Dem delegates won’t be booted + Preparing for the next pandemic + Teacher groups oppose Prop 27
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
STATE DEMOCRATS REJECT PROGRESSIVE PLEA TO BOOT DELEGATES
Via Lindsey Holden...
California Democratic Party leaders will not heed the Progressive Caucus’s call to remove members for endorsing Republican candidates running for local office.
Democratic Chair Rusty Hicks on Wednesday responded to a “statement of charges” from Progressive Caucus Chair Amar Shergill claiming the party should remove nine delegates for backing Republican candidates in the June primary election.
Delegates in the Democratic State Central Committee help endorse candidates, ballot measures and resolutions, among other leadership responsibilities.
“In short, the CADEM Bylaws allow for removal of a DSCC member for endorsement of a non-Democrat in a federal or state contest,” Hicks’ response letter said. “However, we find the plain meaning and intent of the CADEM Bylaws provisions in question to mean the endorsement of a non-Democrat in non-partisan primary election is not cause for removal under the CADEM Bylaws.”
Shergill and the Progressive Caucus in July wrote a letter calling for the removal of seven delegates, plus two others they added later.
The caucus was especially invested in removing three Elk Grove Democrats: Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen, City Councilman Darren Suen and City Councilwoman Stephanie Nguyen.
Nguyen is running for the Assembly District 10 seat against Sacramento City Councilman Eric Guerra, and Progressives wanted to prevent those delegates from voting in that endorsement, which took place in late July.
Ultimately, Guerra received the Democratic endorsement, even with Singh-Allen, Suen and Nguyen remaining as delegates.
On Wednesday, Shergill told the Bee the state Democratic Party bylaws should include more specific “carve-out” language for non-partisan races that make the rules clear.
Shergill also said any time a member files a statement of charges, party leaders are to hold a hearing to assess the situation.
“What Chair Hicks has done is created a brand new bylaw out of thin air, saying that he has the power to refuse to set a hearing if he looks at the charges, and says, ‘I don’t think that they’re valid,’” Shergill said. “So he can just decide on his own whether the statement of charges are valid.”
Shergill said the Progressives intend to appeal to the party’s executive committee to see if members will take any action. He still believes it’s not right for Democrats to support Republicans, especially ahead of the Midterm elections.
“The party is working hard across the state, telling Democrats to defeat Republicans,” Shergill said. “Grassroots activists are working their butt off to defeat Republicans. There’s a small minority of Democrats that are part of the problem, but Rusty Hicks won’t talk about that or put pressure on them to do the right thing.”
IS CALIFORNIA READY FOR THE NEXT PANDEMIC?
Via Owen Tucker-Smith...
The Legislature scheduled panels on the state’s Monkeypox and COVID-19 responses at the same time Tuesday. The conflict, which had lawmakers rushing from one room to the other, illustrated the state’s dueling public health challenges this summer: a newly spreading virus for which it has an extremely limited vaccine supply, and a pandemic that’s well into its third year.
But the focus in the Legislature’s Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response was not battling either of the state’s ongoing problems, but preparing for the next crisis. Lawmakers and public health officials gathered to reflect on lessons learned from two and a half years of pandemic fighting.
Some of the takeaways:
“Business as usual” is nonsense. Aimee Sisson of Yolo County Health and Human Services said one problem during the pandemic occurred when local lawmakers attempted to operate according to their established rules. “Our pandemic response went well when we suspended the usual rules and imported masks from overseas despite high costs and without [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health] approval,” Sisson said. “Our response went poorly when we created a duplicative mechanism to allocate vaccines to providers, and when we refused to allow labs to develop their own COVID tests.” Overall, Sisson said cutting “the red tape” wherever possible is an essential process for pandemic response.
Messaging matters. Sen. Josh Newman stressed that the government fell short when it came to communicating public health information, especially at the start of the pandemic. “There was… a chronic, systemic failure to communicate clear science-based, consistent messages,” Newman said. He also said there was a “fear at any point of simply saying we don’t know about certain aspects of the pandemic.” Sisson emphasized the importance of clear, honest communication. She said the government should not have told their constituents in COVID-19’s early days that the risk to the general public was low — doing so “undermined trust in our response,” she said.
Infectious diseases are not anomalies. “We should not think about contagious disease outbreaks as being something that is unusual,” Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, said. “We’ve had many.” Michael Osterholm, of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said being prepared for the next pandemic first means acknowledging a pandemic-ridden future. “You can’t respond to something that you don’t know about,” he said. “What we have to do is… to imagine what the future will be like with infectious diseases.”
Invest in public and behavioral health: Some panelists on Tuesday noted that certain fields were under-resourced throughout the pandemic. Veronica Kelley said behavioral health in particular was not prioritized, even though behavioral health workers provide much-needed care throughout public health crises. “Local public health departments are such great partners to county behavioral health, but many carefully followed the state’s guidance on how and when to prioritize the needs at the local level, and if we weren’t specifically called out as substance use disorder, or mental health, we simply didn’t exist,” Kelley said.
TEACHERS GROUPS COME OUT AGAINST PROP 27
On Tuesday, it was legislative leaders. On Wednesday, it was teacher groups.
The No On 27 campaign on Wednesday announced that the California Federation of Teachers and the Association of California School Administrators voted this week to officially oppose Proposition 27, the ballot measure authorizing online and mobile device sports betting.
“Research shows online and mobile sports betting is highly addictive, especially for youth and other vulnerable communities,” said CFT President Jeff Freitas in a statement. “Prop 27 will also put California’s students at risk by failing to invest revenue in our state’s education system. This measure is a bad deal for California and for our public schools. We urge voters to reject Prop 27.”
ACSA President Erin Simon said in a statement that California communities should be focused on protecting children.
“Cell phones and mobile devices have become a way of life for even our youngest children. Proposition 27 would turn virtually every cell phone, laptop and tablet into a gambling device giving youth unprecedented access to gambling at their fingertips,” Simon said.
The proposition also is opposed by the California Teachers Association, whose president, Toby Boyd, said in a statement, “Online gambling corporations would take 90% of the profits out of state. Not a single penny is directed to our students or our state’s public schools.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The smarter climate policy is not more mandates and targets. It is greater investments in 1) forestry managment to stop gigantic emissions from catastrophic wildfire and 2) carbon capture technology to meet carbon reductions without drastically increasing costs on consumers.”
- Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, via Twitter.
Best of the Bee:
Associate Justice Patricia Guerrero could soon be the first Latina to serve as Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, after Gov. Gavin Newsom named her Wednesday to replace outgoing Tani Cantil-Sakauye, whose term expires early next year, via Andrew Sheeler.
California lawmakers are trying again to steer extra money to schools with low-academic performance, particularly aiming to provide better educational opportunities for Black students, via Marcus D. Smith.
Despite California’s safe haven reputation, the overturn of Roe vs. Wade was followed by an increase in demand for emergency contraception, via Hanh Truong.