AGENDA BOARD LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE Friday, February 20, 2015 12:30 p.m., Peralta Oaks Board Room The following agenda items are listed for Committee consideration. In accordance with the Board Operating Guidelines, no official action of the Board will be taken at this meeting; rather, the Committee’s purpose shall be to review the listed items and to consider developing recommendations to the Board of Directors. AGENDA

STATUS TIME ITEM STAFF

12:30 p.m. 1. STATE LEGISLATION / ISSUES (R) A. NEW LEGISLATION Doyle/Pfuehler Plan Amendment 1. AB 208 (Bigelow R-O’Neals) – State Design Criteria for Bikeways

2. ACR 18 (Gordon D-Menlo Park) – Parks Make Life Better! Month

(I) B. ISSUES Doyle/Pfuehler 1. Park Bond 2. Cap and Trade Revenue

3. Parks Forward 4. Contract Bidding Limitations – Midpen and Gordon efforts

II. FEDERAL LEGISLATION / ISSUES Doyle/Pfuehler A. NEW LEGISLATION

N/A

(I) B. ISSUES Doyle/Pfuehler 1. Land and Water Conservation Fund

2. Federal Transportation Bill

III. PUBLIC COMMENTS

IV. ARTICLES

(R) Recommendation for Future Board Consideration (I) Information (D) Discussion Future 2015 Meetings: April 17, 2015 September 18, 2015 June 19, 2015 October 16, 2015 August 21, 2015 Legislative Committee Members: Diane Burgis, Chair, Whitney Dotson, Dennis Waespi, Ayn Wieskamp, Alt. Erich Pfuehler, Staff Coordinator

DRAFT

Distribution/Agenda Only Distribution/Agenda Only Distribution/Full Packet Distribution/Full Packet District: Public: District: AGMs Bruce Beyaert Director Whitney Dotson Carol Johnson Yolande Barial Afton Crooks Director Beverly Lane Jon King David Zuckerman Robert Follrath, Sr. Director Diane Burgis Bruce Kern Carol Victor Stana Hearne Director Doug Siden Mona Koa Connie Swisher Director John Sutter Dr. George Manross Director Dennis Waespi Jim O’Connor Director Ayn Wieskamp

Distribution/Agenda Only Distribution/Full Packet Distribution/Full Packet Public: District: Norman LaForce Robert Doyle Allen Pulido Dan Levy Tim Anderson Di Rosario Fred W. Lopez Pat O’Brien Kristina Kelchner Peter Rauch Dave Collins Bob Nisbet Pete Wilson Tyrone Davis Cliff Rocha – Local 2428 Sharon Corkin – Local 2428

TO: Board Legislative Committee (Chair Diane Burgis, Whitney Dotson, Dennis Waespi and Alternate Ayn Wieskamp)

FROM: Robert E. Doyle, General Manager Erich Pfuehler, Government Relations and Legislative Affairs Manager

SUBJECT: Board Legislative Committee Meeting WHEN: Friday, February 20, 2015 - 12:30 p.m. Lunch will be served

WHERE: Board Room, Peralta Oaks ______

Items to be discussed: I. STATE LEGISLATION / ISSUES A. NEW LEGISLATION 1. AB 208 (Bigelow R-O’Neals) – State Design Criteria for Bikeways Assembly Member Frank Bigelow represents central, eastern California – Yosemite National Park, Stanislaus National Forest, Madera, etc. The State Department of Transportation currently has safety design criteria for bikeways. Under the minimum safety design criteria and uniform specifications, motorists are now required to provide three feet of space from cyclists when passing. Assembly Member Bigelow is interested in crafting different rules for rural settings.

The California Bicycle Coalition (CalBike) supported the recently enacted the “Three Feet for Safety Act” (AB 1371 in 2013) sponsored by the City of Los Angeles. CalBike is currently working with Caltrans to get a sign approved to read “Three Feet – It’s the Law.” The East Bay Bicycle Coalition is a member of CalBike. There are certainly parts of the East Bay (both urban and rural) where the three feet rule provides more safety for bicyclists.

Assembly Member Bigelow’s bill is mostly a spot bill at this time. Rather than take a position, staff is recommending watching this bill to see if the concept behind AB 208 gains further traction.

Staff Recommendation: WATCH

2. ACR 18 (Gordon D-Menlo Park) – Parks Make Life Better! Month This measure would recognize the importance of access to local parks, trails, open space, and facilities for the health and development of all Californians and would declare the month of July 2015 as "Parks Make Life Better!" Month.

Staff Recommendation: SUPPORT

B. ISSUES 1. Park Bond Last year, Senator Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) introduced the Safe Neighborhood Parks, Rivers and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2014, SB 1086, as a placeholder for a new state park bond. While it passed the Senate Appropriations Committee in May 2014, it stalled in lieu of the legislature’s debate over the water bond. Since that time, Senator de Leon has been elected by his colleagues as Pro Tempore of the State Senate. Recently, his Chief of Staff informed Advocate Doug Houston that carrying a park bond forward would be a priority for the Pro Tempore. Advocate Houston and General Manager Doyle have been actively working to encourage more agencies to weigh in in support of a Park Bond. Some specific items important for the Bay Area, which may currently have less emphasis for the Pro Tempore are: Per Capita, the Bay Program of the Coastal Conservancy, compensation to agencies who have been operating state parks and the Recreational Trails program. Advocate Houston will provide an update to the Committee about the current status of moving a state park bond forward.

2. Cap and Trade Revenue California’s carbon auction is expected to generate close to $2 billion in revenue for the state this year. The 2014-15 Budget Act of 2014 set some parameters for how the revenue can be spent. The “formula” essentially locked in 60% of the funds to specific programs such as High Speed Rail, Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities, etc. The other 40% is subject to review by the legislature. Last year, a modest amount of this 40% was allocated toward natural resource related categories including urban forestry, watersheds, coastal wetlands and mountain meadow enhancements. The District and Advocate Houston have been working for more of these revenues to be allocated to park-related resources, management of open space and emergency preparedness projects (such as adaptive shoreline restoration and wildfire fuels management). Advocate Houston will provide an update to the Committee about current efforts toward the aforementioned end.

