CRIMINALS OR VICTIMS: WHO SHOULD JUSTICE SERVE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “CRIMINALS OR VICTIMS: WHO SHOULD JUSTICE SERVE?”

 

          It’s a fundamental question these days among California’s leading district attorneys: Should the justice system serve criminals or their victims?

 

          This question never arose seriously before now. Criminals, especially repeat offenders, were bottom priorities when it came to whom district attorneys aimed to help.

 

          That matched the sentiments of California voters, who over generations passed one initiative after another toughening laws on the death penalty, the three-strikes-and-you’re-out law that targets criminals who keep preying on others and threw out a law that banned cash bail.

 

          Voters also okayed mercifully-minded measures over the last 10 years, reducing some felonies to misdemeanors with much lower penalties and allowing for quicker release of prisoners. Those changes excluded serious and violent crimes, except where legal codes inexplicably classed a few violent acts – like sex trafficking – as lesser offenses.

 

          Now come the new district attorneys of California’s most prominent and arguably most influential counties, Los Angeles and San Francisco. George Gascon and Chesa Boudin both are expanding on campaign promises to end cash bail locally, almost never cooperate with federal immigration authorities and seek reevaluation of possibly wrongful past convictions.

 

          Gascon has become the more radical, ordering hundreds of deputies in the nation’s largest prosecutorial office to stop seeking sentence enhancements for career criminals and not to ask juries for death penalties, even for the worst crimes.

 

          Gascon’s actions struck many of his deputies, some with distinguished legal and academic credentials, as illegal, running counter to California law. Their union sued and the other day got a superior court judge to rule Gascon’s ban on sentencing enhancements does violate state law. The ruling will almost certainly be appealed, its fate uncertain in higher courts.

 

          Essentially, longtime Judge James Chalfant, whose decisions are only rarely overturned by appellate courts, ruled Gascon cannot force line prosecutors to ignore laws protecting the public from repeat offenders.

 

          Meanwhile, the moves by Gascon, a former San Francisco police chief and district attorney, and his Bay Area heir Boudin, caught the attention of other district attorneys around the state. On Jan. 12, the California District Attorneys Association, which represents all but one of the state’s chief county prosecutors, wrote Gascon that “CDAA has grave concerns that recent policy directives (by Gascon) undermine California’s bedrock expectation that prosecutors will never abandon their obligation to advocate passionately for crime victims…These mandates ignore our laws and governing ethical standards.”

 

          The prosecutors’ group added that Gascon gave “criminals in Los Angeles County…an unimaginable windfall.” Signing the letter were top CDAA officials Vern Pierson and Michael Hestrin, district attorneys respectively of El Dorado and Riverside counties.

 

          Soon after his colleagues denounced his prior moves, the undaunted Gascon responded with another radical order. He told his deputies to halt their previously routine appearances at state hearings to oppose parole for prisoners with life sentences who have served their legal minimum prison time. So, for example, when Charles Manson “family” member Bruce Davis, the vicious murderer of musician Gary Hinman, came up for a hearing the other day, only the 81-year-old cousin of his victim was present to protest on the video conference. She is not a lawyer.

 

          For decades, appearances by deputy district attorneys – especially those who originally prosecuted the lifers – helped keep major offenders imprisoned, where they could do no further harm to people whose lives their misdeeds already wrecked.

 

          Gascon did this to fulfill a campaign promise to relieve crowding in jails and prisons. Essentially, he placed convicts’ comfort above victims’ well-being.

 

          Almost all of his actions so far have been more in the interest of criminals than their victims, much the same as Boudin’s, which have not been quite as extreme.

 

          Boudin’s tendencies may be more understandable, as he’s the son of two Weather Underground members given long sentences after convictions for being getaway drivers in a 1981 Brinks car robbery in Rocklin, NY, that led to the deaths of two police officers and a security guard.

 

          But Gascon is a former longtime top cop . A movement to recall him is now underway, but he’s already spurred a totally unprecedented conflict among this state’s leading prosecutors. He’s also setting an example for like-mined leftists, if more of them ever become D.A.s.

