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Politico
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Don't mess with high-speed rail
Presented by With help from Camille von Kaenel THIRD RAIL: Katie Porter is quickly learning a lesson Gov. Gavin Newsom knows all too well — cross high-speed rail at your peril. The former congresswoman and gubernatorial hopeful bashed the project in a TV appearance last week. 'I don't think we should BS California voters,' she told KTLA on May 7. 'They have noticed that we don't have a high-speed rail. And they have noticed we've spent money on it.' On Monday, after being greeted with chants of 'high-speed rail' at a labor event — and after she and the other six gubernatorial hopefuls voiced their support for the project — she told our Jeremy B. White that she wants to 'put people to work, and I want to get it done for Californians.' It makes sense that Porter, known for her fiscal prudence, would criticize a project with a price tag that's ballooned from $33 billion to as much as $128 billion. But her recalibration highlights an important reality of California politics: Labor unions can still make or break a statewide campaign. 'The fact that Katie Porter stepped in it and then had to walk it back in front of labor just shows Democrats have to figure out how to message this issue,' said Andrew Acosta, a veteran Democratic consultant. 'They're all trying to make these calculated decisions about how to put a campaign together.' The project has employed nearly 15,000 union workers since construction started in 2015, more than any other infrastructure undertaking in the country. 'It creates thousands upon thousands of great union jobs, jobs that you can buy a home and build your family on,' said Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, after Newsom came through for the project in yesterday's budget proposal. The episode mirrors Newsom's own trajectory. The governor set off alarms among high-speed rail supporters during his 2019 State of the State speech, saying 'there simply isn't a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to L.A.' Newsom put the project front and center Wednesday in his long-awaited plan to extend the state's landmark emissions trading program, highlighting a proposal to guarantee the project at least $1 billion in funding annually alongside money for fighting wildfires and lowering utility bills. 'We're moving forward with high-speed rail,' he said. 'We're finally actually building this system out.' Threats from Trump aside, the move to convert the money from a 25 percent revenue carve-out to a minimum dollar amount gives the project stable funding that it's planning to offer bonds on. 'We worked very hard to get to a place where we have stable funding to securitize and monetize and invite some of you private sector people here to come and invest in California high-speed rail,' High-Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri told attendees at a rail conference Wednesday. 'So that's great news for us.' The good news for high-speed rail will also ratchet up tensions for everyone else fighting in a shrinking pool of cap-and-trade revenues as negotiations kick off. Lawmakers are looking to Newsom's move as a gauntlet. 'You'd really have to pry his fingers open,' said Senate Transportation Chair Dave Cortese. 'That would take the kind of a throwdown versus the governor that we haven't seen during his administration.' — AN Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here! MCNERNEY'S TIME: Sen. Jerry McNerney told us last month he was gearing up for a big fight against the proposed 45-mile-long tunnel rerouting water around the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that makes up the heart of his district. Now, with Newsom asking lawmakers Wednesday to fast-track the tunnel, it's his time to shine. He and 14 other lawmakers representing the Delta region have already written to Assembly and Senate leadership today urging them to reject the trailer bill. AND ANOTHER THING: The tunnel isn't the only thing Newsom wants to fast-track. Another trailer bill would exempt pending water quality rules for the Delta region from CEQA, preemptively eliminating litigation under the law. For more context: Newsom is pushing for the State Water Resources Control Board to adopt a series of agreements he brokered with water agencies in 2022 to limit water use and pay for habitat conservation as an alternative to the more traditional flow limits that make up the water quality rules. The board is going through the plan now and could make a final decision this year. — CvK EVERYTHING'S BIGGER THERE: Texas is now beating California on almost every metric in renewable energy development. In 2024, Texas surpassed California in total utility-scale solar for the first time, according to the annual market report from American Clean Power, a trade group. That's a result of its eighth year leading the nation in renewable energy development; in 2024 alone, Texas added 14 gigawatts in solar, wind and storage, more than second-place California at 6 GW and third-place Florida at 3 GW. California does have Texas, and the rest of the country, beat in one area: renewable energy jobs. It had 340,900 of them last year, primarily in solar but also in wind and storage, far more than second-place Texas at 126,000 jobs. — CvK STUCK ON THE DOCKS: California commercial salmon fishing season is officially history. NOAA Fisheries announced this week that it will close salmon fishing off the California and southern Oregon coasts for the 2025-26 season, Daniel Cusick