A Practical Progressive Guide to the March 2020 California Primary
Californians are still feeling the pain of having been a red state for decades, but we can fix it.
If you’re a California voter only casually following the presidential primary this year, you may be surprised by a few things happening shortly:
- We still have a functioning democracy — at least in this blue state.
- You’re going to get a ballot in the mail THIS WEEK. (Feb. 3–7)
- Your Democratic presidential primary vote will actually really matter, unlike 2016 when Hillary Clinton already had the primary sewn up by the time California voted in June.
- There are a LOT more races to vote for than just who should be the next president.
Since the Republican Party has proven pretty definitively that they don’t believe in upholding the letter or the spirit of our Constitution (see: the first impeachment trial in history without witnesses), it’s no exaggeration to say that the choice of Democratic nominee for president is maybe the most important of our lifetimes.
But bad conservative decision-making doesn’t stop with undermining democracy at the federal level: Right here in California, we are deep in the grips of a housing crisis driven by misguided anti-tax ballot measures passed before millennials were even born (Prop 13 – 1978) and decades of conservative policymaking at the local level.
Solving these problems is going to require putting the right leaders in the right seats at all levels of government to pass big progressive bills, remove barriers to building a lot more housing, and fight battles their predecessors were unwilling to.
Here’s how you should fill out your primary ballot in the next few weeks to maximize the chances that this happens.
President: Vote Your Conscience Between Sanders and Warren
First of all, in order to get to vote in the Democratic primary in California, you must be a registered Democrat or proactively request a Democratic ballot if you are registered as No Party Preference (NPP). You can check how you’re registered here: https://voterstatus.sos.ca.gov/
Honestly, though, if you’re NPP for some reason, just stop. Register as a Democrat. We’re no longer in an era where “both parties suck” is a reasonable position to hold, and most NPPs in California seem to be Republicans who are embarrassed to admit they’re still Republicans. Just be a Democrat. You can update your registration here.
Second, the data we have now suggests that at least three of the top four Democratic presidential contenders have a reasonable shot to beat Trump in November. Here’s the RealClearPolitics average of head-to-head polls from Jan. 15 to Jan. 30 for each candidate:
- Biden beats Trump: +5.4% / 50.1% to 44.7%
- Sanders beats Trump: +3.7% / 49.0% to 45.3%
- Warren beats Trump: +1.8% / 47.7% to 45.9%
- Buttigieg loses to Trump: -0.3% / 45.6% to Trump’s 45.9%
But it’s still early. Even Buttigieg, were he to be the nominee, probably still has a decent chance against Trump. (Note that the margins of victory here essentially perfectly correlate with national name recognition.) Of course, any eventual nominee will still be fighting an uphill battle, because the Electoral College hands disproportionate influence to smaller and more rural states where Republicans are relatively stronger.
So given that we have four candidates who have a shot against Trump, from a progressive’s point of view, the strategic goal should be to get the most progressive candidate possible to be the Democratic nominee.
If you know anything about anything, then you know it’s a choice between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. So you pick your favorite of the two and you’re set, right?
Not so fast. Despite some of the vitriol on Twitter and stoked in the national press, either Sanders or Warren would be a great president and represent the most progressive chief executive since FDR. But from a progressive point of view, the real danger is that progressives split their wing of the party in the primary, and the old-school party establishment coalesces early around an unnecessarily moderate candidate, letting a Biden or even a Michael Bloomberg sneak to a slim majority in delegates.
Even though your primary ballot is arriving the first week of February, it actually doesn’t need to be handed in until Super Tuesday on March 3rd. (Technically, you can mail it back any time between when you receive it and March 3rd itself, so long as it is postmarked by the 3rd and arrives by the Friday after election day.) So the smart move here is to watch the first few primaries play out and see whether Sanders and Warren are both still viable.
2/20 Update: As of this moment, the FiveThirtyEight Primary Forecast gives Sanders a 37% chance of winning a majority of pledged delegates and Warren a 1% chance. For just a plurality of delegates, it’s 56% and 2%, respectively. Betting markets are similar, giving Sanders a 47% chance at being the nominee and Warren a bit over 3%.
From the data, if your goal is a progressive nominee, then it would seem like a slam dunk to vote for Sanders. However, two things confound that a bit:
1.) Warren had a helluva night at the Nevada debate last night and is getting a lot of positive press coverage from it. (See these highlights of her grilling Bloomberg.) This may be the thing necessary to propel her from the middle-to-the-back of the pack to closer to the top.