3. Parks Forward On January 30th, the Parks Forward Commission issued its final plan recommending a series of changes to ensure the long-term sustainability of California’s state parks. Among the recommendations are:  Creating a transformation team, housed in the California Department of Parks and Recreation, with experienced internal and external staff to transform the Department’s organizational structure and update its outdated systems, processes, tools and technology;  Opening pathways to leadership for the most qualified employees, and recruiting and training a new generation of park professionals that reflect California’s racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity;  Creating a statewide nonprofit strategic partner, tentatively dubbed “Parks California,” that will bring resources not currently available to undertake key projects and programs in coordination with the Department;  Prioritizing necessary support to protect the system’s natural and cultural resources for future generations;  Expanding park access for California’s underserved communities and urban populations and engaging California’s younger generations; and  Establishing a reliable, dedicated funding structure for California parks, including a more entrepreneurial revenue-generating strategy. The Commission’s February 6 public release was widely hailed as a solid plan by the Department, non-profits, land trusts, advocates and legislators. A transition team, led by Steve Szalay (former Alameda County executive), is already working on transforming the internal structure. General Manger Robert E. Doyle provided comments about the plan at the February 6th convening. He will provide a verbal summary of his comments.

4. Contract Bidding Limitations – Midpen and Gordon efforts The Midpennsula Open Space District is considering sponsoring an effort to allow their General Manager to award contracts of up to $50,000 without public notification. The current limit is $25,000. They are also including the General Manager of the East Bay Regional Park District. They are working with Assembly Member Rich Gordon (D-Menlo Park) and legislative counsel on drafting the language. Advocate Houston will provide a verbal update about the status.

II. FEDERAL LEGISLATION / ISSUES A. NEW LEGISLATION N/A

B. ISSUES 1. Land and Water Conservation Fund The 50-year old authorization for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) is set to expire at the end of the year. Without action by Congress the program would end. There is likely to be a robust debate about the program. There is bi-partisan support for re-authorizing LWCF, but it will probably get linked with other programs like “Payment in Lieu of Taxes” which is a Department of Interior program with provides Federal payments to local governments that help offset losses in property taxes due to non-taxable Federal lands within their boundaries. On January 29th, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) offered an amendment to the Keystone XL Pipeline legislation to permanently reauthorize the LWCF program. The amendment received 62 votes, but three Senators – Jerry Moran (R-KS), David Perdue (R-GA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) – switched their votes after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spoke to them for 20 minutes on the floor. The amendment ultimately failed 59-39. This good showing on the floor portends well for action later in the year.

The LWCF program also needs to be funded for the current authorized year. The President’s budget calls for full funding of $900 million. Some in Congress want to zero it out. The best outcome is likely something in the $200 to $300 million range is passed.

2. Federal Transportation Bill The current Federal Transportation bill, MAP-21, expires on May 31 this year. There is momentum to pass a new bill before the deadline. The Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, now Chaired by Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), is likely to use MAP-21 as a base bill and pass a version of it by the end of March. Ranking Member Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is committed to keeping the transportation alternatives program (TAPS) in place. The TAPS program is where all of the previous trail, safe routes to school, transportation enhancement money now resides. The Democrats on the committee also firmly support the continuation of the Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program. Some Republicans have called for doing away with both TAP and TIGER programs. Two years ago, the debate over TAP almost derailed the entire Federal Transportation bill.

One fundamental overall challenge remains funding for the bill. There is growing support for the taxing overseas corporate profit, but the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees have been cautious on the concept. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held their first hearing on the bill on February 11th. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx received a decent reception from House Republican committee members during his three hours of testimony. During the hearing, Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) called for a long term bill. Ranking Member Peter DeFazio (D-OR) cautioned that the committee may need a short term back up plan. EPW Democratic staff believe, ultimately, a package of transportation programs could receive a slight increase over last year’s bill, but probably not at the $478 billion level as the Obama Administration proposed. Under Inhofe’s leadership of the EPW Committee, the TAP and TIGER programs both remain vulnerable to elimination.

III. PUBLIC COMMENTS

IV. CORRESPONDENCE AND ARTICLES a. “ The death of the three-time candidate”, Politico, February 8, 2015 b. “State Senate candidate Steve Glazer urges Dems to embrace center”, SF Chronicle, February 8, 2015 c. “18 vie for hot vacant seat dividing Richmond council”, SF Chronicle, February 9, 2015 d. “State Senate candidates says most Democrats intimidated by ‘powerful interests’”, Sacramento Bee, February 1, 2015 e. “Lone republican quits East Bay state Senate election”, Contra Costa Times, February 3, 3015 f. “State Senate candidates says most Democrats intimidated by ‘powerful interests’, Sacramento Bee, February 1, 2015 g. “Bonilla endorsement news highlights campaign rally”, Halfway to Concord, January 31, 2015 h. “Brown and Kashkari teams let down guard on 2014 contest”, LA Times, January 31, 2015 i. “Republicans find it’s not easy being in charge”, US & World, January 26, 2015 j. “Republicans should adopt the legacy of Eisenhower”, SF Gate, January 23, 2015 k. “Rich GOP leaders see poverty as key 2016 issue”, SF Gate, January 23, 2015 l. “Harris has been laying the tracks for a Senate race for a long time”, LA Times, February 1, 2015, LA Times, January 21, 2015 m. “Swalwell rejects Senate run, endorses Harris”, SF Gate, January 21, 2015 n. “Odds of gas-tax hike grow with quiet support of GOP senators”, SF Gate, January 19, 2015 o. “Introduce urban Californians to what John Muir sought to protect”, January 9, 2015

Board Legislative Committee Attachment IV February 20, 2015

POLITICO

History Dept. The Death of the Three-Time Candidate

Serious presidential contenders used to run multiple times; today they can't. This is why. By JOSH ZEITZ

February 08, 2015

You have to give him this much: The man was determined to be president, and he had no problem outpacing his opponents. He spent years crisscrossing the nation by bus, rail and plane. No room was too small, no town too obscure. Earnest and intense, he checked off all the right boxes, from a successful private-sector career to four years as a progressive GOP governor of a Democratic-leaning state. The media initially loved him, though it didn’t long go unobserved that he was something of an Etch-a-Sketch candidate. “Everyone who heard [him] agreed with all that he said,” observed the New Republic, “and no one knew quite what he meant.”