reports for POLITICO's E&E News. The decision comes after the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted last month to recommend a complete commercial salmon fishing closure and 7,000 Chinook salmon quota for recreational fishing. The decision is a blow for one of California's most lucrative commercial fisheries, which has been sidelined for two years already amid declining salmon populations linked to low water levels in rivers and streams where they spawn. NOAA's closure starts Friday and will be in place until mid-May of next year. — AN ON CAP-AND-TRADE: The California Chamber of Commerce is staking out a 'don't rock the boat' position as state officials kick off negotiations on the future of the state's cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases in earnest. In a letter to legislative leaders Thursday, the business group urged lawmakers to quickly pass an extension to the program to avoid market uncertainty that could cost the state 'billions' of dollars — and to avoid changes to the program some environmental groups are pushing in the name of further emissions reductions, like a decrease in the number of free allowances to businesses. 'Stable rules keep allowance prices predictable, predictable prices keep capital cheap, and cheap capital drives the scale and speed of emissions-cutting innovation California needs to cost-effectively hit its climate goals while protecting businesses and consumers and maintaining global competitiveness,' wrote CalChamber policy advocate Jonathan Kendrick. The letter follows Newsom's proposal Wednesday to reauthorize the landmark climate program, in which he avoided reforms and rebranded the program 'cap and invest' in line with his focus on its revenues. — CvK — The Trump administration slashed grants to study the Moss Landing battery facility, which caught fire in January. — California should nix its carbon offset trading system and instead require polluters to buy credits directly from the state, University of California, Berkeley, carbon trading researchers write in an op-ed. — Tesla told customers they had to return leased Model 3 sedans that would be turned into robotaxis — and instead sold them to new buyers.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Housing is dividing California Democrats — so Newsom stepped in
SACRAMENTO, California — In the space of two minutes, Gov. Gavin Newsom reordered a political standoff over California's housing crisis. The governor on Wednesday threw his weight behind a push to turbocharge housing construction statewide by slashing local restrictions and environmental reviews. With divisions among legislative Democrats imperiling a package of bills, Newsom announced during a news conference that he would instead advance those policy changes through the budget, over which he has considerably more leverage. 'Enough,' Newsom said, after pointing to housing as the biggest issue facing California. 'This is a crisis. If you care about your kids, you care about getting this done, this is the biggest opportunity to do something big and bold.' With that move, Newsom put his imprimatur on a debate over how much to ease housing development — even in cities wary of fast growth. For years, slashing barriers to construction has been the state's core strategy for bringing down exorbitant rents and home prices that have put home ownership further out of reach for many people and undermined Democrats' political standing on an issue of paramount importance to cost-strained voters. Pro-housing activists and their legislative allies have collided with lawmakers, unions, and environmental groups who warn that in its race to build, California is abandoning hard-won labor and environmental protections for laws that have produced mixed or minimal results. 'To go taking these large swings and then not even giving them a chance to work — we think that's a little reckless,' said Chris Hannan, executive director of a collection of unions called the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. Democratic state lawmakers this spring split on a series of housing votes that killed one bill and exposed gaping intraparty fractures. But Newsom's intervention could be decisive. By moving to enact changes through the budget, he could circumvent legislative obstacles like hostile committee chairs, and he will hold considerable leverage over lawmakers intent on securing their spending priorities. His public backing of the legislation flips a familiar dynamic in which he's useds his veto power to thwart lawmakers on automation, immigration, and spending bills. Supporters cast the moment in make-or-break terms as Democratic leaders lean into an affordability message to win back voters who have drifted away from the party and to lower-cost states, bolstering Republican attacks on California's liberal governance. The bills 'ask a simple question,' said California YIMBY CEO Brian Hanlon, whose group has driven pro-housing development policies in Sacramento. 'Will the California Legislature rise to meet the scale of the housing crisis, or push California families to states that do build?' That message has taken on additional urgency after Democrats lost winnable races to Republicans last year as Trump made gains in both staunchly blue coastal counties and purple inland battlegrounds. 'Our constituents are demanding it. Look at the election results in November,' said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who is both carrying a leading bill and shepherding a larger affordability package. 