc., the world’s largest cigarette maker. During his short tenure in Sacramento, Granlund has received at least $44,500 in campaign contributions from the tobacco industry.
In February, Granlund introduced a bill to make cigarette vending machines more accessible. The bill would weaken a new state law that bans cigarette vending machines anywhere other than in an estimated 5,000 bars in the state.
“I’ll take free enterprise over political correctness any time,” Granlund said in an interview.
Granlund’s bill, which faces its first committee vote today, would allow vending machines in up to 30,000 restaurants around the state and in factories. Supermarkets also could have vending machines, so long as the machines are equipped with locking devices, to guard against minors buying cigarettes.
“I am a free-enterprise, no-tax, smoker,” Granlund added. “It doesn’t matter if I’m chairing the Health Committee. Those [anti-smoking] people don’t have a right to tell everybody else how to live.”
While Granlund’s bill is not assured of passage, it represents a significant change from the days when Democrats controlled the Assembly. Democratic Health Committee chairmen made a practice of refusing tobacco industry campaign money, routinely voting against industry-backed bills, and carrying legislation aimed at restricting cigarette makers.
Under Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, who selects committee members, every GOP health committee member accepts tobacco money, as do most Democratic members.
“Some of the legislative changes [to limit tobacco] swung the pendulum too far in one direction,” Pringle said, adding that he has “no hesitation” in taking tobacco money. He intends to oppose new anti-tobacco bills and support rollbacks of some restrictions. “That’s what our battle has been on a variety of business bills.”
Tobacco industry spokesmen and their lobbyists in Sacramento do not discuss strategy in any detail, but companies defend their political contributions. They say the money is not intended to buy influence, but rather to support lawmakers who side with them. Even though the tobacco industry has spent millions over the past decade on lobbying and campaigns in California, this state has led the nation in anti-tobacco efforts.
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It started in 1988 when voters approved Proposition 99, which added a 25-cent per pack tax on cigarettes. In 1994, Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation making California the first state to ban smoking in restaurants and most other indoor workplaces. That same year, voters overwhelmingly rejected a 1994 tobacco industry-backed initiative to roll back the restrictions. Now, however, there are indications that California no longer is at the fore of the anti-tobacco fight:
* Seven states have sued the tobacco industry to recoup state money spent on smoking-related illnesses. California Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren has balked at bringing a similar suit, though he is “monitoring” the litigation in other states, a spokesman for the Republican attorney general said.
Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) is pushing a resolution urging Lungren to sue the tobacco industry. But Pringle opposes such litigation, suggesting that Burton’s resolution may fail when it comes up for a vote.
“Isn’t this opening the door to [the state suing over] swimming pools, or automobiles, or second-story balconies, or child cribs?” Pringle asked.
* For three years running, Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature have tried to use a portion of the money raised by the 25-cent per pack cigarette tax for health programs not specifically related to tobacco. Anti-smoking activists have sued, and trial courts have ruled in their favor, saying that the money must be spent on anti-tobacco advertising, education and research.
Wilson has appealed those decisions, and he has no plans to spend $100 million of the disputed money until the cases are resolved. In his new budget, the governor has yet to allocate an additional $81 million in cigarette tax money. He intends to “look for the wisest investment of taxpayer dollars” before spending it, a Wilson spokesman said.
In past years, Democratic legislators agreed with Wilson on diverting the tobacco tax money to other health programs. But this year, Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz of Sylmar and state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) are carrying legislation to fully fund the anti-tobacco research and education programs.
* California’s anti-tobacco advertising program, funded by Proposition 99 money, once was the richest in the nation. The campaign was so aggressive that one tobacco company threatened to sue over a TV commercial, which featured clips of industry executives testifying before Congress that tobacco is not addictive. The ad campaign also has powerful critics in the Capitol.
“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to bash an industry,” Pringle said. “They should be used to provide health information, instead of making it a personal attack on an industry.”
State spending on the high-profile advertising effort has been frozen at $12 million annually for three years, or roughly 40 cents per Californian, down from a peak of $16 million.
Massachusetts now leads the few states that fund anti-tobacco ad campaigns, spending $14 million a year, or $2.33 per resident, according to a study by Connie Pechmann, associate professor of marketing at UC Irvine. Pechmann notes that the tobacco industry spends almost $1 billion a year on promotions and advertising.
