Edison told the government that Calderon was an ‘executive.' Now it claims she wasn't.
Southern California Edison has repeatedly insisted that its former government affairs manager, state Assemblywoman Lisa Calderon (D-Whittier), was never an executive with the company.
But that's not what Edison told the federal government.
Calderon is sponsoring legislation favored by Edison that would slash the credits that many homeowners receive for generating electricity with rooftop solar panels.
Edison has objected to The Times' identifying Calderon as a former executive for the utility, claiming on its website that the news organization is 'choosing sensationalism over facts.'
But in its official reports to the Federal Election Commission, the political action committee for Edison International — the utility's parent company — listed Calderon's occupation as an executive in more than a dozen filings made before she left the company in 2020 to run for office.
All the filings were signed by the PAC's treasurer saying that 'to the best of my knowledge and belief' the information 'is true, correct and complete.'
Asked to explain the contradiction, Edison spokeswoman Kathleen Dunleavy said that the company was referring in its filings with the commission to a broad class of individuals that met requirements for executive as defined by the commission, but not by Edison itself.
Edison uses the term to 'designate someone in a high position of authority,' she said, such as 'an employee director, vice president or similar title.' Because Edison didn't consider Calderon an executive, she said, others shouldn't either.
Calderon told The Times earlier that she was a senior advisor of government affairs at Edison International. In other biographies, she is described as government affairs director. On Monday, she said her official title was government affairs manager.
For years, she managed the parent company's political action committee.
In a statement, Calderon said she had not filled out the political action committee's reports. Instead they were prepared and filed by the company's law firm, she said.
'Due to her professional responsibilities, she was categorized as an executive for FEC filing purposes,' her office said. 'That does not mean that she was an executive at Edison.'
Calderon's AB 942 would sharply reduce the financial credits that the owners of rooftop panels receive when they send unused power to the grid.
The bill applies to those who installed the panels before April 15, 2023. It would limit the current program's benefits to 10 years — half of the 20-year period that the state had told the rooftop owners they would receive. The bill also would cancel the solar contracts if the homes were sold. It wouldn't apply to customers served by municipal electric utilities.
Edison and the state's other big for-profit utilities have long fought to reduce the energy credits aimed at getting Californians to invest in rooftop solar panels. The popularity of the systems has cut into electricity sales.
Calderon, Edison and other supporters of the bill point to an analysis by the California Public Utility Commission's Public Advocates Office that found the energy credits given to the rooftop owners were increasing the electric bills of those who don't have solar panels.
The bill's first hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
Edison has been under scrutiny since Jan. 7, when videos captured the devastating Eaton wildfire igniting under one of its transmission towers. The wildfire killed 18 people and destroyed thousands of homes, businesses and other structures in Altadena.
Edison says it is cooperating with investigators working to determine the cause of the inferno.
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Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Trump's war with California will test MAGA's limits
During the last months of last year's presidential campaign, Donald Trump would hold his rallies in places like Pennsylvania and complain about Vice President Kamala Harris' home state of California being a violent hellscape that had its residents cowering in terror of the rampaging hordes of immigrant criminals who were routinely killing people in their beds. He would often complain that the police were hamstrung by "woke" policies that wouldn't allow them to take the gloves off. At one of his rallies, Trump even daydreamed about what he would do about it if he became president again: allow the cops to have "one really violent day." His crowds loved it. He's always entertained them with his lurid, violent fantasies. It's one of the things they love about him. Californians didn't love it so much, however. The fact that Harris hailed from the state was certainly an invitation for him to trash the state, but he'd been doing that long before Harris was in the race. In fact, despite owning a house and a golf course in Los Angeles, Trump has been openly hostile toward California ever since it failed to vote for him in 2016. During his first term, he raged at the state for failing to "clean the floors of the forest," which he claimed was responsible for the fires that hit Northern California. As The Atlantic's Ron Brownstein reported, during the global pandemic crisis, he demanded that if the Golden State wanted pandemic supplies and federal help, they would need to "ask nicely" and capitulate