Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) made waves in his debate with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) by wielding an unlikely exhibit: a map of San Francisco showing how to avoid human fecal matter on the streets. It’s an unsightly picture but reflective of California as a state, once the envy of the country but now increasingly battered by progressive policies.
Democratic lawmakers have long outnumbered conservatives in California, but the state is now veering leftward at a rapid pace. The state legislature has introduced between 1,000 and 2,500 bills annually, with sessions that last two years. There were approximately 2,632 bills, and six special session bills, for 2022-23.
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The California Globe reported that legislatively, the “2023 California Legislative Session has a higher number of introduction than normal, and the highest number in over a decade.”
This pace has conservatives sounding the alarm. In a Sept. 15 blog post, Tim Anaya of the Pacific Research Institute said, “This year’s legislative session will go down as perhaps the most successful legislative session ever for California progressives.” That’s quite the endorsement. Anaya went on: “Labor and leftists truly flexed their political muscle this year, overcoming the opposition of the so-called moderate Democrats and the business community to advance virtually every legislative priority they had.”
Newsom ended up vetoing more than everyone expected. In fact, he vetoed so many some media outlets actually credited the governor with holding back the progressive tsunami. The Los Angeles Times said the legislature was so intent on passing progressive laws that Newsom’s vetoes show he’s “acting as a moderating force on the liberal Legislature.” “One reason is simply that the Legislature was unusually progressive this year,” the article continued, “passing significant labor-backed bills that had failed in the past. Another is that the state’s finances are shakier than they were earlier in Newsom’s tenure, dooming many proposals that involved spending money.”
Newsom’s decision to veto some of the most progressive bills that came his way hardly signals that California is changing its ways, though it might suggest there is a limit to how much the governor can benefit nationally from the state's leftward lurch. (It might also suggest an attempt by Newsom to posture himself as more centrist ahead of a presidential run.)
Newsom did sign Senate Bill 770, a universal healthcare bill that provides another step closer to government-controlled single payer. The East Bay Times called it an “incremental step to disaster.”
The legislature passed Senate Bill 799, which gave away unemployment benefits to workers on strike, prolonging it. Mercifully, Newsom vetoed it. But the Orange County Register said even the passage of the bill by the legislature was “an attack on business.”
Newsom also signed Senate Bill 525, a bill that forced hospitals to raise their minimum wage for workers to $25 an hour, putting hospitals in tough financial positions. In a guest column for Cal Matters, Craig S. Castro, president and CEO of Community Health System, wrote S.B. 525 “is another crushing blow for hospitals struggling in the inflation-laden, economic aftermath of COVID-19 without a commensurate increase in Medi-Cal and Medicare reimbursement rates” and that this is “especially true for safety-net hospitals caring for high volumes of patients insured by these government programs.” Castro went on to say that while he’s proud of the state’s commitment to help those in need, he’s “also perplexed by lawmakers who passed legislation that threatens struggling California hospitals and could reduce the very jobs this bill seeks to bolster.”
There were real leftward shifts concerning gender-confused children. Newsom signed several bills that could create havoc in families, schools, and family courts. He signed A.B. 223, which allows minors to change the sex identifier on their legal documents, with parental permission, but also keeps those legal records sealed. Advocates applauded the bill, suggesting it keeps minors’ privacy rights intact. Newsom also signed S.B. 407, which requires foster parents to affirm their child's chosen identity, regardless of the parents' faith.
Though Newsom vetoed A.B. 957, this controversial bill would have required “judges to favor the parent in custody cases who affirms and praises a child's chosen gender identity,” according to the California Family Alliance’s legislator score cards. According to Newsom, the only reason he vetoed the bill is that judges are already supposed to consider such details when determining child custody cases.
“The gender issue is the most concerning,” said Greg Burt, vice president of the California Family Council. “If a parent is not on board with their child changing their gender or designated sex, the [courts] are preparing to remove or declare those parents a threat to their own children.”
This has cemented itself among California’s public schools. This session, Newsom signed A.B. 5, which mandates teacher training on how to affirm LGBT identities in students and how to identify non-LGBT-affirming parents.
Citing privacy laws, the California Department of Education has implemented policies based on a 2013 bill codifying sexual orientation and gender identity protections into school systems that further erode parental rights. Although these policies have been in place for some time, parents are just now waking up to them.
“If a kid decides they're a different gender than their birth certificate says, the [Department of Education] says that information needs to be kept secret until the child is ready to tell their parents,” Burt said, adding that he worries this could put a wedge between parents and children at home. “If parents have lost this to privacy issues, the battle is lost.”
Some California parents have awakened and are fighting back. Republican lawmaker Bill Essayli sponsored a bill stipulating that schools had to notify parents if their child asks to be referred to with a different name or pronoun. It died in committee.
Last year, Sonja Shaw, a 41-year-old mother, was elected to the Chino Valley Unified School District's Board of Education in San Bernardino County. Shaw quickly became president. After Essayli’s bill failed, she pressed for parental notification in the district. This July, Chino Valley became the first district in California to adopt a policy that would “require school staff, including principals, counselors, and teachers, to notify parents in writing within three days of the school finding out their child asks to be identified as a gender different from what is listed on official records.” The move struck a chord.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the Chino Valley Unified School District saying the policy is harmful. A judge has halted the policy from going into effect until a final decision is made. On Nov. 27, 2023, the Los Angeles Times published a feature story on Shaw. Their headline, “Righteous mother or right-wing zealot? The soccer mom leading California’s parental rights movement,” describes the war taking place between the state and conservatives when it comes to this.
Of course, California didn’t become a left-wing bastion overnight. Bill Voegeli, a senior fellow with the Claremont Institute, observed that “political changes are not necessarily the most important but are the most easily demonstrated.”
“Securing peaceful victory in the Cold War was Ronald Reagan’s greatest achievement in public life,” Voegeli said. “It was also, ironically, the biggest reason why California, Reagan’s home and the state where he launched his acting and then his political career, changed from a competitive purple state … to one of the nation’s bluest states.”
Voegeli said he believes some of the problem is conservatives have been leaving the state in droves.
“California’s loss has been the Republicans’ gain in other states,” Voegeli said. “I saw one report, for example, that Ted Cruz would have lost his 2018 Senate election to Beto O’Rourke if the electorate had been limited to people born in Texas. His victory depended on winning a comfortable margin among voters who had moved to Texas from other states.”
Census data reinforce this assertion: About 102,000 Californians fled to Texas in 2022, and even more did in 2021. In 2022, more than 817,000 Californians migrated to other states in the United States.
Voegeli said he thinks there could be a silver lining in the clouds of America’s most liberal state: failure. “I don’t see how California can be an avatar for a type of progressivism that comes to dominate the country, even as it is becoming a paradigm of social and governmental dysfunction. ... It’s hard for Democrats to win more elections, and to increase taxes and spending, when government is beset by a crisis of competence.”
“It is also worth noting that even though there is no tangible reason to think that California is going to become more conservative in the foreseeable future, there are reasons to think that it is not going to become much more progressive, either," he said.
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Still, not everyone agrees. Burt thinks it’s incumbent upon conservative lawmakers to speak up more in order to make the changes necessary for California to halt its progressive tilt. “When the state government attempts to take parental rights, violating the U.S. Constitution, which says parents have the final say in the raising of their own children, it is the duty of the local elected officials to resist and refuse to follow,” he argued.
“What scares me the most is the passive response to what the state is doing,” he continued. “What are we waiting for? Especially the Republicans. Where is the uproar? Where is the marching in the streets? Where is the 'no way are you going to take our children from us over our beliefs'?”
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a mother of four and an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas.
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