MEMO TO STATE DEMS: DON’T BANK ON ANTI-TRUMP FEELINGS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “MEMO TO STATE DEMS: DON’T BANK ON ANTI-TRUMP FEELINGS”

          Endorsements and coattails have never meant much in California politics. From Ronald Reagan, whose strong efforts could not keep major state offices in Republican hands after his first term as governor, to Jerry Brown, who usually endorses only after fellow Democrats have already been assured their party’s backing, big names have not had much influence over voters.

          The most classic example of lagging coattails came in 1980, when Reagan carried California in the presidential election by a record margin, but Democratic U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston won reelection with a larger edge. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, who easily won election twice, pushed through less than half the ballot propositions he endorsed and never ushered a single fellow Republican into statewide office.

          That’s why it may be premature for Democrats to celebrate, as they quietly have, the negative feelings most California voters have about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

          Democrats hope Trump will be a gift that gives them plenty this fall, wishing he will depress GOP turnout even though more Republicans than ever voted in the June primary election – 2.1 million in all, 1.55 million for Trump. Of course, Democrats more than doubled the springtime Republican vote, drawing some 4.5 million ballots into the contest between party nominee Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders.

          All this matters because Democrats fervently want to hang onto their current 39-14 margin in California’s delegation to the House of Representatives and would also love to regain the brief two-thirds majority they held two years ago in the Legislature, which gave them virtually complete control of Sacramento.

          Possibly the biggest beneficiary of a small Republican turnout might be Sacramento County’s two-term Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, in the midst of a fund-raising scandal where his father will do jail time after fraudulently raising larger-than-legal campaign donations for him.

          This story broke in media around Bera’s district just before the primary, but he still got 53.2 percent of the June vote, compared with 46.8 percent for incumbent Republican county Sheriff Scott Jones. Under the state’s Top Two system, even though Bera got a clear majority of the primary vote – he and Jones were alone on the ballot – the pair must face off again in November.

          Bera’s fund-raising problems won’t go away before the election, and some voters who cast early ballots for him in the primary might not have known about the issue before they voted. So Jones has hope, but probably needs a strong GOP vote to oust Bera. That’s just one reason Democrats hope Trump depresses the Republican turnout.

          With voters also due to decide hot-button issues from the death penalty to continued tax surcharges on the wealthy, from legalized recreational marijuana to requiring condoms in pornographic films, there’s a good chance even Republicans who detest Trump will vote.

          So Democrats and supposedly independent political action committees backing them have begun sending out campaign mailers associating Trump with every Republican they can think of.

          That happened this spring in the sprawling Los Angeles County supervisorial district held for more than 25 years by the termed-out Republican Michael Antonovich, who now seeks a state Senate seat. One mailer carried photos of five Republicans seeking the powerful county job, calling them “part of Donald Trump’s Republican Party.”

          The mailer, sent for Democrat Darrell Park, helped him into the November runoff against Antonvich’s former chief of staff, Republican Kathryn Barger, in an area that has often elected GOPers to Congress and the Legislature. The Democratic hope, plainly, is that antipathy for Trump will drive some Republicans away from the polls.

          California’s history indicates this won’t work. For one thing, it’s impossible here to pull a single lever and cast a vote for any party’s full slate of candidates. Because each office requires a separate vote, chances are most Republicans won’t think about Trump when they reach the congressional and legislative parts of their ballots.

          All of which means Democrats should be concentrating on turning out their own voters this fall, not worrying about depressing the GOP vote. If they do that well, the Republican turnout won’t matter much, except in a few places, because there are so many more registered Democrats here than Republicans.

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    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

WILL SCHOOL YEAR SEE POTENT RESISTANCE TO UC ANTI-SEMITISM?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “WILL SCHOOL YEAR SEE POTENT RESISTANCE TO UC ANTI-SEMITISM?”

          As the school year begins, one thing is certain: There will be anti-Semitic outbursts and incidents at campuses of the University of California.

          We know this because of a long history of such episodes at campuses like Berkeley, Irvine and UCLA, where Jewish students have been subjected to everything from physical obstruction and attempted intimidation to questions by Palestinian students and their sympathizers about whether their faith allows Jews elected to student government posts to make objective decisions.

