California Democrats strike back against local conservative rebellions

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Like many new political candidates at the time, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan first ran for the state Assembly in 2018 because she was troubled by the election of then-President Donald Trump and wanted California to fight back against his administration.

Six years later, that dynamic has flipped on its head. In the just-concluded regular legislative session, the San Ramon Democrat and her colleagues instead battled a surging rebellion from conservative California communities against the state’s liberal governance.

On issues including abortion access, election rules and LGBTQ rights, Democrats in Sacramento passed legislation this year to stifle emerging local policies that they argued undermine the state’s commitment to diversity, civil rights and other progressive values.

“In certain ways, we have the right to hold the line for our constituencies,” said Bauer-Kahan, who compared the relationship between the Legislature and local governments to a system of checks and balances. “And I think that’s what we’re doing right now — we’re checking them.”

Tensions over local control are nothing new in California politics, as anyone who has followed decades of debate about land use and housing development can attest. But the last few years have opened a new front of conflict around cultural grievances more typical of red states.

With Republican power waning in California — the party hasn’t elected a candidate to statewide office since 2006 and labors under a superminority in the Legislature — conservatives are increasingly using the relative autonomy of city councils, county boards of supervisors and school boards to protest liberal state policymaking and assert a competing vision for their communities.

“There’s just a lot of built-up frustration and that’s one valve that’s being used,” said Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Corona Republican who is often an outspoken opponent of bills to shut down conservative defiance. “We’re in an era in politics where you need an adversary.”

The result has been local laws to require voter identification at the polls, block abortion clinics from opening, review children’s library books for sexual content and mandate parental notification when students change their gender identity at school — prompting legislative Democrats to respond with measures that would ban those policies.

“They don’t want free people to make up their own minds,” said Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau, who developed a library material review committee for his county because he was disturbed by the children’s books included in a Pride Month display at a local library. “We’re fighting for our lives, we’re fighting for our livelihoods, we’re fighting for our beliefs.”

The clash began intensifying last year, with a showdown over an elementary school social studies textbook. When a Riverside County school board refused to adopt the state-approved curriculum because it referenced assassinated LGBTQ rights activist Harvey Milk, Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to send the textbook directly to students and bill the district, which then reversed course. Legislators subsequently passed a law to penalize school boards that ban books because they include the history or culture of LGBTQ people and other diverse groups.

The Legislature also approved, and Newsom signed, a measure to limit when local governments can count ballots by hand, after Shasta County canceled its contract with a voting machine company because of unfounded election fraud claims pushed by Trump and his allies.

A spate of legislation has followed this year, most controversially Assembly Bill 1955 by Assemblymember Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat, which prevents school districts from alerting parents when a student starts identifying as another gender. Such parental notification policies began sprouting up across California after the 2022 election, when Republicans focused on winning control of school boards, but critics argue they amount to forced outing. Essayli and Democratic Assemblymember Corey Jackson nearly came to blows on the Assembly floor over AB 1955, which Newsom signed in July.

Several other measures are headed to the governor’s desk after receiving final approval from the Legislature last week, including Bauer-Kahan’s AB 2085 to streamline the permitting process for reproductive health clinics. Though California has positioned itself as an “abortion sanctuary” since the U.S Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion — even putting reproductive rights into the state constitution — local opposition has prevented clinics from opening in cities such as Beverly Hills and Fontana.

“We saw the voters say they overwhelmingly support abortion rights, so it’s important that we as a state step in to ensure this access that they said they want,” Bauer-Kahan said.

Senate Bill 1174 by state Sen. Dave Min, an Irvine Democrat, would prohibit local governments from requiring voter identification in municipal elections, which Huntington Beach adopted this past spring as a security measure despite criticisms that it would create unnecessary hurdles for poor and minority voters.

And AB 1825 by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, would outlaw the sort of citizen review panels that Huntington Beach and Fresno County recently created to restrict access to library books with “sexual references” and “gender-identity content.” Supporters argue the committees can keep inappropriate material out of children’s hands, while opponents contend that they target books with LGBTQ themes for censorship.

The legislators behind these bills say they support local control on some issues, but it can go too far when communities use their power to challenge people’s rights or the values that Californians have broadly affirmed. That’s when they believe the state should step in.

“I see it as our responsibility for the Legislature to establish protections for all kids regardless of where they live,” said Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat.

Democratic lawmakers suggested the growing confrontation could be a symptom of the divisive politics of the Trump era. They said many conservatives took a signal from Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in the 2020 presidential election and, like liberal states during the Trump administration, are picking up the mantle to lead a political resistance — which they believe, in many cases, has gone too far.

“You’ve seen a lot of these people really thumb their nose at the rule of law,” Min said. “They’re trying to get around that through sneaky little tactics.”

Conservative politicians counter that they are simply reacting to a state government that has pushed much further left than their constituents by listening to the LGBTQ rights movement and other activists rather than the people who elected them. Essayli said the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature is over-representative of a progressive ideology compared to California voters, only 46% of whom are registered Democrats.

“There’s one side changing what the norm is,” he said. “Then we’re considered the instigators, the agitators, the provocateurs for saying, wait, that’s not the way it’s always been.”

A spokesperson for Newsom declined to comment on the legislation pending before him or when the governor thinks state intervention is necessary to override local policies. But even if he signs the bills on his desk, is it almost certainly not the end of this fight, as communities such as Huntington Beach — which has positioned itself over the past two years as a bulwark in the conservative war against “wokeism” — consider lawsuits and other forms of protest.Gracey Van Der Mark, one of the conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council, in her City Hall office on Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for CalMatters

Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark has already introduced a “parents’ right to know” ordinance as a direct challenge to AB 1955, the law prohibiting schools from reporting when students change their gender identity.

She said her city is more at odds now with Sacramento because state politicians are trying to stamp out ideological diversity in California and force all parents to raise their children in a certain way.

“That’s none of the state’s business,” she said. “We’re sick and tired of it. We need to push back.”

“It would be great if Sacramento could focus on homelessness, crime,” she added, “and leave the parenting to the parents.”