'I think there's far greater risk in not solving the problem than there is in not appeasing your groups so as to not upset the apple cart.' Rise of the YIMBYs Newsom's embrace of the pro-development agenda illustrates the power of California's housing-focused 'YIMBY,' or Yes In My Backyard, movement, whose champions have harnessed deep public frustration with rents and home prices to push through changes to local zoning rules, relaxed statewide building regulations and other proposals to make it faster and easier to build. They're tapping into a moment embodied by Ezra Klein's 'abundance' push — which Newsom enthusiastically trumpeted when he hosted Klein on his podcast — and fueled by alarm among elected Democrats that California's housing costs are driving away voters. The underlying politics have shifted dramatically in the last decade as a cohort of Democratic state lawmakers began pushing bills to build more, faster — a fix Vice President Kamala Harris echoed for bringing down costs at the Democratic National Convention last summer — even when that meant defying labor unions, environmental groups, and homeowners who have long thwarted efforts to plan for and construct multi-family homes. Behind the legislation is an ascendant network of groups funded substantially by young tech industry workers that have spent millions on lobbying and elections while organizing priced-out Bay Area liberals to show up to public meetings and advocate for housing developments. Pro-housing Democrats began by reshaping San Francisco politics, and then won seats in the state Legislature. 'Nowadays you can't go to Senate Housing or Assembly Housing (committee) without hearing about some sort of streamlining package or bill,' said Christopher Martin, policy director for Housing California. 'There's a lot more political capital, there's a lot more that's possible in this world in large part because the crisis has gotten so tough for people — not just for low-income folks but for folks who are earning good salaries.' After early setbacks — Democratic infighting doomed a nationally watched 2020 bill to build near transit, and an influential construction union group thwarted a series of proposals — pro-housing lawmakers have been on a winning streak. They broke through the labor impasse by peeling off union groups like carpenters, sending Newsom bills to expedite development in commercial corridors and in cities trailing their state-mandated housing goals. Now, the Legislature is debating a package of bills that would expedite building apartment complexes in urban hubs and limit reviews under a landmark environmental measure, the California Environmental Quality Act, that had long been considered politically sacrosanct as beneficiaries like unions and environmental groups fight to protect it. 'CEQA has been like the sacred cow,' Wicks said. 'When I introduced the bill I was like: 'OK, am I just going to get clobbered now?'' In housing, Wicks and like-minded lawmakers have had a consistent ally in Newsom, who campaigned for office in 2018 vowing to build 3.5 million more housing units by 2025. In addition to signing a spate of bills, the governor has been aggressive in challenging cities and counties that, in his view, have actively resisted planning for more housing. California remains drastically behind Newsom's 2018 campaign goal, however, with state data showing fewer than 500,000 units completed between 2019 and 2023 — the majority in the 'above moderate income' price range. That shortfall and an attendant homelessness crisis could haunt the governor, whose final term ends at the end of next year, if he runs for president in 2028. Growing dissent Yet that formidable pro-development coalition has run into Democratic dissent. One bill from state Sen. Scott Wiener, a potential successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, has already been voted down, and Wiener had to push two more through votes over the opposition of Democratic committee chairs, a rarity in Sacramento that speaks to the issue's continued volatility. 'It implicates so many different interests and anxieties and goals,' Wiener said in an interview. 'You have people who don't want to see change in their neighborhoods versus people who do want to see change, you have fights about labor standards, you have environmental justice advocates, there's just so many angles that it's inherently contentious.' State Sen. Aisha Wahab, who chairs the Senate Housing Committee and favors more projections for renters and lower-income Californians, unsuccessfully sought to block Wiener's bills. Wahab said in an interview that she supports building more housing, but that it must be affordable — and she warned a flurry of recent housing laws have done little to reduce costs while enriching housing developers. It is time, Wahab said, to pause an agenda that looks 'suspiciously like what we are seeing at the federal government, where deregulation is their goal to ensure profitability.' 'If these sweetheart deals for developers are not creating affordable housing,' Wahab said, 'why are we continuing this path forward?' Construction unions fighting the bills have made common cause with affordable housing advocates who want guarantees of less-expensive units and from environmental justice groups who warn that rollbacks would expose low-income residents to pollution at the moment the Trump administration is moving to slash climate protections. 'We know we cannot rely right now on the federal government,' said Grecia Orozco, a staff attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. 