Dems won big in state; will they blow it again?
Even in this bluest of states, the one-party control of California just won by Democrats is phenomenal.
The 2018 elections fulfilled a best-scenario dream for the party and became a worst nightmare for Republicans.
The last time Democrats came this close to completely dominating the state Capitol was after the post-Watergate election of 1976. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown was an ambitious young hotshot in his first term. Democrats won 57 Assembly and 26 Senate seats. The numbers needed for twothirds supermajorities were 54 and 27, respectively.
There’s a valuable lesson for Democrats to learn fromthat 1977-78 legislative session. They ruled the roost. And what did they do? They blew it.
Brown and the Legislature disastrously fumbled property tax relief as home assessments were soaring. They bickered over what kind of tax breaks to provide, while sitting on amultibillion-dollar revenue surplus.
As Democrats dawdled, apartment house lobbyist Howard Jarvis moved swiftly with a ballot initiative that dramatically slashed property taxes.
Proposition 13 passed by a landslide, slicing local funding for cities and schools. Democrats have been cursing the initiative ever since.
So one-party control, even with hefty majorities, is not a magic bullet unless the governor and legislative leaders can coordinate.
Given the Democrats’ strength now, there shouldn’t be much excuse for failure.
Most bills require only a simple majority vote, virtually any measure can be passed with a two-thirds vote and Democrats will possess roughly threefourths supermajorities in both houses.
These are the numbers as ballot counting nears an end:
• In the Assembly, Democrats apparently picked up five seats to hold 60 out of 80. That’s the most for Democrats since 1883.
• In the Senate, Democrats seem to have gained three seats to hold 29 of 40, themost since 1962.
• Democrats won all seven U.S. House seats they targeted in California. In the next Congress, Democrats will hold a whopping 46 of California’s 53House seats, plus both U.S. Senate seats.
• Democrats again won every statewide office.
So why the Republican collapse? It certainly wasn’t sudden
The California GOP has been steadily trending downward, largely because of demographic changes. And the party hasn’t kept up with shifting, more moderate voter attitudes toward such topics as illegal immigration, abortion and gay marriage.
Only 25 years ago, Republicans won a brief one-vote majority in the Assembly before gradually descending into virtual irrelevancy.
In this year’s elections, Democrats outspent, out-organized and outhustled Republicans. But the victors’ chief asset was President Trump and his constant, uncivil bombasts.
“As one of themost polarizing figures in modern U.S. politics, Trump really did set the table for the blue wave that eventually swept the state,” Mark DiCamillo, pollster for the UC Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, recently told the Sacramento Press Club.
Mark Baldassare, president of the Public Policy Institute of California, said, “Almost any time that Donald Trump talks about immigration he’s offending a large number of people in California.”
The nonpartisan pollster also said Republican House members badly wounded themselves by voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act because Democrats made health care amajor campaign issue. And Republicans were hurt, he said, by voting to raise taxes on upper-middle-income Californians by limiting their state and local tax deductions.
Democrats will nowhave little excuse not to act on issues they’ve campaigned on: early childhood education, universal health care, homelessness — plus some things they should deliver, such as a major tax overhaul and wildfire prevention measures.