* A provision of California’s landmark 1994 workplace smoking ban, which Wilson signed into law, is under attack. That provision required the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration to develop safe standards for secondhand tobacco smoke by 1997, or else the smoking ban would be extended to bars and casinos. However, the agency has concluded that setting a standard would be impossible.
Noting that strong fans and suction would be needed to clear bars and card rooms of smoke, Louis Bonsignore, spokesman for the Department of Industrial Relations, said, “You’d need cards made out of lead to stay on the table.”
Assemblyman Sal Cannella (D-Ceres) is carrying the bill to extend Cal-OSHA’s deadline for setting the standards to the year 2000. The bill appears to have significant support from lawmakers in both parties.
The tobacco industry, long among the largest campaign donors, gave most of its money to Democrats in the 1980s and early 1990s, during Democrat Willie Brown’s tenure as speaker. In his 15 years as speaker, Brown was by far the largest recipient of tobacco money in Sacramento, raising more than $500,000.
But starting in 1994, the flow of money has shifted. On the Sunday before the November 1994 election, Philip Morris gave $125,000 in a single donation to Republican Assembly candidate Steven T. Kuykendall of Rancho Palos Verdes.
Kuykendall used the money to help upset the Democratic incumbent, Betty Karnette, who was an anti-tobacco legislator. With Kuykendall’s victory, Republicans gained a 41-to-39 seat majority in the lower house.
Brown left the Legislature to become San Francisco mayor, and another large Democratic recipient of tobacco money, Assemblyman Curtis Tucker Jr. (D-Inglewood), is leaving this year because of term limits.
Without Brown and Tucker, there will be only a handful of Assembly Democrats who take tobacco money. But as the number of friendly Democrats decreases, tobacco industry money increasingly finds its way to Republicans.
In 1995, Philip Morris gave $148,400 to Republicans who hold state office, compared to $83,000 to Democrats. A closer look shows that the difference is even more drastic. The company gave 37 of 41 Assembly Republicans a total of $85,000. Assembly Democrats got a total of $53,500, $50,000 of which went to Brown and Tucker.
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Although Democrats hold a majority in the state Senate, Philip Morris last year gave more to Senate Republicans–$34,665–versus $29,500 for Democrats. The company in 1995 gave $22,000 to Republicans who hold statewide office, including the attorney general, treasurer, insurance commissioner and secretary of state, but none to Democrats in statewide office, campaign finance reports show.
The same pattern held for R.J. Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company. Reynolds gave a combined $8,000 to Tucker and Brown and $6,000 to other Assembly Democrats, versus $52,250 for Assembly Republicans in 1995. Altogether, Reynolds gave almost $80,000 to Republican state officials and $25,000 to Democrats.
Philip Morris would not discuss its political strategy. A spokeswoman for Reynolds said its “position is to support those candidates whose positions are similar to ours. That’s not surprising.”
Whether campaign money translates into legislative gains this year for the industry remains to be seen. At a minimum, though, chances of new anti-tobacco legislation making it out of Sacramento seem slim, especially in the Republican-controlled Assembly. Assemblyman Wally Knox (D-Los Angeles) is pushing a bill to force state pension funds to divest themselves of tobacco stocks, valued at $750 million, but has little hope that it will survive its first committee vote this week.
Two years ago, Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), a former Health Committee chairwoman, carried a bill signed into law by Wilson adding a two-cent per pack tax on cigarettes to fund breast cancer research. This year, she introduced bills to permit local government to tax cigarettes, and to bar tobacco companies from passing out cigarettes in promotions. But she has no plans to seek votes on the measures.
“I’m not taking up any bills on tobacco. It’s obvious they’re going to be killed,” Friedman said.
James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Ivica Zubac and Chris Paul are poised to lead the Clippers through a 2025-26 schedule that opens on the road but closes with four of its final six games at the Intuit Dome.
2025-26 Clippers schedule
OCTOBER
22: at Utah, 6; 24: vs. Phoenix, 7:30; 26: vs. Portland, 6; 28: at Golden State, 8; 31: vs. New Orleans, 7:30.
