Some Final Thoughts on the Primary Election (UPDATED)
Four Things We Learned About the State of Play in San Diego and California
Last Tuesday night, the bridge lines of the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime” were running through my head: “Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was . . .”
Indeed, what could have been a very interesting primary election turned into a big night for status quo politics with one possible exception. As former Senator Barbara Boxer put it on the cable news shows when speaking of the governor’s race, perhaps people just wanted some calm, something boring rather than chaotic. The same might be said of San Diego.
And so it went, with Measure A going down to defeat after those supporting it were outspent over a million dollars by a “No” campaign almost completely driven by false claims about the measure. Thus, given a choice between taking a small step toward taxing folks affluent enough to own two homes to provide more housing for San Diegans and/or some revenue for the city or continuing down the path of deficits and a housing crisis, the voters were convinced to protect the interests of 1% of San Diegans rather than the vast majority of us.
In the end, elections are the only poll that matters, and San Diego voted for more of the same.
What does this show us? San Diegans say they want better public services but refuse to vote for revenue measures that will help pay for them.
But before you think this means voters were ready to throw out the bums they hate (read Democrats), we learned a second lesson about San Diego at present: San Diego voters say they are dissatisfied with the Democrats, but they just elected and/or re-elected a bunch more of them.
This of course leads to the next thing we learned in last week’s primary, which is bad news for Richard Bailey who, despite a fractured field and big money in his corner, is not well positioned to win the general election because the Democratic vote easily exceeds Bailey’s tally.
It also seems clear that just as it may be hard to pass any tax measure, San Diegans are unlikely to vote for a candidate whose Republican colors show through his “independent” mask as does his desire to DOGE our fair city.
At the statewide level, it’s likely as of this writing, that Steyer was unable to overcome the taint of his billionaire status despite his robustly progressive policy agenda. His past, as I mused in my first column of the governor’s race, came back to haunt him. In the end, he proved to be a deeply flawed vehicle for a populist platform. I get it. But just as it was ironic that a billionaire was bringing an anti-billionaire message, it is equally so that voters rejected a rich guy buying the election in favor of a politician supported by other billionaires and big corporate interests who are now more likely to have their interests served. So it goes.
Thus, we are unlikely to see any aggressive push for more revenue measures from Becerra (who will surely win the general) or anything much that would throw shade on Newsom’s legacy.
Will Becerra be better than the MAGA approved Hilton? Of course! It will also be fantastic to have the first Mexican American governor since the 19th century. Good on that, but we are unlikely to see much in the way of anything bolder than business as usual in Sacramento when it comes to policy.
As a recent Guardian piece by Norman Solomon on the California governor’s race observed, a Becerra era is exactly what the Newsom crew wanted, a continuation of the status quo:
The establishment favorite for overseeing the world’s fourth-largest economy, Xavier Becerra, has trod a traditional path. As governor, based on past performance, he would keep his party and the state on the rutted road of corporate-friendly liberalism . . .
Overall, Becerra – who went from Congress to serving as California’s attorney general and then Joe Biden’s secretary of health and human services – is central casting for the kind of political sensibilities that have dominated the state party, which internally boosts identity politics above (rhetoric aside) such considerations as economic justice, labor rights, public health, environmental protection or peace.
Scant policy differences exist between Becerra and outgoing governor Gavin Newsom. “While Steyer is vowing to raise taxes on corporations and his fellow billionaires, Becerra is skeptical of tax increases that could push businesses to leave California,” Politico reports. Preventing capital flight from the state is the same argument that Newsom has used in his vehement opposition to a ballot measure endorsed by Steyer for a one-time billionaire tax, while one study after another has shown such capital flight to be largely a myth.
The bottom line in all this is that, as Solomon points out, the last thing Newsom wanted was someone upending Sacramento and competing with him for the limelight. Now he is free to hit the road to campaign for president without anything bothersome in his rearview mirror.
This of course means that there will unlikely be any new revenue measures favored by the governor’s office, thus there will be less money flowing to schools, social services, healthcare, the environment, or the cities if the Democratic political class has its way. The result of this is that everything will depend on union and/or activist-driven ballot measures like the pending billionaire’s tax and the renewal of Proposition 55 to continue funding schools, colleges, and social services.
All this puts Democrats in a sort of steel trap, stuck dealing with a Democratic electorate that expects more from the government on everything from housing to education and more, but is frequently loathe to pay for it. They just hate Republicans more than Democrats at present.
That said, it would seem to be important for Democrats at the state and local level to figure out a way to pitch a popular, populist agenda accompanied by progressive taxes that can deliver the goods before the contradictions of the present moment come back to haunt them.
Sounds a lot like the last eight years. Same as it ever was.
Coda: What Did We Do to Fight Fascism?
Proposition 50 will very likely help the Democrats earn five more seats in the House and help take it out of the GOP’s hands. That’s huge.
Elsewhere, Trump’s guy, Hilton, doesn’t have a chance in hell to win the gubernatorial race in the general but other than defeating him, it appears the left coast had little appetite for being a laboratory of democracy that might serve as an inspiring contrast to the the MAGA right with the possible exception of Los Angeles. What gives?
The day before the primary, Doug Porter posted a column on the upcoming electoral contest locally that shed some light on what would happen the next day. Toward the end of that piece, he underlined some interesting findings in pre-election polling reported over at the Voice of San Diego:
Will Huntsberry and Scott Lewis’ latest Politics Report at Voice of San Diego covers a running poll conducted by Public Dynamics and Pulse Decision Science on behalf of the Municipal Employees Association.
It says that the number of those dissatisfied with the way Democrats are running San Diego has increased from 32% in 2020 to 49% in 2025 to an astounding 69% at present . . .
Given the choice of paying more taxes and fees for better city services (more affordable housing, improvements to neighborhood parks and libraries) or paying less for less services, 50% opt for more cash out of pocket and 29% for less.
Given the choice between the assumptions that businesses and homeowners already pay too much in taxes/fees (city needs to spend less/focus on basics) OR billionaires and corporations don’t pay their fair share (we should raise taxes on the wealthiest residents and companies to better fund public services), 35% go with the former and 55% say the latter.
Now, I won’t pretend that asking people if they want to tax somebody else is necessarily a good measure of public sentiment. One need look no further than the furor over Measure A, where a tax on the second/unoccupied homes of the bourgeoisie is being falsely portrayed as an attack on the very notion of home ownership, to understand how such things play out in real life.
Our city is jam packed with professional consultants who know how to provoke voters to act like lemmings and dive off a cliff into the deep seas of perpetual despair. Older and wealthier voters turn out in droves with the mere suggestion that somebody beneath them might benefit.
Thus, the battle for the future of the city, the state, and the country might just hinge on whether we are able to effectively redirect existing dissatisfaction with the status quo, economic inequality, and both political parties into anger at an economic system that has been rigged to favor the rich at the expense of the rest of us.
If those of us on the left side of the spectrum are unable to do so, then the right will continue to manipulate that rage at all the wrong targets. At a point in our history where not just an election but democracy itself is at stake, there could be no greater task.
With Democratic Socialist Nithya Raman passing Trump favorite Spenser Pratt up the freeway in the most recent LA Mayoral primary election tallies, we might just get to see what an election in the West Coast’s biggest city that focuses on a real debate about how to address economic inequality looks like. That’s something that makes California’s slow roll election watching a lot more exciting. Stay tuned.