One curious thing about California governor Gavin Newsom’s recent exercise in bill signings, an annual rite of passage that dominates September’s political and policy news in the Golden State: there wasn’t all that much that captured the nation’s attention.
Granted, Newsom did generate headlines last weekend when he vetoed Senate Bill 1047, a matter that pitted Hollywood versus Silicon Valley as it delved into the question of regulating larger artificial intelligence companies.
Then again, interest in the topic got a big assist from celebrity involvement in the matter: Star War producer J. J. Abrams, television mogul Shonda Rhimes, and other Hollywood luminaries implored Newsom to sign the bill, while Elon Musk and a host of strange political bedfellows Musk doesn’t normally associate with (the Screen Actors Guild, Service Employees International Union, the National Organization for Women) supported it.
On the other hand, Newsom at times seemed intent on avoiding a nationwide splash. One such example: the governor’s actions vis-à-vis slavery reparations.
While Newsom did sign Assembly Bill 3089, which offers a formal apology for "the institution of chattel slavery and the enduring legacy of ongoing badges and incidents from which the systemic structures of discrimination have come to exist,” he vetoed the meatier SB 1050, which would have returned propety taken under racially driven uses of eminent domain.
Why the gas-brake approach to slavery reparations? It could be as simple as a governor wanting to keep his state from going further down a path that ultimately could cost taxpayers $800 billion or more in the form of cash compensation.
Or, with the presidential election fast approaching, perhaps Newsom didn’t want to put Vice President Kamala Harris between a rock and a hard place—not wanting to offend Black voters but also not wanting to dredge up a topic that doesn’t poll well with a majority of Americans.
Regardless of California’s legislative choices not having a larger presence in America’s news cycle the past month, the Golden State remains relevant in this election for at least three reasons.
First, there’s California’s role in deciding the balance of power in next year’s Congress, a topic this space will further examine between now and Election Day.
While the Golden State won’t be a factor in terms of which party rules the US Senate—Republican and baseball great Steve Garvey is a decided underdog in his open-seat run against Democratic congressman Adam Schiff—the House of Representatives is an entirely different matter. The Cook Political Report includes five Golden State House seats in the category of “Republican toss up” (there are 13 such Republican seats nationwide, while none of the 11 Democratic “toss ups” are to be found in California). Flip most if not all of those California-held GOP seats and Democrats likely control the House beginning next January.
California’s second influence on the 2024 landscape: a penchant for straw-man arguments over price gouging and “greedflation.”
Nationally, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has an answer for higher food prices: declare war on “Big Grocery.” Harris’s suggestion is to address supposed grocery price gouging by empowering the Federal Trade Commission to fine companies it deems guilty of setting exorbitantly high prices—an idea the usually pro-Harris Washington Post dismissed as one of her “populist gimmicks.”
Why did Harris take this approach? It could be that she fell back on habits from her time as California’s state attorney general—for example, forcing Japanese and Korean television and computer companies to pay settlements for price-fixing.
Or, perhaps Harris has been paying close to attention to Newsom’s approach to voters’ frustration with another aspect of economic hardship in the Golden State—the high cost of gasoline.
Newsom’s choice: declaring war on Big Oil. That includes a legislative special session with the end purpose of authorizing the California Energy Commission to force the state’s oil refineries to keep a mandatory minum of fuel on hand so as deter price spikes. Never mind that Sacramento won’t discuss the elephant in the room fuel island: as my colleague Lee Ohanian explains, high gas prices represent a cautionary tale of supply-and-demand economics, taxation, and regulation.
As for Californa’s third point of relevance in 2024, that would be the need for Republicans to return to being a competitive entity in statewide contests.
Last week, I happened to be in Texas, a state that hasn’t gone Democratic in a presidential contest since 1976 (Jimmy Carter) and that last elected a Democratic governor in 1990 (Ann Richards) and a Democratic US senator in 1988 (Lloyd Bentsen, benefiting from the so-called LBJ Law, which allowed him to run simulatenously for the Senate and the vice presidency).
The first image that popped up when I turned on the local television news: this ad, paid for by a political action committee backing senator Ted Cruz, attacking his Democratic challenger on the question of persons assigned male at birth competing in women’s sports.
About that race: it’s one of the Democrats’ two best shots at unseating a GOP incumbent (the other being Florida senator Rick Scott). And while Cruz may survive what presently is a margin-of-error race poll-wise, Republicans will have to devote ample resources to achieving victory—as they did in 2018, when Cruz had to fend off the deep-pocketed Beto O’Rourke.
In Texas, while a Republican senator has to work to avoid defeat in 2024, so too might GOP presidential candidates one day—though likely not in this election cycle, as recent polling suggests. However, two changes in demographics will determine future outcomes: Republicans gaining more of the state’s Latino vote and the voting sensibilities of newcomers to the Lone Star State (more people moving to Texas from California than from any other state).
And what would that mean in future elections? The two major parties having to rethink their spending priorities. Beto O’Rourke admitted as much recently: “If at a minimum, we can get Trump to play defense here, because of this change in dynamic, it’s going to open up other possibilities in other states. And someday sooner than later, and maybe it’s 2024, we win Texas.”
As such, it’s a new wrinkle in the conversation over Republicans’ need to make themselves more competitive at the top of the ticket in California. If not to win the Golden State’s 54 electoral votes, then to at least make the opposition think twice about frequenting the Golden State for its ample campaign donations (Kamala Harris in San Francisco last weekend for a fundraiser) without leaving much behind in the way of campaign spending.
Or, for a Republican existence that’s been noncompetitive in the Golden State for decades now, is that merely “California Dreamin’”?