VOTERS

DELANO, Calif. — The rows of candies and nuts at the Guadalajara Meat Market — tamarindo con chile, seasoned pistachios, spicy paletas — sat mostly untouched as customers filtered through this carniceria in the late afternoon heat.

“You see a lot of people consuming the minimum, what they need to get by through the week,” said owner Carina Murillo, 31, as she checked out customers on a recent weekday. “Instead of buying six items, they’re buying three items.”

While customers bypass extras, like the snacks at the front counter, Murillo’s costs have gone up. Imported goods from Mexico and Canada have become more difficult to source and sometimes carry tariffs, she said. Transportation fees have risen as diesel prices respond to the war in Iran. The market’s insurance costs have risen by about a third. All of it has forced Murillo to increase prices.

“You see a lot of people consuming the minimum,” says Carina Murillo, owner of Guadalajara Meat Market. “Instead of buying six items, they’re buying three items.”

As the area struggles, Murillo, a college graduate who years ago felt motivated enough to door-knock for political causes, is among those who have become disillusioned. Those in Washington, she said, don’t understand the lives of the working people who keep the country running.

There have been “years where I feel completely overpowered to the point where I’m not motivated to take part,” said Murillo, who didn’t vote in 2024 but plans to do so in November. “That’s what happens when you feel discouraged or like nothing’s going to change.”

The economic strife plaguing Americans is clear in this rural, majority-Latino Central Valley congressional district, home to the state’s most competitive House race, the closely watched contest between Republican Rep. David Valadao and Democrat Randy Villegas.

Democrats hope the national economic angst will translate into big turnout in the midterm elections, but some in this region worry that years of financial struggle may depress voters’ desire to participate rather than motivate them.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) presides over a congressional hearing in March. The Republican is in a race against Democrat Randy Villegas that is considered a toss-up.

(Allison Robbert / Associated Press)

And Republicans, who rely on their party turnout beating that of Democrats in rural areas, also face the risk that frustration with the current political climate could dampen enthusiasm.

“Before they can think about Valadao, before Trump or Gavin Newsom or who’s going to run, families are concerned with the immediate: paying the rent, having the food on the table,” said Eliseo Gamiño, who heads the Central Valley Leadership Round Table, a coalition of Latino community leaders and elected officials. “You can’t be thinking about voting when your kids are hungry.”

Few voters who spoke to The Times in this swing district were decided on which party to support in November — or whether to vote at all. Such undecided voters will likely decide the election outcome, and persuading them is the key challenge for both parties as November nears.

Alexa Lopez sweeps up at closing time on a slower than usual Friday that saw one dress sold at Christina’s Fashion in Delano.

In a district that is the third-youngest in population in the country, the simmering uncertainty among Gen Z and millennial voters in particular could affect turnout or results.

Thirty-one percent of its voting-age population is 29 or younger, according to the Tufts University research center CIRCLE, which tracks youth civic engagement, making it among the top swath of House races in which young people could swing the outcome.

California’s swingiest district

The 22nd District, carved from the state’s agricultural epicenter, is one of fewer than two dozen toss-up races nationwide that will likely determine which party controls the U.S. House in the second half of President Trump’s current term. It is also among several high-stakes races nationwide that will test progressive candidates.

Valadao’s seat has long been considered a vulnerable one; Democrats added about 100,000 Fresno residents to the district under Proposition 50’s new map in a bid to help their chances. The boundaries include swaths of Kern, Kings and Tulare counties, along with a very small piece of Madera County.

“It’s going to be crucial in an area that is more purple, more bipartisan, where it’s very clear it can go either way … that these candidates make an effort to get those voters on their team,” said Brittany Martinez, a California-based Republican strategist.

Valadao, 49, who comes from a dairy farming family, is well known in the district and has repeatedly secured victory in close races, retaking the seat in 2020 after losing it in 2018’s blue wave. He saw a close race in 2022, then won by nearly seven percentage points in 2024, outperforming Trump.

His biggest vulnerability this time around may be his vote for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included steep cuts to Medicaid. Local hospitals are bracing for funding cuts, though a carve-out may keep many valley residents from losing coverage. The district has the highest proportion of Medi-Cal recipients of any in the state, with 67% of residents enrolled as of 2025, according to the California Health Care Foundation.

Valadao spent part of the August recess touring the Central Valley for private meetings with local entities including a hospital, a housing program, a sawmill and a school district, and held a telephone town hall last week. Democrats have criticized him for not holding face-to-face voter events, including public town halls.

Democratic candidate Randy Villegas chats with residents during an August town hall in Hanford.

Villegas, 31, a professor and school board member who was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and is aligned with the Working Families Party, bested a Democrat backed by the party’s House campaign arm to win the nomination.

Villegas has banked on a more public-facing approach to win over swing voters — recently handing out popsicles from a pushcart he wheeled around a Labor Day event in Bakersfield, for instance — a strategy his campaign calls “going everywhere.” Republicans have criticized his record as too far left for the moderate district.

Both candidates have attempted to lean away from partisan narratives. Valadao rarely mentions Trump on social media and did not attend the president’s Republican convention in Dallas last week; Villegas has worked to frame the progressive issues he champions as an effort to help Central Valley voters rather than an ideology.

Trump carried the district as drawn now by less than 2 percentage points in 2024. Since then, residents say they have felt squeezed by housing, gas and grocery prices. The war in Iran has pinched Central Valley farmers — already struggling with water supply and other issues — by driving up fertilizer prices.

Ailyn Flores, center, picks up balloons for a party at Big Delano Discount store.

Tyler Stidham, 28, and her husband recently moved back to Lemoore from San José with their 1-year-old in order to live with family because they could no longer afford their own place.

“Rent got too high and having a family is expensive,” she said as the couple waited for their order from a food truck at the Hanford farmers market on a recent Thursday evening. They have cut out family trips and started meal-planning and budgeting to save money.

Stidham said she is planning to vote and hoping government leaders can make life more affordable. Her husband recalled a favorable impression of Valadao after once meeting him. Stidham isn’t sure who she’ll be casting her vote for.

“I haven’t done my research [yet],” she said.

Young voters said they felt frustrated waiting for a better economy that has yet to materialize.

“I feel like the government is playing in our face. I feel like everything is a show,” said Emma Woodward, 23, of Hanford.

The Sierra movie theater has closed down in Delano, Calif.

(Gary Kazanjian / For The Times)

A store manager at a coffee chain, Woodward bought a house last year to avoid throwing money at increasingly high rent payments, but it has been “hard to survive.” She got a roommate to help with costs, but the two of them sometimes find themselves using food drives for groceries. She has cut out “fun spending,” including concerts and travel.

Woodward said she wanted to vote in order to send the message to Congress that the economy needs improvement. She, too, wanted to research the candidates further; she leaned toward Villegas but was not yet convinced.

‘Whatever happens happens’

Valadao and Villegas must also battle to reach apathetic voters — those who may sit the election out or who are fed up with both parties. In one indication of voter fatigue, local organizers have found it a challenge to register new voters this year.

Dresses on display at Christina’s Fashion store after closing time on a quiet Friday night in Delano, Calif.

People who are unregistered often express mistrust in the government and the feeling that “nothing’s going to change,” said Biviana Camacho, 23, civic engagement program manager for Loud for Tomorrow, a youth organizing group based in Delano that runs voter registration events.

“A lot of folks have been in survival mode for such a long time,” she added, as the group worked on planning a fall event series on a recent afternoon. Their goal: 20 to 25 new registrations per event.

The group’s head of membership, Rosanai Paniagua, 28, agreed. “Here, there’s not a lot of hope because people haven’t seen what good policy could do for them,” she said. “A lot of apathy, for sure, because change hasn’t really happened here.”

Marco Estrada, 20, taking a break outside the Main Street barbershop where he works in Delano, said he wasn’t sure he could imagine anything Congress could do for him. He’s never voted and doesn’t plan to in November. His two co-workers said the same.

“Whatever happens happens,” Estrada said.

Valeria Valdez, a College of the Sequoias freshman, said she was planning to vote in her first election and said the government should help lower gas prices. The 18-year-old wasn’t sure, though, whether she would make a decision in the House race.

“It feels pretty far away from me, to be honest,” she said. “I just want to do what I can for our community and not focus on how corrupt the government is.”

That sentiment is part of what Villegas is aiming to target as he meets voters.

“It’s easy to feel cynical and apathetic in a moment where so many things seem stacked against us,” Villegas said in an interview. “But I tell people that … their vote and their voices do matter, otherwise we wouldn’t have billionaires and corporations spending millions of dollars trying to influence these election outcomes.”

A spokesperson for Valadao did not respond to a request for comment. Valadao said on a Washington Sun podcast in January that he “absolutely” worries about Republican voter enthusiasm, but noted it was a problem on both sides of the aisle. Earlier this month, he conveyed confidence about his race.