               

 

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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

FAULCONER LOOKS LIKE MAIN GOP HOPE FOR A BREAKTHROUGH

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 2, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “FAULCONER LOOKS LIKE MAIN GOP HOPE FOR A BREAKTHROUGH”

 

          The last time San Diego elected a moderate Republican mayor with strong potential for appealing to voters statewide, it was Pete Wilson, a onetime state assemblyman who later won election to the U.S. Senate and two terms as governor.

 

          Now, while Californians think about possibly recalling Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, there’s San Diego’s recently termed-out ex-Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who figures to be on both the recall’s list of possible replacement governors and the state’s June 2022 primary ballot.

 

Faulconer hopes to take a page from the playbooks of both Wilson and ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like Wilson, he’s busily purveying a message of moderation and effectiveness. Like Schwarzenegger, he hopes a recall can propel him to the next level of politics.

 

        With Faulconer as mayor, San Diego was the largest American city with a Republican governor. Now, the other major GOP figure planning to be on the recall list, John Cox, has devoted the recall season’s first major TV commercial to blasting Faulconer. Cox, a big loser to Newsom in 2018, knows who is his main threat this time.

 

          Faulconer has sometimes sought to downplay his Republican identity in this state where the GOP label has lately meant certain defeat for anyone seeking statewide office other than the movie muscleman Schwarzenegger.

 

          Some Republicans hope Faulconer can rescue them, giving California a Republican very different from the hugely unpopular (in California) President Trump.

 

          But Faulconer sometimes makes moves that belie his image as a moderate.

 

          One came in January, when he endorsed former U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa to replace the disgraced and resigned San Diego Republican Duncan Hunter in a Mexican-border congressional seat. Issa, hardly a moderate, “retired” in 2018 from his former seat in north San Diego County when the district became too liberal for him to expect reelection. The Hunter district leans far more to the right.

 

          Faulconer took some risk in endorsing Issa, a persistent harrasser of ex-President Barack Obama while Issa chaired the House Government Operations Committee through much of the last decade.

 

          Then there was an appearance by Trump on Fox News last June, just after Faulconer visited the Oval Office. “(Faulconer) was just in my office, great guy,” Trump said. “He came up to thank me for having done the (border) wall because it’s made such a difference. He said it’s like day and night; he said people (had been) flowing across and now nobody can come in.”

 

          Faulconer quickly denied saying any of that, his office claiming he and Trump discussed only a trade deal. For sure, Newsom can use the Fox News tape against him, and never mind Faulconer’s denial.

 

          But Faulconer hopes to win over more voters with another move than he might lose with any of that.

 

          Besides his own campaign, he plans to sponsor a statewide ballot initiative on the homeless issue aimed for the 2022 election, claiming San Diego has had more success on this than other large cities.

 

          Faulconer wants the still-unwritten measure to make it easier for cities and counties to “encourage” homeless individuals to accept psychological treatment and shelter beds. He also wants to roll back some laws like the winning Propositions 47 and 57, which reduced penalties for drug use and crimes like thefts and car burglaries valued under $950.

 

          “California has lost its way on homelessness,” he said in a speech. “We have to speak the truth about what causes homelessness (referring to drug addiction and mental illness, as well as high rents and home prices).”

 

          Faulconer said San Diego cut homelessness after a hepatitis outbreak by sending nurses and paramedics to “every riverbed, canyon and street corner, vaccinated more than 100,000 persons, sanitized streets and built four bridge shelters.”

 

          That dropped his city’s homeless count by 9 percent in 2019, Faulconer said, the only significant city in California with any reduction.

 

          Faulconer’s stances on many things almost replicate Schwarzenegger’s, and Schwarzenegger remains the only Republican elected statewide since 1998. But he was a famed movie star and Faulconer is neither famous nor an actor.

 

          So the jury remains out on the mayor’s statewide political viability. But so far, despite Cox’s claim to the contrary, the state GOP has no better hope.

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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

A NEW TRUMP PARTY COULD BOOST CALIFORNIA DEMS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “A NEW TRUMP PARTY COULD BOOST CALIFORNIA DEMS”

 

          About the first thing Donald Trump did after debarking from Air Force One near his new Elba (the island of Napoleon’s first exile) in Florida was float the idea of starting a political party of his very own.

 

          He has copious seed money for such a startup with more than $200 million he gathered in donations while boosting fake claims of rampant election fraud last November. The large and raucous crowds he drew even after losing the last presidential election by more than 7 million votes gave some indication of his ability to draw masses to any party he starts.