NOVEMBER
3: vs. Miami, 7:30; 4: vs. Oklahoma City, 8; 6: at Phoenix, 7:30; 8: vs. Phoenix, 7:30; 10: vs. Atlanta, 7:30; 12: vs. Denver, 7:30; 14: at Dallas, 5:30; 16: at Boston, 12:30; 17: at Philadelphia, 4; 20: at Orlando, 4; 22: at Charlotte, 10 a.m.; 23: at Cleveland, 3; 25: at Lakers, 8; 28: vs. Memphis, 7; 29: vs. Dallas, 7.
DECEMBER
1: at Miami, 4:30; 3: at Atlanta, 4:30; 5: at Memphis, 5; 6: at Minnesota, 5; 17: at Oklahoma City, 5; 20: vs. Lakers, 7:30; 23: vs. Houston, 8; 26: at Portland, 7; 28: vs. Detroit, 6; 30: vs. Sacramento, 8.
JANUARY
1: vs. Utah, 7:30; 3: vs. Boston, 7:30; 5: vs. Golden State, 7; 7: at New York, 4:30; 9: at Brooklyn, 4:30; 10: at Detroit, 4:30; 12: vs. Charlotte, 7:30; 14: vs. Washington, 7:30; 16: at Toronto, 4:30; 19: at Washington, noon; 20: at Chicago, 5; 22: vs. Lakers, 7; 25: vs. Brooklyn, 6; 27: at Utah, 7; 30; 30: at Denver, 7.
FEBRUARY
1: at Phoenix, 5; 2: vs. Philadelphia, 7:30; 4: vs. Cleveland, 7:30; 6: at Sacramento, 7; 8: at Minnesota, noon; 10: at Houston, 5; 11: at Houston, 5; 19: vs. Denver, 7:30; 20: at Lakers, 7; 22: vs. Orlando, 6; 26: vs. Minnesota, 7.
MARCH
1: vs. New Orleans, 6; 2: at Golden State, 7; 4: vs. Indiana, 7:30; 6: at San Antonio, 6:30; 7: at Memphis, 5; 9: vs. New York, 7; 11: vs. Minnesota, 7:30; 13: vs. Chicago, 7:30; 14: vs. Sacramento, 7:30; 16: vs. San Antonio, 7:30; 18: at New Orleans, 5; 19: at New Orleans, 5; 21: at Dallas, 5:30; 23: vs. Milwaukee, 7:30; 25: vs. Toronto, 7:30; 27: at Indiana, 4; 29: at Milwaukee, 12:30; 31: vs. Portland, 8.
APRIL
2: vs. San Antonio, 7:30; 5: at Sacramento, 6; 7: vs. Dallas, 7:30; 8: vs. Oklahoma City, 7; 10: at Portland, 7; 12: vs. Golden State, 5:30.
California Democrats and Texas Republicans are in an old-fashioned standoff, threatening to redraw their congressional maps in an attempt to sway the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections.
Caught in the middle are a handful of California Republicans, from relative newcomers to seasoned veterans, who represent pockets of the state from the U.S.-Mexico border to the remote forests in the northeast corner.
The Texas GOP is pushing, at the behest of President Trump, to net five additional seats for congressional Republicans, who hold the U.S. House of Representatives by a razor-thin margin. In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom has said California will push back with a map that would increase the number of Democrats the state sends to Washington.
“The idea that the president of the United States says he’s entitled to five seats should sicken everybody,” Newsom said at a news conference Thursday. “There’s nothing normal about that and anyone who says it’s not surprising is normalizing it. That’s shocking.”
The California gerrymandering plan taking shape behind closed doors would increase the Democratic Party’s dominance in the Golden State, adding as many as five congressional districts favorable to Democrats, according to a draft map reviewed by The Times. If the Democrats succeed, those changes could leave Republicans with four of the state’s 52 House seats — down from the current roster of nine.
California’s districts are typically drawn once per decade by an independent commission. Newsom is pushing to put a new map tailored to favor Democrats in front of voters Nov. 4, which would require the Legislature to approve the plan shortly after members return to Sacramento from their summer recess.
Newsom has said California’s redistricting plan will have a “trigger,” meaning a redrawn map would not take effect unless Texas moved forward with its own.
“We want to do it in the most transparent way,” Newsom said. “That’s a process that will unfold over the course of the next few weeks. But we want to see the maps on the ballot. I want folks to know what they’re voting on. That’s what separates what we’re doing from what others are doing.”