2.) In California specifically, Warren is hovering a bit below the 15% threshold needed to get delegates. (I believe you can meet the threshold in some congressional districts and not others, so she may be closer or further from that target depending on where you live.) So it’s possible your vote has more marginal utility for Warren than it does for Sanders: i.e., your vote is more likely to be the tipping point to get Warren an additional delegate than it is to get Sanders an additional delegate.
Given this, I’d say just vote your conscience in California when it comes to Sanders vs. Warren. Absent some major shakeup to the race, Sanders will most likely pile up the most delegates on Super Tuesday and establish himself as an untouchable leader in the primary. If he happens to get a plurality but not a majority of pledged delegates, then I suspect the Democratic Party would not be stupid enough to make someone else the nominee. (That would virtually guarantee a general election loss. If anything, some faction will strike a deal to get the VP of their choice in exchange for Sanders being the nominee.)
But there is some outside chance that Warren could emerge as a consensus non-Bernie candidate, in which case having as many delegates as possible bolsters the argument for her over Buttigieg or Biden.
Either way, I’d be very happy with a Sanders or Warren nomination and presidency, so we can’t go wrong, and I hope you feel the same.
For myself personally, I will probably vote for Bernie, but I’ll most likely do the most nakedly strategic thing and wait until Monday, March 2nd to mail in my ballot, so that I have the most up-to-date understanding of the dynamics of the race.
Democratic Party Central Committee: See County-by-County Recommendations Below
Unless you’re into local politics, you may never have heard of your Democratic Party Central Committee, and it may seem like just another random race to vote on, like the head of the local mosquito abatement district or state judge #347. However, these races really matter too.
The quick primer is that the Central Committee is the local wing of the California Democratic Party, which can mean slightly different things in different places. In swing House districts, the party might do a lot to organize local Dems to to win and keep those Congressional seats. In solidly blue districts, the local party can exert its influence by endorsing or opposing local and state legislation.
However, regardless of geography, one of the most important duties of your county’s Democratic Party Central Committee is deciding who gets the Democratic endorsement in local races. In close races, this can often be the difference between winning and losing, and who is on your city council or running your county board of supervisors is incredibly important for determining whether your area is going to make the housing crisis better or worse.
Sadly, most city councilmembers in most cities in California have been responsible for zoning decisions that have grossly underbuilt the amount of housing we need, leading to a horrific housing crisis with record-high rents, enormous inequality, and staggering amounts of homelessness in this state. (You can read a fuller account of the housing crisis and how to fix it in one of my prior ballot guides: Housing Is the Most Important Issue for California Voters, So Learn Up)
But even sadder is that many of the local leaders responsible for this crisis are Democrats who were endorsed by their local Democratic Party Central Committee. Many even claim to be progressives themselves, while simultaneously defending things like exclusionary zoning that keep the working class and many people of color out of their communities.
We can start to change this dynamic and elect more pro-housing progressives to cities around the state, and having Central Committees that understand this would be hugely helpful.
Since these races are county-by-county and usually district-by-district within a county, I can’t give a full rundown of who exactly you should vote for here. But here’s how I recommend thinking about it:
1.) Check your local pro-housing Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY) organization’s endorsements. Vote for those people.
Here are ones I’m aware of:
a) San Francisco: YIMBY Action Endorsements for AD17 and AD19
b) San Mateo County: Peninsula for Everyone Endorsements for County Districts 1, 2, 3, and 4 (no endorsements in 5). Also, vote for Ashleigh Evans in District 1, because she was kind enough to appoint me as one of her alternates, and I can personally vouch for her progressive cred.
c) Santa Clara County: Peninsula for Everyone Endorsements for AD24, AD25, AD27, AD28, and AD29
d) Alameda County: Vote Victoria Fierce, Abel Guillen, and Victor Aguilar in AD18 and James Chang, Elizabeth Echols, Nick Pilch, Ces Rosales, Alfred Twu and Julie Waters in AD15.
e) Los Angeles County: Vote Seamus Garrity in AD51.
f) Other Counties? If you know good pro-housing folks, send them my way and I can update this.
2.) Talk to your local politically interested friend about what they think. If you know someone who’s into local politics, they can probably give you a good rundown of who’s good. If you live in San Francisco, ask your friend if they are more of a “prog” or a “mod,” which will probably heavily influence their recommendations.
3.) Vote for non-incumbents and non-politicians, if the ballot designations indicate who they are. There’s a decent chance that your county’s central committee is full of long-time political insiders who tend to endorse other long-time political insiders in local races. Fresh blood is probably a good thing.
4.) Otherwise, it’s okay to not use all your votes. Usually you get to vote for 4 or more candidates for Central Committee. If there are only 1 or 2 you know are good, then just vote for those 1 or 2. That will give them the best mathematical shot at getting elected.
