OPINION: Discontent in the Golden State

May 9—Profound political changes can happen suddenly, and apparently without warning.

Some of the big surprises that caught experts off-guard include the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet Union. In the U.S., political experts were stunned in 1994 when Republicans won majorities in Congress after 40 years in the minority, and you probably remember how many people failed to predict that Donald J. Trump would be elected president in 2016.

In the aftermath of shocking political events, experts may rush to explain why these things happened when they did, but the truth is that if they really knew, they'd have seen it coming. Experts can be blinded by a comfortable routine of chatting with other experts to figure out what's going on. And then they all miss it together.

And that brings us to California. You may have noticed that things are not okay. We have the highest income tax, state sales tax, and gas tax. Our unemployment rate is higher than nearly every other state, and our poverty rate, when the cost of living is taken into account, is the highest in the nation. We have growing tent encampments sprawling over our public spaces even as we spend billions of dollars on failed solutions to the problem. We pay too much for electricity and water due to policy choices that prioritize everything except human needs. The state government has a stunning record of failure on technology projects, unemployment benefits administration, highway maintenance and many other things that don't get as much publicity but really aggravate the people who have to deal with them.

Then, on top of all of that, the state has been under emergency rule for more than a year, with tougher and more arbitrary restrictions than other states. Californians have experienced severe damage from the pandemic response in too many ways to list.

One day, these things may make it into the story when experts try to explain why "deep blue" California suddenly changed, a development that no one could have foreseen, or so they will tell us.

The most visible sign of political unrest in California is the pending recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Secretary of State announced that recall proponents have submitted in excess of 1.7 million valid signatures, hundreds of thousands more than needed to trigger a recall election. Over 264,000 of those signatures came from heavily Democratic Los Angeles County.

There are signs that people whose names are on ballots are aware that regardless of how "deep blue" the state may seem to be, there's a limit to what voters will tolerate. Some of the high-profile legislation pushed by progressive groups is getting pushed off a cliff.

Not moving forward, at least for now, is the much vaunted "single-payer" health care bill, Assembly Bill 1400. Also slowed down was the universal basic income proposal, AB 65, which would pay millions of Californians $12,000 a year from an as-yet-undetermined source of funds. AB 310, the "California Tax on Extreme Wealth," appears to have run into extreme reluctance in the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation.

Another sign that the state's "deep blue" tint may be as fragile as the shell of an Easter egg is a continuing rule in the Assembly that allows committee chairs to kill bills without a hearing. Obviously this isn't needed to stop bills introduced by Republicans. Those can be stacked up and voted down in minutes. No, the rule put in place in 2019 by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon serves a different purpose. It protects Democrats from having to cast difficult votes on far-left bills that are popular with powerful interest groups but not with voters back home in the district. Committee chairs can give those bills the silent treatment, leaving their authors steaming mad but helpless to do anything about it.

One such lawmaker is Assemblyman Alex Lee from San Jose, who at 25 years old is the youngest state lawmaker elected in the last 80 years. Lee was enthusiastically endorsed by Courage California in its "Progressive Voters Guide," which noted that he was a "Democratic Socialist" endorsed by the California Progressive Alliance, Voices for Progress, The Working Families Party, major public-employee labor unions, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Justice Alliance and other left-leaning groups.

So far, he can't get anything done. Lee told CalMatters that after three setbacks in a row, he is finding the legislative process "very exhausting and oftentimes demoralizing," although he won't stop "trying again and again and again."

But Democratic leaders are acting as if they believe that the more progress the progressives make in Sacramento, the more risk the party faces in the next election.

It can't have gone unnoticed that the progressives' holy grail, the partial repeal of Proposition 13, went down in flames in November. The measure that was on the ballot as Proposition 15 had the support of every progressive group, but California voters turn red when anybody attacks Proposition 13.

They're also likely to turn red if anybody tries to cancel their private health insurance policies and replace them with health insurance run by those wonderful folks who brought us the DMV, the EDD, and the bullet train.

Red is the color of voters who are angry that schools aren't open, that streets aren't safe, and that public officials enable tent encampments on sidewalks, parks, parking lots and even beaches.

This fall, every registered voter will be mailed a ballot that asks whether the governor should be removed from office. If experts are surprised that we're here, they must be colorblind.

Susan Shelley is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. [email protected]. Twitter: @Susan_Shelley

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