'California needs to step in and say: No, we need to be a leader here, we need to protect the communities that are most vulnerable.' Local warning signs California's biggest cities have also illustrated cautionary tales about the risk of political backlash over policies to ramp up housing construction. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass reversed herself and diluted her order to speed up housing production in the wake of devastating wildfires, saying she wanted to protect existing tenants, including those in rent-controlled units. Housing advocates lamented a lost opportunity. But Bass' recalibration reflected deeper fears about gentrification and altering the character of neighborhoods that have long fueled more skepticism to dense housing in Los Angeles compared to the Bay Area. Those concerns have taken outsize importance as Los Angeles works to rebuild areas incinerated by wildfires, to the point that Newsom himself has denied allegations he's colluding with developers to put apartments in affluent neighborhoods like the Palisades. In San Diego, city officials last month moved to roll back a policy that built on state law to allow more accessory dwelling units on single lots, arguing it had been abused by developers. Former state senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, who represented San Diego and authored ambitious housing legislation that effectively ended single-family zoning throughout California, said in an interview that her city's recent missteps showed the risks of 'bad development,' recounting gargantuan projects bereft of green space or transit connections in earlier decades. 'There was a backlash in San Diego,' Atkins said. 'Really, it took a long time to come back from that.' But Atkins is still leaning into housing, making it the centerpiece of her 2026 governor campaign with an assist from the same carpenters' unions that have flexed their muscles in the Legislature. Meanwhile, Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate for governor, has accused Democrats of waging a 'war on single-family homes' — reminders that housing politics will continue to dominate and divide long after Newsom is gone. 'It will be my number-one issue,' Atkins said, 'because I think if people don't have an affordable place to live, you can't really do anything else.'
Politico
15-05-2025
- Business
- Politico
Housing is dividing California Democrats — so Newsom stepped in
SACRAMENTO, California — In the space of two minutes, Gov. Gavin Newsom reordered a political standoff over California's housing crisis. The governor on Wednesday threw his weight behind a push to turbocharge housing construction statewide by slashing local restrictions and environmental reviews. With divisions among legislative Democrats imperiling a package of bills, Newsom announced during a news conference that he would instead advance those policy changes through the budget, over which he has considerably more leverage. 'Enough,' Newsom said, after pointing to housing as the biggest issue facing California. 'This is a crisis. If you care about your kids, you care about getting this done, this is the biggest opportunity to do something big and bold.' With that move, Newsom put his imprimatur on a debate over how much to ease housing development — even in cities wary of fast growth. For years, slashing barriers to construction has been the state's core strategy for bringing down exorbitant rents and home prices that have put home ownership further out of reach for many people and undermined Democrats' political standing on an issue of paramount importance to cost-strained voters. Pro-housing activists and their legislative allies have collided with lawmakers, unions, and environmental groups who warn that in its race to build, California is abandoning hard-won labor and environmental protections for laws that have produced mixed or minimal results. 'To go taking these large swings and then not even giving them a chance to work — we think that's a little reckless,' said Chris Hannan, executive director of a collection of unions called the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. Democratic state lawmakers this spring split on a series of housing votes that killed one bill and exposed gaping intraparty fractures. But Newsom's intervention could be decisive. By moving to enact changes through the budget, he could circumvent legislative obstacles like hostile committee chairs, and he will hold considerable leverage over lawmakers intent on securing their spending priorities. His public backing of the legislation flips a familiar dynamic in which he's useds his veto power to thwart lawmakers on automation, immigration, and spending bills. Supporters cast the moment in make-or-break terms as Democratic leaders lean into an affordability message to win back voters who have drifted away from the party and to lower-cost states, bolstering Republican attacks on California's liberal governance. The bills 'ask a simple question,' said California YIMBY CEO Brian Hanlon, whose group has driven pro-housing development policies in Sacramento. 'Will the California Legislature rise to meet the scale of the housing crisis, or push California families to states that do build?' That message has taken on additional urgency after Democrats lost winnable races to Republicans last year as Trump made gains in both staunchly blue coastal counties and purple inland battlegrounds. 'Our constituents are demanding it. Look at the election results in November,' said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who is both carrying a leading bill and shepherding a larger affordability package. 