Proposition 50 looks close despite heavy 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 has raised nearly $97 million — which doesn’t include the nearly $13 million that billionaire investor Tom Steyer spent separately to run his own Pro-Prop. 50 ads.

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

Ads by the Yes campaign — which includes prominent Democrats such as former President Barack Obama and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez of New York — have mostly emphasized pushing back against President Donald Trump. Steyer’s ad, for example, urges voters to “stick it to Trump.”

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

• Lorena Gonzalezfederation president, on the discussion union organizers have had about student walkouts 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 stopped at ‘damn Trump.'”

But despite raising and spending more than his opponent, there’s still no indication the Yes campaign will win: A recent survey by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report found that while about 50 percent of registered voters said they would support Proposition 50, nearly half of those polled said they were undecided or only mildly committed to voting for the measure.

It is this undecided subset of voters that the No campaign is focusing on — tapping into voters’ general distaste for fraud as well as anti-Newsom sentiment among conservatives.

• Jessica Milan Pattersonformer state chairman of the Republican Party and current chairman of the No on Prop campaign. 50: “We can’t win with Republican votes alone, so we have to make sure that those swing voters … that the conversation is happening with them. They know that giving this power to politicians is not going to serve anyone but those politicians, and they just need permission to vote against it.”

Read more here.

If voters pass Prop. 50, one of the more conservative regions of the state may turn out to be represented by a progressive congressman and an outspoken critic of Trump, Maya writes.

Currently, U.S. Representative Robert Garcia’s district is located entirely in Los Angeles County. But under Prop. The 50th, 42nd Congressional District will cover parts of conservative Orange County, including Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. That would mean Garcia would receive more Republican voters than any other Democratic incumbent if he wins re-election to the district in 2026.

Garcia, a Peruvian immigrant, is gay and a known critic of Trump. His positions 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 has banned the flying of the Pride flag on city property and passed an ordinance requiring voter ID. This summer he tried to create a library overview panel to check library books for sexual content, even though voters ultimately rejected the offer.

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

Read more here.

Speaking of Garcia, the congressman joined Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Monday to call on Congress to investigate allegations that federal immigration officials illegally detained US citizens.

Garcia is the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Along with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who leads the Democrats on the Senate Investigations Subcommittee, they send a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security, demanding records and accusing federal agencies of detaining citizens “using disproportionate force and a fundamentally flawed rationale.”

The letter also quotes a ProPublica investigation published last week, which found that more than 170 US citizens were detained during immigration checks – 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 immigration actions under Trump, which intensified over the summer in L.A., were “a spectacular moment in our history.”

• bass, at the press conference on Monday: “What’s happening to undocumented immigrants is happening to US citizens, which means it could happen to anyone, to all of us, at any time.”

Cities target people living in vehicles, ticketing and towing under parking regulations. Last week, the governor signed a bill that makes it easier for some cities to toss RVs parked on their streets. CalMatters’ Marissa Kendall and Director of Video Strategy Robert Meeks have a video segment why critics say it will eliminate much-needed shelter as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58pm weekdays on PBS SoCal.