          It’s safe to say that if such obstacles were placed before black, Muslim or gay-lesbian-transgender students, campus administrators would have come down hard on the perpetrators. But nothing has happened to the anti-Semites, who act under the guise of criticizing Israel. It is, of course, fine to scrutinize or criticize any government’s behavior, but the anti-Israel protests, mostly led by a group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), question Israel’s very right to exist. They even deny that Jews have any historical link to the Holy Land, despite copious archeology and Biblical references to that strong connection.

          These protestors question no other nation’s right to survive, only that of the world’s lone Jewish state, created as a refuge after history’s most murderous genocide claimed half of all Jews. No one suggested Japan should cease to exist after it conquered half of Asia, enslaving millions in the process. No one suggested Russia should disappear when it seized big chunks of Ukraine. No one even suggested there should be no Germany after Germans systematically killed more than 12 million persons before and during World War II.

Only the Jewish state’s existence is ever questioned by campus demonstrators. That kind of singling out constitutes one of the U.S. State Department’s definitions of anti-Semitism.

          UC regents last spring responded to this clear-cut prejudice with a policy declaring that “Anti-Semitism…and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.” The regents did not, however, spell out punishments for students caught in such acts. They left that to campus administrators, led by the top official at each locale, the chancellor.

          So what happened when a dozen or so pro-Israel students at Irvine tried to screen a film about the Israeli army last May, only to have more than 50 protestors led by SJP members descend on the room they used, preventing anyone else from entering or leaving, all the while reportedly screaming “Intifada, Intifada—long live the Intifada! F--- Israel and f--- the police” and “All white people need to die” among other slogans?

          Irvine Chancellor Howard Gilman said the incident “crossed the line of civility” and called for an investigation.  Later, UCI condemned the harassment and intimidation of some of its Jewish students, but denied there is a longstanding problem on its campus, despite a series of incidents since 2001, when a guest speaker claimed Jews are “blind, deaf and dumb.” Meanwhile, nothing has happened to any student involved.

Wrote Gilman, “The people who know us best…(know),” that UCI is “consistently praised for efforts at creating an outstanding environment for Jewish students.”

          That’s not what some others believe. The national group Scholars for Peace in the Middle East described the May film-screening incident as the “most dramatic” anti-Jewish event at any American campus during that month, while U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of Los Angeles County reminded Gilman in a letter that “The inability of Jewish and pro-Israel students to assemble peacefully to view an Israeli film is counter to (the new UC policy), which bans ‘actions that physically or otherwise interfere with the ability of an individual or group to assemble, speak or share the opinion of others.’”

          So the first significant test of UC’s new policy is so far an abject failure, although that could change, depending on what happens when Gilman’s announced investigation is complete.

          For sure, though, anti-Semites on UC campuses have seen yet another episode where their hostile actions are so far unpunished. This, of course, can do nothing but open the door to more and more of the same, as the reputation of UC as a place that tolerates anti-Semitism has again been furthered.

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    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

MORE ETHICS QUESTIONS PLAGUE BROWN

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 30, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “MORE ETHICS QUESTIONS PLAGUE BROWN”

          On a cloudy Sacramento day in 2001, a low-level aide to then-Gov. Gray Davis secretly met a representative of the Oracle Corp. software company, accepting a $25,000 check for Davis’s reelection fund.

          Just a few days earlier, Oracle had received a $95 million software contract to update state computers. The sequence later became emblematic of the “pay-to-play” phenomenon allegedly common under Davis, a pattern used against him by Arnold Schwarzenegger when Davis was recalled and thrown from office in 2003, less than one year after his election to a second term.

          Anyone who thinks such behavior then disappeared from Sacramento can now see the interesting timing of a long list of corporate donations to the state Democratic Party and Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2014 reelection fund released the other day by the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group. The report is called “Brown’s Dirty Hands.” (http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/dirtyhands)

          One example: The report says that in November of 2011, Davis – by then a lawyer for Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. – pressured Brown to fire two oil and gas regulators the company felt were slow to grant injection well permits for hydraulic fracturing (fracking). Two months later, Oxy contributed $250,000 to Brown’s Proposition 30 tax increase initiative, and shortly after that gave $100,000 to a pet Brown charity, the Oakland Military Institute. This surely looks like old-fashioned pay-to-play.

