Will Alvarado-Gil’s party switch effectively disenfranchise her constituents?

Did you know that one of her first consultants was Mike Madrid, the infamous anti-Republican, anti-Trump, founder of the Lincoln Project—to defeat Trump and Republicans?

After you read this, you will see why her re-election is going to be a long shot.  I am told the GOP in the area already have a single candidate to run against her.  One candidate has consolidated support.

“The interview deteriorated from there, with the senator maintaining that she was merely watching the Republican nominee and Zavala retorting, “Right now, people have a hard time identifying who exactly you are. So, if you don’t support Kamala Harris and you don’t support Donald Trump, you have changed your party affiliation from one to the other, and we are less than three months out from an election, I think your constituents might want to know who you are supporting in this consequential election.”

“My name’s not on the ballot,” Alvarado-Gil responded, adding that she’s going to be watching both presidential candidates, but lamented that voters only have a choice between two people.”

 This is a red district where the GOP is a strong supporter of Trump.  It will be interesting watching this election in 2026.

Will Alvarado-Gil’s party switch effectively disenfranchise her constituents?

by BRIAN JOSEPH, Capitol Weekly,  9/12/24  https://capitolweekly.net/will-alvarado-gils-party-switch-effectively-disenfranchise-her-constituents/

California’s Fourth Senate District covers 25,000 square miles, basically 1/6th of the state. It stretches from Death Valley in the South to Truckee in the North and juts out West to grab Modesto, the district’s largest metropolitan area.

In all, the rural district touches an astonishing 13 counties that include some of California’s most bountiful agricultural lands, to say nothing of its nearly 1 million residents.

And yet the region’s representation in the Senate over the next legislative cycle could severely compromised because the decision by its senator, Marie Alvarado-Gil, to jump political parties.

A political newcomer defined by her contradictions, Alvarado-Gil was not a name most Californians would recognize prior first to her surprising jump and then more recently the introduction of salacious litigation by a former employee.

Alvarado-Gil won the seat in 2022 in what’s generally considered an electoral fluke. Running as a Democrat, she captured the heavily red district after six Republicans split the vote in the primary, leaving two Democrats for the general election.

A Second Amendment-supporting Latina with a heart for the disadvantaged, Alvarado-Gil beat out her labor-backed opponent by appealing to conservative voters, and she quickly showed that her conservative bent was not just for the campaign trail. From practically the moment she arrived in Sacramento, Alvarado-Gil clashed with her Democratic colleagues, often voting against and even vocally opposing many of their policy proposals.

Still, as the sitting representative in a district Democrats would like to maintain, she was poised to receive significant party support for re-election in 2026. But in early August, she tossed that possibility on its head by becoming the first California lawmaker in nearly 80 years to change her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican while in office, making the switch just before the legislative session ended.

Her sudden move sparked speculation in the media that the Alvarado-Gil changed teams to improve her re-election chances. But Capitol insiders we spoke to for this story privately mused that she probably did more to hurt her chances than help them.

From practically the moment she arrived in Sacramento, Alvarado-Gil clashed with her Democratic colleagues, often voting against and even vocally opposing many of their policy proposals.

California Republicans, after all, hardly can compete with the massive amounts of money routinely raised by California Democrats. And while Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-San Diego) have welcomed her, saying the switch took “real courage,” others have been far more circumspect. Republican firebrand Assemblyman Bill Essayli, for example, almost immediately after her announcement denounced her as a fake Republican. Either way, she is widely expected to face a primary opponent in two years.

But that is in many ways the least of her problems. By switching mid-term, Alvarado-Gil has almost certainly made herself a target for Democrats who run the Golden State, who likely will not – and really cannot – allow Alvarado-Gil to get away with defecting. That retribution started quickly, as Senate leadership immediately stripped her of all her committee assignments and the party may well do everything within its (immense) power to prevent her from registering many legislative wins going forward.

It’s too early to tell if that will come to fruition, but here is what we do know: Alvarado-Gil had 10 bills pending when she switched parties. Only three made it to the governor, perhaps most notably SB 268, which classifies the intentional intoxication of someone as a violent felony, closing a loophole in California rape laws. A fourth was a resolution declaring November California Runaway and Homeless Youth Prevention Month. The rest were held in committee.

Many believe Democrats will continue to make an example out of her by stifling any bill she introduces, leaving Senate District 4 essentially without real representation in Sacramento over the 2025-26 legislative cycle.

Hardship and long odds are apparently nothing new to Alvarado-Gil. A Modesto Bee profile of her published around the time she entered office in 2023 reported that she “survived poverty, abuse and domestic violence as a child,” while dodging gangs and human traffickers.

According to Bee columnist Garth Stapley, Alvarado-Gil was a California-born child of Mexican immigrants but found herself in foster care in the fifth grade. She attended high school in Mexico under the care of her maternal grandmother, who ran a tortilla factory.