The proposed boundaries of the new congressional districts continue to shift, but the goal for California Democrats remains the same: Funnel the state’s Republican voters into fewer seats, boost vulnerable Democrats and turn some GOP-dominant districts into narrowly divided toss-ups.
Here are the Republicans who could face major changes.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin)
Kiley represents a sprawling district that runs along the Nevada border from Northern California to Death Valley, cutting through Mammoth and Lake Tahoe and the cities of Roseville, Rocklin and Folsom.
Republicans have a 6-percentage-point voter registration advantage in Kiley’s district. The district’s footprint could shrink and shift closer to Sacramento, adding more registered Democrats and trimming off some conservative and rural areas.
Kiley introduced a bill this week to nullify any newly drawn congressional boundaries adopted by states before the next U.S. census, in 2030, which would apply to both Texas and California. He said the bill would “stop a damaging redistricting war from breaking out across the country.”
Newsom, Kiley said, is “trying to subvert the will of voters and do lasting damage to democracy in California.”
Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale)
LaMalfa represents a safe Republican district that stretches through a vast territory of Northern California that borders Oregon and Nevada. The district includes Chico, Redding and Yuba City.
LaMalfa said in an interview that he had seen one map that shifted his district south to include parts of Sonoma County wine country and shifted some conservative rural areas in the north in another lawmaker’s district. Those changes, he said, would put towns near the Oregon border and Marin County, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, in the same district.
“The Democrats are really way over the line on this,” LaMalfa said. “I hope the weight of how bad this looks collapses on them before we even have to go through these gyrations, and millions and millions of dollars.”
He said he was certain that Republicans would litigate the new map if Democrats push ahead. He said other groups, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, have also voiced concerns.
“I’m not even stressed,” said La Malfa, a fourth-generation rice farmer. “If they throw me in some wine country district or some coastal district, and that throws me out, then I can go over here and finish cutting apart this tree that fell on my fence last night.”
Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford)
The proposed plans could add more registered Democrats to Valadao’s predominately Latino district in the Central Valley.
Democrats have tried for years to unseat Valadao, who represents a district that has a strong Democratic voter registration advantage on paper, but where turnout among blue voters is lackluster.
Even before the redistrict dustup, Valadao was once again a top target for Democrats. Valadao represents the California district with the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients, many of whom may lose coverage because of legislation approved by the Republican-led Congress and signed by Trump. Valadao previously lost his congressional seat in 2018 after voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.
A representative for Valadao didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) and Young Kim (R-Anaheim Hills)
The plan being considered could force two Republican members of the House into the same district: Kim and Calvert.
Calvert was first elected to Congress in 1992 and is the longest-serving member of California’s Republican delegation. He represents a Riverside County district that includes Lake Elsinore, Menifee, Palm Springs and his home base of Corona. The district, which leans Republican, has been a prime, but unsuccessful, target for Democrats in the last two elections.
Kim, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, represents a Republican district, mostly in Orange County, that includes Mission Viejo, Orange, Lake Forest, Anaheim and Tustin.
Calvert said he strongly opposes “the scheme being orchestrated behind closed doors by Sacramento politicians” to replace maps drawn by the redistricting commission “with a process that would allow legislators to draw district maps that are gerrymandered to benefit themselves and their political allies.”
Deviating from the independent redistricting process “disenfranchises voters and degrades trust in our political system,” Kim said in a statement. She said Newsom should, “for once, focus on addressing the pressing issues making life harder for Californians under his watch instead of trying to position himself for a presidential run.”
Newsom this week said he was pleased to see Republican members coming out in support of independent redistricting.
“That’s an encouraging sign,” Newsom said. “So already, perhaps, people are waking up to the reality of California entering into this conversation. We’re not a small state. Again, we punch above our weight. It will have profound national implications if we move forward.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Bonsall)
Under the tentative plans, Issa, who has served in Congress for more than two decades, would see his safely Republican district become purple. That could include absorbing Palm Springs, a liberal area that is currently in Calvert’s district and has become a hub of fundraising and political activity for Democrats.
A spokesman for Issa declined to comment but referred to a statement from the state’s nine-member Republican delegation, which said that Trump won 38% of the presidential vote in California last year, but Republicans hold fewer than 1 in 5 of the state’s 52 House seats.
