Proposition 50 looks close despite major Democratic fundraising

The fundraising battle over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50 isn’t close, but the race is. 

Since July, the Yes on Prop. 50 campaign has raised nearly $97 million — which does not include the nearly $13 million that billionaire investor Tom Steyer has spent separately to run his own pro-Prop. 50 ads. 

The No campaign, with about $42 million, has less than half of that haul, report CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller and Jeanne Kuang. 

The Yes campaign’s ads — which include big-name Democrats such as former President Barack Obama and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York — mostly emphasize pushing back against President Donald Trump. Steyer’s ad, for instance, urges voters to “stick it to Trump.”

And, the influential California Labor Federation reminded its 2 million members in a series of digital ads that the Trump administration fired federal workers and cut infrastructure spending.

• Lorena Gonzalez, federation president, on the discussion labor organizers had about turning out students on college campuses: “Do we want to talk about ICE? Do we want to talk about LGBTQ (issues)? Do we want to say, ‘fight fascism?’ We settled on ‘f—k Trump.’”

But despite raising and spending more than its opponent, there’s no indication yet that the Yes campaign will win: A recent survey from the nonpartisan Cook Political Report found that while about 50% of registered voters said they would support Prop. 50, nearly half of those surveyed said they were undecided or only softly committed to voting on the measure.

It’s this undecided subset of voters that the No campaign is focusing on — tapping into voters’ general dislike of gerrymandering, as well as anti-Newsom sentiment among conservatives.

• Jessica Millan Patterson, former state GOP chairperson and current chairperson of the No on Prop. 50 campaign: “We can’t win with just Republican votes, so we need to make sure that those persuadable voters … that the conversation is happening with them. They know that giving this power to politicians, it will not serve anyone but those politicians, and they just need some permission to vote no on this.”

Read more here.

If voters pass Prop. 50, one of the state’s more conservative-leaning regions could find itself being represented by a progressive congressmember and outspoken critic of Trump, writes Maya.

Currently, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia’s district is located entirely in Los Angeles County. But under Prop. 50, the 42nd congressional district would encompass parts of conservative Orange County, including Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. This would mean that Garcia would take on more Republican voters than any other incumbent Democrat should he win re-election for the district in 2026.

Garcia, a Peruvian immigrant, is gay and known for slamming Trump. His stances on some issues are far from those endorsed by the conservative city council that would be in his potential new district. In recent years Huntington Beach banned flying the Pride flag on city property and passed an ordinance requiring voter ID. This summer it tried to create a library review panel to screen library books for sexual content, though voters ultimately rejected the proposal.

But Garcia is confident he will win next year, no matter how the districts are drawn, and views the redistricting effort as “the right thing to do.” 

Read more here.

Speaking of Garcia, the congressmember joined L.A. Mayor Karen Bass Monday to call for a congressional probe into allegations that federal immigration enforcement agents have been unlawfully detaining U.S. citizens.

Garcia is the top Democrat on the House’s oversight committee. Alongside U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who leads Democrats in the Senate’s subcommittee on investigations, they sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security demanding records and accusing federal agencies of detaining citizens “through the use of disproportionate force and fundamentally flawed rationale.”

The letter also cites a ProPublica investigation published last week that found that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained during immigration sweeps — some of whom were reportedly beaten and shot, or held for more than a day without being allowed to contact anyone.

On Monday Bass said that immigration raids under Trump, which ramped up in the summer in L.A., was an “egregious moment in our history.”

• Bass, at Monday’s press conference: “What is happening to undocumented immigrants is also happening to U.S. citizens, which means that this could happen to anyone, to all of us, at any period of time.”

Cities are targeting people living in vehicles, issuing tickets and towing under parking rules. Last week the governor signed a bill making it easier for some cities to dispose of RVs parked on their streets. CalMatters’ Marisa Kendall and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on why critics say this would remove much-needed shelter as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.