Later, as a single mother of three children, two with special needs, she made it her mission to find the best special-ed programs for kids. That eventually led her on a winding journey to obtain not only bachelor and master degrees in public administration from the University of San Francisco, but to also found three charter schools.

Then, she defeated both cervical cancer and metastatic thyroid cancer over a two-year period in 2018 and 2019. The Bee column mentions her ability to “castrate goats and inseminate dairy cows,” an apparent reference to her work as a rancher, or, as she’s been dismissed by Capitol insiders who question her political acumen, a horse farmer.

“She’s not going to be able to get much done….Ultimately, the people in her district will be hurt by it.”

Capitol Weekly was forced to rely on the Bee’s reporting for the senator’s background because she declined to be interviewed for this story. Shortly after she announced her party switch, she sat down with KCRA’s Ashley Zavala, but cut the interview short when she was asked who she would be supporting in the presidential election.

“I have not endorsed Donald Trump, and I have not endorsed Kamala Harris,” Alvarado-Gil said on the August 10 broadcast.

“As a Latina in California, Donald Trump has said he would do the largest deportation roundup of undocumented people, which would inevitably target mostly Latinos,” Zavala said in the interview. “So, is that a policy that you would support and this is a person that you are watching to consider for potentially voting for?”

“I’m watching, I’m not considering,” Alvarado-Gil said. “You’re putting words in my mouth. You want to re-ask the question, I will answer it for you.”

The interview deteriorated from there, with the senator maintaining that she was merely watching the Republican nominee and Zavala retorting, “Right now, people have a hard time identifying who exactly you are. So, if you don’t support Kamala Harris and you don’t support Donald Trump, you have changed your party affiliation from one to the other, and we are less than three months out from an election, I think your constituents might want to know who you are supporting in this consequential election.”

“My name’s not on the ballot,” Alvarado-Gil responded, adding that she’s going to be watching both presidential candidates, but lamented that voters only have a choice between two people.

“As far as the constituents that I represent,” the senator said, “I will be accountable to my votes, I will be accountable to my actions, and I have two years in serving this role and it has nothing to do with who is going to be president.”

Then she walked out of the on-camera interview and refused to answer another of Zavala’s questions, even as the reporter followed the senator to her car.

When the interview was aired, Zavala talked about an Instagram post in which the senator apparently indicated support for Harris, but it was then deleted. The reporter said Alvarado-Gil claimed she didn’t delete the post and that the Senate Democratic Caucus controls the account. But Zavala reported that isn’t true.

“Hopefully she’ll make her positions more clear in the weeks ahead,” KCRA anchor Edie Lambert said to close the contentious segment.

Capitol Weekly tried to find an ally of Alvarado-Gil to interview but was repeatedly told she doesn’t have anyone she’s close to in the Capitol community. Her first chief of staff was Chad Condit, the son of former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit (who now works as a lobbyist in Sacramento). In fact, campaign finance disclosures from Alvarado-Gil’s 2022 and 2026 campaigns indicate she had a working relationship with several members of the Condit family.

But that relationship apparently soured after Alvarado-Gil fired Chad Condit, then requested an investigation into Chad’s son, Stanislaus County Supervisor Channce Condit, for allegedly violating the county’s ethics and conflict of interest policies.

According to articles in the Modesto Bee and the San Joaquin Valley Sun, Alvarado-Gil has filed complaints with both Stanislaus County Chief Executive Officer Jody Hayes and Attorney General Rob Bonta, claiming that the supervisor conspired with his father, when he was working for the senator, to ensure that $5 million in state funding was prioritized for infrastructure improvements in south Modesto.

The Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors allocated $16 million in funds from the federal American Rescue Plan to upgrade Channce Condit’s district. Then Alvarado-Gil was asked to request matching funds from the state. The senator secured $5 million in the 2023 budget.

But now Alvarado-Gil says the request for matching funds was a form of self-dealing by Chad and Channce Condit, who she alleges both were in position to benefit financially from the allocation.

Channce Condit has responded with a cease-and-desist letter, has threatened to sue the senator and said her complaint against him was actually filed in retaliation against a human resources complaint filed by his father, who he claims might have been wrongfully terminated by Alvarado-Gil due to his health.

“It wasn’t like she had this great awakening and she’s a true believer.”

Channce told Capitol Weekly he’s checked with both the state and Stanislaus County and said he is not under investigation by either. He said his father, Chad, would not be able to speak about the senator because of an ongoing claim he’s pursuing against her over his termination. Two days later, Chad Condit filed his scandalous sexual harassment lawsuit against the senator in Sacramento County Superior Court, which her lawyer denounced as untrue.

“A disgruntled former employee has fabricated an outlandish story, presented without evidence, to get a payday,” said the senator’s attorney Ognian Gavrilov, managing partner at Gavrilov & Brooks Law, in a statement provided to Capitol Weekly through the Senate Republican Caucus. “We expect that the Senator will be fully cleared of any wrongdoing of these bogus, financially motivated claims.”