on issues like sanctuary cities. Trump and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called such requests a "blue state bailout" and suggested that the state should go bankrupt if it requests relief during the global emergency. Trump behaved similarly toward other blue states, but reserved a special portion of his ire for California. He started his second term by maligning Los Angeles during the devastating wildfires in January. He fatuously insisted that if the state had listened to him about "turning on the valve" in Northern California to release water to the south from Canada, there would have been no fires. He even ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release millions of gallons into a flood plain and then weirdly claimed that he'd "invaded" Los Angeles and solved its water problem. " He never had a word of sympathy for the victims of the tragedy. All he could do was blame the governor, who he immaturely calls Gavin "Newscum." All that was bad enough. But now he's pretty much declared war on Los Angeles. Ever since Trump came into office with his mandate for "Mass Deportation Now," he's been impatient with the pace and the numbers. What was touted as a plan to rid the country of violent gang members has proved to be less fruitful than he promised. He always meant to deport as many immigrants as possible, regardless of their legal status or criminal history. (Why else would he pounce on the Haitian community as he did?) As the Washington Examiner reported last week, Trump's enforcer and shadow president Stephen Miller brought the hammer down on ICE in recent days, instituting a quota and demanding that they stop looking for criminals and start arresting people at their workplaces, schools and outside places like Home Depot and 7-Eleven. They've been doing smaller raids around the country for some time. But after Miller's edicts, they are now waging full-scale assaults. They've come to LA, with its large Latino and Asian immigrant communities, carrying assault weapons and wearing masks, to make an example of the already stressed city, which is still recovering from an epic natural disaster. What better way to demonstrate our new constitution-shredding, authoritarian police state? (And, naturally, it happens to be Stephen Miller's hometown, which he has loathed since he was an angry xenophobic misfit at Santa Monica High School.) Last week, ICE began a series of large-scale raids, naturally provoking protests from the community. As the demonstrations against them escalated over Friday and Saturday, ICE lied about the LAPD failing to help protect them, clearly as a way to allow Trump to deploy the National Guard. He claimed it was a riot. Los Angeles knows what a riot is. We have had real ones here, and this is not that. He did not ask the governor to deploy the National Guard, as he is expected to do. He instead evoked a very rarely used law that was last applied in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson to protect civil rights workers from local police, allowing him to federalize those issued a memorandum ordering "at least 2,000" troops to the city of LA for "no less" than 60 days. It instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, most recently a former Fox News weekend host, to order active duty military on standby as well. Several hundred of these federalized California National Guard troops entered the city on Sunday. All this action did was escalate tensions and prompt more unrest. But then, that was the point. I live here and I can validate the fact that immigrants in this city are part of the fabric of our lives. There have always been many undocumented workers here and they're part of the community — they're our families, friends and co-workers. We value them and the contribution they make culturally and economically. Nobody here is asking for this. Having militarized federal cops and active duty troops raiding our neighborhoods and violently grabbing people off the streets is the real invasion, not the people who've been living and working here forever. And it isn't going to be just us. Liza Goiten, director of the National Security Project at the Brennan Center, told CNN: [Trump's] memorandum doesn't even mention Los Angeles. It authorizes the deployment of federalized national guard forces and active armed duty forces anywhere in the country where protests against ICE activity are occurring regardless of whether those protests involve any violence or in places where protests are simply likely to occur. And that could really be anywhere in the country. That kind of pre-emptive nationwide deployment of the military to effectively police protests is unprecedented, incredibly dangerous and an abuse of any law the president might be relying on. " On Sunday, Donald Trump spoke to the media and promised that "we're going to have troops everywhere." Late last night, he posted this: We can probably expect to see even more escalation by Trump in the coming days. The state of California is filing suit, so perhaps the court will stay his hand temporarily. But that won't be the end of it. If they rule that he cannot use this rarely used law, he will almost certainly invoke the Insurrection Act and, if necessary, declare martial law. This is just the beginning. Anyone who lives in a blue American city should get ready. They're coming for you, too.
