California state primary

Hm, I haven't done one of these in a while. Well, time to alienate future employers and make awkward mistakes in public that I have to explain if I ever run for office! (Spoiler: I'm highly unlikely to ever run for office.)

This is only of direct interest to California residents. To everyone else, RIP your feed reader, and I'm sorry for the length. (My hand-rolled blog software doesn't do cut tags.) I'll spare you all the drill-down into the Bay Area regional offices. (Apparently we elect our coroner, which makes no sense to me.)

Propositions

I'm not explaining these because this is already much too long; those who aren't in California and want to follow along can see the voter guide.

Proposition 68: YES. Still a good time to borrow money, and what we're borrowing money for here seems pretty reasonable. State finances are in reasonable shape; we have the largest debt of any state for the obvious reason that we have the most people and the most money.

Proposition 69: YES. My instinct is to vote no because I have a general objection to putting restrictions on how the state manages its budget. I don't like dividing tax money into locked pools for the same reason that I stopped partitioning hard drives. That said, this includes public transit in the spending pool from gasoline taxes (good), the opposition is incoherent, and there are wide-ranging endorsements. That pushed me to yes on the grounds that maybe all these people understand something about budget allocations that I don't.

Proposition 70: NO. This is some sort of compromise with Republicans because they don't like what cap-and-trade money is being spent on (like high-speed rail) and want a say. If I wanted them to have a say, I'd vote for them. There's a reason why they have to resort to backroom tricks to try to get leverage over laws in this state, and it's not because they have good ideas.

Proposition 71: YES. Entirely reasonable change to say that propositions only go into effect after the election results are final. (There was a real proposition where this almost caused a ton of confusion, and prompted this amendment.)

Proposition 72: YES. I'm grumbling about this because I think we should get rid of all this special-case bullshit in property taxes and just readjust them regularly. Unfortunately, in our current property tax regime, you have to add more exemptions like this because otherwise the property tax hit (that would otherwise not be incurred) is so large that it kills the market for these improvements. Rainwater capture is to the public benefit in multiple ways, so I'll hold my nose and vote for another special exception.

Federal Offices

US Senator: Kevin de León. I'll vote for Feinstein in the general against any Republican, and she's way up on de León in the polls, but there's no risk in voting for the more progressive candidate here since there's no chance Feinstein won't get the most votes in the primary. De León is a more solidly progressive candidate than Feinstein. I'd love to see a general election between the two of them.

State Offices

I'm omitting all the unopposed ones, and all the ones where there's only one Democrat running in the primary. (I'm not going to vote for any Republican except for one exception noted below, and third parties in the US are unbelievably dysfunctional and not ready to govern.) For those outside the state, California has a jungle primary where the top two vote-getters regardless of party go to the general election, so this is more partisan and more important than other state primaries.

Governor: Delaine Eastin. One always has to ask, in our bullshit voting system, whether one has to vote tactically instead of for the best candidate. But, looking at polling, I think there's no chance Gavin Newsom (the second-best candidate and the front-runner) won't advance to the general election, so I get to vote for the candidate I actually want to win, even though she's probably not going to. Eastin is by far the most progressive candidate running who actually has the experience required to be governor. (Spoiler: Newsom is going to win, and I'll definitely vote for him in the general against Villaraigosa.)

Lieutenant Governor: Eleni Kounalakis. She and Bleich are the strongest candidates. I don't see a ton of separation between them, but Kounalakis's endorsements are a bit stronger for me. She's also the one candidate who has a specific statement about what she plans to do with the lieutenant governor role of oversight over the university system, which is almost its only actual power. (This political office is stupid and we should abolish it.)

Secretary of State: Alex Padilla. I agree more with Ruben Major's platform (100% paper ballots is the correct security position), but he's an oddball outsider and I don't think he can accomplish as much. Padilla has an excellent track record as the incumbant and is doing basically the right things, just less dramatically.

Treasurer: Fiona Ma. I like Vivek Viswanathan and support his platform, but Fiona Ma has a lot more political expertise and I think will be more effective. I look forward to voting for Viswanathan for something else someday.

Attorney General: Dave Jones. Xavier Becerra hasn't been doing a bad job fighting off bad federal policy, but that seems to be all that he's interested in, and he's playing partisan games with the office. He has an air of amateurishness and political hackery. Dave Jones holds the same positions in a more effective way, is more professional, and has done a good job as Insurance Commissioner.

Insurance Commissioner: Steve Poizner. I'm going to vote for the (former) Republican here. Poizner expressed some really bullshit views on immigration when he ran for governor (which he's apologized for). I wouldn't support him for a more political office. But he was an excellent insurance commissioner (see, for instance, the response to Blue Cross's rate increase request). I'm closer to Ricardo Lara politically, but in his statements to the press he comes across as a clown: self-driving car insurance problems, cannabis insurance, climate change insurance, and a bunch of other nonsense that makes me think he doesn't understand the job. The other democrat, Mahmood, seems like less of a partisan hack, but he's a virtual unknown. If this were an important partisan office, I'd hold my nose and vote for Lara, but the job of insurance commissioner is more to be an auditor and negotiator, and Poizner was really good at it.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Thurmond. The other front-runner is Marshall Tuck, who is a charter school advocate. I hate charter schools with the passion of a burning sun.

Local Measures

Regional Measure 3: YES. Even more hyper-local than the rest of this post, but mentioning it because it was a narrow call. Bridge tolls are regressive, and I'm not a big fan of raising them as opposed to, say, increasing property taxes (yes please) or income taxes. That said, taxing cars to pay for (largely) public transit is the direction the money should flow. It was thinly balanced for me, but the thrust of the projects won out over the distaste at the regressive tax.