The good news? Ami Bera was re-elected. The not so good news? The legislature.
It has been nearly three weeks since election day, and while there are still
tens of thousands of ballots left to be counted across the state (yes, it takes us that long to get anything done), just about every single race has been decided.
When we last checked in on the situation in the Golden State, there were still some federal races to be decided, including the state's 7th District, where former Republican Rep. Doug Ose was challenging freshman Democrat Ami Bera. It turned into the most expensive congressional race in the country, with both campaigns and their allied groups dropping nearly $20 million into the race. In the end, though, Democrats swept every single contested race for federal office, leaving them with a +1 gain in the delegation. If only Democrats could bottle what we do in California and export it to the rest of the country.
Unfortunately, not everything was sunshine and rainbows, as down-ballot races features losses for Democrats and progressives at the state and legislative level. More on all that below the fold.
Let's start with the basics: with the race at the top of the ticket an absolute sleeper, nobody came out to vote. In 2010, when Republican CEO Meg Whitman was running a serious and absurdly expensive campaign that forced Democrats to mobilize to get Jerry Brown elected, there were over 10 million ballots cast in California's gubernatorial race. In 2014, with Republican neophyte Neel Kashkari unable to mount any sort of serious campaign and polling showing Jerry Brown coasting to an easy and effortless re-election, there simply was nothing on the ticket to really mobilize infrequent voters. It looks like fewer than 7.5 million ballots were cast in the 2014. That's a massive drop-off. Here's another scary way to look at the cratering of voter participation: Meg Whitman got roughly the same number of votes in 2010 that Jerry Brown got in 2014. And Whitman 2010 got 40 percent of the vote, while Brown 2014 got 60 percent.
That lack of voter participation isn't just bad for both democracy and the Democratic Party. The high voter turnout of the hotly contested 2010 gubernatorial cycle and the subsequent 2012 presidential cycle had led to historic gains in the California state legislature: at the beginning of the 2013 legislative cycle, Democrats had 55 out of the 80 State Assembly seats, and 28 out of 40 State Senate seats. This supermajority power gave Democrats the ability to pass urgency measures (bills that take effect immediately as opposed to the beginning of the the next legislative session), put ballot measures before the voters, and even override the occasional gubernatorial veto—all of which take a two-thirds majority to implement—without needing a single Republican vote. These were good times, but it was not meant to last.
In 2012, Democrats unexpectedly won a couple of seats in the Assembly: the 38th district in the exurbs of Los Angeles County, and the 65th in traditionally Republican Orange County. In 2014's low-turnout affair, Democrats could not hang onto these seats. But in addition, we also lost two other contested races in swingy suburban districts in both Los Angeles County and the East Bay. And while we did win our best pickup opportunity by getting a Ventura County seat formerly held by the Republican who unsuccessfully challenged Julia Brownley in the 26th Congressional District, that still left Democrats two short of the 54 seats required for a supermajority.
While it would be reasonable to expect Democrats to pick up at least two of these seats and regain an Assembly supermajority, it would likely not end up mattering much given the picture in the Senate. Even though Democrats entered the cycle with a 28-12 advantage in the upper chamber, a combination of redistricting and Republican victories in the only two closely contested Senate races means that there will be at least 14 Republican Senators in the upcoming session, the bare minimum necessary to block procedures that require a supermajority. Meanwhile, the seats that are up in 2016 don't offer many opportunities: the Senate seats that are up in 2016 were also up in 2012, and even in that Democratic wave year, no current Republican senator got less than 55 percent of the vote.
In any case, Democrats still have overwhelming majorities in both chambers and will be able to govern as they see fit, for the most part. We just won't have the full run of the place in Sacramento like we had for the past couple of years, which were some of the most productive in recent memory in terms of getting the state's finances back on track.
California's ballot measures were also a mixed bag. As David Jarman wrote last week:
One of the most important initiatives of 2014 was California's Proposition 47, which passed 59-41. This measure reclassified most non-serious property and drug crimes from felony to misdemeanor. Not only is it good policy in terms of saving the state huge amounts of money on incarcerating nonviolent offenders, but this could kick-start broader moves in sentencing reform across the country. Two other measures in California failed in the face of strong insurance company opposition, though. Measure 45, which would have required notice and approval for insurance rate changes, failed 41-59, and Measure 46 which would have raised caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits, failed 33-67.
That's a good summary, but details add flavor. Proposition 47 not only classified most non-violent crimes with property loss of under $950 as misdemeanors, it also requires that the Department of Finance determine exactly how much money the government will save by not prosecuting those crimes as felonies, and invest that amount of money into education. In other words, it is an explicit "build schools, not prisons" initiative, and it won by 20 points in a low-turnout midterm election. It even won in traditionally red Orange County. The results of Proposition 47 suggest that the public is more ready than it has ever been to roll back harsh sentencing laws for nonviolent crimes, especially drug crimes, and reinvest in education systems. Advocates for sentencing reform now have a model they can follow in states where citizens can put measures on the ballot.
Standing up to the insurance industry, however? That's a much more difficult task. Proposition 45, which would have required medical insurance companies to justify rate increases to California's elected Insurance Commissioner, failed. So did Proposition 46, which would have increased the cap on damage awards for pain and suffering damages in medical malpractice lawsuits. Cumulatively, the insurance industry spent around $100 million opposing the two initiatives, and drove them into the ground. There was simply no way for the proponents to keep up with that kind of spending.
While the loss of Proposition 45 hurt on a policy level, the result of Proposition 46 was more personal. I consulted for Proposition 46 later in the campaign, understanding that opposition to "tort reform" and arbitrary caps on damage awards was a progressive position I would have no qualms about representing. But it quickly became personal.
In California, state law limits the amount of money recoverable for non-economic damages in a medical malpractice lawsuit to $250,000. The law imposing this limit was passed in 1977, and the amount has not even been adjusted for inflation since then—meaning that in terms of actual purchasing power, the cap is over 75% lower than it was when the law was passed. There is no cap on economic damages, however; if a working person is killed in a medical malpractice lawsuit, the individual's family or beneficiaries can recover the sum total of what that person would have made during the entire course of their career. But a non-working person with no wages to recover, such as a child, a working mother, or a senior citizen? The value of their lives is set at $250,000, by law. Even worse, medical malpractice suits are so expensive to bring to trial that given the low cap on damages, lawyers will often refuse to take the case, forcing families of victims to settle for an absolute pittance because the medical industry has all the power.
I traveled up and down the state with families of victims. Mothers who had lost children for no reason other than the fact that either the doctors who treated them or the hospitals they were treated at did not perform anywhere close to the standards we expect of the medical profession. Because of an outdated law written by the insurance industry, these families have little, if any, access to justice. And the insurance industry spent about $60 million opposing this initiative to keep it that way. Given the amount of money they stand to keep from a system in which premiums continue to increase but damage awards never do, it was a strategic investment.
Ultimately, California's experience reflects the double-edged sword that is the citizen initiative process. Sometimes, it can be a vehicle for passing good legislation that state legislators may have difficulty bringing before their chambers. Just as long as you're not challenging an industry that has limitless funds to spend in defense of its stranglehold over state law.