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Presented by Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment: Jeremy B. White and Lara Korte’s must-read briefing on politics and government in the Golden State | | | | |  | | By Jeremy B. White, Lara Korte, Matthew Brown and Ramon Castanos | Presented by Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment | THE BUZZ: Thirteen months before the primary and 400 miles from her home base, Rep. Katie Porter held the first event of what promises to be a raucous U.S. Senate race. The Orange County Democrat kicked off her campaign with a visit to the East Bay’s Rossmoor Democratic club, a rich vein of three critical resources: donations, volunteers and high-propensity Democratic voters. It’s also all but impossible to win statewide without piling up votes in the Bay Area. “The fact that she’s here within a week of announcing her candidacy means Northern California is in her heart,” Assembly member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan told a crowd of hundreds in an intro speech (RBK is so far neutral in the Senate race.). Whiteboards were featured heavily — fittingly, sincePorter built her reputation by grilling executives with her signature prop and is centering her campaign on countering entrenched interests. A few women in the audience had specially made “4 Katie!” mini-whiteboards pinned to their shirts. An emcee screened a video of one memorable interrogation and recounted others to murmurs of recognition. Porter boasted about lobbyists cowering from “the whiteboard treatment.” California, she said, needs “our best warrior in the Senate.” In a possible preview of how she’ll approach Democratic rivals, she said it’s for “a fresh new voice.” Porter was able to get in front of potential voters before the competition because she didn’t wait for Sen. Dianne Feinstein to confirm the pervasive presumption that she won’t seek another term. Before holding the cycle’s first campaign event on Tuesday, Porter issued the first strength-signaling fundraising release ($1.3 million in 24 hours) and rolled out the first high-profile endorsement (Sen. Elizabeth Warren, her mentor and former professor). But she won’t long have the field to herself. Rep. Barbara Lee has already said she’s in, and Rep. Adam Schiff shouldn’t be far behind. To differentiate themselves from rival Democrats, they’ll need to put in the time with the party faithful at Rossmoor-like clubs around the state. They’ll also need to raise enormous sums of money — and a key to that is accumulating numerous small-dollar donors, like the types of people who show up to a campaign event on a Tuesday night many months before they’ll cast a vote. Porter has demonstrated fundraising acumen — and some ground to make up. She raised more than $25 million last cycle but spent some $27 million to survive a bruising re-election race, leaving her with about $7.7 million at November's end. Schiff, ensconced in his safe Los Angeles district, raised a similar amount but spent markedly less than Porter, leaving him with more than $20 million on hand. Lee, who is less of a fundraising juggernaut, had $54,000. MIN’S IN — We have a new contender for Porter’s opening House seat: Democratic state Sen. Dave Min is running for CA-47 with an endorsement from Porter, who said in a statement Min has “proven that he can win in this area while delivering on a progressive agenda.” Min finished behind Porter in the 2018 House primary and will avert a 2024 Senate clash with state Sen. Josh Newman. He joins a field that already includes former Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda and former Republican Assembly member Scott Baugh. On that note — the very first question to Porter concerned her purple House seat’s fate. “We win it,” she replied emphatically, vowing to “be there every step of the way.” BUENOS DÍAS, good Wednesday morning. Rep. Josh Harder is holding an event today focused on flooding and the Delta tunnel project. The massive water infrastructure project is reviled in much of Harder’s area, but Gov. Gavin Newsom recently lauded it as a way to capture the “extraordinary” amount of water flowing out to sea during massive storms that have prodded officials to think harder about capturing rainwater.