House of Representatives: Vote for the Democratic Incumbent or a Democratic Challenger
You may be aware that in California, for many offices below the presidential level, we have a top two primary system. This means that every voter, regardless of party registration, can vote in these primaries, and whichever two candidates get the most votes then move onto the general election in November. Importantly, nothing stops two candidates of the same party from both going to the general election.
In 2018, there were a number of swing House seats in California that were in danger of a perverse outcome: the districts were about 50/50 Democrat vs. Republican, but so many Democrats were running for Congress that there was an outside chance that the top two vote-getters would both be Republicans. (e.g., 50% divided by 2 Republicans vs. 50% divided by 3–6 Democrats) This would’ve locked even the top Democratic candidate out of the general election. Fortunately, this didn’t come to pass, and as far as I’ve heard, I don’t think we face that kind of danger this year.
So in your U.S. Representative race, just vote for the Democratic incumbent if there is one, or whatever Democratic challenger seems most impressive upon googling them. (If you’re aware of a race where this advice doesn’t apply, let me know.)
State Senator and Assemblymember: See District-by-District Recommendations Below
If you’re not one of the folks that makes a hobby out of local politics, chances are you don’t know the name of your state senator or your assemblymember. (I didn’t… until I got into local politics.) That’s okay. It’s not really important, because unless you live in a swing district, it doesn’t usually matter.
However, every 12 years or so, your State Senate or Assembly race REALLY matters. This is because Californians passed Prop 28 in 2012, which instituted a lifetime 12-year limit for serving in the state legislature. What this translates to in practice is that every 12 years, there’s a very competitive race for that legislative seat, and then whoever wins that general election runs effectively unchallenged for 12 years until they themselves are term limited out. (Local politics tends to be a small world, so if a well-liked person ends up in an important position of power by winning such a seat, you usually don’t help your own political career by pursuing a long-shot challenge against them.)
Occasionally, you’ll see factional challenges to a sitting state legislator in a blue district, but they are unlikely to win (and usually know it). For instance, the state senator in San Francisco, Scott Wiener, is facing a challenge from the “prog” faction in the city, and Nancy Pelosi is herself facing a similar challenge. Both challengers are unlikely to win, but having gone against incumbents myself and lost in my Burlingame City Council race, I give folks a lot of credit for putting themselves out there and trying to move the ball forward on the things they care about.
(Side note: San Francisco politics are unusually bizarre — see this tweet — so the word “progressive” gets pretty muddled there. I think, for instance, that the “prog” stance on housing policy tends to get a lot of things empirically wrong and ultimately fails to meet the urgency of the crisis we face. And most “mods” would be clear progressives in any other city in the country.)
So given all that, here is who you should vote for to push progressive values forward and make real traction in addressing the housing crisis in California:
State Legislative Races: Bay Area
San Francisco — Senate District 11: Scott Wiener
You may have heard about SB 50, the bill that proposed to do something logical about the housing crisis, like zoning for more housing around public transit, but which ran into a NIMBY buzzsaw in the state legislature last month. It’s no exaggeration to say that Wiener is the most important legislator in the state on housing issues, and it is crucial he stays in Sacramento. Please vote for Scott; this is a no-brainer if you care about solving the housing crisis.
Peninsula — Senate District 13: Shelly Masur
This is one of the once-every-12-years races due to the terming out of Senator Jerry Hill, and this district, running from Brisbane to Sunnyvale, is the part of the state that perhaps bears the most responsibility for exacerbating the housing crisis. San Mateo County, for instance, has added so little housing that between 2010 and 2017, it built just 1 home for every 12 jobs it added. As the home of Facebook, YouTube, and many other rapidly growing companies, this is fucking crazy. And for those of us that live here, it means that our rent is absurdly high for what we get and that buying a starter home routinely costs $2 million or more.
There are a number of qualified Democrats in this race, but the only one who fully grapples with the seriousness of the housing crisis and its impacts on equity and on climate is Redwood City Vice Mayor Shelly Masur. She’s endorsed by the Peninsula Young Democrats and local YIMBY group Peninsula For Everyone and seems to have by far the most local support. On top of all that, she has a really deep background in education and women’s reproductive rights and is beloved locally. She’s really the best of all worlds, and it’s a slam dunk to vote for her. Learn more about Shelly on her web site here.
East Bay — Senate District 7: Marisol Rubio
This race is actually an exception to the rule that legislators in blue district rarely get a serious challenge during their 12 years in Sacramento. The incumbent in this district, Steve Glazer, is a very conservative anti-union “Democrat” who did not receive the party endorsement this cycle and who was originally elected to office after the Republican in the race dropped out and endorsed him. (Primaries for Progress has an extensive writeup here.)