Jacqui Nguyen, press secretary for the California Senate Republican Caucus, added in another statement to Capitol Weekly: “Senator Alvarado-Gil is fully cooperating. This is a lawsuit regarding a former employee, so we need to allow the judicial process to go through its course and defer all inquiries to the Senate Rules Committee.”

Channce (who never mentioned anything about the graphic allegations in the lawsuit to Capitol Weekly, but did refer us to a federal lawsuit alleging that the senator had law enforcement kick a woman out of a Turlock event in violation of her First Amendment rights) said his father met Alvarado-Gil during the 2022 election, when Chad was running for the 22nd Assembly District. Channce said Alvarado-Gil was “charming” and “charismatic” and that the Condit family believed in her initially. Channce said his family helped open some doors for the senator in Stanislaus County, where she had no allies.

Channce said he now believes Alvarado-Gil is “vindictive” and “calculating.” He attributes her complaints against him as a way to get back at his father by securing a damaging headline in the newspaper, and he said believes her switch to the Republican Party was done entirely out of her belief it would help her re-election chances in 2026.

“It wasn’t like she had this great awakening and she’s a true believer,” Channce said, noting there had been whispers the senator would change parties for a while.

Channce said Democrats in Alvarado-Gil’s district “are very upset” at her party switch.

“They feel completely blindsided,” he said.

Indeed, Democratic Party representatives in counties Alvarado-Gil represents expressed that anger when Capitol Weekly asked about her party switch.

Joyce P. Kaufman, chair of the Mono County Democratic Central Committee, admitted Democrats were initially skeptical of Alvarado-Gil because her positions seemed to lean Republican. But she said the senator began to change some minds in May when she attended a Mammoth Lakes fundraiser for Jessica Morse, the Democratic candidate in California’s Third Congressional District.

Kaufman said Alvarado-Gil gave such a “full-throated” endorsement of Morse that she thought she was wrong about the senator. Then, Kaufman says, Alvarado-Gil switched parties and flipped her endorsement to support the incumbent in the Congressional district, Kevin Kiley.

“Oh my God,” Kaufman said, “could she flip any more than she did?”

Kaufman said Mono County is a blue bastion in an otherwise red district. So, with Alvarado-Gil changing parties, she said the county’s interests are no less represented than they were in the past. But still, she sees the senator’s switch as a betrayal.

The Placer County Democratic Party provided Capitol Weekly with a statement it released about Alvarado-Gil on August 10, which read in part, “The Placer County Democratic Party shares the sentiment with other Democrats in the region that this is deeply disappointing and a betrayal of trust. Changing parties after being elected is not an act on behalf of one’s constituents but of politically expedient self-preservation.”

So, what does Alvarado-Gil have to look forward to? (Aside from a lot of questions about Chad Condit’s lawsuit, of course.) Republican strategist Hector Barajas predicted the newly minted Republican will face the same struggles as other Republicans in the legislature, particularly Latino Republicans, noting her exile from the Latino Legislative Caucus after her party switch.

Latino Republicans like Abel Maldonado and Bonnie Garcia were similarly kept out of the caucus, Barajas said, adding that the caucus should be known as the Democratic Latino Legislative Caucus.

Beyond that, Barajas said he didn’t think Alvarado-Gil’s situation was all that dire. He expects that she will get assigned to some new committees, in part because there’s not a lot of Republicans to go around and the committees need GOP members.

He acknowledges that the Democrats will likely be looking to block her legislation, but he said that many of her bills also died when she was a Democrat. Barajas said she’ll just have to be strategic in introducing bills that the Democrats can’t afford to torpedo.

“That’s how she’s going to have to be successful,” he said.

Republican strategist Tim Rosales said he thought Alvardo-Gil would be able to help her district by continuing to offer constituent services, but he added, “I’m sure the Democratic leadership wants to make an example out of her.”

“A party switch like that is embarrassing,” Rosales said.

Republican strategist Mike Madrid was grimmer, saying he expects the Democrats to do everything within their power to block Alvardo-Gil from doing anything, effectively disenfranchising her constituents.

“She’s not going to be able to get much done,” he said, adding, “Ultimately, the people in her district will be hurt by it.”

But Madrid said it’s important to consider why the Democrats might put forth an effort to retaliate against the senator, a representative of a solidly red district whose defection does nothing to jeopardize the party’s control of the Legislature.

He said the Democrats need to make an example out of Alvarado-Gil because there’s a growing disconnect between Latino voters and party’s platform. (Think of Gloria Romero’s recent party switch.) Madrid said the Democrats can’t have their Latino legislators diverting from party orthodoxy, and going after Alvarado-Gil is a perfect opportunity to show any lawmakers tempted to take a bold stance what the consequences of stepping out of line may be.

“I’m not surprised by it,” he said. “It’s just disappointing.”