His name was Harold Stassen.

Today, Harold Stassen is remembered as the “Grand Old Party’s Grand Old Loser”—the onetime “Boy Governor” who ran for president 10 times between 1948 and 1992—a “perennial, never-say-die candidate” whose quixotic, lifetime quest for the White House obscured an otherwise brilliant public career.

A self-made man who put himself through college working as a Pullman car conductor, Stassen became a successful attorney and, at age 31, the youngest man ever to have been elected governor of a state. His career included wartime service in the Pacific and five years as president of the University of Pennsylvania. When he died at age 93 in 2001, he was the last surviving American signer of the United Nations Charter.

During his first presidential run, in 1948, Stassen racked up four primary victories, nearly costing New York Gov. Thomas Dewey, the Republican front-runner, his party’s nomination. On the strength of that first campaign, many observers regarded him as the prohibitive favorite for the GOP nod in 1952. When General Dwight D. Eisenhower declared his own candidacy, Stassen dropped out of the race and went on to serve for five years in Ike’s administration.

Of course, he isn’t remembered for all those things. He is Harold Stassen, who ran for president 10 times.

Harold Stassen in 1946 (left) and again in 1992 (right), after announcing his 10th presidential campaign. | AP Photos

Mitt Romney will not suffer Harold Stassen’s fate. But his decision not to seek the presidency in 2016 raises an interesting question: When did it become conventional wisdom that there is no second (or, at least, no third) act in presidential politics?

Henry Clay, whom Abraham Lincoln called his “beau ideal of a statesman,” ran for president four times. No one remembers him as a joke. William Jennings Bryan was a three-time Democratic presidential nominee. Also not a joke. Adlai Stevenson, twice nominated. Hubert Humphrey, Stassen’s fellow Minnesotan, ran three times. Ronald Reagan lost the GOP nomination in 1968 and 1976 before his victory in 1980. Definitely not a joke. Richard Nixon: lost in 1960, won in 1968. A joke, but for other reasons.

Today, it is nearly inconceivable that serious politicians can run multiple times for the presidency, especially after losing a general election. Every four years, the Mike Huckabees and Rick Santorums reemerge, but their campaigns are usually about something other than winning the presidency—building a personal brand, perhaps, or sending a message. The real contenders— those with a plausible path to the White House—don’t get a permanent free pass. This relatively new, unforgiving rule is partly a reflection of the presidency’s growing power since the 1930s, but it is also a product of how the nominating process has evolved. Until 50 years ago, a small number of big-state political bosses tightly controlled the selection of presidential nominees. In the late 1970s, all of that changed. The rising influence of television increasingly made politics resemble entertainment, while the fallout of the Vietnam War and civil rights movement shattered the authority of political bosses and elite political institutions. Out of this disruption came the system we know (and love, and loathe) today—the four-year presidential horse race, the campaign reality show, Iowa and New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, a nauseating array of debates and candidate forums.

This is not a format that is hospitable to “losers.” The modern nominating process has an unwritten rule: You lose, you leave. To understand how it all came to be, it’s necessary to wind the clock back to 1967.

*** Late that year, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, an anti-war liberal from Minnesota, sent shock waves through the political system when he challenged Lyndon Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination. Most observers initially thought that McCarthy was committing political suicide. Notwithstanding the normal challenges of unseating an incumbent president, McCarthy proved a lazy and diffident candidate. During his 15-day campaign swing through New Hampshire, he routinely skipped scheduled events, refused to make obligatory early-morning appearances at factory gates (“I’m not really a morning person,” he explained) and delivered dry, pretentious speeches that tended to anesthetize his audiences. When Johnny Carson, the host of NBC’s popular Tonight Show, asked what sort of president he would be, McCarthy replied, “I think I would be adequate.” Polls initially had him below 10 percent.

On January 31, 1968, everything changed. Roughly 67,000 Viet Cong troops launched a massive invasion of South Vietnamese cities. The Tet Offensive cost the Viet Cong enormous troop losses but shook the confidence of many American voters who had believed the administration’s assurances that the United States was turning the corner in Southeast Asia. In the turmoil that followed, McCarthy scored a stunning upset in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, winning 42 percent of the vote to Lyndon Johnson’s 49 percent. Because of a quirk in the state’s electoral system, McCarthy actually earned more delegates than the president. Days later, Robert Kennedy joined the fray, and on March 31, LBJ dramatically announced his retirement from politics.

That spring, Kennedy and McCarthy battled it out in several hotly contested primaries, culminating in Kennedy’s narrow victory in California on June 5 and his tragic assassination the same evening. By August, when the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, 38.7 percent of Democratic primary voters had cast ballots for McCarthy and 30.6 percent had cast ballots for Kennedy, meaning that over two-thirds of primary voters had supported self-identified peace candidates. By contrast, only 2.2 percent of voters had supported Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s heir apparent, who reluctantly echoed the administration line on Vietnam and who had not competed in a single primary.

By all reasonable expectations, the Democrats should have nominated an anti-war liberal. But in 1968 only 15 states chose their delegates by primary. Almost three-fifths of convention delegates were selected by county committeemen, state party officers and elected officials. As early as June 2, even before Kennedy’s assassination, the vice president’s advisers had sewn up enough delegates to secure the nomination. Humphrey did not need grass-roots support to win; he had the party bosses.

Given the sharp divisions within their party, it was almost inevitable that the Democrats would fight and fracture, as indeed they did. Amid reports that various groups planned to disrupt the convention, Mayor Richard J. Daley, the legendary Chicago mayor and party fixer, mobilized law enforcement to stand watch over the city.