Glazer’s presence in the legislature has made getting progressive priorities through more difficult, and his challenger, Marisol Rubio, is a longtime organizer and SEIU member who has been cleaning up on endorsements, including from YIMBY group East Bay For Everyone. Marisol is a slam dunk vote as well.
South Bay — Senate District 15: Dave Cortese
I don’t know as much about this race, but Cortese is a current Santa Clara County supervisor and voted for the CASA Compact, an important (but sadly controversial) set of principles for addressing the housing crisis. He’s been endorsed by South Bay YIMBY.
South Bay — Assembly District 25: Alex Lee
Alex is a pro-housing millennial and a former Legislative Policy Advisor in the state legislature. He’s exactly the kind of legislator we need more of in Sacramento, and of course, has been endorsed by South Bay YIMBY as well.
Santa Cruz County — Senate District 17: Maria Cadenas
This is pretty far from where I live, so I don’t have much first-hand knowledge of the race. But Maria’s background is awesome, including a stint with the ACLU, and she’s endorsed by Santa Cruz YIMBY.
San Luis Obispo — Assembly District 35: Dawn Addis
Also don’t have a ton of deep insight here, but Dawn is a city councilmember, the founder of the Women’s March in SLO, and endorsed by the area’s lead pro-housing activist. Good enough for me.
State Legislative Races: Los Angeles
I’m not aware of any competitive races down in the LA area this cycle, but holy shit, is the legislative delegation from there bad on housing policy. If you want to see legislators claim to care about affordable housing but then kowtow to affluent suburban white homeowners in their district, just look at your average LA state senator. (This blog post has a rundown.) Just vote against the incumbents out of spite.
County Supervisors: You’re on your own — sorry!
There are a LOT of counties in California, so many, many county supervisor seats come up for election every 2 years. They are actually quite important, because counties receive a ton of property tax revenue and run lots of crucial services for residents, including helping folks struggling to find stable housing. Look to your local newspaper for endorsements for who is reasonable.
In San Mateo County, there are no competitive county supervisor elections this year. (As in, there is literally only one person running in each one.) And in San Francisco County, the city and county are combined into a single body. None of those seats are being voted on this primary, as far as I understand.
State Proposition 13: K-12, Community College, and University Bonds — YES
The only state proposition you’ll be voting on this March shares a number with the infamous 1978 Prop 13 that has screwed over generations of young people in California, but THIS Prop 13 is good. You can read a lot more about it on Ballotpedia, but the gist is that the Legislature needs voter approval to issue bonds to spend money on school facilities throughout the state. And it makes sense to issue bonds instead of allocate money directly from the general fund, because these investments are meant to last for decades, vs. typical general fund spending that funds services being implemented this year.
The list of endorsements for this one is long — the California Democratic Party, most elected Democrats in the legislature, the California Federation of Teachers, the League of Women Voters, and so on — and California is desperately behind on our K-12 spending. Adjusted for cost of living, our per-pupil spending is in the bottom half of states. And the screwed-up property tax system is a major reason why. As a result, passing bond measures like this is one of the only ways to keep our schools and public colleges and universities from falling apart. Please vote yes.
Alfred Twu — who you should also vote for for Democratic County Central Committee in Alameda County AD15— created this very helpful graphic to explain the historical Prop 13, the current Prop 13, and the upcoming Schools & Communities First ballot measure that you should also vote yes on in November:
Local School District Ballot Measures — YES
Because the 1978 Prop 13 screwed up education funding all over California, there’s a decent chance that the local districts in your area have put their own bond measures on the ballot as well. Typically the way these are structured is that the district gets to borrow a lot of money upfront and then put the debt service payments on property taxes each year, allowing it to go beyond the 1% cap implemented in the bad Prop 13. This is basically the only way to build and maintain school facilities in the long run, because per-pupil funding is so anemic that after you pay teacher and administrator salaries, there’s very little left over to do much more than keep the lights on facilities-wise.
For instance, in Burlingame where my wife and I live, both the San Mateo Union High School District and the Burlingame Elementary School District have bond measures on the ballot this year. The total cost to property owners is quite minimal, though.
If you own a $2.4 million home — the average sale price in this city thanks to the housing crisis — you are charged an incremental:
- SMUHSD Bond: $15.55 per $100k of assessed value = $373.20 per year
- BESD Bond: $20.00 per $100k of assessed value = $480.00 per year
- Total = $853.20 per year or $71.10 per month
However, the above only applies to folks who recently bought their homes at that $2.4 million average sale price. According to Trulia, the typical Burlingame house is assessed at only about 51% of its actual market rate, so cut that $71.10 cost per month in half or more for many taxpayers.