Politico
4 hours ago
- Politico
Major escalations in LA as Newsom, Trump fight over Guard troops
Presented by Californians for Energy Independence DRIVING THE DAY — Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to file a lawsuit early this morning to challenge President Donald Trump's move to deploy the National Guard in Los Angeles, his office confirmed. But that was hardly the only provocation over the weekend. Newsom bristled at the Trump administration's threat to arrest California officials if they get in the way of his crackdown on immigration protests and civil unrest in Los Angeles. 'Arrest me. Let's just get it over with, tough guy. I don't give a damn … Tom, arrest me. Let's go,' Newsom told MSNBC as he recoiled at the statements from President Donald Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan. The tension in Los Angeles County is only growing as protests enter their fourth day and immigration agents continue to conduct raids. FIRE WITH FIRE — Newsom had tried to avoid skirmishing with Trump over immigration. But the governor now finds himself locked in an increasingly incendiary power struggle with the president as he fights for control of the state's National Guard. Trump's move to commandeer control of the troops to thwart protests over ICE raids in LA is exceedingly rare in modern American political history. Not since the civil rights era of 1965 has a U.S. president deployed the National Guard without a governor's consent. COURT CHALLENGE INCOMING … Democrats — including blue-state governors — were shell-shocked by Trump's sweeping assertion of federal executive powers. Newsom called the move an 'illegal act' and vowed, in an interview on MSNBC Sunday night, to file a lawsuit 'very early' today. 'He's exacerbated the conditions,' Newsom said. 'He's lit the proverbial match, he's putting fuel on this fire ever since he announced he's taking over the National Guard.' While Democratic officials said the protests were largely peaceful, there were instances of rioting. Videos posted on social media Sunday evening showed multiple Waymo vehicles on fire. In an AP video, protesters blocked off a major roadway, many of them waving Mexican flags and holding signs as traffic came to a standstill. 'Governor Gavin Newscum and 'Mayor' Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots,' Trump posted on Truth Social. NEWSOM WARNS OF FASCISM … Newsom on Sunday suggested Trump's actions were steps toward fascism. 'These are the acts of a dictator, not a President,' Newsom posted on X. He accused Trump of deliberately inciting violence in LA so he could send the military into a major American city. Newsom urged Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday to back down as demonstrators clashed with law enforcement. As Blake reported, the governor's legal affairs secretary wrote in a letter to Hegseth that the deployment came without necessary coordination with California officials. Newsom said state and local law enforcement agencies had the protests under control and that federal intervention would only intensify the conflict. But the Guard might not be the extent of the unwanted federal intervention; Hegseth has also threatened to send in the U.S. Marines. A Defense official told POLITICO that 500 members of the military branch were given 'prepare to deploy' orders and could be sent to the region. DEM GOVERNORS UNITE … Every Democratic governor in the nation spoke out in support of Newsom on Sunday, releasing a joint statement calling Trump's actions an 'ineffective and dangerous' override of California's authority that sets a frightening precedent. 'President Trump's move to deploy California's National Guard is an alarming abuse of power,' the Democratic chief executives wrote. GOOD MORNING. It's Monday. Thanks for waking up with Playbook. You can text us at 916-562-0685 — save it as 'CA Playbook' in your contacts. Or drop us a line at dgardiner@ and bjones@ or on X — @DustinGardiner and @jonesblakej. WHERE'S GAVIN? In Los Angeles, meeting with local leaders and law enforcement. STATE CAPITOL LEADER LIMÓN? — State Sen. Monique Limón's allies say she is closing in on the votes necessary to succeed Senate leader Mike McGuire, and edging out her top competition, Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, several people with direct knowledge of the race told Playbook. But several senators and people briefed on the matter said they hadn't seen evidence of Limón securing the votes. Like McGuire, Limón would be a relative short-timer in the post. She has represented Santa Barbara in the Legislature since 2016, and her final term ends in 2028. McGuire, meanwhile, leaves office after the end of next year — a timeline that has periodically caused succession chatter to pick up in the upper house since his first year as president pro tempore. McGuire has signaled to colleagues that he wants to stay in his role until next year, an adviser for him previously told Playbook. But he could be replaced sooner, depending on the succession timeline. McGuire's office didn't respond to a request for comment. — With help from Jeremy B. White and Melanie Mason FIRST IN POLITICO: BUDGET DEAL IN FOCUS — The broad strokes of a budget agreement among California lawmakers came into focus