California prison guards’ union spent big and lost with tough-on-crime message
The images of bullet casings, broken glass and crime scene tape recalled the nationwide tough-on-crime movement that started in California in the 1990s.
Yet when they appeared on campaign flyers in Los Angeles County this fall, they jarred with a prevailing public sentiment, reflected in polls, that it was time to reform law enforcement.
A major backer of tougher laws in both eras has been the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. This year, after president Glen Stailey announced a new push to regain the union’s former political might, some of the group’s most expensive efforts fell short.
The prison guards’ union, through its political committees, spent $1 million to support incumbent Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey, but she lost to progressive criminal justice reform advocate George Gascon, a former San Francisco district attorney.
It gave $2 million to support Proposition 20, which would have stiffened prison sentences and restricted parole, but the measure is failing by a 24% margin.
And the union spent at least $1 million to support Efren Martinez, a Los Angeles businessman who lost his race against incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, chairman of the Assembly Public Safety Committee.
The union also backed some winners, potentially including Dave Min, a Democrat who defeated Republican state Sen. John Moorlach of Orange County.
The expensive losses reflect how difficult it will be for the union to carry out Stailey’s vision of regaining the union’s once-renowned clout in a changed political environment.
Through a spokesman, Stailey declined an interview request but responded to emailed questions.
“We’re only getting started,” he said in the email. “We want to build our profile as an active participant in policymaking in California, and working on campaigns is one small piece of it.”
Public safety + prison jobs
The politics of crime and punishment have evolved as crime rates have dropped to historic lows in California. In the last six years, voters have supported lighter sentences and earlier parole for prisoners.
Yet a CCPOA-supported mailer sent to Los Angeles residents showcased themes from three decades ago, juxtaposing crime scene imagery with a vine-covered house, suggesting homeowners might be threatened. The photos were overlaid with text: “Two candidates for District Attorney. Two choices for Los Angeles.”
Lacey, who was seeking a third term in the office, received the bulk of her $7 million in campaign cash from law enforcement unions. Wealthy individuals including billionaire George Soros and Netflix founder Reed Hastings helped boost Gascon’s campaign to $12 million.
Public safety was a focus of Lacey’s campaign, along with some reforms for mentally ill offenders. Gascon campaigned on aggressive proposals to end the death penalty, stop trying juveniles as adults and to reopen police shooting cases in L.A. County.
On his campaign website, he says prisons are “fundamentally places of punishment and control, not treatment and rehabilitation,” and calls for setting up regional behavioral health centers where law enforcement would work with public health officials to treat offenders.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has also expressed his intent to move the state toward treatment and rehabilitation. The corrections department two months ago announced plans to close Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy. Notices to prison staff about transfers and potential layoffs followed.
About a third of California’s prison population comes from Los Angeles County, according to a Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice analysis of corrections department data from 2019.
Maxwell Szabo, a spokesman for Gascon, suggested the correctional officers’ union’s real interest is in keeping the prisons populated.
“They may suggest that safety is the bottom line for why they’re doing something, but I think it’s very clear that more individuals in custody means the state has to employ more prison guards,” Szabo said.
Stailey said Lacey was more closely aligned with the union’s principles.
“We’re just standing up for what we believe in,” Stailey said in the email. “We made a choice based on our values and based on our respect for Jackie Lacey.”
Criminal justice reform
Calls for criminal justice reform grew more forceful in May, when protests broke out around the country after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled for nearly nine minutes on the neck of George Floyd just before the Black man’s death.
Two months earlier, businessman Efren Martinez had received about 2,500 more votes than Jones-Sawyer in the primary election for Assembly District 59 in South Central L.A, setting up this fall’s runoff election.
The correctional officers union threw its weight behind Martinez. Had he won, the Assembly would have had to find a new chair for the Public Safety Committee.
Jones-Sawyer has supported a range of changes to the criminal justice system, including proposals to get rid of mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession, eliminate a narcotics registry and increase oversight of corrections programs.
Shortly after Stailey’s September announcement on the union’s political ambitions, the group released an ad on social media showing crosshairs over a photo of Jones-Sawyer. The union withdrew the ad after backlash.
Martinez didn’t emphasize law enforcement in his own campaign. His website emphasizes his working-class background along with his experience in the military and business.
Some law enforcement mailers emphasized those same points, yet small text at the bottom of each disclosed who had paid for them. One mailer, paid for by the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County PAC, was more direct, pronouncing Martinez “Law Enforcement’s Choice.”
Jones-Sawyer said he thinks the law enforcement groups unintentionally helped him. He was leading Martinez by 15.6 percentage points when the Associated Press called his race this week.
“They helped a lot, with their money,” he said.
Stailey’s email offered a terse response to Jones-Sawyer’s assertion: “He’s entitled to his opinion.”
In July, Gascon’s campaign announced it had conducted a poll that found poll that found a majority of respondents specifically favored candidates who didn’t accept money from law enforcement unions. A UC Berkeley poll in August found most Californians supported law enforcement reforms including limiting police unions and redirecting police funds.
Pay and benefits
In the Orange County state Senate race, CCPOA’s mailers branded Moorlach a “Trump loyalist” and “anti-science,” rather than focusing on public safety.
The union spent about $1.5 million to support Dave Min, a UC Irvine law professor who was leading Moorlach by 2.4 percentage points with 90% of votes counted when the AP called the race Thursday.
Moorlach has been critical of California’s spending on public pensions, a pillar of correctional officers’ benefit package.
“Unions usually focus on one word, and that is ‘more,’” Moorlach said. “I certainly put a target on my back by being a taxpayer representative.”
The officers get the same generous public safety pensions as California Highway Patrol officers and Cal Fire firefighters, which allow workers to retire earlier than other civil service workers. The latest Legislative Analyst’s Office report on correctional officers’ pay said the officers made 40% more than their local government peers in 2015. In 2019, an officer’s average pay was $7,286 per month, according to the office.
“Protecting our member’s benefits and retirement is always first and foremost in the decisions we make,” Stailey said in the email. “That’s why people join a union.
Nearly all of the state’s 28,000 correctional officers are dues-paying union members, representing a higher membership rate than most of the state’s unions. In 2017, the most recent year for which the nonprofit organization’s finances are readily available, CCPOA reported about $30 million in revenue.
The union spent more on politics this year than in previous years, and plans to keep it up.
“We will continue to get involved in campaigns we care about,” Stailey said in the email “We are undeterred. We’re here to stand up for ourselves.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.