“I’ve won in these types of races. I can win again,” he told the Associated Press. “I think we should be fine.”

Inside Murillo’s market, business picked up as 5 o’clock neared. Murillo rang up tortillas, cuts of meat, and three-liter Mexican soda bottles. She advised a customer about treating a bug bite, helped a man wire money and cajoled a city worker about getting a sidewalk repair.

Congress should “definitely” be helping communities like hers, she said. She plans to research her voting options so she can participate in November. But trusting political candidates, she mused, can feel like a risk for voters.

“Whether they execute what they promise or not,” she said, “that’s shown with time.”

Is a hissy fit worth $200 million?

That was the tab in 2021, when California held a recall election less than a year before Gov. Gavin Newsom was set to face voters.

There was angst — the COVID-19 pandemic was raging. There was anger — the lifesaving restrictions imposed by Washington and Sacramento made daily living a chore and drove many small businesses to the brink. Others went clear over the edge.

There was also no small amount of political opportunism at play.

The recall gave Newsom’s critics, mainly on the right, a chance to try to chase the Democrat from an office that Republicans, under normal circumstances, stood little chance of winning.

In the end, the recall effort amounted to scarcely more than a partisan tantrum. The result — 61.9% voting no, 38.1% voting yes — matched the outcome of the 2018 gubernatorial race down to the decimal. All that money and effort wasted on an election in which voters said pretty much, yep, we meant what we said. Not too long after, they gave Newsom a second term.

The plebiscite, and its pointlessness, underscored the many flaws inherent in California’s recall system. In November, voters will get a chance to remedy at least one of them, eliminating the chance a candidate could take office with just marginal support from voters.

Trigger warning: What follows is a somewhat wonky explanation of election rules and procedures.

One choice, not two

Currently, a recall election is conducted in two parts. Voters are asked whether a lawmaker should be removed and, if so, who their replacement should be. If the incumbent is ousted, whoever gets the most votes takes their place, even if they fall well shy of attaining majority support. (Which is not out of the question in a large multi-candidate field; in 2003, 135 people were on the ballot, vying to replace Gov. Gray Davis.)

Among its provisions, Proposition 5 would amend the state Constitution so that voters would be asked a simple yes-or-no question: Do you wish to recall the incumbent? If so, the lieutenant governor would serve as governor for the rest of the ousted executive’s term — unless the recall occurred during the first two years a governor was in office and before the filing deadline for the next statewide election.

In that case, a special election would be held on the same date as the next primary and a candidate receiving a majority of votes would serve out the governor’s term. If no candidate received a majority, the top-two finishers would face each other in a November runoff, with the winner taking over as governor.

Still there?

Proposition 5 has two benefits. It would save taxpayer dollars by consolidating elections and it would enhance the legitimacy and political standing of a replacement governor by ensuring he or she assumed office with at least 50% support.

But there’s still more to be done.

Ending political promiscuity

California makes it way too easy to qualify a gubernatorial recall measure.

Of the 19 states that allow their governor to be booted, California is by far the most permissive. Forcing an election requires signatures reflecting just 12% of the ballots cast in the prior gubernatorial contest. In Newsom’s case, proponents needed just under 1.5 million signatures in a state with more than 22 million voters and nearly 40 million residents.

Not exactly a thundering roar.

The threshold should be higher and the reasons for kicking a governor out of office should be more serious, such as corruption, official malfeasance or conviction for a serious crime. Not just because a governor is a member of the opposite party, or people on the losing end of an election are unhappy with the result.

“The system in its current form offers bad actors an incentive to target an elected official with whom they disagree and to have the official replaced by someone who otherwise would not enjoy the support of a majority of voters,” Josh Newman of Fullerton and Isaac Bryan of Los Angeles said in advocating change. The two Democratic lawmakers authored the constitutional amendment, which was placed on November’s ballot by the Legislature.

If you think overhauling the process is simply about protecting partisan interests, consider: Should Republican Steve Hilton pull off an epic upset and become California’s next governor, is there any doubt a recall effort would be underway before he and Mrs. Hilton even had the chance to start boxing their belongings for the move to Sacramento?

The recall is a vestige of the Progressive-era good-government movement. But the process needs to be revamped to reflect today’s bad-faith political environment.

The Little Hoover Commission, California’s independent oversight agency, has recommended several changes, including raising the signature requirement and prohibiting recalls undertaken during the first 90 days and the last six months of an officeholder’s term.

Elections, it’s said, have consequences. They also have — or should have — end dates and final results that are respected, not re-litigated until the losing side gets its way.

Proposition 5 is a step in the right direction. More should follow.

What else you should be reading

Get smart: Trump’s economic record is working against him in the midterms
The deep dive: Backlash over data centers hits California, and the midterms
The L.A. Times Special:Integrity on the ballot: Election deniers target secretary of state races in key states

Until next time,
mzb
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Steve Cooley is florid-faced and unequivocal as he responds to a question during a public forum at USC last June. Asked about Proposition 66, the initiative to amend California’s three-strikes law on the November ballot, the Los Angeles County district attorney essentially has two things to say: He hates it, and he will work for its defeat.

Then he lays out his case opposing the ponderously titled “Limitations on Three Strikes Law. Sex Crimes. Punishment. Initiative Statute”: Only one sex crime against a child will be affected. It eliminates several crimes that can trigger a third-strike sentence. And because it’s retroactive, thousands of prisoners will have to be resentenced within 180 days of its becoming law. “This initiative is a bad, bad idea,” Cooley says.

Intently scribbling notes just a few feet away is 53-year-old Sam Clauder. At 6-foot-3 and 270 big-bellied pounds, Clauder is dressed in a suit and tie instead of his more typical attire of a blue John Kerry-for-President gimme cap, Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts. Rarely looking up as he writes, Clauder gives no clue that he’s at the forum to scout the opposition or that he wrote the initial draft of the proposition that Cooley is trashing.

If you’d known Clauder years ago, you’d find that hard to believe. In November 1994, Clauder was among the 72% of Californians who voted in favor of the three-strikes law, sending a law-and-order message that defined the decade. The vote reaffirmed the same law that had been passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Pete Wilson eight months earlier, but this version had more teeth. Any attempts to amend the three-strikes law, now that it had been approved as an initiative, would require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature instead of a simple majority.

In 1994, Clauder had done more than vote for three strikes. He had worked as a “ballot access consultant,” coordinating the gathering of petition signatures for statewide initiatives. But three strikes was different. He believed that the law’s passage was essential for public safety, believed it so strongly that in one 10-day period he oversaw the gathering of 12,000 signatures.

During the next two years, however, Clauder began hearing horror stories of people who were being sentenced for 25 years to life in prison for petty crimes. Not only had he personally favored the law, as a consultant he says he had “made money off the backs of these people.” He decided to set things right. In this he is not alone.

From the beginning, the three-strikes law has been shaped by personal stories, some tragic, others epiphanies. Fresno photographer Mike Reynolds helped start the movement after the murder of his 18-year-old daughter. Three strikes was further fueled by public reaction to one of the most publicized crimes in recent California history–the abduction and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas by Richard Allen Davis, a brutal, twice-convicted kidnapper.

This year’s attempt to reform the three-strikes law on its 10th anniversary also is rife with pain and loss and, most of all, a change of heart. Two self-described ragtag volunteer activists worked for years in anonymity to reform it. Polly Klaas’ grandfather has become its powerful advocate. A wealthy Sacramento insurance broker with a son in prison stepped in to personally bankroll it.

All four supported the original three-strikes law. All four have changed their minds.

For Sam Clauder and many others, the official ballot argument in favor of the 1994 law sounded right on the money. “Three strikes keeps career criminals who rape women, molest children and commit murder behind bars where they belong,” it read.

What many voters didn’t recognize, however, was that they also were voting to place a man such as Willie Turner in prison for 25 years to life. His third crime? Attempting to buy a macadamia nut disguised as a $5 rock of cocaine from an undercover cop. They didn’t realize that Rene Landa would receive a third strike for stealing a spare tire, or Johnny Quirino for shoplifting some razor blades, or Scott Benscotter for stealing a pair of sneakers, or Robert Di Blasi for shoplifting $2.69 worth of AA batteries, or Eric Simmons for being in possession of three stolen ceiling fans, or Joey Arthur Fernandez for aiding and abetting the theft of baby formula and Tylenol.

Most of these men have long criminal histories. The petty nature of their third strike sometimes masks the serious nature of their previous crimes. But many also have no record of violence. They are simply society’s natural-born losers–kinetic speed freaks and crackheads, washed-out winos and small-time thieves–Fellini’s freaks, Charles Bukowski’s barflies, junkies and addicts who got their first two strikes by committing burglaries to support their habits, often decades earlier.