          (Just a few years earlier, former Republican Insurance Commission Chuck Quackenbush was hounded from office for getting insurance companies he regulated to contribute to his own pet charities.)

          Another example: In June 2013, tough regulations were dropped  from SB4, a bill intended to restrict fracking. The same day, Chevron Corp. gave $135,000 to the Democratic Party. Several months later, Chevron wrote the party a $350,000 check and a week later, the party put $300,000 into Brown’s reelection campaign fund. On the same day, Chevron plunked $54,400 (the legal maximum) into Brown’s coffer.

          The report’s list goes on. It makes corporate campaign donations under Brown look at least as dicey as those that helped oust Davis.

          Brown and his aides don’t deny any of these facts, but dismiss it all as insignificant claptrap. “The governor’s leadership on climate is unmatched; these claims are downright cuckoo,” said press secretary Evan Westrup, who furnished that remark via emails to this and other news outlets. Brown refused to comment personally.

         

At least Davis had the good taste to fire a few aides after his “pay-to-play” pattern was exposed. There have been no such consequences under Brown.

          For example, former Pacific Gas & Electric Co. vice president and lobbyist Nancy McFadden remains the governor’s executive secretary, his top aide, years after it became widely known that she accepted a “departure gift” of more than $1 million from PG&E, signing a “non-disparagement” agreement to get the money. McFadden, part of whose job is to help vet all Brown’s top appointees, cannot do anything that might harm PG&E.

          So it was no surprise that emails between PG&E executives and the disgraced Michael Peevey, former president of the state Public Utilities Commission, identify McFadden as “the go-to person” in the governor’s office when it comes to naming new utilities commissioners. It is also no surprise that Brown continues refusing to disclose more than 60 emails between him, his office and the PUC from the time the commission saddled consumers with 70 percent of the $4.7 billion cost of closing the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

          And it’s no surprise that state Attorney General Kamala Harris, enthusiastically backed by Brown for the U.S. Senate, has taken more than four months to rule on the simple question of whether those emails must be disclosed.

          “It’s all an extension of the kind of thing that went on under Davis,” said Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court. “But Brown operates more under the radar and with more stealth.”

          Then there’s the pattern of multiple, well-documented government agency lies under Brown.

          It forms a pattern of ethical lapses more pervasive than anything perpetrated under Davis.

          But an attempt to recall Brown when he has barely two years left in his final term would likely prove futile, besides being a waste of time, money and energy. The important thing is for Californians to understand how unclean their state government now looks and to bear that in mind constantly while considering candidates to become Brown’s successor.

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     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, go to www.californiafocus.net

VACCINATION LAW TAKES EFFECT, BUT UNDER CHALLENGE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “VACCINATION LAW TAKES EFFECT, BUT UNDER CHALLENGE"

          As schools begin opening around California, the state’s new vaccinate-or-stay-out-of-school policy ought to be taking effect at last, more than 18 months after the December 2014 measles outbreak at Disneyland that propelled it.

          Under the new law, all students entering kindergarten this fall must have had two measles shots, a mumps and rubella (MMP) vaccination, their final doses of polio vaccine and a diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (whooping cough) injection.

          Parents who don’t want to provide these for their kids can home school their children, but unvaccinated kids who may be carrying any of those once-dreaded diseases are no longer welcome in kindergarten. That’s because unless 94 to 96 percent of children in any group of 100 are vaccinated, there can be no guarantee against disease outbreaks.

          The most recent California example of what non-vaccination can bring came in Nevada County last March, when many students at the Yuba River Charter School were kept out of classes more than a week after an unvaccinated child was diagnosed with measles. Health officials said the child was infectious while attending school. Classes were shut down because only about 43 percent of kindergarten pupils entering the school in fall 2015 had up-to-date vaccinations and an epidemic could have resulted.

         

          Many of the other 57 percent in those classrooms were exempted because of a “personal belief” provision written into previous state law, allowing parents to claim vaccinations ran counter to their religious beliefs. The new law, known as SB 277, allows exemptions only for children medically unable to receive vaccines, with parents required to produce a doctor’s note before getting that exemption.