Anti-war protesters outside the 1968 National Democratic Convention. | AP Photo

Daley wasn’t exactly imagining an empty threat. Under the direction of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the “Yippies,” a motley band of agitators who combined New Left politics with street theater tactics, had all sorts of wonders planned for the benefit of Humphrey’s supporters. Among its designs were enlisting 230 “hyper-potent” men to seduce the wives and daughters of prominent delegates and injecting LSD into Chicago’s water supply. There were also planned demonstrations by more serious activists aligned with the National Mobilization Committee to End the War (the MOBE), as well as Gene McCarthy’s supporters, who were deeply embittered that the party was about to coronate a man who had not competed in a primary.

As expected, the convention descended into chaos. Inside the hall, city policemen treated pro- McCarthy delegates brutally, refusing entrance to Allard Lowenstein, a prominent anti-war activist delegate from New York who would be elected to Congress later that fall, and roughing up Alex Rosenberg, a delegate who headed New York City’s most important Democratic reform club. “I wasn’t sentenced and sent here!” Rosenberg screamed as the police dragged him away. “I was elected!” When CBS reporter Mike Wallace tried to cover the mayhem, a police officer punched him in the face.

As Daley’s police force brutally attacked young protesters outside the convention hall, inside, liberal Sen. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut took to the podium to denounce the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago.” Television viewers who had already been mesmerized by live feeds of the riot engulfing the city’s streets were then treated to an unusually vivid spectacle as Mayor Daley, seething with rage, pointed his right index finger in Ribicoff’s direction and bellowed out a string of inaudible expletives. Seasoned lip readers had little trouble discerning his words: “Fuck you. You Jew son-of-a-bitch!”

“How hard it is to accept the truth,” Ribicoff taunted in reply. “How hard it is.”

At the end of the week, Hubert Humphrey collected his prize. He would be the Democratic nominee in the November election. But his party lay in shambles. It was the first televised presidential campaign spectacular, and the last time that party bosses ever got to choose their candidate.

***

Watching the spectacle unfold, South Dakota Sen. George McGovern concluded that the Democratic nominating process was broken. He also decided that he was running for president. In late July of 1970, the McGovern and his wife invited a small committee of supporters to their summer home on the Maryland shore to lay plans for a national presidential campaign. Among those in attendance was Gary Hart, McGovern’s campaign manager, whom the gonzo-journalist Hunter S. Thompson described as “a young Coloradan … who looks like a ski instructor.” Hart, a “loose-limbed, bushy-haired, blue-eyed six-footer,” in Theodore White’s words, preferred open- necked shirts, cowboy boots and blue jeans to business suits. He was the mastermind of McGovern’s primary campaign strategy and, arguably, the country’s first celebrity political strategist.

After assessing the field of likely Democratic contenders, which included Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine, New York Mayor John Lindsay, Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington state and both Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the campaign team decided to compete in every presidential primary but to target contests in five key states: New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon and California. They assumed that either Muskie or Humphrey would emerge as the consensus candidate of the party bosses; McGovern would have to defeat liberal rivals like Lindsay and McCarthy in the early primaries and build sufficient momentum to rack up victories in late primary states like New York, New Jersey and California.

The McGovern team’s strategy reflected new political realities. In the aftermath of the 1968 convention debacle, the Democratic Party rewrote the rules governing its selection process. A week of televised bedlam in Chicago placed in sharp relief the undemocratic nature of how major parties nominated their presidential candidates, while the twin influence of the grass-roots civil rights and antiwar movements created widespread distrust of elite political actors who once held a largely uncontested grip on power. Reform-minded liberals in the Democratic Party and their conservative counterparts in the Republican Party recognized that the base would no longer settle for the status quo. The changes they wrought were far-reaching. Whereas only about 40 percent of delegates had been selected by direct primary or caucus in 1968, in 1972 that figure rose to 60 percent. Moreover, a special reform commission headed by none other than George McGovern had adopted new guidelines aimed at creating a more diverse nominating convention. Though the new rules were somewhat confusing and open to wide interpretation, they effectively required that delegate slates include critical numbers of women, African-Americans and young people. In 1972, the team that could master the shifting and complicated dynamics of the nomination process would come out on top.

When McGovern officially announced his candidacy on January 18, 1971—the earliest launch of a presidential campaign in modern history—good money was still on Muskie. But while McGovern’s general election campaign would later emerge as a textbook example of how not to run for president, its primary operation was in many ways a pioneering effort. As their team racked up one victory after another, journalists began to write about the “McGovern juggernaut.” “And where had this notion come from?” journalist Tim Crouse asked his colleagues. “They partly got it from the slickness of the McGovern press operation,” answered one member of the pool. “When a reporter got to his room at night his bag was there. When he called the pressroom, he didn’t get a yo-yo saying there was nobody there. He got handouts telling him where the candidate was going to be the next morning and who he could interview at 2 a.m. if he needed to get a fast quote. And so pretty soon the reporter started saying to himself, half- consciously, ‘If the press operation is this good, they must have a hellava voter registration operation!’ The press didn’t create the McGovern juggernaut, but they sure as hell helped create it.”

In California and Wisconsin some 10,000 well-trained volunteers walked every single electoral precinct, using computer databases of registered voters to identify possible McGovern supporters and coding millions of respondents by their candidate choice and stance on key issues. The electronic tapes were fed to a central mail house that targeted voters with letters and literature that spoke to their individual concerns. Working out of dozens of regional storefront offices, on Election Day the same volunteer base telephoned or directly visited every voter identified in advance as a potential McGovern supporter. It was the first large-scale marriage of computers and campaigns, and it worked wonders. Combining old-fashioned retail politics with modern technology, the McGovern campaign essentially pioneered the art of micro-targeting. Exclaimed one seasoned campaign watcher who was also an official with a New York-based Teamsters local, “I’m not kidding. This is better than Tammany Hall.”

Few people recall how professional an operation McGovern ran, because popular memory of the 1972 campaign begins and ends with the 1972 Democratic National Convention—a disaster of epic proportions. But McGovern’s was a breakthrough candidacy. He was the first major-party candidate who owed his nomination to the voters, not the bosses. And as time would tell, voters can prove less forgiving of losers than bosses. ***

The modern nominating system came to maturity in 1976, when two very dissimilar candidates (and future rivals) leveraged the new rules to upend the political establishment.

When Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia told his mother, Lillian, that he planned to run for president, she famously responded, “President of what?” Then serving in his third year as governor of Georgia, Carter was a former peanut farmer whose prior political experience was limited to a four-year stint in the state Senate and an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1966. That Carter should even contemplate running for president—and that his candidacy ultimately proved successful—speaks as much to the country’s extreme hunger for reform in the aftermath of Watergate as to its new rules governing the nomination process.

The notion that Jimmy Carter should run for president first occurred to his young statehouse aide, Hamilton Jordan, as he lay on the beach in Miami during the 1972 Democratic National Convention. In early September, Jordan gathered several key members of the governor’s inner circle and walked them through his thinking. “The general election hadn’t even taken place,” he later acknowledged. “We all knew it looked kind of preposterous. But we were serious about it. It was hard to say it. I can remember I didn’t make a very good presentation. It was hard really to talk about it. It was almost embarrassing.” In a follow-up memorandum, Jordan speculated, “The strongest feeling in this country today is the general distrust of government and politicians at all levels.” (This was before Watergate became a weight around Richard Nixon’s neck.) As an outsider who was neither a career politician nor a product of Washington, D.C., Carter could lay claim to the reform vote. Looking ahead to the 1976 primary election cycle, Carter’s advisers noted that a record-breaking 73 percent of convention delegates would now be chosen by direct primary or caucus. In a wide field, if the Georgia governor could score victories in the key early states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Florida, he could accumulate the necessary momentum to sweep big-state primaries later in the spring.

It was a bold and precocious strategy, given Carter’s limited exposure outside of his home state. But Jordan’s calculations were correct. Squaring off against a crowded field, Carter won Iowa with a plurality of 27.6 percent and went on to sweep Florida and New Hampshire. Though only 10 percent of registered Democrats participated in the Iowa caucuses that year, the appearance of an upset victory was enough to propel him forward.

As improbable as it seemed, Jimmy Carter cinched the Democratic nomination by the summer of 1976. Time marveled that the new standard bearer had “never met a Democratic President or slept in the White House,” while even one of his advisers admitted that he was “a sort of fluke.”

While Carter was sewing up his party’s nomination, one state at a time, President Gerald Ford found himself locked unexpectedly in a tight contest with conservative challenger Ronald Reagan. The same rule changes that emboldened the Democratic left in 1972 were now awakening grass-roots conservative activists in the Republican Party. Ford scored two early victories in New Hampshire and Florida, winning the latter state largely by emphasizing Reagan’s support for investing Social Security funds on the stock market, but the former California governor found traction in North Carolina by emphasizing his opposition to the administration’s negotiations to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. Playing to conservative resentment over America’s loss of military and diplomatic stature in the aftermath of Vietnam, Reagan galvanized his base by proclaiming, “When it comes to the canal, we built it, we paid for it, it’s ours, and we should tell [Panamanian leader Omar] Torrijos and company that we are going to keep it!” Riding to victory in North Carolina on the canal issue, Reagan racked up important wins in Texas, Nebraska and California. Ford could barely mask his disdain for his improbable rival. “Governor Reagan and I do have one thing in common,” he quipped. “We both played football. I played for Michigan. He played for Warner Brothers.” Despite such counterattacks, by the eve of the Republican National Convention, Ford was still 28 votes shy of locking up his party’s nomination; Reagan was short by 67 votes, and 94 delegates remained uncommitted. Rogers Morton, the chairman of Ford’s campaign committee, hardly reassured the president’s supporters when he told reporters that he had no intention of changing strategy in the closing weeks of the primary cycle. “I’m not going to rearrange the furniture on the deck of the Titanic,” he blurted out.

Ford ultimately managed to squeak out a narrow victory on the first ballot and win the nomination, but not without bleeding much of the credibility associated with incumbency. The writer Garry Wills gave voice to popular perceptions when he labeled the GOP contest “dumb- out at the O-K Corral.” Ford’s political wounds were deep and irreversible.

When Harold Stassen first ran for president, primaries were essentially inconsequential events by which candidates hoped to demonstrate viability. The real decisions were made by a relatively small group of state and national party leaders. By 1976, the nominating process had become thoroughly democratic and thoroughly televised. Now, vox populi, vox Dei. And neither God nor man liked losers.

***

Richard Nixon and Thomas Dewey, Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson, William Jennings Bryan and Henry Clay—all could run, and run again, and run again, because they ran in an era when politics was a tightly held concern. To be sure, political campaigns since the Age of Jackson were great public spectacles. They were designed to engage, entertain and enliven the party faithful. But ordinary citizens held little sway over who got nominated, and formidable party machines could be counted on to mobilize voters regardless of who held the standard.

That system held up for a surprisingly long time. Only in the past 40 years has the presidential nomination system become truly democratic. That’s a good thing. As our country has grown more diverse and inclusive, so should its politics. Yet the system has also become much more celebrity-driven. It is arguably the longest-running nighttime soap opera on TV. Its first episode ran in the summer of 1968, and it’s been airing regularly since. That might not be a good thing. Writers like Hunter Thompson realized early that modern candidates were in danger of becoming pop culture commodities. As with any market for a commodity, success breeds success, and failure creates obsolescence.

Mitt Romney commanded an unparalleled fundraising base. Having lived through two national campaigns, he was in most ways a far more credible and tested candidate than his primary rivals. But the narrative was slipping away from him. The teaser for tomorrow’s episode strongly hinted that he couldn’t possibly run again.

Once upon a time, 10 GOP state chairmen could have converged in a smoke-filled room and let Romney take another turn at bat. Something in him understood that there are no more Henry Clays. There are only Harold Stassens. His was a sober but not altogether incorrect calculation. The only dignity was in bowing out.

Josh Zeitz has taught American history and politics at Cambridge University and Princeton University and is the author of Lincoln’s Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image. He is currently writing a book on the making of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Follow him @joshuamzeitz.