Newsom, the delegation said, is trying to wrest power from the independent redistricting commission and “place it back into the hands of Sacramento politicians to further his left-wing political agenda.”
“A partisan political gerrymander is not what the voters of California want,” the statement said.
Times staff writer Taryn Luna contributed to this report.
Stevie Nicks has postponed several upcoming tour dates after fracturing her shoulder.
“Due to a recent injury resulting in a fractured shoulder that will require recovery time, Stevie Nicks’ scheduled concerts in August and September will be rescheduled,” the Fleetwood Mac singer announced over the weekend.
The affected shows include all her August and September shows, which include Detroit, Brooklyn and Florida dates. Those dates have been rescheduled for later in the fall and winter.
Nicks’ shows scheduled for October are still on as planned, including Portland, Sacramento and Las Vegas.
“Stevie looks forward to seeing everyone soon and apologizes to the fans for this inconvenience,” the statement continued.
Nicks recently delighted Fleetwood Mac fans by reaching enough of a detente with her on-and-off bandmate Lindsey Buckingham to reissue their beloved 1973 collaborative LP “Buckingham Nicks,” their only album together before joining Fleetwood Mac. That LP is out Sept. 19.
WASHINGTON — A last-ditch effort by California Democrats to redraw the state’s congressional map for the 2026 election, countering a similar push by Texas Republicans, is now up against the clock.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that Democrats are moving forward with a plan to put a rare mid-decade redistricting plan before voters on Nov. 4. But state lawmakers will craft a “trigger,” he said, meaning California voters would only vote on the measure if Texas moved forward with its own plans to redraw Congressional boundaries to add five more Republican seats.
“It’s cause and effect, triggered on the basis of what occurs or doesn’t occur in Texas,” Newsom said. “I hope they do the right thing, and if they do, then there’ll be no cause for us to have to move forward.”
Democratic lawmakers in Texas on Monday left the state to deprive Republicans of the quorum needed to pass the new maps. Republican lawmakers voted 85 to 6 to send state troopers to arrest them and bring them back to the Capitol, a move that is largely symbolic, since the lawmakers won’t face criminal or civil charges.
The outcome of the dueling efforts between Texas and California could determine which party controls the House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections, which Democrats see as the last bulwark to President Trump’s actions in his second term. Trump has pushed Republicans to add more GOP seats in Texas, hoping to stave off a midterm defeat.
Democrats hold 43 of California’s 52 congressional seats. Early discussions among California politicians and strategists suggest that redrawn lines could shore up some vulnerable incumbent Democrats by making their purple districts more blue, while forcing five or six of the state’s nine Republican members into tougher reelection fights.
But nothing official can be done until state lawmakers return from recess to Sacramento on Aug. 18.
Democrats, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, would have less than a month to draw a new map, hold hearings and negotiate the language of a bill calling for the special November election, leaving just enough time for voter guides to be mailed and ballots to be printed.
Democratic lawmakers and operatives said Monday that the timeline is doable, but they would have to act quickly.
California’s Democratic congressional delegation expressed consensus during a video meeting Monday with moving forward with a ballot measure that would allow mid-decade redistricting only if another state moves forward with it, according to a person familiar with the virtual meeting, and that the change would be temporary. They expressed their support for the independent commission.
California Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas said the Democratic caucus met Sunday night “to discuss the urgent threat of a continued, blatant Trumpian power grab — a coordinated effort to undermine our democracy and silence Californians.”
Democrats in the California Senate and Assembly held separate meetings to discuss redistricting. David Binder, a pollster who works with Newsom, presented internal polling that showed tepid early support among voters for temporarily changing state laws to allow the Legislature to draw new maps for elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030.
“Our voters must be empowered to push back,” Rivas said. “California has never backed down — and we won’t start now.”
Texas Democrats resist
Democratic lawmakers’ exodus from Austin on Monday denied Republicans the quorum necessary to proceed with a vote on a redrawn state map that could net Republicans five congressional seats.
Democratic lawmakers balked at threats from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. The Texas House Democratic Caucus put out a statement riffing on a slogan made famous during the Texas Revolution: “Come and take it.” One member of the caucus noted that being absent was not a crime and that Texas warrants can’t be served in Illinois or New York, where many lawmakers have gone.
