Bonfire of the Absurdities
Sometimes you just have to laugh. Otherwise, it’d be tears. The lengths California politicians will go to disenfranchise voters has reached a point of all-time absurdity with AB 1495.
Last year, I introduced a Resolution calling on Gavin Newsom to let voters choose Kamala Harris’ replacement in the U.S. Senate. Instead, Newsom chose the new Senator himself, conducting a “cattle call” before installing his crony Alex Padilla.
This seemed legally dubious to me, so I spent the weekend of November 14-15 researching the issue. My hunch turned out to be right: under the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Newsom was required to set an election.
I wrote a memo explaining this, which Newsom and the press ignored. But a month later, the Legislative Counsel’s Office gave me a formal 10-page opinion reaching the same conclusion: Newsom had to set an election for a Senator to complete Kamala’s term.
Since Newsom had already named Padilla, I wrote a letter advising Mitch McConnell not to admit him as a Senator. Unfortunately, McConnell soon lost his Majority. But I also made it clear to Newsom I was prepared to go to court.
This seemed to get his attention, as the Speaker of the Assembly asked me for a copy of the Legislative Counsel opinion. We now know what happened next: A scheme was concocted to bail out Newsom and Padilla with Assembly Bill 1495, which will be rammed through the Legislature next week.
AB 1495 acknowledges I was right: It sets an election to fill the remainder of Kamala’s term. But rather than having the vote right away (or combining it with the Recall) the bill schedules the election for November 2022. Kamala’s term ends in January 2023. You read that correctly: we’ll be electing someone to serve for a month.
Here’s the truly crazy part: Padilla will at the same time be up for reelection. So on your November 2022 ballot you’ll see what looks like a printing error: a race for the same Senate seat will appear twice, one after the other, with Padilla running in both. One vote will be for the last month of Kamala’s term, the other for a new term.
The point of this scheme, of course, is to let Padilla serve nearly two years before facing voters. To make matters worse, Newsom is trying to push Dianne Feinstein out the door, making way for our other U.S. Senate seat to fall prey to the same corrupt shenanigans.
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