Newsweek has called California’s law “the toughest” in the nation. U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens reacted to such sentences by declaring California “the only state in [the union] in which a misdemeanor could receive such a severe sentence.” California’s three-strikes law, in fact, is the only one of 26 three-strikes states that doesn’t require a violent crime conviction to trigger a third strike. The state’s 7,400 third-strikers are more than half the total number of those imprisoned for third strikes in the U.S. Of those Californians, 57% are now serving sentences based on a nonviolent third crime–among them 357 for petty theft and 678 for drug possession. About 35,000 other prisoners have had their sentences doubled for second strikes under another provision of the law.

Getting Proposition 66 on the ballot has been a great victory for Clauder and other reformers–the only one that California’s three-strikes opponents have had in a long, frustrating decade of failed attempts. There’s no guarantee that the initiative will pass: Virtually the entire criminal justice system in California is opposing Proposition 66, and Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer have both signed the official ballot argument against it.

Nevertheless, there are signs that this year could be different. In a Field Poll conducted last month, 69% of likely voters supported Proposition 66, including 60% of Republicans and 59% of conservatives, and 78% said that Schwarzenegger and Lockyer’s opposition would not affect their vote.

Opponents such as L. Douglas Pipes, a Contra Costa County senior deputy district attorney who analyzed the initiative, have warned that it could result in as many as 26,000 second- and third-strikers being resentenced soon after its passage. That situation, he says, could release thousands of prisoners and throw California’s court and corrections systems and county jails into chaos.

A legal opinion commissioned by the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, however, maintains that only third-strikers would be affected. Using Department of Corrections figures, that comes out to about 4,200 inmates who would be eligible for revised sentences.

In 1994, Sam Clauder was a 43-year-old ex-private eye and aspiring producer/writer/director/actor. Smart and hyper-garrulous, he radiated a boyish naivete and a profound sense of right and wrong.

Born in Houston, Clauder was raised in an Assemblies of God Pentecostal sect, “far to the right of Jerry Falwell,” he says. He once stole a piece of gum from a local store and, racked with guilt, immediately returned, showed the clerk the chewed mass inside his mouth and told him he needed to pay for it. His father, a rigid man, was a Houston police officer before moving his family to Orange County and becoming active in the John Birch Society.

At 16, Clauder got “fed up with the hypocrisy of the church” and began experimenting with Hinduism and other religious faiths. In 1970, while a student at a local community college, he began hanging out with Vietnam veterans. Listening to stories of the horrors they had experienced and also committed in war led to his reexamining and then rejecting the conservative political values he’d always known. By 1971 he had become a political activist, volunteering to work on ballot initiatives to save the California coastline and to legalize marijuana. For the next 30 years, as Clauder tells it, he dabbled in the movies, gathered petition signatures and worked in Texas as a licensed private bail bondsman and bounty hunter.

Late in 1994, as Clauder was advising author and activist Jack Herer on an initiative to decriminalize marijuana, Herer began hammering away at him for contributing to the passage of the three-strikes law. Shortly after, Clauder realized that “Jack was right.” No one incident brought about his epiphany, just a cumulative awareness of people’s victimless crimes that he didn’t think should be against the law in the first place. “I was flabbergasted,” he says, “and so angry that I made a promise that I was going to do everything in my power to make up for that error.”

Three years later, Clauder received a visit from Jim Benson, who had heard that Clauder was an experienced hand in the initiative process. Benson asked him how to get a three-strikes reform proposition on the ballot.

Trim and gray-haired, Benson is a slow-talking, soft-spoken native of Ohio who also had supported and voted for the law. A self-described political moderate, he previously had worked for Reform Party presidential candidates John Anderson and Ross Perot. He also served as chair of the Reform Party in Orange County, and was a candidate for a Santa Ana state Assembly seat and a member of the Orange County Democratic Central Committee.

But in the spring of 1998 Benson spoke with some Green Party activists at a Cinco de Mayo festival in Santa Ana who told him about the eyebrow-raising sentences being handed down. “I thought that they surely had to be nuts,” Benson says. Later he told a friend about the encounter. “They’re right,” his friend replied. “I know someone who just received 25-to-life for some marijuana offense.”

“That was not what I had voted for,” Benson says, “and I knew I had to do something about it. I believe strongly in keeping serious criminals who’ve committed repeat serious crimes in prison forever. But I also know what it’s like to be addicted to alcohol and drugs. And I know that with treatment and determination, it’s possible to recover.”

As the vice chairman of Proposition 66’s sponsoring organization, the Orange County-based Citizens Against Violent Crime, Benson is responsible for running the day-to-day campaign. Like Clauder, he’s an unlikely crusader. At 41, he’s a recovering alcoholic who has been sober for 22 years. He started drinking gin at 14 and was downing two fifths a day when he was forced, he says, “to quit or die.” He had attended a small Ohio college for a year, and afterward worked as a limo and taxi driver, auto mechanic, cash register clerk and dealer of baseball cards and rare coins.

At their first meeting, Benson and Clauder talked an entire morning about what it would take to get an initiative on the ballot–about half a million dollars and at least several million more to run a statewide campaign against what surely would be powerful opposition from conservative politicians, their liberal counterparts worried about being labeled “soft on crime,” and the powerful special interests within what amounts to a statewide criminal justice industry.

In the fall of 1999, Clauder read a three-strikes commentary in the Los Angeles Times written by Polly Klaas’ grandfather, Joe Klaas. Clauder got in touch with Klaas, a now-retired 84-year-old resident of Pebble Beach, and he agreed to become the reform effort’s public face and chief spokesman.

Klaas has traveled thousands of miles through the state in his ’85 Buick Regal, trying to get the three-strikes law amended. Now he says he’s “too old to drive eight hours a day.” Instead he spends at least 20 hours a week at his computer or on the phone, speaking almost daily with leaders of the reform effort.

A former stringer for the Associated Press who also worked as a talk-radio host and station manager, Klaas had campaigned for the passage of three strikes alongside his son and Polly’s father, Marc Klaas. But then he began looking into the initiative’s fine print with a cooler eye.

In late February 1994, Joe Klaas talked to a reporter in Petaluma who told him about some of the more draconian provisions of the law. Then he decided to read the proposal and check it against a California law book. As he did, he realized that not only did it not take a violent crime to trigger a third strike, but that any one of California’s 500-plus felonies could trigger the sentence.

Klaas then spoke with someone in the legislative analyst’s office who explained that the bill also included minor misdemeanors that could be “enhanced” to felonies and fall under the law. Klaas was horrified. “This isn’t what everybody thinks it is,” he thought. “Nobody’s ever mentioning these nonviolent crimes.” Klaas’ realization came too late to make much difference, but soon after, Joe and Marc Klaas opposed the version of the law on the ballot and Joe became its fiercest critic both during the campaign and after it was approved.

It might seem incongruous that a man who had lost his granddaughter to a demented murderer would become an implacable foe of three strikes. But only if you’d never met Joe Klaas, an idealist from a different time. At the outbreak of World War II in Europe, he quit the University of Washington, joined England’s Royal Air Force and fought as a Spitfire pilot. After joining the U.S. forces, he was shot down over North Africa and spent the rest of the war as a POW, seeing, he says, “Allied prisoners gunned down not 50 feet” from him.

But there was more than that. For many years he had volunteered at San Quentin, Soledad and Vacaville prisons to coordinate 12-step recovery programs for inmates. (He was forced to stop because of the warped convict logic that held Polly responsible for the passage of three strikes. If he continued volunteering, prison officials told him, he’d be a marked man.)

Just how strongly Klaas opposed three strikes was visible one morning in 2000 as he spoke to the California Assembly’s Public Safety Committee. “I want to state up front that the murder, rape and kidnapping of my granddaughter, Polly Klaas, was exploited by this ‘three-strikes’ bill–a bill which didn’t stand a chance in hell of passing before Polly’s killing,” Klaas said.

“As a former prisoner of the Nazis,” he continued, “I can say that taking 25 years of somebody’s life for committing a nonviolent crime is violence almost on the level with murder. [Sentencing someone] to 25-to-life because he made a false application for a real estate loan, or for taking aspirin out of a bottle and putting the bottle back on the shelf in a drugstore–now that is violence.”

Despite Klaas’ passion, his son Marc has become a staunch opponent of Proposition 66, believing, as he recently told the Sacramento Bee, that “certain people are hard-wired for crime” and need to be locked up for decades, even if their third strike is a petty crime, so that they don’t “revictimize.” Their rift is so painful that Joe Klaas refuses to talk about it, other than to say, “We can’t be in the same town together because he’s so mad at me for not switching with him against [Proposition 66].”

Geri Silva, a founding member and former state chair of Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes, has called Klaas’ emergence in the reform struggle significant: “Joe Klaas wasn’t just some guy off the street. He came from the other side. He could have been out there talking about how if we’d had this three-strikes law earlier, his granddaughter would still be alive. Instead he was aligning himself with us. And that was major.”

