GOP convention targets Newsom + Single payer in California? + Ending canine blood colonies
Good morning and welcome back to the A.M. Alert!
RECALL WATCH
In case you missed it, the latest report from the Secretary of State shows the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom has about 670,000 valid signatures as of February 5, less than half of what’s needed to get them across the finish line.
But organizers aren’t worried.
The recall campaign said Friday it has more than 1.7 million signatures, and not all have been counted. The latest report shows that about 84% of signatures the recall campaign has submitted so far are valid. If the campaign reaches its goal of 2 million signatures by the March 17 deadline, and that validation rate holds steady, it would qualify for the ballot.
Meanwhile, Republicans are still fundraising. Finance records show Republican businessman John Cox has kicked in another $1 million into his own campaign fund.
The recall was a recurrent theme at the California Republican Party virtual convention over the weekend. Although there’s already been some infighting among Republicans about what a potential endorsement could look like, delegates this weekend called on fellow members to stay focused on ousting Newsom, not fighting with one another.
CA GOP Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson was reelected, beating out longtime activist Steve Frank. While accepting the nomination for reelection, Patterson promised a bold future for the party, including winning more congressional seats and putting a Republican in the governor’s office.
“Republicans have an opportunity to make gains nobody thought was possible two years ago,” Patterson said. “Is there a bigger disaster anywhere in the country than Gavin Newsom? No governor in California’s history is more deserving of a recall, and we’re going to give it to him.”
RECALL RULES
Two years after he was recalled from his Orange County Senate seat, Josh Newman is back in the Senate after a successful reelection campaign, and he has some ideas about how to make future recall elections fairer. On Friday, the Fullerton Democrat introduced two bills he says would improve the process.
Neither bill is written in a way that could affect the current effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newman says that’s not his intention – he crafted the bills based on his own experience and said he doesn’t plan to add an “urgency” clause to enact the bills in time to affect a potential Newsom recall this year.
“There’s no connection to the current effort to recall the governor,” Newman said. “I’m running them based on what I think I learned based on my experience.”
One of the bills he introduced Friday, Senate Bill 663, would let the subject of a recall see the list of people who signed a petition to recall them. Under California law, recall proponents must gather signatures to place the issue on the ballot. After the signatures are collected, people who signed have 30 days to remove their signatures if they change their minds.
SB 663 would change that time period from 30 days to 45. It would also allow the politician subject to the recall to see the names of the voters who signed, so they can contact them and try to persuade them to remove their names. Newman said it would help ensure that people who signed a recall petition understood what they were signing.
The other bill, Senate Bill 660, would ban signature gatherers from being paid on a per-signature basis. Similar bills have been proposed unsuccessfully in the past, but former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed them. SB 660 would affect efforts to place recalls, referenda and initiatives on California ballots, which typically rely on paid signature gatherers. Newman argues that current practice incentivizes signature gatherers to distort the issue they’re promoting to get people to sign as quickly as possible.
Instead, the bill would force campaigns to pay signature gatherers another way, such as an hourly rate.
When Brown vetoed similar efforts in 2011 and 2018, he acknowledged that per-signature payments could incentivize petition circulators to use misleading tactics. But he argued “per-signature payment is often the most cost-effective method for collecting the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to qualify a ballot measure. Eliminating this option will drive up the cost of circulating ballot measures, thereby further favoring the wealthiest interests.”
NEW SINGLE PAYER BILL
In a move sure to inspire vigorous debate in the Legislature, California Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, introduced a bill that would make health care a human right in the Golden State and institute a single payer medical system.
“Our current system results in unjust outcomes, and these inequities are underscored especially now, exacerbating economic downturns for working families who have lost their income and meaningful access to health care,” Kalra said in a statement. “We will have a long fight ahead in fixing our broken system, but this bill will set us on a real path towards a single-payer system and affirms the policy that would save lives, decrease suffering, and improve public health in California.”
Kalra’s office cited the fact that 3 million Californians have no health insurance, despite the successes of the federal Affordable Care Act. In addition, Californians face deductibles and co-pays that are simply too high, his office said.
The bill, AB 1400, has two co-authors, Assemblymen Miguel Santiago, D-Los Angeles, and Alex Lee, D-San Jose.
“Health care should be a human right, not a privilege. Millions of uninsured Californians are anxious and afraid of what will happen to them if they get sick during this pandemic. Will they be able to afford to survive COVID-19?” Santiago said in a statement.
Lee pointed out in a statement that two-thirds of bankruptcies in the nation are tied to medical debt.
“We’ve seen from the pandemic that employment-based health care doesn’t work — through CalCare we can guarantee health care for all Californians,” Lee said.
Kalra’s office said that upon being authorized and financed, the single payer system would make certain that all Californians, regardless of employment, income, immigration status, race, gender or other considerations would be able to get medical treatment free at the point of service.
“CalCare also includes long-term services and supports for people with disabilities and the elderly, a health care cost control system, and ways to address health care disparities,” Kalra’s office said.
The bill is sponsored by the California Nurses Association, whose executive director Bonnie Castillo said in a statement that “the COVID pandemic has just underscored the desperate societal need for this program NOW. CalCare will ensure that public health is the priority of our health care system, not making a buck for insurance corporations.”
NEW BILL PHASES OUT CANINE BLOOD COLONIES
Closed “colonies” of dogs and cats being used as blood donors would be phased out, under a new bipartisan bill introduced into the Assembly by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica.
Though Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a previous version of the bill for not going far enough, he has expressed a desire to end the practice of canine blood colonies in the state.
Bloom’s bill, which is co-authored by Sen. Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clara, and sponsored by animal activist group Social Compassion in Legislation, also would allow commercial blood banks to source blood from community-provided donor animals, under veterinary supervision.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“This may not be a touchdown, but it is positive yardage. Our kids have been on the sideline for nearly a year- today’s changes should have been made months ago. Excited to see our kids back on the field soon.”
– Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, R-San Luis Obispo, speaking via Twitter about the decision to allow youth sports to resume in counties where COVID-19 case rates are low.
Best of The Bee:
In the years since Anthony Rendon rose to power as speaker of the California Assembly, nonprofits associated with his wife, Annie Lam, received more than $500,000 in donations and event sponsorships from dozens of companies with business before the Legislature, via Hannah Wiley and Lance Williams.
California will set aside 10% of all vaccine first doses for teachers and child care workers starting March 1 with the goal of getting kids back into classrooms, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday, via Sophia Bollag.