Prop 5—the effort to make it easier to pass bonds was defeated. Prop. 36, to make it a crime to shoplift and more, passed by 71-29. The effort to increase the minimum wage failed as did the measure to pay prisons more money by defining convicts as “slaves”.
It looks like the GOP kept all its members of Congress and will add one to it. We also added a member of the State Senate. Our candidate for Senate received about 42.7% of the vote—without campaigning—or maybe that was because he was running against the crooked Adam Schiff?
Is California beginning to wake up? We will know in 2026.
Even in California, progressives take a hit
Voters turned against criminal justice reform, rent control and a minimum wage hike.
Hillel Aron, courthousenews.com 11/6/24 https://www.courthousenews.com/even-in-california-progressives-take-a-hit/
(CN) — An election that stunned Democrats all over the nation also offered a repudiation of certain progressive policies in, of all places, California.
Californians voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 36, which will increase prison sentences for some crimes including shoplifting and fentanyl-related drug crimes, making them felonies rather than misdemeanors. With just over half the ballots tallied, the measure is winning by nearly 40 points — a more than two-to-one margin — a clear rejection of the criminal justice reform policy that has dominated the state for more than a decade. It undoes key parts of Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014, which was aimed at reducing prison sentences.
The tough-on-crime turn was seen elsewhere up and down the left coast. In Los Angeles County, George Gascón, sometimes called the “godfather of progressive prosecutors,” was roundly trounced after one term in office by Nathan Hochman, a former Republican and former prosecutor who promised to roll back many of Gascón’s reforms.
“The voters of Los Angeles County have spoken and have said enough is enough of DA Gascon’s pro-criminal extreme policies,” Hochman said in a written statement. “They look forward to a safer future.”
In Northern California, two progressives — Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, another criminal justice reform advocate — each faced recall campaigns that appear to have been successful. Both recall efforts are ahead by roughly 30 points, with just over a third of the vote having been counted.
“I think we still need to digest the results,” said Louis DeSipio, a political science professor at UC Irvine. “But clearly, there was a move to the right nationally. And California was a part of it. Sometimes there’s talk of California’s exceptionalism, that we go our own way. But we don’t. We’re part of a nation. This is evidence of that.”
Voters in the Golden State also rejected, for the third time, a measure that would have expanded rent control. And another proposition aimed at stopping the biggest champion of rent control from spending millions of dollars on political campaigns is clinging to a very slim three-point lead, with roughly half the votes counted. Proposition 34 is written in a vague sort of way; it would require health care providers that receive most of their revenue from federal prescription drug programs to spend most of their money on patient care and not political campaigns. The innocuous-sounding measure applies to just one organization: the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which routinely spends millions of dollars on anti-development and pro-rent control ballot measures.
An initiative that would ban forced labor in prisons is also behind, by about 10 points, with half the ballots counted. And a move to raise the state’s hourly minimum wage from $16 an hour to $18 is also behind, though only by about four points. With millions of ballots left to be counted, the results of some of these ballot measures could easily flip.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for progressives in California. The largely ceremonial Proposition 3, which adds a constitutional amendment to recognize marriage as a fundamental right, passed easily — erasing the constitutional mandate against same-sex marriage passed by voters via Proposition 8 in 2008. A number of public bond measures to spend money on schools and clean water infrastructure also appear headed toward victory.
With Republicans having clinched both the presidency and control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats are holding out hope of capturing the House of Representatives, giving them a precarious toehold of power in Washington. Three key congressional races in California would go a long way toward helping Democrats win the House: the 13th, 27th and 41st Congressional Districts, all of which are currently held by Republicans, but which the Democrats spent big to try to capture.
Though the races are still too close to call, Republicans lead in all three. In the Central Valley’s 13th District, incumbent John Duarte is clinging to a thin three-point lead over Democratic challenger Adam Gray, with just over half the vote counted as of 9 a.m. Wednesday. In the 27th District in northeast LA County, incumbent Mike Garcia is also clinging to a razor-thin two-point lead over businessman George Whitesides. In the 41st in Riverside County, incumbent Ken Calvert is sitting on a one-point lead in his race against Democratic challenger Will Rollins, with nearly 70% of the vote counted.
There are still millions of ballots left to be counted in California, a massive, sprawling state where many people vote by mail. Late-arriving mail-in ballots and provisional ballots, which need to be verified, can take weeks to count. In other words, it could be weeks before we know the outcome of close races. That said, it looks increasingly unlikely that Democrats will take as many congressional seats in California as they had hoped.
“California was the Democrats’ hope to retake the house, and that’s a pretty tenuous hope right now, I think,” DeSipio said.
As for the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris won California, capturing its 54 electoral votes. But her margin of victory — 17 points, as of 9 a.m. — is a fraction of what Joe Biden’s was in 2020, when he won the Golden State by nearly 30 points, although Harris’ margin could grow as the late-arriving ballots are counted.