Friday, according to five people familiar with the negotiations, as legislative leaders scramble to close a $12 billion deficit. As Dustin and our colleague Eric He scooped for subscribers, the deal between leaders of the state Senate and Assembly would look in part to close the deficit with deferrals and various accounting maneuvers, though details were still unclear. Any budget would require a negotiation after passage with Newsom. Five major points being discussed, according to people briefed on the tentative agreement who were granted anonymity to discuss private negotiations: DEFERRING HEALTH CUTS: Lawmakers' budget plan would avoid imposing some of the most severe Medi-Cal cuts that Newsom laid out in his May budget proposal by deferring reductions for two to three more years. Putting off such cuts would soften Newsom's proposal to cap Medi-Cal benefits for undocumented immigrants and overtime pay for in-home supportive service providers. TRANSIT BAILOUT LOAN: Transit advocates had requested $2 billion for a fiscal lifeline to ailing transit systems in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, including BART, MUNI and LA Metro. Now, lawmakers want to provide at least a portion of that relief in the form of a long-term loan, which would help transit agencies cover their operating expenses and avoid steep service cuts to bus and rail service. PARTIAL HOMELESSNESS FUNDING: Cities and counties have pleaded for more state money to address the homelessness crisis. The Legislature is expected to propose sending $500 million in new funding for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, which issues grants to local governments. That's less than the $1 billion they received in prior years, though Newsom had proposed no new funding for the program. REVENUE DEBATE PUNT: Progressive Democrats have floated an array of corporate tax proposals, from targeting offshore tax havens to penalizing companies that employ large shares of Medi-Cal recipients, to help the state address its shortfall while minimizing cuts. Those proposals aren't expected to be part of the initial deal and will likely be punted to a later date, possibly in the fall — depending on the extent to which California loses federal funding. HOLLYWOOD LIFELINE: Lawmakers overwhelmingly support Newsom's proposal to double the state's film tax credit. Newsom's proposal for a revamped $750 million tax break is designed to lure back production companies that have fled in droves to other states and countries. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and McGuire declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for Newsom. CAMPAIGN YEAR(S) FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: JOINING FORCES — Former state Sen. Steven Bradford is out of the race for lieutenant governor, but he's still hoping to boost a political ally's fortunes in the contest. Bradford will today endorse State Treasurer Fiona Ma, as the duo exclusively told Playbook. Ma will, in turn, endorse Bradford for state insurance commissioner. The two previously served together in the state Assembly and have been friends and political allies for over 16 years. 'From expanding affordable housing to protecting taxpayers, she has the vision and experience we need in our next lieutenant governor,' Bradford said. WAGE WARRIOR — Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis was the only candidate for governor at a recent CalChamber forum to unabashedly advocate for raising California's minimum wage, and her campaign is seeking to capitalize with digital ads pointing that out. 'I was proud to be the ONLY Democratic candidate for governor to advocate for raising the minimum wage, while my opponents turned their backs on our workers and unions,' reads a digital ad written from Kounalakis' point of view. — Kounalakis at the event said the state should work toward a $20 an hour minimum wage, rather than 'throw poor people under the bus.' — Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said 'I believe in a higher minimum wage,' before cautioning, 'We can't just keep on raising the minimum wage. We address affordability, and we don't have to do that.' — Former Rep. Katie Porter at the forum made a similar argument: 'We can't endlessly keep raising wages. It isn't the solution.' — And former legislative leader Toni Atkins said 'we should be working toward' a higher statewide minimum, 'but now is not the moment.' ON THE AIRWAVES FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: INJURY ATTORNEYS ASSEMBLE — The beef between consumer attorneys and corporations pushing for tort reform in Sacramento is quickly escalating with dueling ad campaigns. As Playbook exclusively learned, the Consumer Attorneys of California will today launch digital ads and a website targeting Uber and other companies behind a new advocacy group that's pushing for legislation to limit civil lawsuits in California and other states. The ads accuse corporations of seeking to 'roll back consumer protections and shield powerful interests from accountability in court.' The attorneys are specifically taking aim at Protecting American Consumers Together (or PACT), an independent-expenditure group that recently urged Georgia lawmakers to pass a landmark tort reform bill. 