Emerging from the emergency

Feb 28, 2023

By Jeremy B. White, Lara Korte, Matthew Brown and Ramon Castanos

Presented by SEIU-UHW

THE BUZZ: California’s official Covid-19 emergency ends today, but we’re still living through the aftermath.

Most Californians won’t notice the emergency expiring and removing the final provisions — like those dealing with hospital capacity and vaccine rollouts — that Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t yet erased. But it punctuates a political era. More than 100,000 Californians have died since Newsom invoked the Emergency Services Act in early March of 2020. Beyond that staggering human toll, the virus upended society and dominated the state’s politics on a scale few could conceive of three years ago.

Newsom’s first term was defined by the coronavirus. His aggressive approach, bolstered by his emergency powers, won praise for saving lives and condemnation for stifling the economy while keeping classrooms empty — a bifurcated response that mapped onto national partisan divides. There is no Newsom recall without Covid-19.

California was the first to lock down and order everyone inside as Newsom moved swiftly to avoid catastrophe. Multiple shutdowns would follow as the virus spiked. It’s dizzying now to remember the shifting array of color-coded virus alert levels and county transmission tiers that guided openings and closures. Those emergency constraints allowed Newsom to issue school rules effectively ensuring most kids would not return to classrooms in the summer of 2020 — a decision that fueled months of political conflict and the greatest challenge of Newsom’s career.

In retrospect, the recall marked the nadir of a full circle for Newsom. His approval ratings climbed to record heights at the pandemic’s outset. They tumbled as mounting despair and disillusionment culminated in a recall drive that was sustained by signature gatherers winning more time thanks to pandemic restraints. But Newsom crushed the recall. The outcome both vindicated him and so depleted Republican resources that the GOP largely sat out the 2022 gubernatorial race, letting a reinvigorated Newsom romp to re-election.

Many of the pandemic’s policy repercussions are behind us. Eviction moratoriums have lifted. Bills mandating vaccines in schools and workplaces or letting minors get inoculated without parental consent withered in Sacramento last year. The Newsom administration has quietly backed away from its own school shot requirement. The emergency’s end extends the list.

Still, Newsom’s political future will rest in part on perceptions of his muscular pandemic response. Newsom’s supporters see a leader who deftly navigated an unprecedented cataclysm. His critics see the worst kind of liberal overreach — a list of detractors that includes California Assembly members who sued over his executive powers and a certain rival Republican governor from Florida. The emergency may be ending, but that debate persists.

BUENOS DÍAS, good Tuesday morning. Energy costs are once again on the Legislature’s agenda today as California Public Utilities Commission President Alice Reynolds talks to a Senate committee about utility bills that have soared this winter. Former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti was scheduled to get an ambassadorship confirmation hearing today, but it looks like that’s not happening.

Got a tip or story idea for California Playbook? Hit us up at jwhite@politico.com and lkorte@politico.com or follow us on Twitter @JeremyBWhite and @Lara_Korte.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I think it’s extremely difficult to represent your district well. Beyond that, I think having just five members on our board makes it really difficult to represent the diversity of the county.” Unrig LA activist Rob Quan on Los Angeles Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s bid to expand a five-member board overseeing 10 million constituents, via LAist.

TWEET OF THE DAY:

Scott_Wiener

BONUS TOTD:

LorenaSGonzalez

WHERE’S GAVIN? Nothing official announced.

A message from SEIU-UHW:

Healthcare workers are burnt out and underpaid, causing many to leave their jobs. Now, California faces an urgent healthcare worker shortage that threatens patient care. Tell lawmakers: Stop the shortage. Pass SB 525 Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage bill.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — LATEEFAH’S LANE: BART Board member Lateefah Simon is running for the House seat Rep. Barbara Lee is giving up to run for Senate, becoming the first to announce and consolidating support in what could have been a crowded Democratic field. Simon enters with endorsements from Assemblymembers Mia Bonta and Buffy Wicks, state Sen. Nancy Skinner and former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. Simon considers Lee a mentor and, like Lee, is a Black woman — an important consideration for the Oakland-anchored district. “I was always clear – one day, I am gonna follow in her footsteps,” Simon said of Lee.

SUPER SENATE RACE — PACs poised to supercharge California Senate campaign, by POLITICO’s Jeremy B. White: The once-in-a-generation contest for a California Senate seat could unleash a tsunami of outside spending as independent expenditure committees with unlimited fundraising powers work to differentiate Democrats jostling in an open field. And that could lead to the kind of negative broadsides that candidates themselves could be reluctant to level.

Allies of Rep. Barbara Lee launched a Super PAC even before the Oakland congresswoman opened her Senate campaign. That committee is staffed with some of California’s most prominent political operatives — as with a rival PAC backing Rep. Adam Schiff — and supporters of Rep. Katie Porter are laying the foundation for a third. The dynamic could deepen intraparty strife as liberal donors fund advertising targeting more centrist Democrats, and vice versa, in what is likely to be one of the most expensive contests in California history.

