There was a time when California found itself in the middle of national vox populi.
Not recently, though.
Exactly 30 years ago—the same year Republicans won both chambers of Congress for the first time in four decades—California joined in the so-called “revolution” by electing Republicans to five of eight state constitutional offices.
And fourteen years prior to that, in 1980, nearly 53% of California voters opted for native son Ronald Reagan in a presidential election in which he received 50.7% support nationwide. A reminder that time marches on: a first-time voter in that election, assuming he or she was 18 years of age in the first of the two Reagan landslides, is now eligible for Social Security benefits.
The notion of California as part of a larger national statement won’t be the case next week—at least, not where the top of the ballot is concerned. Polling suggests that not a single California statewide race is competitive (that begins with a presidential contest where a recent Emerson College poll has vice president Kamala Harris leading former president Donald Trump 59% to 35%).
But that doesn’t mean California’s election doesn’t fit into the national puzzle. One reason is the Golden State electorate’s frustration with crime—theft and property crimes in particular.
In that regard, keep an eye on these three contests as something of a California bellwether in 2024:
A San Francisco Earthquake? Seismic disturbances in the San Francisco Bay Area at this time of the year are no laughing matter (October 2024 being the 45th anniversary of the Loma Prieta temblor that killed 63 souls and caused approximately $10 billion in damages). In this year’s election, the political “quake” might happen on opposite ends of the landmark San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.
Let’s begin with Francisco and the question whether London Breed is falling down—Breed, San Francisco’s mayor, seeking reelection in what’s turned out to be a contentious mayoral contest.
Breed faces two handicaps as a sitting mayor: a deep-pocketed challenger who’s running one of the most expensive self-funded mayoral campaigns in America’s history; and the awkwardness of an incumbent trying to market herself as a “change” candidate” (which becomes all the more challenging when an opponent tries to hold her responsible for the shooting of a San Francisco 49ers player).
If there’s such a thing as good news for Breed, it’s that none of her challengers stands out as a panacea for what-all ails San Francisco (here’s a local newspaper’s guide to each of the mayoral hopefuls’ soiled laundry).
The question looming over San Francisco’s mayoral vote, assuming none of the candidates achieves 50% of the vote, is what happens once the city begins the process of ranked-choice voting? How that works: San Francisco voters are allowed to “rank” up to 10 of the 13 mayoral candidates from favorite to least favorite. Until the time that a candidate receives 50% support, those candidates with the fewest votes are removed—their votes transferred to the remaining candidates based on preference—until someone clears 50%.
Thus, the question of which candidates are San Franciscans’ first, second, and third favorites. In addition to Breed, there is businessman Daniel Lurie, who’s spent $15 million to position himself as the non-politician problem solver and former interim mayor Mark Farrell, who’s found himself on the receiving end of attacks from the city’s political elites for alleged campaign financing improprieties.
And if Breed fails to survive the so-called instant runoff? It could mean something as simple as San Francisco voters saying “enough is enough” with the city’s status quo, despite the mayor’s rightward shift on crime and homelessness.
Oaktown Takedown? Then again, Breed isn’t the only Bay Area mayor fighting for survival, which takes us to the other side of the Bay Bridge and the question of what happens to Oakland mayor Sheng Thao, currently the subject of a recall election next Tuesday.
There are several ways to parse what’s befallen Thao.
On the one hand, she’s something of an “accidental” mayor, having slipped into office courtesy of the city’s ranked-choice voting system (she didn’t earn the most first-place votes on the first round of counting but picked up support as the weaker candidates were removed and their votes redistributed according to their preference for the rest of the field).
One could argue that Thao is the victim of bad luck—just months into her term, the city’s IT system fell victim to a cyberattack. Following that: the departure of the Oakland A’s to Las Vegas (by way of Sacramento), marking the last major-league team to leave Oakland for greener pastures (the Oakland Raiders having departed for Las Vegas and the Golden State Warriors having relocated to San Francisco).
Or voters may perceive Thao as being guilty of bad judgment and ethical lapses. Buttressing that argument: her decision to fire the city’s police chief, which may prove costly with Black voters; and in June, the FBI raiding the mayor’s home in conjunction with an investigation into a money-laundering scheme involving “straw donors.”