In 2003, Benson and Joe Klaas began a fundraising drive, sending out letters and e-mails signed by Klaas and actor/activist Ed Asner. Jerry Keenan, a wealthy owner of a Sacramento auto insurance firm who previously had made a token contribution, got a letter and decided to essentially bankroll the initiative.

“I went numb,” Benson says. “It was so entirely unexpected. I thought, maybe we can actually do this thing.” Keenan’s check was for $300,000, a down payment on the $1.6 million he has contributed so far. Benson, who had been aiming to get the initiative on the ballot in 2006, turned his sights on 2004.

Keenan and his wife, Cynthia, had voted for the three-strikes law. But “the more we learned about how it was being misused,” Keenan says, “the more we became determined to modify the law.” They learned about it in a very personal way.

One night in 1999, the Keenans’ then-21-year-old son, Richard, smoked some grass, drank beer with his friends and climbed into his gold Lexus with four of them. His driver’s license had been suspended after he’d been caught with a small amount of marijuana in his car, but Richard, as his lawyers tell it, was unaware that the suspension had gone into effect. He cranked up the Lexus to about 20 miles above the 55 mph speed limit on an undulating back road, and the Lexus flipped over. Two of his passengers–both 19 years old–died.

Richard Keenan pleaded guilty to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter, plus one count of causing great bodily injury, and received an eight-year prison sentence in 2000. “Great bodily injury” is a “strikable” offense, and should Keenan commit a second felony, he could receive a second strike and his sentence would be doubled.

“When Richard was linked to three strikes,” Jerry Keenan says, “it opened my eyes. Something was horribly wrong if a three-strikes law could affect someone like Richard.” A precise, soft-spoken man, Keenan has reluctantly put himself in the public limelight.

Perhaps not coincidentally, about the time that Keenan helped fund the initiative, a new provision was written into the proposed proposition. If great bodily injury happened accidentally, it read, without the intent to commit harm, the conviction would not count as a strike.

The addition of the provision has led to accusations that Jerry Keenan is trying to purchase a law, and the family of one of his son’s victims has publicly objected.

Buying legislation, however, is what California initiatives have been about for decades. At the turn of the 20th century, the state’s good-government Progressives sought to take power away from the robber barons and railroad titans and place it in the hands of the people. But that experiment in democracy has morphed into a multimillion-dollar industry where campaign consulting firms can make as much as $7 million spearheading a single initiative.

In 1994, when Mike Reynolds’ three-strikes campaign was desperate for cash, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. stepped in to contribute $101,000. The National Rifle Assn. contributed at least $90,000 and U.S. senatorial candidate Michael Huffington donated $350,000. That was $541,000 out of the campaign’s $1.6 million in total spending–key portions of it coming at a time when Reynolds’ campaign was barely afloat. At the time, voters were concerned about gun control. Three strikes enabled the NRA to change the public conversation from gun control to its theme of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” and Huffington to prove his law-and-order bona fides in a law-and-order year. (He lost.)

California’s three-strikes law also was very good for the prison guards’ union. Increasing numbers of prisoners held for vastly longer periods of time require more guards, new prisons and lucrative overtime pay. The guards’ union “and others came in and bought the three-strikes law by donating money that enabled it to pass,” Keenan says. “I’m not trying to buy a new law, just modify the current one.”

Steve Cooley says he realizes the law has been applied unfairly, and he blames his predecessor and other prosecutors who used it to pump up their “get-tough” credentials. “Disproportional, bizarre, unusual and draconian” are some of the adjectives Cooley uses to describe the three-strikes policy of former L.A. Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti.

“His policy was to prosecute petty crimes as three strikes,” Cooley says at the USC forum. “Mine has been exactly the opposite: You cannot pursue ‘got ya’ prosecutions and maintain a credible criminal justice system.”

Whether the state is maintaining a credible justice system, however, is a larger question than three-strikes reform.

The chairman of an investigative panel appointed by the governor recently described the state’s corrections department management as “deficient and dysfunctional.” The panel’s report cited “too much political interference, too much union control and too little management courage, accountability and transparency.” In April, the Department of Corrections declared a state of emergency for five prisons due to overcrowding–despite a $5.8 billion annual corrections budget and the building of 21 new prisons during the last two decades at a cost of more than $4 billion. A judge is now threatening to place the adult prison system under federal receivership.

Nevertheless, Gov. Schwarzenegger is taking a leading role in opposing the initiative. Joe Klaas finds this “amazing” given that it is “something [that] could save so much money by no longer putting petty criminals behind bars for 25 years to life.”

According to a report by the state legislative analyst’s office, Proposition 66’s passage would, in fact, result in state “prison operations savings of potentially several tens of millions of dollars in the first couple of years, growing to as much as several hundred millions in ongoing savings when the full impact of the measure is realized in about a decade.” In addition, the report states, “The lower prison population resulting from this measure would potentially result in capital outlay savings . . . associated with prison construction and renovations.” State and local costs for the courts and county jails would increase, however.

Cooley’s opposition is equally surprising. But he’s a veteran of 32 years as a prosecutor and is a member in good standing of the state’s criminal justice industry, with its $17.5 billion annual budget and the political juice to literally dictate crime and punishment policy.

He doesn’t see the proposition as a remedy for the three-strikes excesses of which he accuses Garcetti, or other excesses across the state. He would instead get the California District Attorneys Assn., which is fiercely battling the initiative, to support a three-strikes reform bill in the state Legislature. But getting a two-thirds vote to soften the controversial hard-line law is unlikely. Why would district attorneys want to give up a sledgehammer used to intimidate defendants into accepting harsh plea bargains? Cooley is his own man, but he’s no maverick.

After the forum, Clauder’s appraisal of Cooley’s position is that he’s been “doing a good job implementing a bad law.” And the three-strikes policy of Cooley’s office has, in fact, not been much different in its bare-bones essentials than the reform initiative he is now vehemently opposing.

Before his election in 2000, Cooley declared, “If the potential third strike is a ‘violent or serious’ felony, the case should be . . . pursued as a third strike. If it is not a ‘violent or serious’ felony, the case . . . should not be pursued as a third strike.” Cooley proved true to his word. Mirroring a statewide trend, third-strike convictions in L.A. County dropped from 526 in the peak year of 1997 to 113 in 2003 under Cooley.

So why his blanket opposition? One reason, Clauder suggests, is that “Cooley’s present policy is Cooley’s policy, he has control over it, it’s his decision to use it or not. He won’t have that power if Proposition 66 passes.” Cooley says he simply thinks the initiative is bad, citing one provision that would eliminate a district attorney’s ability to get multiple strike convictions in the same proceeding.

In any case, given the numerous failed legislative attempts to reform mandatory minimum sentences such as three strikes in California or the Rockefeller drug laws in New York, Clauder probably has it right: “You can’t rely on politicians to correct the law. You have to correct it by initiative. Only then will policy follow.”

“The phone is ringing off the wall,” Clauder says, and he is “breathing fire,” fielding calls from people who, like him, are unhappy that the final version of Proposition 66 doesn’t apply retroactively to second-strikers. He’s still actively supporting the proposition, but he has now formed his own organization, “Yes on 66.” Its major mission will be to influence the debate so that when Proposition 66 is adjudicated–should it pass–a judge might rule that including second-strikers was the voters’ intent.

Jim Benson, meanwhile, is working with Joe Klaas on the campaign. So far, the proposition’s supporters include the California Federation of Labor and the California State Employees Assn. Newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News and San Diego Union-Tribune have published editorials in favor of it.

In August, Klaas had what he thought was a heart attack during a meeting in Monterey. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, and he is now attributing it to work “overload.” “I’m 84, and everybody I knew who should be 84 is dead,” he says.

Jerry Keenan says he is only “among the people who have financed” a new organization called “Fix Three Strikes, Yes on 66,” designed to pull together several organizations supporting the proposition. “Fix Three Strikes” also is discussing raising several million dollars–in addition to the $1.6 million that Keenan already has donated–to buy television ads when the campaign reaches its apex in the fall. They’ve hired the top-gun political consulting and advertising firm Zimmerman and Markman–which produced a number of anti-Bush television commercials for MoveOn.org–to create the ads.

Jerry and Cynthia Keenan visit their son every weekend at the minimum-security Folsom prison ranch, a vast improvement from the three years of hard time he served. “The other side fought against Richard serving his time at the ranch, but he’s doing much better now,” Keenan says.

As for the 57% of prisoners whose third strike was for a nonviolent crime, they wait for the voters of California to decide whether or not they’ll be spending the rest of their lives in prison.

Researcher Jessica Gelt contributed to this story.

Aug. 30 (UPI) — Icelandic voters rejected restarting talks about the Nordic island nation joining the European Union.

Referendum results announced Sunday showed that 53% of people voted against the talks while 47% said yes. Overall, 68,135 were cast with 82.4% voter turnout.