In reality, areas with high property values typically have highly-rated schools, so paying a little bit extra each year to support those schools staying highly-rated more than pays for itself in the long run. Additionally, if you’re able to afford the mortgage on a $2.4 million home (about $10,000 per month), then you can definitely afford the extra $71.10 per month to have decent public schools.
(Side note: If you’re wondering why there might be two separate school districts in your area, it’s common in California for elementary school districts covering K-8 to be separate from high school districts covering 9–12. In Burlingame, the elementary school district operates six elementary schools and one middle school within the city borders, while the high school district operates one high school within Burlingame and six other high schools in nearby cities.)
Despite the short-sightedness of the bad Prop 13 and the problems it is still creating for us decades later, anti-tax conservatives STILL fight against bond measures for local school districts. You should ignore them. Barring some extraordinary malfeasance in your local schools, only right-wing zealots vote against school bond measures in California. Vote yes if you have one or more of these on your ballot.
Other Ballot Measures: San Francisco
If you live in San Francisco, the Chronicle has an easy-to-read writeup of the 5 ballot measures you’ll be voting on. Based on that and a few endorsements I’ve seen, here’s how I’d recommend voting:
- Prop A — City College Facilities — YES
- As described above, education funding in California at all levels of the system is pretty screwed up. Generally vote yes on education bonds unless you have a really good reason not to.
- Prop B — Earthquake Bond — YES
- Again, this is borrowing money to make long-term investments, this time for emergency services. It’s the only way to do that, basically. Vote yes if you like not dying in natural disasters.
- Prop C — Fix to Retiree Benefits for Former SF Housing Authority Employees — YES
- This is one of those things that legally needs to go in front of voters even though it isn’t actually a big deal. Just vote yes to help a few dozen public employees avoid getting screwed on their promised retirement benefits.
- Prop D — Commercial Vacancy Tax — YES
- The fundamental cause of San Francisco’s storefront vacancies problem seems to be the city’s byzantine and overly-long permitting process. But a vacancy tax probably wouldn’t hurt and would at least establish that a lack of a vacancy tax is not the main driver of this problem.
- Prop E — Limits on Office Development — NO
- This is probably the most important measure on the ballot. Please, please vote no. Because if San Francisco, the most transit-accessible city in the Bay Area, stops allowing new office development, that doesn’t eliminate the demand for new office buildings. It will simply push it out to Oakland and San Mateo County, which means even more driving and even more planet-killing carbon emissions. The solution to San Francisco’s affordable housing issues is to zone for a lot more housing, not shuffle office development elsewhere.
If you read this far, thank you. And if I missed any important races or I’ve completely missed the mark on something above, you can find me on Twitter: @mldunham. (And yeah, yeah, I know that San Francisco “progs” will disagree with me on whether my endorsements above are actually progressive. That’s okay.)
As my presidential primary recommendation evolves based on new events, I’m copying my prior thoughts here for posterity and transparency:
Original Post: We will know a lot more after Iowa (Monday, 2/3), New Hampshire (Tuesday, 2/11), and Nevada (Saturday, 2/22). There’s a chance, for instance, that Sanders wins Iowa decisively and then starts to run the table in New Hampshire and Nevada, setting him up for a huge Super Tuesday. Or Warren gets a surprise win in Iowa, the establishment rallies around her instead of Biden, and it’s a Bernie vs. Warren primary.
Either way, unless you’re a can’t-possibly-change-your-mind diehard for either Sanders or Warren (I’m not), you should hold off for a couple of weeks to see how things shake out. I’ll keep this post updated with where I think things stand and how I’m planning to vote.
2/6 Update: As of this morning, Iowa results are STILL up in the air. Basically, it seems certain that Sanders has won the “popular vote” metric of how many voters caucused for him in the end, but Pete Buttigieg may win the “state delegate equivalents” metric that has traditionally been the marker of who “won” Iowa in the eyes of the press.
Either way, it seems like Buttigieg is getting a large bounce out of Iowa going into New Hampshire next week, and Biden’s 4th-place finish is putting him on the ropes. There are now a lot of ways that things could shake out, including Sanders running the table after New Hampshire if he wins there or a very significant chance that we go to a brokered convention (currently 23% in FiveThirtyEight’s primary forecast).
I still recommend holding off on sending in your ballot for at least another week until we see what happens in New Hampshire. If we end up in a Bernie vs. Buttigieg primary, even Warren stans may want to throw a vote to Bernie. But if we’re on our way to a brokered convention, then you should probably just vote for your favorite candidate.