 

          Meanwhile, the idea has Democrats drooling across America, but nowhere more than in California.

 

          For third party efforts stoked by the rich and famous are not new to the nation or this state. They generally damage the party from which the founder defected.

 

          The late Ross Perot was the last billionaire to start his own party, running against Republican George H.W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992. Clinton won that time with a mere plurality, not a majority, taking just 46 percent of the California vote, for one example. Perot, a data processing mogul whose company General Motors bought for more than $2 billion, drew 20 percent, indicating Bush might have won had Perot not interfered.

 

          Now comes Trump, who appears to know at least some of this history. His stated purpose in starting a new party – if he goes through with it – would be to “punish” Republicans he claims betrayed him by not backing his bogus claims of having actually won in a landslide last year.

 

          Plenty of Republicans allowed Trump’s 30,000-odd documentable lies while in the White House to slide. They often let his prevarications become the basis for national policy, fearing what the ex-president could do to their political futures. Namely, destroy them by running some of his minions against them in primary elections.

 

          One consequence has been the repeated shortages of COVID-19 vaccines and the chaotic distribution of what supplies there were when Trump left office. No one will ever know how many lives that cost, but most likely they number at least in the thousands.

 

          If Trump ever founds his own faction, he’s said he would call it the Patriot Party, seemingly oblivious to Samuel Johnson’s famous observation that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Such a party would work hardest to undermine and defeat several GOP senators who decried his incitement of the crowd that went straight from a rally behind the White House to breaking into the Capitol building. He’d also go after the 10 Republicans in Congress who voted to impeach him a second time.

 

          These included one Californian, David Valadao of Hanford, who was never so independent while Trump held office. For sure, Trump would not attack the likes of his sycophantic golf partner Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, also the GOP leader in the House and the likely replacement for Speaker Nancy Pelosi if Republicans regain control there.

 

          He might work against Kevin Faulconer when the former San Diego mayor who never was much of a Trumper runs to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in this year’s possible recall election or for a full term in 2022.

 

          It remains to be seen whether he attacks Young Kim, a new Republican representatives from Orange County who avoided voting on impeachment, never taking a stand.

 

          For Trump, the alternative to a new party would be working within the GOP, running primary candidates against his would-be victims. That would not work well in California, where Democrats and independents could bail out Trump targets in the state’s June 2022 non-partisan primary.

 

          There is, therefore, little reason for any politician in California to fear anything the ex-president does. No one planned it this way, but the state’s very open primary makes it difficult for outsiders to dictate outcomes.

 

          Which means Trump, who had severe negative impacts on California air and water quality, wildfire aftermaths, policing policy, immigration, infrastructure and more, probably can’t greatly influence any more elections here unless and until he runs again for president.

  

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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

IRONIC RECALL BEARS LIKELY PLUSES FOR NEWSOM

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “IRONIC RECALL BEARS LIKELY PLUSES FOR NEWSOM”

 

          The colorful Internet ad from an organization called Rescue California, a lead sponsor of the petition drive to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, accuses him of posting “The worst record of getting vaccines distributed” of any state in America.

 

          For one thing, that’s not correct. As of Feb. 1, California stood 37^th among the states in the percentage of available COVID-19 vaccine doses that had already been administered. Not great, but far from the worst, and the pace has picked up since then.

 

          Then there’s the irony in that ad. Among the early leaders of the Newsom recall have been two organizer and leaders of rallies by the Freedom Angels, a group of hardline anti-vaccination activists. One of that movement’s adherents violently attacked the pro-vaccination leader and Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan last year as he walked in his Sacramento district.

 

          There can be few greater ironies than for anti-vaxx organizers to gripe about a governor not getting enough people vaccinated. Then there’s the fact that almost all recall leaders are part of the Republican far right, which often decries the “cancel culture.” Yet, they’re trying to cancel the results of the 2018 election.

 

The recall drive, of course, likes to play up Newsom’s admitted hypocrisy in attending at least one group dinner larger than the state’s then-recommended limit of 10 persons.

 

          Who are the bigger hypocrites here? Anti-vaxxers like those who shut down the mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium for an hour the other day, many of whom signed the recall petition, or the governor, who is very human and sometimes slips up?