BAY AREA & STATE State Senate candidate Steve Glazer urges Dems to embrace center

By Carla Marinucci February 8, 2015 Updated: February 8, 2015 6:28pm

Photo: Mathew Sumner / Special To The Chronicle Steve Glazer

Months after being flogged by union attack ads last year during his unsuccessful Assembly race, Orinda Mayor Steve Glazer has issued a politically risky call to arms, urging California Democrats to stop “demonizing” moderates and fiscal conservatives in their own party.

“There is an attitude by party interests that if you’re a Democrat from the Bay Area, you must be a 'supersized liberal,’ or else you’re a traitor to the cause,” said Glazer, who delivered a blistering assessment of his party at a recent UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies panel.

The longtime adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown, now a candidate in next month’s special election for the East Bay District Seven state Senate seat, came out swinging last week at a packed candidates forum in Lafayette.

Aiming for the spot vacated by Mark DeSaulnier, who replaced retired Rep. George Miller, Glazer portrayed himself a “pragmatic,” pro-business, antitax candidate, arguing “the Democratic Party needs to regain the mantle as the fiscally responsible party.” Even before he finished that appearance, the Contra Costa Young Democrats club tweeted that Glazer is an “alleged Democrat,” indicating it won’t be an easy contest for the candidate who argues his party has veered too far to the left.

But while risky, Glazer’s move to go after his party might be a game-changer in a district where almost 30 percent are registered Republicans.

His surprise decision to enter the race threatens to upend the primary between two established progressive candidates, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla and former Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, and underscores the unpredictability of California’s top-two primary system, in which the top two vote-getters move on to the general election.

In the all-Democratic race, Bonilla has racked up major endorsements, including DeSaulnier, former Rep. Ellen Tauscher — and her party. But Buchanan, recently termed out of the Assembly, also has a loyal following as a six-term legislator.

Glazer’s campaign got a boost last Monday when the only Republican in the race, Michaela Hertle, dropped out and endorsed him. Hertle cited Glazer’s support for a ban on BART strikes, which earned him the wrath of several Bay Area unions during the Assembly race in November, won by Republican attorney Catharine Baker.

Political analysts say Glazer, a California State University trustee, may have a real shot at shaking up the race.

“He’s got two liberal Democrats against him, and I think his opportunity now is very good to get the GOP vote — which should be enough to make the runoff,” said former GOP strategist Tony Quinn, a co-editor of the California Target Book, which analyzes California races.

The primary is on March 17, and if no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the general election is set for May 19.

Alienating some Dems

Steve Maviglio, a veteran Democratic consultant, calls Glazer a longshot at best in what is expected to be a low-turnout special election. Up against Buchanan, “a credible, moderate Democrat,” and Bonilla, a popular progressive, and with a Republican’s name remaining on the ballot — it’s too late to remove it — “he has to peel off enough ultraconservative Democrats” to at least come in second, he notes.

But Glazer has alienated many Democrats with criticisms that are simply unfounded, Maviglio said.

“Almost having a supermajority in both houses, and every constitutional officer in the state, isn’t a bad place to be” for Democrats, Maviglio said. And for six years in Sacramento, “the Democrats have been balancing the budget, and helping the business community” grow jobs and the economy.

Still, Democratic consultant Garry South said centrists like Glazer have faced the wrath of party officials and consultants for “daring” to help other Democratic challengers in primary elections.

“In this top-two environment, we Democrats have to be careful that we don’t let these Democrat-on-Democrat races turn into fratricidal battles that do damage to, or split, the Democratic coalition,” he said. In the current climate, Democrats “are not going to have two- thirds majorities in both chambers with all those legislators acting like they’re Nancy Pelosi,” he said in reference to the liberal California U.S. representative.

“You’re going to have places that elect more-moderate Democrats, and if the party can’t deal with that, we have problems,” he insists.

Challenging status quo

Democrat Ro Khanna, the former Obama trade representative who unsuccessfully challenged seven-term progressive Rep. Mike Honda in a high-profile race for a Silicon Valley seat in November, agrees that the party needs to broaden its reach and appeal — or face problems as more voters choose to be independent.

“In my case, I came out for ... a lot of positions that labor union people told me, privately, were very bold,” he said. But Khanna, who came in just four points behind Honda, faced an onslaught of attacks, including from a Democratic super political action committee that questioned his Democratic loyalty. “The problem is institutional stagnancy,” Khanna said. “There’s a sense that when we back the person we know, it’s almost like an old boys’ club, in not allowing fresh new voices to be heard.’’

“It’s more about the institutions of power rallying around their own interests,” he said, “and the top-two system is designed to break through that — eventually.”

Carla Marinucci is a San Francisco Chronicle senior political writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @cmarinucci

18 vie for hot vacant seat dividing Richmond council

By Chip Johnson

February 9, 2015 Updated: February 9, 2015 4:22pm

Eighteen people are jockeying to fill an empty seat on the Richmond City Council, a vacancy created when Tom Butt was inaugurated as mayor last month.

It’s up to the five council members and Butt, who also votes on the council, to appoint someone to join them on the panel. But that likely won’t happen.

The council is split right down the middle, with three independents and three members of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, so the appointment of a new council member represents an opportunity for either side to hold a majority — and hence control of the council.

The council has until mid-March to fill the seat. If no one is appointed, a special election will be held.

It’s been a rough couple of years for the Richmond council. There have been obscenity-laced council meetings with some people spewing hate at Councilwoman Jovanka Beckles, who is lesbian and a member of the Progressive Alliance. Councilman Corky Booze, who was defeated in November, encouraged and led a hostile crowd at meetings where a police presence became a necessity. If that weren’t enough, in the November election, Chevron, which operates a refinery in Richmond, pumped nearly $3 million into political races trying to get refinery-friendly people elected. It didn’t work. All its candidates were defeated.

Among those vying for the council appointment are Jim Rogers, who lost his council seat in November, and former Richmond Mayor Rosemary Corbin, who was the city’s first female mayor when she was elected in 1992.