Iceland had discussed joining the bloc in 2013 shortly after a banking collapse in the country and the global economic crisis. Talks ended because Icelanders were concerned about keeping sovereign control over fisheries, the country’s top export.

Iceland would not have become an EU member automatically if voters had approved the talks. The country’s representatives would have had to negotiate with Brussels, and Icelandic voters would have had to approve EU membership in a second referendum.

“This is a good day,” Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir said Saturday. “We have now reached the point where this is in the hands of the nation. Either we enter these negotiations, seek a good agreement and then see what happens, or we put the discussion about the European Union aside, at least for the time being.”

Frostadóttir last month said on the British podcast, The Rest is Politics, that Iceland currently follows 75% of EU rules.

“Joining it is not going to sink the country and joining it is also not fundamentally going to change every aspect of Icelandic, you know, economy,” she said at the time.

However, there was concern that the other 27 countries in the EU would drown out Iceland and the country would have to change its currency to the euro from the króna.

Reporting from ORANGE CITY, Iowa — They met decades ago, when they were first married, and the three sisters-in-law still gather each week at the Dutch Bakery to catch up amid the sweet smell of flour and sugar floating through the air.

Despite the cozy setting here on the state’s western edge, they can feel the country beneath their feet slipping away, eroding under the threats of immorality and terrorism.

“I never thought we would live in so much fear,” said Joanne Niezen, as her coffee sat cooling before her in a Styrofoam cup.

There’s fear on the other side of the state as well, though for different reasons.

In the college town of Iowa City, with its hip music scene and pita restaurant advertising “fresh thinking and healthy eating,” Veronica Tessler worries about the harsh rhetoric directed at immigrants and the economic inequality that lingers years after the Great Recession.

“I really fear for our country,” said Tessler, who left her job at a foreign policy foundation to open a frozen yogurt shop near the University of Iowa campus.

A sense of dread is about the only thing that unites Orange City, a bastion of religious conservatism, and Iowa City, known for its blue-sky liberalism. Together they bookend not only the state’s geography but its political spectrum as Iowa prepares to kick off the presidential selection process Monday night with its closely watched caucuses.

The two communities, located in the most lopsidedly partisan counties in the state, reflect the vast political chasm here and across the country, a divide that President Obama was unable to heal and which may prove insurmountable for whomever takes his place.

“Republicans see an America where the government is too big at home and too feeble abroad. Democrats see an America where the economy is out of whack,” said David Nagle, a Democratic attorney who used to represent Iowa City and surrounding Johnson County in Congress. “It’s like two trains in the night, passing in opposite directions.”

But the division goes far beyond a profound disagreement on issues. While partisan tensions are nothing new, they have deepened and intensified during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the parties have splintered along the lines of age, race and culture. The result is a separation of America into mutually estranged and suspicious tribes.

Today, as conversations at opposite poles of Iowa show, voters on each side often get their news from different sources, worry about different problems and view political adversaries with mistrust and even contempt. One voter’s vision for America is nothing less than another’s nightmare; it’s common to hear candidates of the opposing party described as “concerning” or “scary” or “crazy.”

In 2014, a major study released by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that more than one-third of Republicans and just over a quarter of Democrats — especially those most engaged in politics — go as far seeing the other party as a “threat to the nation’s well-being.”

In Johnson County, known both affectionately and derisively as the “People’s Republic,” life in Iowa City revolves around the university, with young people constantly hustling between classes or hunkered down in coffee shops with headphones and homework.

Obama is largely viewed with gratitude or, at worst, disappointment for failing to deliver an even more liberal agenda.

The city’s leanings are evident at the Hamburg Inn, where jars labeled with the names of presidential candidates are lined up in the window. Diners drop in coffee beans to show their preferences; some of the Republican jars are nearly empty, while a second container was added for Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist, because the first overflowed.

Tessler, 30, is volunteering with the Sanders campaign, and she’s been alarmed by what she hears coming from the mouths of Republican contenders.

In response to Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., she helped make T-shirts to protest his Iowa City visit last Wednesday. “I stand with my Muslim neighbors,” they read.

She doesn’t dismiss the threat of terrorism — in fact, she was visiting family near San Bernardino on the day of the attack there that killed 14 people in December. But she’s also the daughter of a Soviet Jew who escaped to Los Angeles in 1973, and she thinks Republicans are scapegoating immigrants and refugees.

“They are not American ideals,” she said.

For many in Iowa City, issues like economic inequality and student debt feel most urgent, not fears of terrorist attack.

“ISIS could do something terrible anywhere,” said Chuck Michaelson, 61, a piano instructor who lives in nearby Coralville, using an acronym for the militant group Islamic State. He paused while flipping through a biography of writer Joan Didion at a bookstore near campus. “But the likelihood of it being personally affecting is slim. It’s like being struck by lightning.”

About 300 miles away in Orange City, across a vast expanse of fertile farmland, the fears of terrorism seem more immediate despite the area’s isolation and outward serenity.

“The whole thing of ISIS scares me,” said Bob Hulstein, 64, who publishes the Orange City newspaper and owns a printing business with his brother-in-law, Dave Pluim, 51.

After attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Hulstein said, “I’m afraid we’re going to see that closer and closer. I guess I want that stopped before it comes to my front door.”

Pluim agreed. “In fact, it would be real easy to do something horrible in Orange City,” he said. “Come to a high school basketball game.”

Settled largely by Dutch immigrants, this region proudly promotes its heritage; Orange City, the seat of Sioux County, was named after a Dutch prince, and decorative windmills, wooden shoes and tulip-themed businesses abound.

The area was hardly touched by the Great Recession — strong commodity prices and a boom in farm values helped see to that — and now there is something close to full employment. “Help wanted” signs are everywhere: at the florist, the bakery, restaurants, the post office.

So it is not economics that drives the anxiety here so much as concerns about the country’s place in the world.

“Are we willing to back our allies?” said Tony Vande Brake, 25, a financial advisor and newly elected member of the Orange City Council. “Are we willing to stand behind our military prowess, show strength if we had to?”

Back at the Dutch Bakery, Niezen and her sisters-in-law describe the election as a chance to reclaim the moral authority and military strength that, in their opinion, has withered under Obama and fueled a rise in Islamic extremism.

“He’s taken our military way down,” said Niezen, who is in her 70s. “When they were cutting our people’s heads off, he should have gotten in there right then.”

Leona Noteboom, an 83-year-old retiree, agreed. “I don’t trust him for taking care of my country,” she said.

“We’re just losing all our Christian values,” piped in Carol Noteboom, 74, who lives on a nearby farm.

Amid all the anxieties, there were glimmers of optimism.

Morgan Brittain, a political science student, crosses the ideological fault line every time he travels from his family’s home in Winterset, a small town outside Des Moines, to school in Iowa City. When he last got his hair cut back home, the woman holding the shears confided she planned to support Trump.

“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, Heidi, you’re killing me,’” Brittain said.

At the barbershop close to campus, everyone seems bewildered by Trump’s popularity.

Asked if any candidate could bridge the divide, Brittain laughed and said, “I’m going to say absolutely, anybody can unify us.”

But he’s just 22, Brittain said, and still an idealist.

Twitter: @ChrisMegerian

Twitter: @markzbarabak

Megerian reported from Iowa City and Barabak from Orange City.

Hoy: Léa esta historia en español

For more, go to latimes.com/politics.

ALSO:

Everything you need to know about the Iowa caucus and why it matters

How Martin O’Malley could decide who wins the Democratic caucuses in Iowa

Republican rivals take advantage of Trump’s absence in Iowa presidential debate

Trump makes a big show of skipping GOP debate and staging benefit for veterans

If you want proof of the widening chasm between the Trump administration and Latinos, look no further than California state Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares and White House spokesperson Lauren Bis’ reaction to the same anti-Latino image.

Posted on the White House’s social media accounts this week, it’s a take on the logo for the beloved 1990s PBS cartoon “The Magic School Bus.” Same cheery font, same yellow bus blasting through the cosmos, same depiction of wacky teacher Ms. Frizzle and her cute chameleon sidekick Liz. But instead of a bunch of happy kids off to another adventure, the passengers are five handcuffed, brown-skinned, mustachioed men looking downward and dejected, all identical save for the colors of their T-shirts.

Bracketing this soulless scene are the words “The Magic Deportation Bus” — get it? Har har! The White House released the illustration to accompany an Aug. 24 Fox News headline gushing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had arrested a “jaw-dropping number” of undocumented immigrants in the D.C. area over the last two weeks.

The post was the latest in a flood of racist, anti-immigrant images that the Trump administration has shared. But this one was so bad that it even offended Martinez Valladares, a Republican whose district stretches from the Grapevine to Victorville.

