Rotten Districts Result in Rotten Result
Rotten Districts Result in Rotten Result
California Dems Who Blocked Bill to Stiffen Child Sex Trafficker Punishment All from Safe Seats
Thanks again to the California Globe for running this piece. You can visit the website at: https://californiaglobe.com/
A background note - Despite it breezing through the state Senate unanimously and having more than enough votes to pass if it came up for a floor vote - overwhelming bi-partisasn support, by the way - on the assembly side, the assembly (think house of representatives) Public Safety Committee blocked a bill that would have “included sex trafficking of minors in the lists of crimes that are defined as serious under California law, making the crime a strike under the Three Strikes law, and would help strengthen protections for the millions of victims of sex trafficking.”
Yup - making sure convicted child sex slave traffickers did their full bit in prison - max 12 years, by the way - could not get past the committee, with one member even saying that additional prison time won’t help the victims. The fact that it would reduce the number of future vistims did not seem to dawn on her.
Ladies and gentelmen, the decarceration/prsion reform movement at work.
In theory, if an elected official does something unpopular they could lose their re-election bid.
If they do something unconscionable – like blocking harsher penalties for convicted child sex traffickers – they should lose their re-election bid.
But for the six Democrats who “abstained” (same as a no but now they can lie and say they didn’t technically vote against it) from voting on SB14 - https://californiaglobe.com/articles/california-assembly-democrats-block-bill-to-fight-sex-trafficking-of-minors/ - that is – horribly - not a concern.
That’s because all six represent safe to the point of rotten Democrat seats.
They literally do not have to care what the public thinks…about anything.
Let’s start with the chair of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, the man caught on tape chuckling after a member of the public yelled “Horrible!” after Tuesday’s vote. Sawyer-Jones represents the 57th district, which runs south from downtown Los Angeles. Last fall, he ran unopposed for re-election in a district that has a population of about 508,000 but a “citizens of voting age” rate of only about 48% and one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the state.
Jones=Sawyer, a former union rep, got about 40,000 votes, the fourth lowest number of any Assemblymember – and the other three actually had opponents.
Note for context – the assembly member who got he most votes in a winning race got about 140,000 votes (again, the numbers vary widely because of the rotten district system, but a typical winner should be in about the 80-90,000 vote range.
Assemblywoman Liz Ortega represents the 20th district – in and around Fremont in the Bay Area. Her opponent in the general election was another Democrat and she got about 65% of the vote.
Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur hails from the 51st district, which includes part of the westside of Los Angeles and Santa Monica. He, too, faced another Democrat last November.
Miguel Santiago, 54th district (Boyle Heights, downtown Los Angeles) Assemblyman got 54,000 of the 68,000 votes cast in November against a write-in candidate.
Isaac Bryan, 55th district, Culver City and the surrounding area, actually had a Republican opponent. He beat him 84 to 16 percent.
And now Mia Bonta, 18th district assemblywoman and wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta. Rob held the seat before her until he was tapped by Gavin Newsom to become the Attorney General after Xavier Bockarrhea – sorry, Becerra – was picked by Biden to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Biden didn’t actually get that right, either, throwing in an “education” when he made the announcement.)
Mia won a special election in 2021, defeating fellow Democrat Janani Ramachandran. That particular race was highly-charged, with cries of nepotism, sleaze, and other political shenanigans from Ramachandran - https://www.ebar.com/story.php?ch=news&sc=latest_news&id=306908 .
While that race was close, last fall she faced only token write-in opposition and took nearly 90% of the vote.
In other words, they all have safe seats due to the supposedly “independent” California Redistricting Citizens Commission so they ain’t going anywhere.
Their placement by Democrat leaders on the potentially controversial public safety committee is not a coincidence. Since their re-election is never in question, they can safely do the dirty work of enforcing the progressive/woke/equitarian “empty the jails, no cash bail, victims be dammed” party line without forcing the few other Democrats who are not in safe seats to actually cast a vote that could enrage the public.
These six rotten districts are far from the only ones created by the redistricting commission. Based on the most recent available figures (in their latest report, for whatever reason, the commission did not break out that figure) “citizens of voting age” equals about 85% of the number of people of voting age. These figures, however, are not consistent statewide while some districts have higher – or much lower – number of citizens of voting age – let alone voter turnout - even though they all have just about the same number of people.
From a 2021 story - https://thomas699.substack.com/p/four-votes-good-two-votes-bad - on the issue:
An average district has about 275,000 legal voters. Districts that have more than 300,000 legal voters (about 10 percent higher than the average) returned seven Republicans, 16 Democrats, and one independent, results roughly in line with statewide party registration figures.
But districts that have fewer than 250,000 legal voters showed a very significant tilt, electing three Republicans and 17 Democrats, more than twice the difference that could be expected vis a vis statewide party affiliations.
It should be noted that the turnout and citizen rates appear to be intertwined. The competitive districts with the highest percentages of citizens had the highest turnouts, with the top eight turnout districts showing an average citizenship rate of 87 percent, while the lowest 10 districts by turnout carried a citizenship rate of 62 percent (Republicans and Democrats split the top eight districts four to four while the lowest went Democrat by nine to one).
And that’s why they abstained.
That and they’re evil cowards, of course.
End Note - because Governor Gavin Newsom is running for president and even he realizes how awful this looks for him (looks being the operative word), the Assembly is using a rare procedure to hold a floor vote today. The bill is expected to finally pass, despite the obstructions.