The 2018 elections are coming—and those of you who don’t spend your waking hours monitoring the secretary of state’s website may have some questions.
Questions like: Wait, there’s an election? And, didn’t we just have an election? And, Is Jerry Brown running again?
Yes, yes, and no, but you may hear a lot from the current governor between now and the elections.
In fact, expect to hear more political chatter of all kinds as Californians gear up to select a governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and other statewide constitutional officers; new Assembly members (all of them) and state senators (just half); members of Congress including a U.S. senator; and a yet-to-be-determined number of ballot propositions that may claim to remedy the housing crisis, fix healthcare policy and repeal the new gas tax, for starters.
Here’s a quick primer for anyone resolving to enter the 2018 elections as a more informed citizen:
Poverty and Inequality
Our state’s gross domestic product may dwarf those of most countries. We may host some of the world’s fastest growing industries and the country’s wealthiest zip codes. But it remains, as ever, the economy, stupid.
Just ask voters. In a fall poll from the Public Policy Institute of California, more respondents chose ‘jobs and the economy’ as the state’s most pressing issue.
“Particularly as it relates to the uneven growth of the economy in California, that is a hugely important factor,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s president. “It’s what people are referring to as the Two Californias.”
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who remains the frontrunner in the governor’s race despite some recent tightening in the polls, will be quick to take some credit for state’s low unemployment rate. It’s been bumping around 5 percent this year, the lowest level since 2007. He is also pushing for progressive palliatives like state-funded universal health insurance, a pre-school-for-all program (as are all Democratic hopefuls) and an expanded earned income tax credit, which provides a boost to the wages of low-earners.
But you can’t take credit without inviting some blame. Democratic runner-up Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Los Angeles mayor, has framed his campaign around the tale-of-two-states theme.
“This focus on economic issues, particularly the stark divide between a few booming cities and the rest of California, distinguishes the candidates,” Villaraigosa spokesman Luis Vizcaino said in a statement. “As Mayor Villaraigosa travels to the many forgotten corners and communities of our state, he clearly hears from Californians that they want an economy that creates opportunity for everyone.”
Villaraigosa has paired that anti-elitist rhetoric with a politically moderate anti-poverty plan, lambasting Newsom’s “pie in the sky” thinking on health care and calling for a revamping of California’s “Byzantine and bureaucratic regulatory framework” to help small business.
That’s also proven to be a useful attack for the two Republicans gubernatorial candidates, Assemblyman Travis Allen of Huntington Beach and millionaire John Cox of San Diego. Why have the state’s inland and northern areas stagnated while the coastal cities have boomed? Why does uber-progressive California have the nation’s highest poverty rate once you account for the cost of housing?
Tough questions for any incumbent.
Housing
Didn’t the Legislature already fix this issue?
Sadly, no. Despite California lawmakers’ best efforts to tweak regulations and channel more money into low-income housing construction with a series of bills last August, California is still projected to fall woefully short of affordable places to live.
Newsom has said he would like the state to set a goal of building 3.5 million new homes by 2025—a proposal that walks the line between bold and delusional.
John Chiang, current state treasurer and the gubernatorial candidate most likely to issue a white paper, released his own detailed plan: more funding for low-income housing subsidies and more carrots and sticks to entice or compel local governments to allow more residential development.
Voters will also be asked to sign off on lawmakers’ plans to borrow $4 billion to build more affordable housing and subsidize the rent of veterans. Depending on how the signature gathering goes, they may also see a ballot measure that could repeal California’s restrictions on rent control—local laws that cap how much landlords can charge tenants. Democratic Assemblyman Richard Bloom from Santa Monica will introduce a similar proposal in the Legislature.
Finally, there’s the $1.5 trillion question mark that is the recent rewrite of the federal tax code. As the California housing market adjusts to the newly slashed corporate tax rate and the reduced deductibility of property taxes and mortgage interest, expect to hear more.
Taxes
Proposition 13 has long been considered sacrosanct—but this election season the 40-year-old tax law may finally get an overhaul.