 

          For sure, not even its blatant hypocrisy will stop the recall movement. So it’s time to examine how a recall that stands some chance of ousting Newsom could also make him a political hero and a martyr to many members of this state’s dominant Democratic Party.

 

          So far, major Democrats are staying off the list of alternative potential governors that will accompany the recall question if and when it appears in a special election. If this holds up, and Republicans don’t find a candidate with the wide popular appeal of an Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newsom can run a massive ad campaign labeling the whole thing a far-right attempt to usurp power. He could even borrow one of ex-President Donald Trump’s post-election slogans, “Stop the Steal.”

 

          So far, the biggest names willing to put their names on the list of potential new governors are Republicans Kevin Faulconer, the termed-out ex-mayor of San Diego, and his near neighbor, businessman John Cox of suburban San Diego County, defeated easily by Newsom in 2018. Former Sacramento area Congressman Doug Ose also may run. None of them has appeal approaching movie muscleman Schwarzenegger.

 

          When former Facebook executive and Democratic megadonor Chamath Palihapitiya begged off the campaign the other day, it left no well-funded Democrat planning to run.

 

Prominent Democrats like Congressmen Adam Schiff of Burbank and Ro Khanna of San Jose won’t oppose a like-minded sitting governor, fearing they could become pariahs in their own party if he survives the ouster attempt.

 

          Only one significant Democrat took that risk in 2003, when voters dumped then-Gov. Gray Davis in California’s only successful statewide recall vote. That was former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who did become an enduring party pariah after losing to Schwarzenegger. Another former lieutenant governor, John Garamendi, considered running but backed off and later ran for Congress, where he sits today.

 

          One thing for sure: If and when Newsom beats back the recall, he would instantly win a reputation as someone who put a bunch of far-right populists in their place. That would give him a leg up in a future race either for president – which every California governor considers – or in a 2024 run for the Senate seat now occupied by Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

 

          Newsom now dreads the likely recall attempt but if it happens, he gets a chance to whip his three most likely 2022 reelection challengers well in advance of that election. He could turn the entire experience into one of the best things that ever happened to him, with the potential of becoming a lasting hero among his fellow Democrats, here and across the country.

 

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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

HOUSING BACKERS START FACING POST-PANDEMIC REALITY

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “HOUSING BACKERS START FACING POST-PANDEMIC REALITY”

 

          The mysterious blindness that apparently affected California’s top legislative housing advocates all through 2020 seems to have abated a little. They and leading housing advocacy groups appear at last to accept that the coronavirus plague changed things – a lot.

 

It’s true those lawmakers still insist on pushing bills to make California cities of all sizes and shapes far denser than ever. But some at last appear willing to admit that things have changed in the last year.

 

          No legislator will say a housing solution is at hand, but one new bill’s very presence in the Legislature shows an awareness that was missing last year.

 

That bill is for the moment called Senate Bill 6, part of a housing package introduced in the state Senate within moments of the current session’s opening. Specific terms of SB6 are not yet spelled out; the measure for the moment is basically a blank, but with a stated purpose.

 

That is to make it mandatory for cities and counties to allow rezoning when office buildings are converted to residential or mixed-use.

 

This bill exists because of the mass exodus of businesses from offices across California, a flood tide that started in mid-March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic grew so menacing that even the largest companies sent almost all employees home to work.

 

Since then, surveys indicate the changes will largely become permanent. Companies have cut expenses greatly by reducing office space, some even paying for the privilege (Pinterest paid a reported $89 million to get out of a lease in San Francisco, Twitter forked over even more to escape some of its obligations).

 

Firms from Dropbox to Merrill Lynch have sent workers home by the hundreds of thousands.

 

Multiple studies show about two-thirds of those employees prefer working remotely – and that they are more productive that way. How does this affect housing? Simple: Building owners sizing up their situation are realizing “normal” market conditions won’t return. Many are responding with quiet plans to convert existing office space into housing.

 

It's part of a trend that also sees rents dropping precipitately (down more than 20 percent in San Francisco over the last year) while home prices in exurban areas like Sonoma County and north San Diego County are on the rise. With distance working now the vogue, white collar workers can live almost anywhere they can afford. Proximity to their offices has become irrelevant.