'I think there's far greater risk in not solving the problem than there is in not appeasing your groups so as to not upset the apple cart.' Rise of the YIMBYs Newsom's embrace of the pro-development agenda illustrates the power of California's housing-focused 'YIMBY,' or Yes In My Backyard, movement, whose champions have harnessed deep public frustration with rents and home prices to push through changes to local zoning rules, relaxed statewide building regulations and other proposals to make it faster and easier to build. They're tapping into a moment embodied by Ezra Klein's 'abundance' push — which Newsom enthusiastically trumpeted when he hosted Klein on his podcast — and fueled by alarm among elected Democrats that California's housing costs are driving away voters. The underlying politics have shifted dramatically in the last decade as a cohort of Democratic state lawmakers began pushing bills to build more, faster — a fix Vice President Kamala Harris echoed for bringing down costs at the Democratic National Convention last summer — even when that meant defying labor unions, environmental groups, and homeowners who have long thwarted efforts to plan for and construct multi-family homes. Behind the legislation is an ascendant network of groups funded substantially by young tech industry workers that have spent millions on lobbying and elections while organizing priced-out Bay Area liberals to show up to public meetings and advocate for housing developments. Pro-housing Democrats began by reshaping San Francisco politics, and then won seats in the state Legislature. 'Nowadays you can't go to Senate Housing or Assembly Housing (committee) without hearing about some sort of streamlining package or bill,' said Christopher Martin, policy director for Housing California. 'There's a lot more political capital, there's a lot more that's possible in this world in large part because the crisis has gotten so tough for people — not just for low-income folks but for folks who are earning good salaries.' After early setbacks — Democratic infighting doomed a nationally watched 2020 bill to build near transit, and an influential construction union group thwarted a series of proposals — pro-housing lawmakers have been on a winning streak. They broke through the labor impasse by peeling off union groups like carpenters, sending Newsom bills to expedite development in commercial corridors and in cities trailing their state-mandated housing goals. Now, the Legislature is debating a package of bills that would expedite building apartment complexes in urban hubs and limit reviews under a landmark environmental measure, the California Environmental Quality Act, that had long been considered politically sacrosanct as beneficiaries like unions and environmental groups fight to protect it. 'CEQA has been like the sacred cow,' Wicks said. 'When I introduced the bill I was like: 'OK, am I just going to get clobbered now?'' In housing, Wicks and like-minded lawmakers have had a consistent ally in Newsom, who campaigned for office in 2018 vowing to build 3.5 million more housing units by 2025. In addition to signing a spate of bills, the governor has been aggressive in challenging cities and counties that, in his view, have actively resisted planning for more housing. California remains drastically behind Newsom's 2018 campaign goal, however, with state data showing fewer than 500,000 units completed between 2019 and 2023 — the majority in the 'above moderate income' price range. That shortfall and an attendant homelessness crisis could haunt the governor, whose final term ends at the end of next year, if he runs for president in 2028. Growing dissent Yet that formidable pro-development coalition has run into Democratic dissent. One bill from state Sen. Scott Wiener, a potential successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, has already been voted down, and Wiener had to push two more through votes over the opposition of Democratic committee chairs, a rarity in Sacramento that speaks to the issue's continued volatility. 'It implicates so many different interests and anxieties and goals,' Wiener said in an interview. 'You have people who don't want to see change in their neighborhoods versus people who do want to see change, you have fights about labor standards, you have environmental justice advocates, there's just so many angles that it's inherently contentious.' State Sen. Aisha Wahab, who chairs the Senate Housing Committee and favors more projections for renters and lower-income Californians, unsuccessfully sought to block Wiener's bills. Wahab said in an interview that she supports building more housing, but that it must be affordable — and she warned a flurry of recent housing laws have done little to reduce costs while enriching housing developers. It is time, Wahab said, to pause an agenda that looks 'suspiciously like what we are seeing at the federal government, where deregulation is their goal to ensure profitability.' 'If these sweetheart deals for developers are not creating affordable housing,' Wahab said, 'why are we continuing this path forward?' Construction unions fighting the bills have made common cause with affordable housing advocates who want guarantees of less-expensive units and from environmental justice groups who warn that rollbacks would expose low-income residents to pollution at the moment the Trump administration is moving to slash climate protections. 'We know we cannot rely right now on the federal government,' said Grecia Orozco, a staff attorney for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment. 