          Unvaccinated students admitted to kindergarten in previous years will continue in school, however. When they reach 7^th grade, their parents will have to provide written evidence of vaccination.

          But foes of vaccination, who have long insisted vaccines backfire and lead both to adverse reactions and more disease, are not giving up their fight against the law. Their first move was trying to qualify a referendum for this fall’s ballot aiming to overturn SB 277. They got far too few signatures to qualify it for a vote.

          So they’ve turned to a Superior Court judge in San Diego County, seeking an injunction to suspend the law until higher courts can rule on its constitutionality.

          That move has also not yet succeeded. But an initiative proposed for the November 2018 ballot aiming to overturn SB 277 remains alive, with a Sept. 26 deadline for gathering signatures.

          Amid all this, there are no credible denials of research showing that no more than 86 percent of those at Disneyland had been vaccinated before the day many were exposed to measles. The actual rate may have been as low as 50 percent, according to the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Because the scientifically accepted vaccination level for so-called “herd immunity” is at least 94 percent, there was ample opportunity for infection and 145 cases were recorded among those at the theme park and others who came in contact with them later.

          “This is what happens when parents opt out of vaccinations, as roughly half the cases occurred in children who were not vaccinated but were eligible to receive the shots,” wrote Lila Abassi, MD, director of medicine for the American Council on Science and Health.

          Because some who have been vaccinated can still contract measles when exposure is strong and direct, as they did at Disneyland, most physicians consider “herd immunity” vital to disease prevention.

          Said Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan, SB 277 author and the Legislature’s only practicing pediatrician, “It is unfortunate there are still people who perpetuate misinformation about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and minimize the dangers of vaccine-preventable diseases that disabled and killed millions annually before vaccines were available.”

          The safety of vaccines has been proven in myriad studies, and their efficacy is clear from the small incidence of diseases like rubella and polio since vaccines for them were deployed.

          But that doesn’t quiet nay-sayers any more than photos from space deflated flat-earth advocates who still hold occasional conventions. What’s important is that parents understand that regardless of their personal preferences, they don’t have the right to expose the children of others to potentially deadly ailments.

         

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    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

PIOUS-TALKING POLS MAY KILL EX PARTE REFORM

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “PIOUS-TALKING POLS MAY KILL EX PARTE REFORM”

          Strong evidence shows several arms of California government are in urgent need of major ethical fixes, beginning with the Public Utilities Commission, the Energy Commission and the Coastal Commission, to name just three powerful agencies.

          But even the smallest and most obvious reforms are consistently met with vetos, legislative detours and other obfuscation despite the pious rhetoric of powerful politicians from Gov. Jerry Brown down to backbenchers in the Legislature.

          The pattern began last year, when Brown vetoed a batch of proposed changes for the PUC, including creating an inspector general for the almost untouchable agency that oversees electric and natural gas safety and prices. Brown nixed a ban on private contacts between PUC commissioners and executives of the big utility companies they regulate, while often acting like rubber stamps. These are known as “ex parte communications.”

          The drive for a ban on ex parte’s for the PUC followed revelations of a secret deal between a former PUC president (now under criminal investigation) and officials of the Southern California Edison Co. that stuck consumers with the bulk of costs for shutting down the San Onofre Nuclear Power Station. There were also private contacts between PUC commissioners and Pacific Gas & Electric Co. on both rates and the consequences of the fatal 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion.

          This year, legislators proposed a similar ban on ex parte communications by the Coastal Commission, which rules on virtually all development along the state’s scenic coastline. This came after several commissioners admitted having secret meetings, emails and phone calls with developers on whose projects they were to vote.

          For months, passage of a ban seemed assured; it easily cleared the state Senate. If passed, the bill by Democratic state Sen. Hannah Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara would prohibit ex parte communications between commissioners and anyone else with a financial stake in agency business.

          This would be a nice start, many consumers believe, with similar bans also needed for many other state boards and commissions. So far, not one such ban has been accepted by Brown, whose signature is needed to make legislation into law.

          Now the Coastal Commission ex parte ban has now run afoul of an analysis by the state Natural Resources Agency that found the commission would need six new employees at a yearly cost of about $150,000 each. That department – under Brown’s direct authority – also backed the contention by some commissioners that ex parte communications help greatly in their work.

