A California lawmaker switched to the Republican party. What happened to her bills?
A California lawmaker who recently switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican had a bad day in the legislature’s suspense file hearing.
Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil, R-Jackson, had nine bills before the Assembly Appropriations Committee Thursday. Only two of them passed.
One of the bills that passed, SB 268, would make it a violent felony to drug and rape someone.
Currently, rape by use of force or under the threat of violence or duress is considered a violent felony, but rape of someone unable to consent due to intoxication is not considered a violent felony.
“I have been a strong advocate for public safety, and I am celebrating a major win today with SB 268 passing out of the Assembly Appropriations Committee,” Alvarado-Gil said in a statement to The Bee. “It’s hard to vote against victims of rape, but did any other legislator get 80% of their bills held?”
Compared to her Senate colleagues, Alvarado-Gil did appear to have the highest rate of bills killed in the Assembly Appropriations Committee Thursday. Other Republicans including Sens. Scott Wilk and Janet Nguyen had two of their three bills held. Other senators had half or more of their bills held.
“There are other legislators who I’m sure are not pleased with me right now,” said Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee. “It’s part of the job.”
“We let out, I think, some of her top priority bills,” Wicks said. “She did have a lot of expensive bills because of her former chairmanship in human services. Those bills tend to be more pricey and I think in the budget environment that we’re in they are particularly on the chopping block. But we did allow a couple of her more top priority bills out.”
Alvarado-Gil struck a more positive tone in a news release.
“I sincerely appreciate the bipartisan, positive vote of the members of the Assembly Appropriations Committee today,” the new Republican said. “No rape is more acceptable than another. And no law should tell a victim that what happened to them is not as significant as what happened to someone else.”
Alvarado-Gil, who represents swaths of California’s rural Gold Country, announced earlier this month she was switching her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. She criticized the legislature’s Democratic supermajority, saying it is “unrecognizable to what I once knew and lacks the will to fix the problems plaguing this state.”
A few days later she said she had been stripped of all her committee assignments and removed from the legislative Latino Caucus, which has historically excluded Republican members.
The Jackson lawmaker is up for re-election in 2026 and will likely face challengers from the right in her majority-Republican district.
Alvarado-Gil’s other bill to advance, SB 1197, would allow foster children living with a relative to receive certain in-home care services.
Among her bills that were not advanced to the Assembly floor for a final vote were a bill to prohibit a person carrying a firearm from possessing fentanyl and increase punishments for making threats against a school or place of worship.
The legislature’s suspense file hearings deal with bills that would cost $150,000 or more. Lawmakers allow hundreds of bills with price tags to accumulate in each chamber’s appropriations committee. During the hearing, all bills in the suspense file are acted upon, either passing for floor votes or getting held and effectively killed for the year.
Stephen Hobbs contributed reporting.