“Enforcing immigration law and securing the border isn’t anti-Latino. But this image wasn’t necessary or helpful,” she told me. “We can strongly support border security while expecting our government to communicate those policies without reducing a community to a stereotype. Being tough on illegal immigration doesn’t require turning Latinos into a caricature.”

Suzette Martinez Valladares, then a Republican assembly member and now a state senator, is pictured in 2022.

(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

Martinez Valladares isn’t any random Trump supporter. She’s co-chair of the California Hispanic Caucus, which represents the state’s GOP Latino legislators and was founded after a record number of them — nine — were elected in 2024. The group’s creation reflected the tsunami of Latino support for Trump that helped sweep him into the Oval Office for a second round and upended political thinking about America’s largest minority.

Such a critique from a politician of Martinez Valladares’ stature should set off fire alarms in the Oval Office as the midterms loom and the GOP needs Trump’s Latino supporters to hold the party line, right?

Nope!

When I asked the White House whether the “Magic Deportation Bus” was anti-Latino, spokesperson Bis whined in a statement that my query was “more race baiting by the media who are just mad the White House’s social media content is driving conversations with the American people about deporting illegal aliens. Is the L.A. Times really suggesting there has never been a deportation flight of just Guatemalans?”

Who’s doing the race baiting?

Nothing in the gross graphic suggests that Guatemala is the final destination for Migra Ms. Frizzle and her detainees. The men’s appearance is the only indication that they’re Latino — just the type of racial profiling that Trump’s immigration goons swear they don’t engage in, despite ample video and audio evidence to the contrary. While Latinos have long made up the majority of deportees, to portray the bus passengers as interchangeable clones who “look” Latino is as dehumanizing as you can get — but that’s par for MAGA.

Not only that, but the Fox News story that went with the icky illo said that ICE’s D.C. operation nabbed Jamaicans, Hondurans and Salvadorans, in addition to Guatemalans.

Trump and his minions famously never apologize, doubling down on their pendejadas when confronted with facts. Well, if Republicans wants any chance of holding on to Congress in the midterms and winning other key races, they need to beg Latinos for forgiveness, now that Trump has upended the lives of brown-skinned people, immigrants and U.S.-born alike.

A 1949 photo of undocumented immigrants boarding a bus for deportation to Mexico.

(Los Angeles Times)

Nearly half of Latinos voted for Trump two years ago, the best result ever for a Republican presidential candidate. Poll after poll released this year, each more dire for Trump than the last, show that those days are as distant a memory as affordable groceries. His approval ratings — and GOP hopes for the midterms — will continue to wither until he spends more time fixing the stagnant economy, ending the quagmire in Iran and stopping the deportation deluge.

To maintain his grip on power, Trump needs to inspire Latinos to stand by him, vote for his agenda and urge others to follow along. Instead, he faces frustrated supporters like David Hernandez, founder and chair of the Los Angeles County Hispanic Republican Club and host of the club’s weekly talk radio show.

Hernandez said he’s seen the perils of “unchecked” immigration at overcrowded hospitals and clinics. He also feels that in the race for California governor, Republican Steve Hilton’s attacks on Democrat Xavier Becerra’s alleged mishandling of migrant children while Health and Human Services secretary for the Biden administration will stay on the “front burner.”

The “Magic Deportation Bus” does nothing to highlight these issues, Hernandez said, describing it as “an immature cartoon failing to make any valid point.” Worse, the Navy veteran argues, it suggests that immigration agents plan to snatch children from schools.

“There is nothing funny about the issue,” Hernandez added, “that warrants this type of frivolous portrayal.”

I ran Hernandez’s and Martinez Valladares’ thoughts by Bis, noting their GOP bona fides without identifying them by name.

“Take a ride on The Magic School Bus to your home country!” the White House spokesperson began. Only her heart knows whether the line was a callback to the offending social media post or a not-nice suggestion that I self-deport to wherever the hell she thinks I was born (I’m a native Anaheimer, by the way).

Bis went on to repeat her previous line that the Trump administration is just seeking to “innovate” conversations with Americans and that “our efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens are no exception to this.”

Way to listen to the concerns of the front-line soldiers your boss so desperately needs this November, Lauren!

Spending more time crafting weak-salsa anti-Latino jokes than improving the lives of Latinos — that’s the racist swamp the president and his team happily fester in.

But there’s one thing their putrid parody of “The Magic School Bus” got right.

Ms. Frizzle often shrank her steel steed and its occupants to microscopic sizes so they could explore places they’d never seen. That sure sounds like the historic collapse that Trump is experiencing with Latinos, no?

To use Ms. Frizzle’s catchphrase: Bus, do your stuff.

Barring some extraordinary event — a health emergency, a career-ending scandal, a killer asteroid destroying all life on earth — Xavier Becerra will be the next governor of California.

That’s not partiality or wish casting on the part of your friendly political columnist. The fact is Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans in California, in both registration and inclination.

The GOP brand has been political poison in this Tahoe-blue bastion for decades now. But under Donald Trump, it’s grown even more toxic. His endorsement, which the president bestowed upon Republican Steve Hilton mid-primary, is the political equivalent of sarin; like the deadly nerve agent, it can kill on contact.

Still, give credit where due.

The gregarious and media-savvy Hilton has been waging an energetic and effervescent run for governor, with multiple appearances a day and frequent updates to his cheeky social media accounts.

“He’s going to San Francisco” — into the bowels of the liberal beast — “he’s going into schools, talking to labor groups,” said Hector Barajas, a campaign spokesman. “He’ll go everywhere.”

Becerra not so much.

The Democrat has appeared here and there since finishing first in the June 2 primary, securing one of two slots in November’s runoff. He’s offered a few modest proposals, including a plan to deliver two free hours of electricity a day to low-income households and a call for stiffer regulation of artificial intelligence.

A sprint vs. a stroll

That said, if Hilton is flat-out running for a job he stands virtually no chance of winning, Becerra is embarked on more of a leisurely stroll toward his all-but-certain perch in Sacramento.

That’s not a terrible thing at this midsummer stage of the race. Once, in the blessed era before the 24/7 news cycle and the omnipresence of social media, there was a lull in the months after the primary, with campaign activities picking back up around Labor Day.

On Tuesday, during a walking tour of Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood, Becerra pushed back on the notion he was taking his election — and California voters — for granted. “If I were trying to coast,” he told reporters, “I’d be out on the coast right now instead of here with you all.”

Becerra’s pace aside, the days between now and the Nov. 3 election offer him plenty of time to spell out what, exactly, he has to offer his home state and how, in a broad sense, he plans to tackle one of the highest profile, most vexing jobs in all of American politics.

At least one of those days should include a face-to-face debate between Hilton and Becerra. The two shared a stage multiple times during the primary season. They have not appeared together since.

More than a half-dozen news organizations have offered to host the gubernatorial rivals in a one-on-one session. Several other groups have proposed forums that would allow them to discuss their differences together in person.

Barajas, the spokesman for Hilton’s campaign, said the Republican hopeful has agreed to each and every invitation.

“He’s got absolutely no problem” appearing anytime or anywhere, Barajas said. “He will go to East L.A.. He will go to South-Central. He will go into the heart of the Central Valley. It doesn’t matter to him.”

That’s no surprise.

When a candidate is an underdog, like Hilton, they’ll typically show up at the opening of an envelope if it means appearing before a crowd. Conversely, a candidate on a seeming glide path to election, like Becerra, will often balk at giving their opponent the exposure afforded by a debate, much less risk harming themselves with a bad performance.

The Democratic front-runner said Tuesday that “there will be debates,” though he didn’t say where or when.

An obligation to voters

There’s a lot of virtue signaling that surrounds the notion of candidate debates.

Far from a high-minded discussion of policy differences, they often devolve into a stale recitation of talking points and pre-scripted zingers. After a while, debates can grow redundant and, frankly, boring as contestants repeat well-worn phrases and replow deeply furrowed ground. Such was the case by the time California’s gubernatorial hopefuls met for their sixth televised debate in the spring.

Most voters — many of whom profess to care oh-so-deeply about issues and matters of great import — don’t even bother tuning in. If they found debates that captivating, shows such as the “PBS NewsHour” would routinely outdraw the latest season of “Love Island USA.”

No matter.

There is an audience, however limited, for debates. Even if they don’t bother watching, many voters read about the encounters afterward, catch snippets online, or glean useful insights from the extensive coverage that follows.

Above all, a willingness to debate is a sign of respect — for voters as well as the political process the candidates are a part of. Minimizing direct confrontation with Hilton may play to Becerra’s inherently cautious nature. It also makes sense from a purely strategic standpoint.

But it doesn’t serve the people of California, or give voters their due. This is a campaign for governor. Not a coronation.