'California needs to step in and say: No, we need to be a leader here, we need to protect the communities that are most vulnerable.' Local warning signs California's biggest cities have also illustrated cautionary tales about the risk of political backlash over policies to ramp up housing construction. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass reversed herself and diluted her order to speed up housing production in the wake of devastating wildfires, saying she wanted to protect existing tenants, including those in rent-controlled units. Housing advocates lamented a lost opportunity. But Bass' recalibration reflected deeper fears about gentrification and altering the character of neighborhoods that have long fueled more skepticism to dense housing in Los Angeles compared to the Bay Area. Those concerns have taken outsize importance as Los Angeles works to rebuild areas incinerated by wildfires, to the point that Newsom himself has denied allegations he's colluding with developers to put apartments in affluent neighborhoods like the Palisades. In San Diego, city officials last month moved to roll back a policy that built on state law to allow more accessory dwelling units on single lots, arguing it had been abused by developers. Former state senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, who represented San Diego and authored ambitious housing legislation that effectively ended single-family zoning throughout California, said in an interview that her city's recent missteps showed the risks of 'bad development,' recounting gargantuan projects bereft of green space or transit connections in earlier decades. 'There was a backlash in San Diego,' Atkins said. 'Really, it took a long time to come back from that.' But Atkins is still leaning into housing, making it the centerpiece of her 2026 governor campaign with an assist from the same carpenters' unions that have flexed their muscles in the Legislature. Meanwhile, Steve Hilton, a Republican candidate for governor, has accused Democrats of waging a 'war on single-family homes' — reminders that housing politics will continue to dominate and divide long after Newsom is gone. 'It will be my number-one issue,' Atkins said, 'because I think if people don't have an affordable place to live, you can't really do anything else.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
California labor leaders grill Democrats running for governor on AI, benefits for strikers
In the largest gathering of 2026 gubernatorial candidates to date, seven Democrats vying to lead California courted labor leaders on Monday, vowing to support pro-union agreements on housing and infrastructure projects, regulation of artificial intelligence, and government funding for university research. Throughout most of the hourlong event, the hundreds of union members inside the Sacramento hotel ballroom embraced the pro-labor pledges and speeches that dominated the candidates' remarks, though some boos rose from the crowd when former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa strayed from the other Democrats on stage. Villaraigosa was the only candidate to raise objections when asked if he would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers, saying it would depend on the nature and length of the labor action. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 vetoed a bill that would have provided that coverage, saying it would make the state's unemployment trust fund 'vulnerable to insolvency.' The Monday night event was part of a legislative conference held by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, two of the most influential labor organizations in the state capital. Villaraigosa was joined on stage by former state Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee. All are running to replace Newsom, who is serving his second and final term as governor. Throughout most of the event, the candidates were peppered with yes-or-no questions, answering with the wave of a red flag for "no" or green flag for "yes." Read more: Who is running for California governor in 2026? Meet the candidates The event was not without its frosty moments, including when the candidates were asked whether, as governor, they would be "pragmatic and stop targeting California's oil and gas industry in ways that jeopardize union jobs and force us to rely on dirtier imported energy." Some of the candidates raised their green flags timidly. California's Democratic leaders, including Newsom and top state lawmakers, have been major proponents of transitioning to renewable energy and imposing more restrictions on the state's oil and gas industry. "We all want a clean environment going forward," Yee said, "but it cannot be on the backs of workers." Villaraigosa, in remarks after the event, said he challenged the idea of jumping into electrification too quickly, which would affect union jobs and increase the cost of utilities and energy across the state. "Closing down refineries, telling people to get rid of their gas stove and gas water heater is just poppycock," he said. Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, praised the Democratic candidates for showing strong support for unionized workers. She's hopeful that each would be more receptive to some pivotal union concerns than Newsom, such as the regulation of artificial intelligence, a major threat to union jobs, she said. "When we're talking about things like regulating AI — we can't even get a conversation out of Gavin Newsom about any regulation — I think that was, that was a key thing. They all threw up their green flag," Gonzalez said. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is weighing a run for governor, declined an invitation to address the conference. Read more: How Antonio Villaraigosa went from a union organizer to a union target The State Building and Construction Trades Council represents hundreds of thousands of workers in the state, including bricklayers, ironworkers and painters, among many others. The Labor Federation is a formidable power in California politics and policy, expected to help coordinate the spending of as much as $40 million by unions in next year's election. The federation is an umbrella group for about 1,300 unions that represent around 2.3 million workers in the public and private sectors. The organization has backed all of the gubernatorial candidates in various prior races, although it opposed Villaraigosa in the 2005 mayor's race and supported Newsom over Villaraigosa in the 2018 gubernatorial race. The latter decision was driven by the arc Villaraigosa has taken from his roots as a union leader to a critic of Los Angeles' teachers union and supporter of charter schools and reform of teacher-tenure rules. Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
California labor leaders grill Democrats running for governor on AI, benefits for strikers
SACRAMENTO — In the largest gathering of 2026 gubernatorial candidates to date, seven Democrats vying to lead California courted labor leaders on Monday, vowing to support pro-union agreements on housing and infrastructure projects, regulation of artificial intelligence, and government funding for university research. Throughout most of the hourlong event, the hundreds of union members inside the Sacramento hotel ballroom embraced the pro-labor pledges and speeches that dominated the candidates' remarks, though some boos rose from the crowd when former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa strayed from the other Democrats on stage. Villaraigosa was the only candidate to raise objections when asked if he would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers, saying it would depend on the nature and length of the labor action. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 vetoed a bill that would have provided that coverage, saying it would make the state's unemployment trust fund 'vulnerable to insolvency.' The Monday night event was part of a legislative conference held by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, two of the most influential labor organizations in the state capital. Villaraigosa was joined on stage by former state Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, former Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and former state Controller Betty Yee. All are running to replace Newsom, who is serving his second and final term as governor. Throughout most of the event, the candidates were peppered with yes-or-no questions, answering with the wave of a red flag for 'no' or green flag for 'yes.' The event was not without its frosty moments, including when the candidates were asked whether, as governor, they would be 'pragmatic and stop targeting California's oil and gas industry in ways that jeopardize union jobs and force us to rely on dirtier imported energy.' Some of the candidates raised their green flags timidly. California's Democratic leaders, including Newsom and top state lawmakers, have been major proponents of transitioning to renewable energy and imposing more restrictions on the state's oil and gas industry. 'We all want a clean environment going forward,' Yee said, 'but it cannot be on the backs of workers.' Villaraigosa, in remarks after the event, said he challenged the idea of jumping into electrification too quickly, which would affect union jobs and increase the cost of utilities and energy across the state. 'Closing down refineries, telling people to get rid of their gas stove and gas water heater is just poppycock,' he said. Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, praised the Democratic candidates for showing strong support for unionized workers. She's hopeful that each would be more receptive to some pivotal union concerns than Newsom, such as the regulation of artificial intelligence, a major threat to union jobs, she said. 'When we're talking about things like regulating AI — we can't even get a conversation out of Gavin Newsom about any regulation — I think that was, that was a key thing. They all threw up their green flag,' Gonzalez said. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is weighing a run for governor, declined an invitation to address the conference. The State Building and Construction Trades Council represents hundreds of thousands of workers in the state, including bricklayers, ironworkers and painters, among many others. The Labor Federation is a formidable power in California politics and policy, expected to help coordinate the spending of as much as $40 million by unions in next year's election. The federation is an umbrella group for about 1,300 unions that represent around 2.3 million workers in the public and private sectors. The organization has backed all of the gubernatorial candidates in various prior races, although it opposed Villaraigosa in the 2005 mayor's race and supported Newsom over Villaraigosa in the 2018 gubernatorial race. The latter decision was driven by the arc Villaraigosa has taken from his roots as a union leader to a critic of Los Angeles' teachers union and supporter of charter schools and reform of teacher-tenure rules. Times staff writer Phil Willon contributed to this report.