“There is no felony in the Texas penal code for what he says,” said Rep. Jolanda Jones, a Democrat. “He’s trying to get soundbites, and he has no legal mechanism.”
The Texas House Republican speaker, Dustin Burrows, said that Democrats leaving does not “stop this House from doing its work. It only delays it.”
But Abbott’s legal options to get his redistricting bill passed, by expelling Democrats or compelling their return, appear narrow, likely forcing the governor’s office to make challenges in courtrooms based in Democratic districts. Abbott has until the end of the year to secure new maps for them to be used in the state’s March 3 primaries.
At a news conference last week in Sacramento, Newsom compared Trump’s pressure on Abbott to add five Republican congressional seats as akin to his efforts to “find” 12,000 votes to win Georgia after the 2020 election.
“We’re not here to eliminate the commission,” he said. “We’re here to provide a pathway in ’26, ’28 and in 2030 for congressional maps on the basis of a response to the rigging of the system by the president of the United States. It won’t just happen in Texas. I imagine he’s making similar calls all across this country. It’s a big deal. I don’t think it gets much bigger.”
Escalation on a deadline
For decades, redrawing California’s electoral maps amounted to political warfare. In 1971, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan vetoed a redistricting plan that he called “a mockery of good government.” The California Supreme Court ultimately drew the lines, and did so again in 1991, when then-Gov. Pete Wilson rejected maps drawn by Democrats.
California’s state lawmakers last drew their own district lines in 2001, after members of both parties signed off on a plan drawn up to protect incumbents.
In 2008, California voters stripped state lawmakers of the power to draw their own districts by passing Proposition 11, which created an independent redistricting commission. Two years later, voters handed the power to redraw congressional district maps to the same panel by passing Proposition 20. That group drew the lines before the 2012 elections, and again after the 2020 census.
California set the date for its last statewide special election — the 2021 attempted recall of Newsom — 75 days in advance. County election officials would need at least that much time to find voting locations and prepare ballots for overseas and military voters, which must be mailed 45 days before election day, one elections official said.
“We need at least a similar timeline and calendar to what took place in 2021 for the gubernatorial recall election,” said Dean Logan, the top elections official in Los Angeles County.
Similarly, he said, counties will “need the funding provided upfront by the state to conduct this election, and the funding to do the redistricting associated with it, because counties are not prepared financially.”
The 2021 recall election cost California taxpayers about $200 million. The preliminary estimate for Los Angeles County to administer the redistricting election is about $60 million.
National fight over state lines
Republican strategist Jon Fleischman, former executive director of the California Republican Party, said Republicans nationally need to take state Democrats’ efforts to redraw the maps seriously — by pulling out their checkbooks.
“Our statewide Republican fundraising has atrophied because it has been over a generation since we had a viable statewide candidate in California,” he said. “The kind of money that it would take to battle this — it would have to be national funding effort.”
While Texas prompted California Democrats to take action, Fleischman said, the issue has enough momentum here that it ultimately doesn’t matter what Texas does.
“If Gavin Newsom places this on the ballot, it means he’s already done his polling and has figured out that it will pass because he cares more running for president that redistricting in California,” Fleischman said. “And he knows he can’t afford to make this play and lose.”
Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who championed the ballot measure that created the independent redistricting commission, has not weighed in on the mid-decade redistricting efforts in Texas and California. But a spokesperson for the former governor made clear that he vehemently opposes both.
Since leaving office, Schwarzenegger has fought for independent map-drawing across the nation. Redistricting is among the political reforms that are the focus of the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC.
“His take on all of this is everyone learned in preschool or kindergarten that two wrongs don’t make a right. He thinks gerrymandering is evil,” said Daniel Ketchell, a spokesperson for Schwarzenegger. “It takes power from the people and gives it to politicians. He thinks it’s evil, no matter where they do it.”
Wilner reported from Washington, Nelson and Mehta from Los Angeles and Luna from Sacramento.
In Sacramento, the Athletics are mired in last place, struggling to fill the minor league ballpark they call home. That does not mean our state capitol is lacking for some serious hardball.
California legislators, meet our old friend, Frank McCourt.
McCourt, the former Dodgers owner, first pitched a gondola from Union Station to Dodger Stadium in 2018. The most recent development, from May: An appellate court ordered a redo of the environmental impact report, citing two defects that needed to be remedied.