Becerra owes California, and Hilton, the chance to take the candidates’ measure side by side before their contest is over. The sooner Becerra commits to a time and place, the better.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Trump turns to containing the fallout from setbacks in Iran
The deep dive: War was supposed to crush Iran’s ‘Axis of Resistance.’ Instead, it’s bloodied but unbroken
The L.A. Times Special: Xavier Becerra won’t deliver the home runs — or strikeouts — racked up by Newsom, Schwarzenegger

Until next time,
mzb
—
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California voters are more inclined to back progressives running for office than mainstream Democrats, a new poll found, though a marked generational divide separates those who favor each camp.

Registered Democratic voters over 65 were overwhelmingly more inclined to support a candidate identified as a mainstream Democrat, whereas more voters under 40 favored those more aligned with the party’s left wing, including democratic socialists.

The results, from a new poll conducted by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times, illustrate the highly visible midterm-season debates unfolding within the Democratic Party over age, ideology and the party’s future.

“There’s particular frustration among the younger voting population,” said IGS poll director Mark DiCamillo. “Their views of mainstream Democrats are not that positive, and that’s a long-term problem, I think, for the Democratic Party.”

The poll asked voters about how they perceived candidates described as a progressive, democratic socialist, mainstream Democrat, Republican and MAGA supporter. Voters were asked whether each label made them more inclined or less inclined to back a given candidate, or if they believed there was not much difference or had no opinion.

Among all California voters, a candidate described as “progressive” drew the broadest support — besting both mainstream Democrats and Republicans, as well as democratic socialists and members of President Trump’s MAGA movement. At 40%, support for progressive candidates registered just two percentage points above support for democratic socialists and within the poll’s margin of error, though fewer people felt negatively toward progressives than democratic socialists.

Among registered Democrats, the survey found 60% said they would be inclined to support a candidate identified as progressive; 58% felt the same when asked about a democratic socialist and 48% about a mainstream party member.

The polling offers a glimpse into how California voters feel about democratic socialism, the brand of liberal politics popularized by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).

The views among all California voters were split, with 38% saying they would be more inclined to support a candidate labeled as a democratic socialist and 38% saying they would be less inclined. That makes the concept both more polarizing and more popular than the idea of a mainstream Democrat.

“To us, it’s honestly an incredibly good thing to hear that by and large, California voters see democratic socialism as a preferable option,” said Misha Kesselman, who leads membership coordination at the California Democratic Socialists of America.

“Being only two percent behind a progressive Democrat is the perfect place for us to be and for our organization to organize from,” Kesselman added. “I don’t see this as our ceiling; this is a great floor for us to start running from.”

Notably, more voters, 36%, said they were less inclined to support a mainstream Democrat than those who said they’d be more inclined, 29%. Twenty-seven percent showed indifference, however, possibly demonstrating that most voters would be fine supporting them in a general election, said Christian Grose, a political science professor at the University of Southern California.

The results could reflect a shift in labeling as much as in politics, Grose said, noting that most California Democrats now refer to themselves as progressive, a term that was not as popular 20 years ago, regardless of policy differences.

“Progressive Democrat in California has really in some ways become a mainstream Democrat, and then ‘mainstream’ is often associated with Washington,” Grose said, referring to the more moderate party establishment.

As the two parties compete for control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, the rise of democratic socialist ideas within the Democratic party has set off a debate among left-leaning leaders and voters about how best to counter Trump’s cultural dominance, appeal to disillusioned voters and create a winning presidential strategy for 2028.

The split does not fully fall along generational lines, but it often overlaps with the growing push by some younger candidates to oust veteran lawmakers, a debate over experience and seniority versus fresh blood.

Republicans have used the phenomenon as a key line of attack, as Trump and others have labeled Democrats as communists and extremists. In recent weeks, Trump argued that Democrats want to “destroy the traditional American way of life.”

“Sadly, young people have not been taught the truth about socialism and communism. It’s a dangerous road, and this is one of our efforts to make sure people know that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Saturday on Fox News, after launching a website last week dedicated to the idea that socialism and communism have failed.

Meanwhile, many establishment Democrats fear that a far-left candidate would be unable to win a general presidential election and worry a swing in that direction could jeopardize the party’s chances in 2028. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he does not support the Democratic Socialists of America agenda, further underscoring internal divisions.

Democratic socialism generally centers on an anti-capitalist agenda, including higher taxes for the wealthy and universal healthcare. Many progressive candidates support policy ideas backed by socialists but do not identify themselves as such.

A handful of high-profile progressive primary wins against Democrats backed by the establishment has supercharged the conversation in recent weeks, including this month in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, where progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated a moderate opponent.

But progressives have lost elsewhere, including in Wisconsin, where democratic socialist Francesca Hong last week was defeated in the gubernatorial primary by David Crowley, the more moderate Milwaukee County executive.

California was not host to that type of showdown this year, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra, though progressive by national standards, was viewed by many left-leaning voters as a safer or more moderate primary choice. He faces Republican Steve Hilton in November.

In Los Angeles, however, the mayor’s race between incumbent Democrat Karen Bass and democratic socialist Nithya Raman is set to draw national attention. A handful of progressive candidates also advanced in House races, including Randy Villegas, who is challenging Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford); Mai Vang, challenging Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento); and Angela Gonzales-Torres, challenging Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles). Vang identifies as a democratic socialist.

The new polling also showed a generational divide among Republican voters: A higher share of older voters than younger said they would be more inclined to back a MAGA supporter, though all ages favored the Republican category over MAGA.

Seventy percent of GOP voters said a Republican label would make them more inclined to support a candidate, and 46% said the same of a MAGA label. Sixteen percent said they would be less inclined to vote for a candidate with a MAGA label and 29% said it didn’t make much difference.

Among California voters who eschew both the Democratic and Republican parties, either registered as no party preference or with other parties, a progressive candidate drew the most favorable reaction, but they also showed more support for a democratic socialist than a mainstream Democrat.

Those voters were not positively inclined toward right-leaning candidates, with 15% responding favorably to Republicans and 7% to MAGA.

In California, Democrats account for nearly 45% of all registered voters, compared to 25% who are Republican and almost 23% who don’t belong to either party, according the California Secretary of State’s office.

Whether voters’ shifting preferences for the progressive or democratic socialist labels translate into any different policy action from those who are elected is an open question, Grose said.

“The labels are changing things… but it’s not clear yet if it’s changing the actual ideology of voters and elected officials,” Grose said. “What the elected officials do in office who are Democrats, that remains to be seen.”

The Berkeley IGS/Times poll findings are based on an online survey in English and Spanish of 4,207 California registered voters from Aug. 3-9. The results are estimated to have a margin of error of about 2.5 percentage points in either direction in the likely voter sample, and larger numbers for subgroups.

Though I don’t regularly attend Mass, I fondly remember the two years in high school when I prepared for the sacrament of Communion.

In the basement of St. Boniface Church in Anaheim on weekday afternoons and weekend mornings in the mid-1990s, my sister, about 20 other teenagers and I learned about the tenets of our faith.

We were inculcated with the importance of charity, love toward all, good works and humility, and urged to carry those virtues into adulthood. I didn’t agree with everything our lay teachers espoused — why abortion should be outlawed, why necking was bad, why only men could become priests — but I learned enough important moral lessons that I still proudly call myself Catholic.

Confirmation is meant to bring recipients closer to God and “imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark,” according to the Vatican’s official guide to its doctrine. What especially stayed with my classmates and me was, well, us.

We were white, Filipino, Vietnamese and Latino, children of working-class parents and equals in the eyes of God. Church fairs were as likely to serve pancit and spring rolls as hamburgers and tacos. When we finally received confirmation at a special Mass at St. Boniface attended by then-Bishop Norman McFarland, we exemplified not just the future of the church but also the promise of a better tomorrow for the United States.

Our parish lived and practiced American Catholicism’s long tradition of welcoming the stranger, the outcast, the refugee — following the example and words of the Gospel we read every Sunday. But even as we committed ourselves to the path of Christ, politicians in California waged a war against illegal immigrants and anything that suggested diversity — a xenophobia that would culminate decades later with President Trump’s election.

Trump is a walking manifestation of the seven deadly sins, to the point that he has depicted himself as Jesus and a pope on social media. Nevertheless, a majority of Catholics — thankfully no one in my immediate family — voted for him in each of his three presidential elections, with support topping out at 55% in 2024, per the Pew Research Center.

Catholics were a key constituency in every sector Trump needed for his historic victory against Kamala Harris. Swing states with old-line communities like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Boom states like Nevada and Florida. And especially Latinos, who voted for Trump in numbers never before seen for a Republican presidential candidate. Latino Catholics went even harder for Trump: The Public Religion Research Institute found their support for him increased by 17 percentage points from 2016 to 2024, even as his white Catholic support dropped from 64% to 59%.

Issues from abortion to the economy to transgender rights spurred Catholics to side with Trump, but his hard-line stance against immigration was especially popular. As immigrant Catholics were being demonized, echoing previous eras of American history, too many Catholics sided with the demonizers.