'It's time to hit the brakes on corporate greed,' states one of the ads. It's a counteroffensive that comes after PACT launched its own ad blitz earlier this year, with a roughly $1 million buy that includes cheeky spots designed to mock highway billboard ads typical of the personal injury legal industry. PACT has previously disclosed that its funders include Uber and Waffle House Inc. CLIMATE AND ENERGY FISH VS. FARMS — California's water wars have long pitted fishermen and farmers against each other. But old battle lines are shifting as both sides grow increasingly desperate about the decline in salmon populations, which is triggering fishing restrictions as well as cuts in water deliveries to farmers. Read more in California Climate's interview with Lisa Damrosch, the executive director of a major commercial fishing group that teamed up with farmers on a first-ever joint trip to Washington to lobby for more money for salmon hatcheries. TOP TALKERS CAN THEY BE FRIENDS? — The messy breakup between billionaire Elon Musk and Trump appears to have quieted down — at the very least, a shaky detente in the social media strife between the two held over the weekend. The possible truce followed a call between representatives for both sides Friday, as our Washington colleagues Dasha Burns and Julia Marsh reported. 'He's stopped posting, but that doesn't mean he's happy,' said a White House official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about Trump's reaction. 'The future of their relationship is totally uncertain.' THE OTHER GIULIANI — Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York City Mayor and onetime Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, is the new head of the White House's World Cup Task Force. He's charged with coordinating the federal government's role in the 2026 games in LA. As our colleague Sophia Cai reports, the younger Giuliani faces a tough task. The task force promises an 'America welcoming the world' tournament even as the administration bans travel from countries hoping to compete and Trump's policies have inflamed relations with co-hosts Canada and Mexico. AROUND THE STATE —- Bay Area residents from the Middle East and Northern Africa are anxious over Trump's recent order banning travel to the U.S. from 12 countries. (San Francisco Chronicle) — San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria won't attend Pride in his city, citing objections to headlining performer Kehlani, who has been accused of amplifying antisemitism in their lyrics about the war in Gaza. (The San Diego Union-Tribune) — The Oakland Unified School District could soon exit state financial oversight, but the district could quickly slip back into receivership as it spends its rainy day fund to alleviate a budget deficit. (KQED) — Rancho Cucamonga, a suburb in east LA County, could be home to the first bullet train hub in the U.S. as Brightline breaks ground on its high-speed rail line to connect Las Vegas and SoCal. (Bloomberg) PLAYBOOKERS SPOTTED: RAINBOW CITY HALL — San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie hosted a Pride flag raising ceremony at City Hall on Friday. Among the politicians in the crowd: Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis; state Sen. Scott Wiener; Assemblymember Matt Haney; Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman; Supervisors Bilal Mahmood and Joel Engardio; former Supervisor Leslie Katz; city Treasurer José Cisneros; Honey Mahogany, director of the city's Office of Transgender Initiatives; Community College Board Member Luis Zamora; SF Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford; BART Board Member Janice Li; and drag queen Juanita More. While the mood was largely celebratory, Wiener offered a sober take on the state of LGBTQ+ rights in America. He railed against the Trump administration's effort to remove Harvey Milk's name from a U.S. naval ship. 'What a petty, despicable move to remove his name,' Wiener said of Milk, the first openly gay man elected in the U.S. PEOPLE MOVES — Kevin Orellana will be a legislative assistant for Rep. Vince Fong (R-Calif.), handling his financial services portfolio. He previously was a legislative aide for Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.). — Josh Korn is now head of public policy at Whatnot. He previously was tech policy head at Netflix. — Alex Khan has been promoted to principal at Valencia Government Relations Inc., and the firm is rebranding to Valencia Khan Government Relations. He was previously its senior legislative advocate. BIRTHDAYS — director Aaron Sorkin … actress Natalie Portman … Raphael Ouzan at … Ria Strasser-Galvis at JPMorgan Chase … Brad Gallant … tech entrepreneur Raj Goyle BELATED B-DAY WISHES — (was Sunday): Rep. Ken Calvert … actress Julianna Margulies … author Mel Levine … Kaitlin Kirshner at Microsoft … comms strategist Elizabeth Thorp … Helga Zheutlin … (was Saturday): Blake Johnson at Child Action, Inc. WANT A SHOUT-OUT FEATURED? — Send us a birthday, career move or another special occasion to include in POLITICO's California Playbook. You can now submit a shout-out using this Google form.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Democrats ignore Nevada's upside down, regressive, and unfair tax structure. Again.