At the time, a project spokesman categorized those defects as “minor, technical matters” and said they could be “addressed quickly.”
In the event of another lawsuit challenging the gondola project on environmental grounds, McCourt and his team want to guarantee any such suit would be addressed quickly.
On Monday, state legislators are scheduled to consider a bill designed in part to put a 12-month limit on court proceedings related to environmental challenges to certain transit projects. The current challenge to the gondola project is 16 months old and counting.
The bill, in all its legislative prose, does not cite any specific project. However, a state senate analysis calls the gondola proposal “one project that would benefit.”
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), the bill’s author, said he had not met with any of the lobbyists from the McCourt entities registered to do so. Wiener said he included the gondola-related language in the bill at the request of legislators from the Los Angeles area.
“To me, it was a no-brainer,” Wiener told me.
A rendering of the proposed gondola that would transport fans from Union Station to Dodger Stadium.
(LA Aerial Rapid Transit)
The larger purpose of the bill: cutting red tape for buses, bikes, trains, ferries and any other mode of transit that might get you out of your car. If a gondola can do that, he said, bring it on.
“We need more sustainable transit options in California,” he said. “We need to make it easier for people to get around without having to drive.
“When you get cars off the road, it benefits the people who don’t have to drive, but it also benefits drivers, because it means there are fewer drivers on the road.”
The Senate analysis listed 52 organizations in support of Wiener’s bill, none opposed. Weiner told me he had not heard from anyone in opposition.
That was concerning to Jon Christensen of the L.A. Parks Alliance, one of the two groups that filed the long-running environmental lawsuit against the gondola project.
Christensen, whose coalition recently scrambled to hire its own Sacramento lobbyists, said he has no problem with expediting legal proceedings. What he has a problem with, he said, is a bill that “singles out one billionaire’s project for favoritism.”
Nathan Click, the spokesman for Zero Emissions Transit (ZET), the nonprofit charged with building and operating the gondola, said the bill simply extends a provision of previous legislation.
“The vast majority of Angelenos want and deserve zero emission transit solutions that reduce traffic and cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions,” Click said.
Click declined to say why project proponents felt compelled to pursue inclusion in this legislation if the environmental challenge already had been reduced to what he had called “minor, technical matters” two months ago. Project opponents maintain ridership estimates for the gondola are overly optimistic.
In the end, what happens in Sacramento might not matter much.
The gondola project still requires approvals from the City Council, Caltrans, Metro and the state parks agency. The latest target for a grand opening — 2028, in time for the Olympic baseball tournament at Dodger Stadium — likely would require construction to begin next spring. No financing commitment has been announced for a project estimated to cost $385 million to $500 million — and that estimate undoubtedly has risen in the two years since it was shared publicly.
There is nothing improper or unusual about lobbyists advocating for the interests of big business, but it’s not cheap. Over the past five years, according to state records, McCourt’s gondola company has spent more than $500,000 to do so.
July 2 (UPI) — A warehouse storing fireworks outside of Sacramento, Calif., exploded Tuesday evening, according to authorities, who said the facility was still on fire.
The Yolo County Sheriff’s Office said the warehouse is located near the small California town of Esparto, about 36 miles northwest of Sacramento.
“We urge everyone to avoid the area so fire crews and emergency responders can safely do their work,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement on Facebook.
“At this time, the cause of the explosion remains unknown.”
Authorities have issued a 1-mile evacuation zone surrounding the warehouse.
Aerial video of the incident captured by local station KCRA 3 shows flames burning through the roof of the warehouse as large spot fires burn on the compound. When it exploded, a large fireball was ejected into the air followed by fireworks and smoke.
Curtis Lawrence, fire chief of the Esparto Fire Protection District, told reporters during a Tuesday night press briefing that they responded to calls of an explosion at the warehouse at 5:50 p.m. PDT.
He said they believe that a large fire, which ignited at one warehouse facility on the compound, spread, causing numerous spot fires in the area, burning a total of approximately 80 acres.
He would not state whether there were any casualties.
CalFire’s Office of the State Fire Marshal Arson and Bomb Unit is investigating, but the local sheriff’s office said it has not opened a criminal investigation, at least not at this time.