Maria Marin and her husband, Martin Marin, pose with a cardboard cutout of Pope Leo XIV during the Archdiocese of Chicago’s celebration of Leo at Rate Field on June 14, 2025.

(Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times via Associated Press)

A June 2024 survey by Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which tracks American Catholic life, showed that 43% of respondents supported lower levels of immigration. A month into Trump’s second term, 41% of American Catholics thought that increased immigration in recent years had changed the U.S. “for the worse,” compared with 33% who felt it made life better, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, I argued about the dignity of Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants with people from my parents’ native ranchos in Mexico, who came to this country without papers and are regular churchgoers. I sighed in disappointment as former confirmation classmates whose refugee parents fled tyrannical rulers, just like the Holy Family, posted approvingly on social media about Trump’s vow to build a bigger, nastier border wall.

Catholics have frequently exemplified the best and worst tendencies of American society. We’ve been brutal conquistadors and the huddled masses yearning to be free, trailblazing politicians and the millions who stood silently during our church’s sex abuse scandals. Trump’s support among Catholics represented a new low. But by some miracle of God, more and more of those supporters are finally seeing him for who he is.

On Aug. 12 — the feast day of Jane Frances de Chantal, the patron saint of forgotten people — the Public Religion Research Institute released a survey showing that 62% of Catholics think unfavorably of Trump, while 57% oppose his handling of immigration, both legal and illegal. If this repentance transforms into votes against MAGA in the midterms, the rest of Trump’s presidency is doomed.

The poll offers no insight into why Catholic support for Trump has cratered. The easy explanation would be the president’s enmity toward Pope Leo XIV, who has preached a gospel of kindness toward the undocumented and spoken out against the quagmire in Iran. When the Trump administration invited the native-born Chicagoan to visit the U.S. for America’s 250th anniversary, Leo instead decided to spend his Fourth of July on Lampedusa, the Ellis Island of the Mediterranean.

But the poll noted that Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, had higher favorability ratings among American Catholics during the same time in their respective reigns — 90% to Leo’s 75%.

Trump’s popularity is also collapsing among Americans as a whole. Only about a third support him, according to an a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll — the poorest showing of his second term, matching the lowest numbers of his first term. But for Catholics, it’s not just high prices, the Iran War and Trump’s drift toward despotism that makes him so onerous.

The Catholics in his government, from Supreme Court justices to Cabinet members to Vice President JD Vance, are acting as a rubber stamp for an imperious ruler, instead of imitations of Christ. Trump’s immigration sweeps are hitting American Catholicism so hard that bishops have allowed the faithful to stay home instead of attending Mass.

What reason is there left for good Catholics to support Trump? If ever a group needed to break away from him, it’s us.

What’s been especially galling about Trump’s second term, from a Catholic perspective, is his gleeful cruelty.

Proverbs 21:13 states, “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.” Conservatives who have criticized Pope Leo for taking on Trump over his nastiness toward the meek don’t get that his motive isn’t political — this has been standard Vatican doctrine going back to his namesake, Leo XIII. In an influential 1891 encyclical urging the world to stand by the working class, Leo XIII pointed out that sacrificing oneself “for the benefit of others, is man’s surest antidote against the insolence of the world and immoderate love of self.”

Is there any statement more contrary to MAGA than that?

Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin and Archbishop Bernard Hebda speak to reporters after a Mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Feb. 27, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn.

(Mark Vancleave/Associated Press)

The Catholics who supported Trump may have forgotten Leo XIII’s words as they repeatedly voted for him. But that’s the beauty of our faith. We can admit our errors and seek to right them through another sacrament — confession.

“Through such an admission man looks squarely at the sins he is guilty of,” reads the catechism of the Catholic Church. That way, people can “take responsibility” for their faults and reconcile with God “in order to make a new future possible.” And the way to do that is by “doing something more to make amends for the sin.”

Catholics are supposed to confess our sins privately. But we must repent of Trump publicly and loudly at the ballot box this November and urge others to follow.

We helped usher in Trump. We must now lead in exorcising him from American society once and for all.

Reporting from Washington — Will the second time be a charm for Judge Thomas M. Hardiman?

Hardiman, 53, was the runner-up last year in the seat that went to Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.

He has a solidly conservative record, including a strong defense of gun rights. And Hardiman’s working-class background could bring a fresh perspective to the nation’s highest court, giving him a special appeal to the voters who propelled President Trump’s drive to the White House.

He would become the current court’s only non-Ivy League graduate. The first in his family to graduate from college, Hardiman drove a cab to help pay his tuition.

As a young man, he learned Spanish, studied in Mexico and worked with Ayuda, a legal aid clinic in Washington, where he represented Spanish-speaking immigrants, including those who were seeking political asylum.

Beyond that, Hardiman had an inside advantage: He serves on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia along with Judge Maryanne Trump Barry, who has reportedly urged her brother to choose him.

Hardiman’s compelling personal back story may make him harder for Senate Democrats to oppose.

But he has not appeared to be among Trump’s top three candidates in the search to replace retiring Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

He has been seen as a capable, hardworking and well-liked judge. But he did not have a national reputation as a legal thinker, and even lawyers in Pittsburgh said last year that they do not see him as Supreme Court material.

“He takes the case before him and looks at the facts and precedents, but without imposing an overarching view of the law,” said University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur Hellman. “It’s hard to assess what he would be like as a Supreme Court justice. My guess is that he will be a cautious judge, at least for a few years.”

President George W. Bush chose Hardiman to become a district judge in 2003 and then elevated him to the appeals court two years later, when he won unanimous confirmation from the Senate.

Hardiman does not have record of strident comments on issues such as abortion or gay rights that could fuel opposition in the Senate.

He grew up in Waltham, Mass., where his father ran a company that provided taxi service and school transportation. Hardiman won a merit scholarship to go the University of Notre Dame, and he earned his law degree at Georgetown University in Washington. He practiced law in Washington before moving to Pittsburgh. His wife, Lori Zappala Hardiman, comes from a prominent Democratic family long active in Pittsburgh politics.

He staked out a strong position four years ago in favor of the 2nd Amendment right to carry a gun in public. He dissented when the 3rd Circuit upheld a New Jersey law that required people seeking gun permits to demonstrate a “justifiable need” to be armed. Several plaintiffs who had been turned down for permits sued, alleging the restriction violated the 2nd Amendment.

A district judge upheld the law — as did the 3rd Circuit, by a 2-1 vote. The majority said that although the Supreme Court had recognized a right to have a gun at home for self-defense, it had not ruled the Constitution protected the right to carry a gun in public.

Hardiman wrote a 40-page dissent, arguing the high court and Justice Scalia described the 2nd Amendment as protecting a right to “self-defense.” Because “the need for self-defense naturally exists outside and inside the home, I would hold the 2nd Amendment applies outside the home,” he wrote in Drake vs. Filko.

In passing the law, “New Jersey has decided that fewer handguns legally carried in public means less crime…. It is obvious that the justifiable need requirement functions as a rationing system designed to limit the number of handguns carried in New Jersey,” he wrote, maintaining that the law could not stand in the face of 2nd Amendment challenge.

The law survived an appeal to the Supreme Court, however. The justices, without comment, turned down a petition in 2014 asking them to review the 3rd Circuit’s decision.

Hardiman also wrote an important opinion that upheld the power of jailers to strip-search all new inmates, even those being held briefly for failing to pay a fine who do not appear to a pose a security risk. A class-action suit was brought on behalf of people who had been arrested and strip-searched in a county jail in New Jersey. They alleged these full-body exams amounted to “unreasonable searches” in violation of the 4th Amendment. The lead plaintiff, Albert Florence, had been arrested and briefly jailed for not paying a fine. It later turned out he had paid the fine.

A district judge ruled for the plaintiffs, but Hardiman spoke for a 2-1 majority to throw out their claim. “We do not minimize the extreme intrusion on privacy associated with a strip search by law enforcement officers,” he wrote, but he added that “the prevention of the entry of illegal weapons and drugs is vital to the protection of inmates and prison personnel alike.”

The Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in the case, Florence vs. Board of Chosen Freeholders, but affirmed Hardiman’s 3rd Circuit decision by a 5-4 vote in 2012.

However, Hardiman’s judicial record is not uniformly conservative, which raises concerns among conservatives.

In 2009, one of his opinions for the 3rd Circuit revived a claim of “gender stereotyping discrimination” brought by a man who said he was harassed, ridiculed and finally fired from his job at a specialty printing company because he was seen as effeminate.

Hardiman noted that neither Congress nor the Supreme Court had outlawed discrimination based on an employee’s sexual orientation. However, he said, the justices had said employees may sue if they are fired for failing to conform to “gender stereotypes.” In the case of Prowel vs. Wise, he cleared the way for the fired employee to take his claim before a jury.

david.savage@latimes.com

On Twitter: DavidGSavage