| | | | A message from Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment: Californians are being ripped off by Big Oil at the gas pump. A price gouging penalty — or windfall profits cap — is sorely needed to protect Californians from greedy polluters. California already imposes a cap on profits for energy utilities that sell methane gas and electricity. We can cap profits on gasoline that protects consumers while ensuring reliable supplies. Governor Newsom and the California legislature must hold Big Oil accountable and pass a price gouging penalty. Learn more. | | | 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: “This is the first time I am going to say this in person, in public: I am running to be your U.S. senator.” Porter kicks off her remarks, and the 2024 campaign. TWEET OF THE DAY:
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| BONUS TWEET OF THE DAY:
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| WHERE’S GAVIN? Nothing official announced
| | | | JOIN TODAY TO HEAR FROM MAYORS AROUND AMERICA: 2022 brought in a new class of mayors leading “majority minority” cities, reshaping who is at the nation’s power tables and what their priorities are. Join POLITICO to hear from local leaders on how they’re responding to being tested by unequal Covid-19 outcomes, upticks in hate crimes, homelessness, lack of affordable housing, inflation and a potential recession. New York City Mayor Eric Adams will be our featured speaker. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | |  | Top Talkers | | — “Elon Musk’s appetite for destruction,” by The New York Times’ Christopher Cox: “For a company that depended on an unbounded sense of optimism among investors to maintain its high stock price — Tesla was at one point worth more than Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Ford and General Motors combined — these crashes might seem like a problem. But to Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, they presented an opportunity.” —“LAPD widens investigation into source of racist City Hall leak,” by the Los Angeles Times’ Richard Winton and Matt Hamilton: “Recording conversations without a person’s consent is illegal in California, with rare exceptions. The search warrant states that LAPD investigators believe that the recordings, made in October 2021 at the L.A. County Federation of Labor headquarters in Westlake, are a felony violation of the state eavesdropping law.” IDEALLY — “Want to solve climate change? This California farm kingdom holds a key,” by the Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth: “By year’s end, a field of solar panels should cover this land, sending clean electricity to San Diego. A giant battery will help the coastal city keep the lights on after dark. None of the infrastructure will destroy pristine wildlife habitat.” — “The Getty family’s trust issues,” by The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos: “They tend to have no public presence — Gordon Getty’s family office is known, inconspicuously, as Vallejo Investments—but by some estimates they control about six trillion dollars in assets, a larger sum than is managed by all the world’s hedge funds.”
| | | | A message from Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment:   | | | | | CAMPAIGN MODE | | EVERYONE FOR THEMSELVES — “California’s shadow Senate campaign is already spilling out into the light,” by the Daily Beast’s Sam Brodey: “No matter how the eventual field shakes out, California politicos are bracing for a bruising intra-party battle royale. In the state’s election system, the top two vote-getters in the primary advance to the general election, regardless of party — which means that in this deep blue state, a Democrat-versus-Democrat matchup in November 2024 is not only possible, it’s likely.”
| | CALIFORNIA AND THE CAPITOL CORRIDOR | | — “Race to zero: Can California’s power grid handle a 15-fold increase in electric cars?” by CalMatters’ Nadia Lopez: “State officials claim that the 12.5 million electric vehicles expected on California’s roads in 2035 will not strain the grid. But their confidence that the state can avoid brownouts relies on a best-case — some say unrealistic — scenario: massive and rapid construction of offshore wind and solar farms, and drivers charging their cars in off-peak hours.” TEAMWORK — “Billionaires in blue states face coordinated wealth-tax bills,” by The Washington Post’s Julie Zauzmer Wail: “A group of legislators in statehouses across the country has coordinated to introduce bills simultaneously in seven states later this week, with the same goal of raising taxes on the rich. ‘The point here is to make sure we do at the state level what is not being done at the federal level,’ said Gustavo Rivera (D), a New York state senator who is part of the seven-state group.’” ‘LARGELY UNBEKNOWN TO THEM’ — “How restaurant workers help pay for lobbying to keep their wages low,” by The New York Times’ David A. Fahrenthold and Talmon Joseph Smith: “The National Restaurant Association uses mandatory $15 food-safety classes to turn waiters and cooks into unwitting funders of its battle against minimum wage increases.” — “Is the Bay Area on the verge of a housing construction slowdown?” by The Mercury News’ Ethan Varian: “There already is a slowdown, but I think it will magnify itself in 2023,” said Ken Rosen, chair of UC Berkeley’s Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics. “A lot of developers may put projects on hold until construction costs come down.” — “New Bay Area maps show hidden flood risk from sea level rise and groundwater,” by the Los Angeles Times’ Rosanna Xia: “Communities that consider themselves “safe” from sea level rise might need to think otherwise, said Kris May, a lead author of the report and founder of Pathways Climate Institute, a research-based consulting firm in San Francisco that helps cities adapt to climate change. ‘I started working on sea level rise, then I went into extreme precipitation, and then groundwater … but it’s all connected,’ May said.” — “These two major shifts sparked a mental health crisis among LGBTQ youth in California,” by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Elissa Miolene: “By surveying nearly 223,000 students across 20 states, San Francisco organization YouthTruth found that during the 2021-22 school year, nearly 80 percent of bisexual, gay and lesbian middle schoolers reported depression, stress and anxiety as an obstacle to learning, double the rate of straight students.” — “In Montecito, the million-dollar views still come with mudslide risks,” by The New York Times’ Jill Cowan and Corina Knoll: “The allure of Montecito, as with many places in California, has proven to also be its Achilles' heel — where natural beauty means living on the edge of possible disaster.” — “Californians approved billions for new water storage. Why hasn't it gotten built?” by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kurtis Alexander: “As the state experiences a historic bout of rain and snow this winter, amid another severe water shortage, critics are lamenting the missed opportunity to capture more of the extraordinary runoff that has been swelling rivers, flooding towns and pouring into the sea.”