Marilyn Langlois, a retired community advocate, is the top choice of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a slate of officeholders who vote as a bloc. In a nutshell, the alliance is a coalition of community activists that embrace liberal causes from immigrant rights to environmental concerns to government surveillance issues. Its members on the council are Beckles, Eduardo Martinez and Gayle McLaughlin, who was elected to the council in November after serving two terms as mayor.

Langlois is considered more of a liberal extremist than the group that supports her run for the council seat. She is known in Richmond political circles for her conspiratorial views on the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Although there has not yet been a complete and thorough investigation of the events surrounding 9/11, there is sufficient evidence to indicate that 9/11 was an act of state- sponsored terrorism facilitated by elites within the US military-industrial complex,” Langlois wrote in a 2011 article published at transcend.org, the website for the peace organization Transcend International.

The rest of the field includes a business leader, high school security guard, a Chevron environmental engineer and a couple of lawyers.

Butt certainly has his favorites, and they include Corbin and Ben Choi, an account executive who wants to move the council beyond the “two-dimensional” thinking of environmental and public safety issues.

Richmond Progressive Alliance members, who carry forward decisions made by a steering committee, don’t have the authority to compromise on proposals without checking with their membership first. That’s not a good arrangement, and it smacks of trouble down the line.

If that group gained a majority, there would be nothing to stop it from deciding public policy from behind the doors of their offices on Macdonald Avenue, taking it to the council and simply dictating city policy.

While it may serve the interests of politicians and their supporters, it doesn’t do much to advance the idea of an open democratic process.

If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on a special election because with little more than a month before the council must appoint someone, the two sides couldn’t be further apart.

Chip Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column runs on Tuesday and Friday. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @chjohnson

Capitol Alert

State Senate candidate says most Democrats intimidated by ‘powerful interests’ By David Siders 02/01/2015 1:56 PM

Steve Glazer, right, walks with Gov. Jerry Brown to a meeting with the League of California Cities in Sacramento in 2011. Glazer, then an adviser to the governor, is now running for an East Bay state Senate seat. Hector Amezcua Sacramento Bee file

Steve Glazer, the former political adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown and, years ago, Brown’s sister Kathleen, said he isn’t angry.

But the pounding he took from organized labor in his Assembly race last year must still sting: Glazer thumbed through a collection of attack ads for the audience at a political conference over the weekend and acknowledged “they tend to take a toll on a candidate.”

For Glazer, who has used Democratic Party politics for decades to his advantage, the result is a measure of disillusionment.

During a panel conversation on the impact of California’s top-two electoral system Friday, Glazer said Democrats who disagree with labor unions on school, budget and pension issues have been “demonized” by influential elements of their own party.

“The Democratic Party is controlled by some very powerful interests,” Glazer said at the forum, organized by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, “and most Democrats who have ambition are intimidated by that circumstance.”

In his Assembly race last year, labor unions backing Democrat Tim Sbranti worked against Glazer, a more conservative Democrat, in the primary election. Sbranti advanced but was defeated in the general election by a Republican, Catharine Baker. Glazer’s opponents tied him in campaign mailers to Big Tobacco, ostensibly because he once consulted for the California Chamber of Commerce, whose donors include cigarette makers.

Glazer is now running in the special election for the East Bay state Senate seat formerly held by Rep. Mark DeSaulnier. He is one of three high-profile Democrats in the race. The party’s voters hold a 15- percentage-point registration advantage over Republicans in the district.

The other candidates, former Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo, and Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, spent recent days securing the endorsements of the California Teachers Association and California Democratic Party, respectively.

Glazer, who serves on the Orinda City Council, has not always been at cross-purposes with labor. Public employee unions spent heavily eviscerating Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s image during the gubernatorial campaign in 2010. Glazer managed Brown’s winning campaign that year.

Labor helped again in 2012, when Glazer helped Brown raise money for his ballot measure to raise taxes.

“I don’t want to come across angry,” he said as he left the forum. “I’m not.”

But he said he declined to participate in the Democratic Party’s endorsement process in his Assembly race and is doing the same now, in his bid for Senate.

Call David Siders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1215. Follow him on Twitter @davidsiders.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol- alert/article8903987.html#storylink=cpy

Lone Republican quits East Bay state Senate election

By Josh Richman [email protected]

The only Republican in the East Bay's 7th State Senate District special election dropped out Monday and endorsed a Democrat, less than a week after the candidates' list became official.

Michaela Hertle, a cloud-computing executive from Pleasanton who has never run for office before, issued a statement saying she's throwing her support to centrist Democrat Steve Glazer, Orinda's mayor and Gov. Jerry Brown's former campaign advisor.

"I cannot establish the funding, name recognition and support required to win this election against this field of Democratic candidates within a six-week period," she said, adding Glazer "can work with Republicans and Democrats alike to find common sense solutions to our state's needs."

File: Orinda City Council member and State Assembly candidate Steve Glazer in Walnut Creek, Calif., Monday, June 2, 2014. (SUSAN TRIPP POLLARD)

Republicans make up 29 percent of the district's voters, so if they take heed, Hertle's endorsement could help Glazer -- who has burned most bridges with his own party and the unions that back it -- vie with the race's two more prominent Democrats, Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla and former Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan. Democrat Terry Kremin, a psychology lecturer who sought Concord City Council seats in 2010 and 2012, also is running.

But it's too late for Hertle to be removed from the ballot, so voters who don't know she dropped out might still vote for her.

The special primary will be held March 17; if nobody gets more than 50 percent of the primary vote, the special general election will be held May 19.

Hertle praised Glazer's fiscal conservatism; his support of public-pension and school reform; and his willingness to buck unions and other special interests. Republicans "have more commonalities with him than differences and he can win this race," she said. Glazer called Hertle's endorsement "a big boost." "I've promoted a bipartisan experience and track record and her endorsement is a great validation," he said. "It underscores what makes my candidacy unique."