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CALIFORNIA AND THE CAPITOL CORRIDOR

— “California lawmakers revive effort to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for crimes,” by the Los Angeles Times’ Hannah Wiley: “Several months before the Nov. 8 election, lawmakers killed a proposal that would have asked voters to eliminate an exception in the state Constitution that allows for involuntary servitude for criminal punishment.”

— “PG&E outages: Bay Area storms knock out power to thousands.” by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Sam Whiting: “The outages were due to a combination of Monday's and Sunday’s storms, on top of holdovers from the major windstorm of Feb. 21, which caused downed lines and killed power for more than 1 million PG&E customers, 400,000 in the Bay Area alone.”

SURF OR TURF — “Newsom cares more about almond growers than California's salmon fishery,” opines George Skelton in the Los Angeles Times: “What Newsom and government officials are really talking about is a long-term water shortage. It’s caused by California having more agriculture and people than can be sustained with what nature provides us. And it’s made more problematic by the uncertain prospects of climate change.”

— “California tripled its spending on Sacramento’s homelessness crisis. Here’s where the money went,” by CapRadio’s Chris Nichols: “Regional officials say the massive jump in funding reflects the state’s commitment to solving the problem. But a lack of progress in slowing the crisis as more state dollars flowed doesn’t mean officials wasted the money, according to Lisa Bates, who heads the nonprofit Sacramento Steps Forward, which receives and manages regional homelessness funding.”

COMPLY OR STAND BY — “Some California cities can’t stop apartment projects as developers use ‘builder’s remedy’,” by The Orange County Register’s Jeff Collins: “To the horror of slow-growth proponents and neighborhood preservationists, proposals range from a six-story apartment building in suburban Orange to 2,000 units in a 1.9-million-square-foot, 20-level complex in Santa Monica. But because these cities didn’t have a state-approved housing plan when developers filed their applications, local leaders can’t use zoning rules or their general plans to stop them.”

— “This reservoir on the Sacramento River has been planned for decades. What's taking so long?” by CalMatters’ Alastair Bland: “Still, Sites Reservoir remains almost a decade away: Acquisition of water rights, permitting and environmental review are still in the works. Kickoff of construction, which includes two large dams, had been scheduled for 2024, but likely will be delayed another year. Completion is expected in 2030 or 2031.”

A message from SEIU-UHW:

BIDEN, HARRIS AND THE HILL

— 'We can’t find people to work': The newest threat to Biden's climate policies, by POLITICO’s Zack Colman: The same booming labor market that has given Biden the lowest unemployment rate since the 1960s is also creating a hiring bottleneck for the same construction and manufacturing companies that are central to his climate agenda.

— Lobbyists to Biden: Unless you want to cede to China, relax microchip rules, by POLITICO’s Brendan Bordelon: The Semiconductor Industry Association — the chip industry’s main voice in Washington — is pressing the Commerce Department to grant new manufacturing projects a “categorical exclusion” from a key environmental law. With billions ready to be spent under the CHIPS and Science Act, industry lobbyists worry the law’s review requirements could delay domestic chip production for years.

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SILICON VALLEYLAND

ALIGNMENT IN DECLINE — “Take the money or change the world? Why some tech workers are sticking with the industry, or not,” by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Chase DiFeliciantonio: “Many current and former workers got their starts fueled by the optimism of tech’s power to improve peoples’ lives, before finding themselves disillusioned, or just unconvinced, by the change-the-world ethos that many companies, large and small, rely on to attract workers and funding.”

IT’S NOT WHERE YOU START … — “Even before the layoffs, tech workers were quitting. Here’s why,” by The Washington Post’s Danielle Abril: “After nearly two decades of helping programmers, Chris Phipps is writing sketches for live comedy. The former IBM Watson lead in artificial intelligence and natural language processing delivery had always dreamed of getting into entertainment.”

‘BOOM AND BUST’ — “Emerald Triangle communities were built on cannabis. Legalization has pushed them to the brink,” by CalMatters’ Alexei Koseff: “Things are getting desperate in this remote, mountainous community in far northern California, where cannabis is king — the economy, the culture, the everything. Over the past two years, the price of weed has plummeted and people are broke.”

A message from SEIU-UHW:

While hospitals made billions during the pandemic, patient care has gotten worse. Why? Healthcare workers are burnt out and underpaid, causing many to leave their jobs. Now, California faces an urgent healthcare worker shortage.

Lawmakers have a choice: Pass SB 525 Healthcare Worker Minimum Wage bill or put more patients at risk.

HOLLYWOODLAND

— “Woman accused of helping steal Lady Gaga’s dogs is suing for the reward to return them,” by The Sacramento Bee’s Madeleine List: “In a lawsuit filed Feb. 24, McBride’s attorney argued that Gaga, who initially offered a reward of $500,000 “no questions asked” for the safe return of her two dogs, “committed a breach of contract, fraud by false promise and fraud by misrepresentation” by failing to pay McBride, according to People.”

CALIFORNIA POLICY IS ALWAYS CHANGING: Know your next move. From Sacramento to Silicon Valley, POLITICO California Pro provides policy professionals with the in-depth reporting and tools they need to get ahead of policy trends and political developments shaping the Golden State. To learn more about the exclusive insight and analysis this subscriber-only service offers, click here.

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