| | BIDEN, HARRIS AND THE HILL | | TAKING A BREATHER — Why Harris world thinks she may be the biggest winner of the midterms, by POLITICO’S Eugene Daniels: She no longer is tied to the whims of an evenly split Senate, where she had been called to cast more than two dozen tie-breaking votes. And they say she no longer feels her every move is being eyed in the context of a potential 2024 Harris presidential campaign since her boss is highly likely to seek another term. — White House to McCarthy: ‘Come clean’ on your backroom speaker deals, by POLITICO’s Christopher Cadelago: The White House had long been gearing up to paint the incoming House Republican caucus as beholden to their most conservative members. But President Joe Biden has tried to turn the policy implications of Republicans’ priority bills, including legislation to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace more progressive income taxes with a national sales tax, into a political cudgel.
| | SILICON VALLEYLAND | | — “Inside Elon Musk’s “extremely hardcore” Twitter,” by Platformer’s Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton and The Verge’s Alex Heath: “If ‘free speech’ was his mandate for Twitter the platform, it has been the opposite for Twitter the workplace. Dissenting opinion or criticism has led to swift dismissals. Musk replaced Twitter’s old culture with one of his own, but it’s unclear, with so few workers and plummeting revenues, if this new version will survive.” — “What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report,” by The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima and Drew Harwell: “Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms — especially Twitter — failed to heed their own employees’ warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of reprisals. — “Dozens of media companies set 2023 content deals with Twitter,” by Axios’ Sara Fischer: “Elon Musk's leadership style has caused many advertisers to flee, but media companies, newsrooms and sports leagues are reaping too much revenue and marketing advantage to quit the platform.”
| | | | A message from Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment: Californians are being ripped off by Big Oil at the gas pump. Last year, when Californians paid $6 a gallon for gas, $3 more than the national average, oil companies reported record high profits. A price gouging penalty — or windfall profits cap — is sorely needed to protect Californians from greedy polluters raising gasoline prices in the future. Under this type of regulation, oil refineries can still make profits but within reason so it doesn’t hurt consumers, especially low income and communities of color. Oil refineries should be limited in how much profit they can make to ensure Californians are protected from abnormally high gasoline prices. California can cap profits on gasoline that protects consumers while ensuring reliable supplies. Governor Newsom and the California legislature must hold Big Oil accountable and pass a price gouging penalty. Learn more. | | | | | MIXTAPE | | — “‘An iconic moment’: In Warriors’ return to White House, Biden takes a knee,” by the San Francisco Chronicle’s C.J. Holmes. — “LAPD chief bans ‘Thin Blue Line’ flag from police station lobbies, patrol vehicles and uniforms,” by LAist’s Emily Elena Dugdale. — “Irvine councilwoman threatens to pull city out of green power agency if CEO isn’t replaced,” by Voice of OC’s Noah Biesiada. — “BART director apologizes for using racist language,” by The San Francisco Standard’s Joe Burn. — “California legislators refuse to fix CEQA. Here's how Newsom and the courts can take charge,” opines the San Francisco Chronicle’s Chris Elmendorf. — “Struck by EBT fraud, thousands of San Diego food-stamp and welfare recipients struggle to find food, pay bills,” by The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Jeff McDonald. — “Judge allows sharing gun owner information with researchers,” by The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Greg Moran.
| | Transitions | | — Former Assembly member Jordan Cunningham and his former chief of staff Nick Mirman are launching a new consulting firm, CM Public Affairs.
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