There’s one other factor working against Thao: California’s recall culture. Though not always a guarantor of an incumbent’s ouster (governor Gavin Newsom survived a recall vote in September 2021), the same procedure took down Chase Boudin, San Francisco’s former district attorney, in June 2022.
About that election: Boudin had entered office as a progressive reformer—ending cash bail and prosecuting minors as adults; becoming the first San Francisco district attorney (yes, Kamala Harris’s old job) to file homicide charges against city police officers. But it wasn’t clear that the citizenry agreed with his agenda. In the end, 55% of San Francisco voters decided to part ways with their controversial district attorney.
Bye, George? Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, George Gascón, that city’s embattled district attorney, might consider a 55% rejection something of a moral victory if the polls are to believed (a UC Berkeley–Los Angeles Times poll from earlier this month had Gascón trailing his challenger, former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, by 30 points).
Gascón’s plight is a reminder that it’s not the California of 2020 (back then, Gascón ran on a Boudin-like agenda of police reform, eliminating cash bail, and reducing prison populations).
Four years later, Gascón finds himself under fire for Los Angeles’s struggles with public safety (per the LA County Sheriff’s Department, violent and property crimes are up compared to 2021, Gascon’s first year on the job).
So anticipating a bad jury verdict, if you will, what’s an embattled prosecutor to do? Throw a “Hail Mary” pass, as his critics and the rival Hochman campaign contend, charging that Gascón’s decision earlier this month to revisit the murder case of Erik and Lyle Menendez (Gascón wants a judge to reconsider their sentencing) reeks of election-year politics.
So, there’s California’s potential earthquake: two incumbents tossed in Los Angeles and Oakland; a third maybe not finishing in the top-two of her mayoral race.
What else to watch for on the California ballots? Three items:
The Kamala Factor. Breaking news (it’s not): Vice President Kamala Harris will be the runaway winner in California. The question is, by what margin?
In the previous two Trump presidential elections, the Democratic nominees amassed 63.5% and 61.7% of the statewide vote, respectively (Donald Trump failing to clear 35% on either occasion).
Why does Harris’s tally matter? Because it’s a gauge of Democratic enthusiasm (Joe Biden, in 2020, receiving 2.35 million more votes than Hillary Clinton four years prior). An engaged Democratic electorate betters the party’s chances of flipping the Golden State’s toss-up congressional seats.
The 36 Juggernaut. If 60% is the threshold for the vice president’s victory, the anti-crime Proposition 36 may have an even higher margin—again, if recent polling is to believed (I’m looking at last week’s Public Policy Institute of California survey that showed the ballot receiving 73% support, a 2-point improvement from the previous month’s polling).
That’s rarified air for a California ballot measure and yet more trouble for Gascón in his reelection contest. One question, should Proposition 36 prevail: How does Governor Newsom spin the results, considering he opposes the measure, thus putting himself at odds with some prominent Democratic mayors (Breed has embraced Proposition 36, while Thao took a pass)?
Confusion with 33. Back in my colleague days (and proof that I’d face Senate confirmation struggles equal to those of Brett Kavanaugh), many a beer-fueled late-night conversation centered around why the number “33” is found on Rolling Rock labels (one theory: in honor of 1933 and the repeal of Prohibition, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg for “33” conspiracists).
A “33” confusion lingers over California’s election—namely, can voters make sense of Proposition 33 and the question of housing affordability in the Golden State? (A yes vote allows cities to impose rent control on any type of housing; voting no allows state law to continue to limit rent control.)
The advertising campaigns for and against the measures have been impossible to miss for weeks now. In a word, they’re confusing. Which raises the question of whether California voters are easily swayed by clever marketing ploys or actually take the time to digest the Golden State’s very thorough Official Voter Information Guide and the nuances of initiatives.
If there’s such a thing as a silver lining to a complicated media campaign, it would be this clever spot produced by the Yes on 33 campaign. Taking the song California Dreamin’, it rewrites the Mamas & the Papas lyrics from 60 years ago to something more germane to 21st-century California’s housing woes (thus “all the leaves are brown . . . and the sky is gray” in the original version becomes “all the homes are gone and the rent’s too high” in an ad titled “California Leavin’”).
Such is California politics in 2024, addressing one of the state’s more vexing issues by falling back on the music of yesteryear.
Which, unfortunately, is the closest this electorate will get to Mama Cass’s less complicated Golden State.
