CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2022, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA CONTINUES AS POLITICAL
CASH COW”
A look at
the six national ZIP codes which contributed the most to the presidential
campaign fund of President Biden through the summer and fall shows four were in
California.
Similarly,
three California ZIP codes were among the top 10 in contributions to the 2020
reelection drive of President Trump.
Contrast
this to the total amount of time these candidates spent in the state that was
most golden to them during the last two months of their hotly contested
contest: three hours. That was how long Trump spent from the moment Air Force 1
– acting as a campaign plane for him – landed in Orange County for a
fund-raiser where patrons paid $150,000 apiece.
Biden
never set foot here during that time. Both men totally ignored Californians
without money to contribute.
Of
course, the sums Trump harvested at the Newport Beach home of a tech mogul
didn’t go directly to his campaign, but rather to the national Republican
Party, which quickly laundered almost all the cash and relayed it to Trump’s
poverty-stricken operation, which had canceled several advertising buys in
swing states like Iowa and Pennsylvania during the preceding week.
So
California continued as the ultimate campaign cash cow both in 2020 and through
last fall. Californians also kicked in more money to U.S. Senate candidates in
Arizona, Maine, Georgia and North Carolina than anyone but residents of those
states themselves.
Californians
also did plenty of national volunteer work, not only for presidential
candidates but also in races for the Senate and House. One common tactic:
California volunteers bought and hand-wrote hundreds of postcards addressed to
individual voters in states with key races. The parties then shipped those
cards to the states involved, where they would be tossed in mailboxes and
delivered, looking like personal appeals from neighbors or near-neighbors.
No
candidate who benefited from those infusions of Californians’ money and time
ever said much to those who contributed.
It’s a
role the nation’s largest state became accustomed to after the anti-illegal
immigrant 1994 Proposition 187 passed and spurred 2.5 million Latino immigrants
to become citizens and register to vote. Almost all signed up as Democrats, and
this onetime swing state quickly turned predictably blue.
California
has been so heavily Democratic since that Hispanic voter registration flood
that in 2016, it provided the entire 3 million-plus-vote margin by which Trump
lost the national popular vote.
That has
also produced a political climate in Sacramento where the few elected
Republican legislators have zero influence. They can’t stop tax increases that
require two-thirds majorities in both the Assembly and state Senate. And their
situation figures to grow worse after this fall.
This
means the only real disputes among lawmakers are over how far to go with
liberal policies like easing prison terms and trying to densify housing
everywhere in California. It’s almost as if there are three parties in the
Legislature, so-called progressive Democrats and moderate Democrats, with
Republicans a distant third.
It has
also meant that California’s 40 million people are ignored by presidential
candidates except in the spring primary, when this state’s votes are
substantially diluted by the proportional representation rules imposed by
national Democrats, which usually preclude clear primary winners.
Presidential
candidates make promises in Iowa on subjects like ethanol and farm subsidies,
trying to win that state’s paltry six electoral votes. They promise continued
fracking and coal mining in Pennsylvania, hoping to grab 20 electoral votes.
But they
need make no promises to get California’s 54 electoral votes because everyone
knows those are going Democratic. The same for New York’s 29 votes, and the
combined 21 of Maryland and Massachusetts.
Essentially,
100 million Americans are disenfranchised by the current system of voting by
state, followed by the electoral college. Smaller states don’t care about that.
They correctly say they’d be ignored under a national popular vote system. But
California, Illinois, New York and Massachusetts are ignored because they are
considered Democratic property by both parties, while Kansas, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Missouri and most southern states are similarly
neglected as immovably Republican.
This
system makes some Americans more American than others and it must be changed,
or someday, somehow, someone or some state or group of states will rebel or
secede.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at
tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net