          Two facts are relevant here: One is that the expense ($900,000) for six new employees who would presumably police their bosses is a fraction of the building cost for just one typical new coastal home. It’s a pittance for keeping commissioners honest and fair. The other fact is that wealthy coastal developers can hire lobbyists and other spokesman whose fees are usually beyond the means of conservationists. That’s why most Coastal Commission ex parte communications are one-sided renditions of property owner interests.

          Nevertheless, allegedly because of its financial impact, Jackson’s bill has been sidetracked into the state Assembly’s suspense file, which usually delays votes on proposed laws by about a year. If this bill isn’t resurrected by Thursday evening, it can’t be reintroduced until next year. Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon of Lawndale, sponsor of last year’s vetoed PUC reforms, refused to say whether he will try to break it loose.

          Meanwhile, there’s no prospect for an ex parte communications ban for any other agency. A package of PUC changes agreed to by Brown and key legislators would require commissioners to reveal quickly the contents of any such contacts. But there are no significant penalties for anyone who doesn’t comply.

          There’s no effort to impose even that much on the Energy Commission or other panels.

          All of which means it will likely be business as usual in California government for at least another year, despite rhetoric from Rendon and other legislators who have advocated ex parte and other reforms to prevent regulators from favoring the very interests they’re supposed to rein in.

          Coming almost two years after revelations of the extent and consequences of PUC ex parte communications, this raises major questions about politicians who talk a good game on this but may not really mean it.

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    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

WHY SHOULD TAXPAYERS PAY FOR CLOSED PRIMARIES?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 2016, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “WHY SHOULD TAXPAYERS PAY FOR CLOSED PRIMARIES?”

          California’s June presidential primary election is now just a memory, long ago subsumed in the news by vice presidential derbies, political conventions, politicians’ gaffes and violence at home and abroad.

          But one question lingers on: Why did taxpayers have to cover the primary election costs for those political parties that did not let any voter who liked cast a ballot in their contests?

          In June, Democrats and Greens allowed anyone registered as either a Democrat or without party preference to vote in their primaries, although there were a few hoops for non-Democrats to jump through. Republicans and a couple of minor parties (American Independent, for one) did not. They ran completely closed affairs, with no one not registered as a party member allowed to vote.

          This meant barely 27 percent of registered voters could participate in the Republican balloting, which turned out to be no big loss for anyone because Donald Trump’s significant opponents all dropped out weeks before the vote.

          But why should the 68 percent of voters eligible to vote on the Democratic side have had to contribute to the costs of running the Republican primary when there was no way for them to participate even if they wanted to?

          The parties say that was because by holding a primary, they did a public service. Wait a minute: That service was only for the relative few who chose to become members of the GOP.

          Compare this to the Top Two primary system used in all California primaries except those for president. Anyone registered to vote, regardless of which party they chose to join, if any, can vote for anyone on the ballot.

          That’s a truly public event, as opposed to the private nature of a closed primary like the GOP’s. It is arguably a far greater public service, too, because it offers all voters a chance to select whichever candidate they like – unlike a closed primary that denies most voters the right to participate.

          No one has yet broken out the cost of any one party’s presidential primary from the overall costs of staging elections, mailing out ballots and then counting those that are cast.

          But the cost of closed California primaries this spring surely was many millions of dollars. Nationally, the New York-based Open Primaries organization pegged the cost of closed presidential primaries at $287 million.

          Of course, both major parties would love to keep all their primaries closed. That’s why they sued (and won) in the late 1990s to throw out the so-called “blanket primary” system approved by California voters in 1996. That setup, like Top Two, allowed all voters to choose any candidate they liked, but separated vote counts by party, so that all qualified parties were guaranteed a place on the fall ballot in each race they entered.

          But four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld arguments from both major state parties claiming it was unconstitutional for non-party members to help choose party nominees. This left open the route taken by Top Two, where the runoff election candidates are not chosen by party, but simply by being one of the two leading vote-winners in a single primary. That’s why this fall California will see 28 races with both candidates from the same party.

          This kind of selection process winnows out candidates who don’t draw many votes, but still could pull enough to distort the final outcome if they were on the November ballot.