 

          This is fine with advocates of low-cost housing and helping the homeless, so long as new laws include a requirement for plenty of affordable units.

 

          The new reality, says David Zisser, associate director of the advocacy group Housing California, “intrigues us. We don’t think single-family housing or market rate prices are evil,” he added, “But those alone don’t serve people who are neediest.”

 

          So he favors a by-right zoning bill that might encourage creating long-term housing for the homeless on some floors, high-end condominiums on others, with floors for offices also included. Buildings might rejigger elevators so that some run only to residential floors, others to office areas.

 

          Cities would be crazy to resist a rezoning measure like this. After all, if office towers and other commercial spaces go vacant, building values and property taxes plummet. But if building owners reconfigure structures for mixed use, those same structures can remain cash cows for owners and local governments.

 

          At the same time, Housing California and other advocates favor accelerating government purchases of motels and hotels to house the currently homeless, even if some will never want to move in. The history of homeless folks responding to getting housed is that the majority prefer indoor living.

 

          What better time than now to buy up hotel properties, while many are shut down and being eyed for possible redevelopment into market-rate housing?

 

          Still, housing advocates in the Legislature and elsewhere have not given up pushing for more new construction. But they’re starting at last to recognize they can get more units faster by using the billions of square feet that have already become vacant or are about to.

 

          That’s major progress toward political recognition of the obvious California housing solution.

 

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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

STATE VOWS END TO VACCINE DISCRIMINATION; CAN IT?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2021, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “STATE VOWS END TO VACCINE DISCRIMINATION; CAN IT?”

 

          Everything went smoothly the other day at a mass vaccination center in the parking lot outside The Forum, the Inglewood arena kitty-corner from  modernist SoFi Stadium, new home of the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers football teams.

 

          Lines of cars were long but manageable as they moved slowly and steadily. Nurses checked on the newly vaccinated recipients of first doses of Pfizer BioNTech inoculations against the dread COVID-19 virus, found to be at least partly effective on every mutation yet discovered. Folks were free to go after a 15-minute waiting period to assure they were having no immediate serious side effects.

 

          Staffers and nurses were competent, kind and friendly, some having come as temporary workers from points as distant as Louisiana and Ohio. The mix of cars inching forward ran from shiny new Range Rovers to ancient, oxidized Honda Civics.

 

          But some things were dreadfully wrong behind this pleasant, well-managed scene where health care workers and folks over 65 got their shots in the arm.

 

          The same flaws applied to other public and private vaccination sites in most California counties. For one thing, there was dreadful inconsistency in the vaccine rollout. Some hospitals served everyone on their patient roster over 65. Others vaccinated only seniors who were also among their most immune compromised patients. Shots were available at county sites to anyone over 65 who could book one, which proved no simple matter for many.

 

          The inconsistency applied in almost all California counties as vague state guidelines left institutions to interpret local rules according to how much vaccine they had in their freezers.

 

          Confusion piled atop even bigger problems. A principal inequity was that almost no walkup vaccination sites accepted people lacking previously arranged appointments. It took computer savvy and equipment to make those appointments. Nothing in the state’s series of vaccination plans aimed to fix that problem.

 

          This left the entire enterprise looking like an exercise in economic discrimination and classism. There appeared to be only two ways to get appointments: go online and fight through ever-jammed websites where getting any response could seem miraculous, or go in person to a site and prevail on agreeable staffers to use their smartphones to get you an appointment.

 

          Big advantages went to those with fast computers and strong wifi. Anyone lacking either commodity would need lots of help getting the vaccine unless they were on the patient roster of a system like Kaiser Permanente’s, where phone calls went to all patients over 75 as soon as Kaiser got permission to vaccinate them.

 

          If you were a patient of other medical groups and did not check email or your personalized app from those systems, you would not learn appointments were available unless someone else told you.

 

          Then there was the matter of getting there. For the immobile, stranded at home with caregivers who might not have cars, there was no one bringing vaccine regardless of how many Covid risk factors they might have.

 

          The fact is that the poorer folks are the less likely they are to have reliable, strong wifi even when they have computers. They were not doing well in this system.

 

          As for getting to one of the large, mass distribution sites generally located in the large parking lots of places like Disneyland, Dodger Stadium and CalExpo, getting there took a car. Yes, processing and injection generally took only 45 minutes after arrival at The Forum, but some folks squirmed as long as five hours in their rest-room-free vehicles at other big sites.