On one side, the California Association of Realtors is currently gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would allow seniors and disabled Californians to preserve their lower tax rates even if they move. Under Prop. 13, homeowners pay property taxes equal to 1 percent of a home’s price at the time of purchase. Increases are limited to 2 percent each year, no matter how fast a home’s value increases.
The proposed initiative would eliminate the penalty most longtime homeowners now pay when they move, which the Realtors say would encourage aging empty nesters to clear out of their large homes and make room for younger families. But it would come at a cost. The Legislature’s nonpartisan fiscal scorekeeper has said the proposal would eventually cost local governments upwards of a billion dollars each year.
On the flipside, another proposed initiative would weaken Prop. 13 by exempting commercial property owners. Already some of the gubernatorial candidates are on board.
Democrat contender Delaine Eastin, former state schools superintendent, has said that the extra revenue generated by taxing commercial property owners more could fund school improvements. Villaraigosa has also said he would be willing to reexamine Prop 13.
“I’m not interested in Prop. 13 in isolation,” Newsom recently told an audience in San Francisco. Instead, he advocated a more comprehensive approach to make the California budget less dependent on the volatile income of top earners. Otherwise, he warned, “When we catch a cold, our budget is going to catch the flu.”
That’s a concern that all gubernatorial candidates have nodded at, though details on how to actually boost the budget’s immune system have been scant.
Transportation
With President Trump’s approval numbers in the low thirties among likely voters and the majority of California voters unable to name the GOP’s two leading gubernatorial candidates (again, that would be Allen and Cox), California Republicans don’t have much to feel optimistic about, statewide.
But they do have the gas tax.
Democratic supermajorities in the state Senate and Assembly narrowly passed a transportation funding package that included a 12-cent hike to the gas tax and additional vehicle fees. Taxing drivers isn’t considered best practice for winning future elections in California. It’s a testament to the Democrats’ political confidence—and the sorry state of the California road system—that they were willing to push this through.
Now, the Republicans are itching for political payback. Allen has sponsored one of two proposed ballot measures that would rescind the fee hike. San Diego anti-tax Republican Carl DeMaio is funding a recall effort against freshman state Senator Josh Newman, a Democrat from Fullerton, allegedly for supporting the tax. Party leaders are hoping that their rallying cry of “GasTaxtrophe” will stick.
They may be onto something. In a recent survey, nearly 3 in 4 likely voters said that repealing the gas tax is important to them. But whether that’s enough to energize the Republican base and flip undecided voters red is an open question.
Environment
If the smoldering moonscapes of Ojai and Napa don’t spark some talk of climate and environmental policy on the campaign trail this year, a round of upcoming green-themed legislation offers a conversation-starter.
Last year, Democratic Senate leader Kevin de León of Los Angeles introduced a bill mandating that 100 percent of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2045. That will be back. Likewise, Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco will introduce a bill to ban new gas-powered cars by 2040.
Gov. Brown has positioned himself as a global leader on climate change—hence his recent trip to Europe.
None of the Democrats seeking to replace him are climate skeptics. But they do depart from him in substance and style.
Take Villaraigosa, who says the environmental movement needs to be less narrowly focused on greenhouse gas emissions and should better address local pollution and its impact on low-income communities of color.
Or Eastin, who frequently notes that she is the only candidate calling for a ban on fracking.
And while all of the Democratic candidates are broadly supportive of Brown’s high speed rail project, all have expressed varying degrees of opposition to the governor’s twin tunnels water plan: Villaraigosa says cities need to conserve more, Chiang has raised concerns about the Delta ecosystem, Eastin calls the project “nonsense,” and Newsom has wondered whether one tunnel wouldn’t do just as well.
And then there are those fires. As the Central Coast and North Bay rush to house the newly homeless and grapple with the bigger question of if, how, and where to re-build in a state that seems increasingly prone to going up in flames, expect to see some of that grappling on the campaign trail.
For five other topics including, education, healthcare and pensions, visit calmatters.org/articles/get-speed-10-hot-topics-will-shape-california-campaigns-2018/.