The Nevada Legislature Building underwent a face lift prior to this year's session, but the Democratic legislative leadership's economic agenda, inasmuch as there is one, remained the same as it ever was. (Photo: Richard Bednarski/Nevada Current) Democrats nationwide are awash in conflicting opinions about how to stanch the loss of young and working class voters before the U.S. backslide into autocracy is irreversible, if it's not already. Some Democrats blame 'wokeness.' Some Democrats say the party needs to lean in on kitchen-table issues. Some think they should do nothing and just wait for Trump and Trumpism to collapse under the weight of its self-generated slagheap of corruption, lawlessness, malice, and counterproductive policies. Some Democrats, including at least half of those in Nevada's congressional delegation, seem to think the best way to inspire the electorate is to make sure every sentence they mutter includes a noun, a verb, and the word 'bipartisan.' And on and on. And then there are Nevada's Democratic state legislative leaders. They chose to meet this inflection point by yet again allowing generous public subsidies for deep-pocketed Californians to serve as the featured attraction of this year's recently concluded Nevada legislative session. Yes, ding dong, the film tax credit bill is dead. Praise be, etc. But Democratic legislative leadership — Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro and Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager — whether by design or neglect, allowed a government giveaway scheme to film corporations to become the one and only thing about the 2025 Legislature working class voters, especially young ones, most likely ever heard about. Assuming they heard about anything legislative at all. Ever since it was plopped onto the Nevada policy landscape more than a decade ago by then-Democratic state senator, now Democratic state Attorney General Aaron Ford, the film tax credit has always been a predominantly Democratic production. One of the chief legislative sponsors of this year's version was state Sen. Daniele Monroe-Mareno, who also currently serves as chair of the state Democratic Party. To reiterate, a critical mass of voters nationwide, including voters on which Democrats once relied, are marinading in nihilism and cynicism, and evidently don't grasp the goals, agenda, priorities — the point — of the Democratic Party, or just cold stopped caring. Against that backdrop, Democrats in Nevada put on a big show about a scheme to use nearly $2 billion of public money to enrich two of California's largest film corporations and one of the nation's most prominent corporate developers of master-planned communities. Weird. In Nevada, Democrats over the last ten years have been very successful at doing what(ever) it takes to win and maintain majorities in both houses of the state Legislature, an endeavor which, luckily for them, had more to do with voter registration numbers and redistricting power than policy positions. As a result, mean-spirited reactionary policies that are racist, poverty-shaming, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ, anti-democracy, anti-immigrant, and anti-rights — policies designed first and foremost to feed the MAGAfolk — are (mostly) not enacted here. Keeping such pernicious policies (mostly) at bay in Nevada is no small consideration. Winning enough elections to block Republicans from enacting that stuff is arguably the crowning state-level achievement of contemporary Nevada Democrats. But when it comes to pro-active progress, specifically on economic policy, the Nevada Democratic legislative agenda, inasmuch as there is one, is tired (they're 'for' education), and worse than useless (inveterate footsie-playing with industries, mischaracterizing public giveaways to private corporations as 'economic development'). In the meantime, with only the occasional exception, they can rarely be bothered to acknowledge, let alone confront, the fact that the state has one of the country's most upside-down tax structures, in which the smaller your income, the higher the percentage of it you pay in taxes. Giving working families a break by lowering the state's aggressively high sales tax rate would leave a budget hole that would have to be filled by generating revenue elsewhere (evergreen suggestion: raising Nevada's lowest-in-the-nation gaming tax). Under Nevada's constitution, raising or creating taxes requires a two-thirds vote of both legislative houses, majorities Democrats have not had and would probably be afraid to use if they did. In Washington state, which is bluer than Nevada but whose residents have also suffered under a regressive tax structure, it took 15 years of advocacy from organizations and politicians to finally enact a tax on the ultra-wealthy (another good suggestion). Reforming Nevada's tax structure would likewise be a long process. That's assuming Democrats and, for that matter, their most powerful progressive organizational allies, would do something they so far haven't: get started on a public education campaign advocating tax fairness that would also enable the state to be a little less cheap and a little more responsible when it comes to funding public services, programs, and projects. If only the state's Democratic legislative brain trust had spent as much time advocating for an equitable tax system as they've spent advocating and/or rubber-stamping government handouts to corporations and billionaires. The first quarter of the 21st century has been economically harder on Nevada than any other state. It's perhaps a testament to the state Democratic Party's long-hailed organizational oomph that Nevada didn't go for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and only finally fell to Trump last year. It remains to be seen if and how Democrats nationally can generate enough trust and optimism to pull the country out of its degenerative spiral. If they do, there might be some Nevadans, including some state legislators, who will make a meaningful contribution to the effort. But if prior performance is any indication of future results, it's hard to imagine Nevada legislative and party leadership having much of a role in that. At least not in a good way. A version of this column originally appeared in the Daily Current newsletter, which is free and which you can subscribe to here.