          It all harkens back to the days when there were no primaries and parties chose their candidates in state and national conventions (now reduced to elaborate pep rallies) featuring “smoke-filled rooms.”

          “Primaries are actually bad public policy,” says Richard Winger, who runs the newsletter Ballot Access News. “We’re the only country in the world that lets the population decide the candidates.”

          Yes, things might be smoother for presidential candidates if they didn’t have to slog through up to two years of campaigning before the first primary. But primaries make politicians accountable to the public, where accountability is only indirect when the parties pick their own leaders.

          The bottom line: Primaries do make sense in a populist-oriented country like America, but forcing the public to pay when those primaries are closed does not. Fortunately, Californians now face that fundamentally unfair situation only once every four years.

         

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    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

OBAMA RISKS ALIENATING LATINOS FROM DEMOCRATS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 16, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “OBAMA RISKS ALIENATING LATINOS FROM DEMOCRATS”

          Here’s the one thing Democratic politicians should fear more than any other potential California event: Latinos stay home from the polls in droves on Election Day in November 2016.

          It went almost unnoticed beyond Orange County in early 2015, but the events in one contest for a spot on that county’s Board of Supervisors should be most instructive.

          In that race, the virtually unknown Vietnamese-American Republican Andrew Do beat the recently termed out and popular former Democratic state Sen. Lou Correa – now running for Congress – by 43 votes.

          This wasn’t the classic Orange County campaign in a suburban area where Republicans typically run up huge margins. Instead, it centered on Santa Ana, the mostly-Latino county seat that’s been the base of power for longtime Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, now running for the U.S. Senate.

          This supervisorial seat became vacant in 2014, when former county Supervisor Janet Nguyen took over Correa’s vacated slot in the state Senate in an election where overall turnout was dismal, but Latinos voted in much lower proportions than the general public.

          While Latino voters were no-shows in large numbers again in the Do-Correa contest, the Vietnamese-American Republicans who elected Nguyen performed again for Do, with 84 percent of the votes cast by mail.

          One analysis of the race found that ethnic Vietnamese registered voters were twice as likely to turn in ballots as Latinos.

          Why were Latinos so derelict about voting? It just may be that California is at last feeling some results from President Obama’s determined, long-term policy of deporting as many undocumented immigrants as possible.

          During his first five years in office, Obama presided over the deportations of 1.9 million persons who were in this country illegally. That was a massive increase from the 1.1 million deported during the last five years of the previous administration led by Republican George W. Bush.

          Yes, Latinos know Republicans in Congress stymie every move made by Democrats to provide the undocumented with a path to citizenship, even if it’s long, onerous and expensive. But they also see what Obama has done, even though he’s attempted to allow illegal immigrants brought here as children to stay indefinitely.

          When a report from the often reliable Latino Decisions polling firm shows 63 percent of all Latino registered voters are personally acquainted with someone who is undocumented, mass deportations like Obama’s speak powerfully. When 40 percent of those same registered voters say they know someone who currently faces deportation, that also makes an impact.

          It means this: The more undocumented immigrants Obama deports, the more Latino registered voters start to wonder if there’s really any difference on immigration between Republicans and Democrats, despite their very different rhetoric.

          But Obama hasn’t cared about this. His deportation policy has long been an attempt to fend off frequent, completely unsubstantiated claims from the Republican right that he is a traitor with a secret agenda of destroying America.

          So, while every survey shows that immigration for years has been the single most important issue for Latino voters, Obama persists with his defensive mindset and his deportation policy.

          Now the results are beginning to come in, with first Nguyen and then Do elected in an area long dominated by Hispanic voters.

          Overall voting figures from 2014 suggest this might not be confined to the Santa Ana area. Only 1.3 million Latino votes were cast in California that fall, 15 percent of the total. Staying home, then, was more common for Latinos last year than for other voters, who also came out in record low numbers.

          All of which suggests that Obama’s deportation policy has already hurt a few fellow Democrats, and could hurt more this fall. Latinos who suddenly became active as voters turned this state solidly Democratic because of their fears after the passage of the anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994. If those same voters become convinced Democrats are taking them for granted, as Obama has, Republicans could stage a significant California comeback.

         

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    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