 

          It added up to discrimination against the poor and uncybernetic, especially folks lacking both computers and smartphones. “We know about the problems,” said Darrel Ng, senior advisor to the state’s Covid task force. “There will be more outreach. But we will need larger supplies of vaccine to make really big improvements.”

 

For now, this means poor planning has created discrimination by economic class, since the poor are far more likely than others to lack needed skills and equipment.

 

          The bottom line: It should have been simple to get vaccinated, especially in California, whose governor has spent years preaching equal opportunity.

         

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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

CAPITOL INVASION THREATENS GOP CALIFORNIA SEATS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS 
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “CAPITOL INVASION THREATENS GOP CALIFORNIA SEATS”

 

          Republicans made much ado last fall when they regained four of the seven congressional seats Democrats flipped away from them two years earlier, in 2018.

 

          They gloated in ways they could not over the last 25 years, since Democrats turned this state into a sea of blue.

 

          “We were the ones who wanted to get something done,” crowed Hanford’s David Valadao, who took back the 21^st District seat he had lost by 900 votes to Democrat T.J. Cox two years earlier.

 

          But are they gloating too soon? Valadao’s margin of 1,522 votes out of about 170,000 that were cast only slightly topped Cox’s earlier edge. Fewer than 2,000 voters switching from one candidate to another, one party to another, made the difference.

 

          This could portend a Democratic comeback in the district next year – but no one can be certain, because California is likely to lose a seat or two in the House when Census results are finalized, assuring that district lines will change. It’s even possible Valadao could find himself in a primary fight with neighboring GOP Rep. Devin Nunes if new districts feature overlap between their two current ones.

 

          Even more threatening to some Republicans was their performance in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 mob invasion of the U.S. Capitol, incited in part by Trump.

 

          His purpose: To disrupt the usually pro forma congressional certification of the Electoral College vote held on Dec. 14, which made Joe Biden president in accordance with the popular vote nationally and in individual states. Congress voted on possibly rejecting electors from Arizona based on unfounded fairy tales of fraud propounded by the defeated past president. A week later, it voted to impeach Trump a second time.

          Only one of the four Republicans who recovered seats for the GOP actually voted for the objections from their party’s senators and House members. That was Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita, a former Navy fighter pilot who won last fall by just 333 votes out of more than 340,000 cast in the district running from Lancaster and Rosamond in the high desert of northern Los Angeles County over to Simi Valley in Ventura County.

 

          As with other districts, no one knows quite what his will look like in 2022, the shape of districts to be determined by California’s bi-partisan Citizens Redistricting Commission, whose members are yet unnamed.

 

          Garcia’s is the only House seat even partly in 12-million-person Los Angeles County that’s now held by the GOP, and Garcia won it by the barest of margins. It contains several of the few remaining Republican-dominated enclaves in the state, but Garcia won this time because about 800 swing voters changed their choices between 2018 and 2020.

 

          With no evidence to back his assertion, Garcia explained his vote to cancel Arizona’s electors by asserting without offering any evidence that he “firmly believ(ed)” there were constitutional errors in some states’ votes. This despite numerous court decisions finding there were no such errors, all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the incumbent’s own appointees joined the majority ruling against him.

 

          Immediately, there were calls in the district for Garcia to resign and make way for a special election to replace him, charging he gave aid and comfort to the Jan. 6 mob that invaded the Capitol.

 

          Meanwhile, newly elected seat flippers Valadao, Young Kim and Michelle Steel of Orange County all found excuses not to vote on the Arizona objection. They may have avoided calls to resign, but they made no move to back constitutional democracy and so will be subject in 2022 to charges they implicitly backed the mob and the former incumbent. Like Garcia, three of them voted against impeachment. Valadao was one of just 10 Republicans to back it.

 

Chances are expansion of district sizes due to loss of a seat or two will increase the geographical reach of all their districts next year, throwing more Democrats into their constituencies.

 

          This leaves the California GOP in significantly worse shape now than

before the Capitol invasion, a boon for Democratic efforts to hold their slim House majority in an off-year election where the incumbent president’s party usually loses some seats.

         

 

    -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, go to www.californiafocus.net