Glazer incurred unions' wrath by working in 2012 as a strategist for the California Chamber of Commerce's JobsPAC, which backed moderate Democrats over more liberal, labor-friendly ones. And in 2013, he capitalized on public outrage over two BART strikes by urging a ban on transit worker strikes -- an idea opposed by many Democrats.

The 7th District seat, representing central and eastern Contra Costa County plus Alameda County's Tri-Valley area, came open when Democrat Mark DeSaulnier was sworn in last month to succeed Rep. George Miller in Congress.

Buchanan may have a name-recognition edge: The 16th Assembly District seat from which she was term-limited out in 2014 overlaps much more of this senate district than Bonilla's 14th Assembly District.

But Bonilla, D-Concord, so far has more prominent endorsements including DeSaulnier's. Over the weekend she also picked up the California Democratic Party's nod, though some Buchanan backers grumbled that Bonilla used a soon-to-be-abolished bylaw to pack the local caucus meeting with supporters.

Bonilla spokesman Patrick McGarrity said Monday that Bonilla is the Democratic Party's choice while "Steve Glazer is the choice of delegates from the Alameda County Republican Party."

Bonilla, Buchanan and Glazer will spar in a forum at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, sponsored by the Contra Costa Young Democrats; they'll meet again at noon the following Wednesday, Feb. 11, for a forum in Walnut Creek sponsored by the East Bay Leadership Council.

Josh Richman covers politics. Follow him at Twitter.com/Josh_Richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.

Bonilla endorsement news highlights campaign rally

January 31, 2015 by Bill Gram-Reefer

At campaign rally Saturday, Jan 31, Susan Bonilla shared exciting endorsement news as she told supporters that she had just overwhelmingly won the California Democratic Party support for her State Senate campaign.

Susan Bonilla, Assemblywoman and candidate for the State Senate District 7 race, celebrates stunning endorsement news with supporters at campaign rally, campaign, Jan 31.

Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, is a candidate for the Special Election for Senate District 7 seat, vacated by Mark Desaulnier now serving in Congress (CD-10). The Special Election called by Governor Brown will be held March 17, just six weeks away.

The walls were lined with over 2,000 yard signs ready for distribution as Campaign coordinator Heather Greven urged supporters to get involved in upcoming precinct walking and Thursday evening phone banks.

Bonilla faces tough competition in facing two other local Democrats, Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, and Orinda City Councilmember and former Mayor Steve Glazer.

Irregardless of the endorsement news, the campaign has been so compressed, with so little time, Greven and Newell Arnerich of Danville, who introduced Susan to the crowd, urged supporters to “come through now” and not dally as the campaign time is so short.

Many leading Democrats were in attendance including recently installed Pleasant Hill Mayor Ken Carlson, Concord City Council members Tim Grayson and Ron Leone. Representatives of IBEW, as well as teacher, fire and police unions were also on hand. According to a statement released by the Bonilla campaign concerning the endorsement news The Democratic Party vote was cast at a local endorsing caucus, made up entirely of local Democrats residing in Senate District 7 and convened by the state party. Bonilla earned 87 votes out of 119 cast, earning 73.1% percent and easily clearing the 60% threshold for a formal endorsement.

Congressman Mark DeSaunoer and Susan Bonilla discuss the District 7 State Senate race at a Bonilla rally in Concord, Jan 31.

In special elections the endorsing caucus’s vote provides a formal endorsement by the state party – unlike the “recommendation for endorsement” that is provided during regular election cycles. With today’s vote, Bonilla is officially the candidate of the California Democratic Party.

“I’m proud to have the support of local Democrats and the California Democratic Party,” Susan Bonilla said. “As a lifelong Democrat, this endorsement is deeply meaningful to me. I’m proud to be our party’s standard-bearer in the March 17th Primary.”

This vote quickly follows her endorsement by the Concord Democratic Party Club. Since launching her campaign, Bonilla has built a strong base of support and strong momentum. She’s recently earned the highly coveted support of Congressman Mark DeSaulnier – who represented this district before being elected to Congress this fall, Congressman Mike Thompson, former Congresswoman and Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher, PORAC, AFSCME Council 57 and Local 2700, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, and the California Professional Firefighters.

Brown and Kashkari teams let down guard on 2014 contest

Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger Neel Kashkari at their sole debate on Sept. 4, 2014, in Sacramento. (Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

By MICHAEL FINNEGAN AND SEEMA MEHTA contact the reporters

Campaign strategists for Gov. Brown, Neel Kashkari open up about last year's election

With the election nearly three months behind them, top aides to Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican challenger, Neel Kashkari, let down their guard Saturday at a postmortem organized by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies.

In a candid back-and-forth, they shared behind-the-scenes recollections of how Brown coasted to reelection and trounced Kashkari, 60% to 40%.

POLITICAL

Neither candidate always listened to the aides. Brown suggested a whistle-stop train trip across California in his campaign for reelection. “We said that was a bad idea,” said Dana Williamson, the Democratic governor’s cabinet secretary.

Kashkari ignored the advice of advisors who urged him to stop dipping into his waning personal fortune to finance a campaign they knew he could not win. “We thought it was crazy, but that’s Neel,” said Aaron McLear, a top Kashkari strategist.

A first-time candidate for elective office, Kashkari got into the race because he’d had a taste of public life as the U.S. Treasury Department’s point man on the 2008 bank bailout -- and wanted more, McLear said.

“I think he missed kind of the rush he got from Treasury,” McLear said. The candidate's campaign’s cornerstone was “authenticity,” because Kashkari thought Republicans Meg Whitman, Brown’s GOP rival in 2010, and 2012 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney “didn’t come across as sincere and genuine,” McLear said.

But by last spring, Kashkari, a moderate, was in danger of losing the primary to tea party sympathizer Tim Donnelly, then a GOP state assemblyman from the Lake Arrowhead area. So Kashkari started dumping what would eventually be $3.1 million of his own money into the race.

Karl Rove, Romney and other Republicans feared Donnelly would damage the party’s prospects across the nation. Wealthy donors stepped up to run an independent campaign in support of Kashkari.

They didn't want Donnelly "carrying the flag for Republicans,” McLear said.

Kashkari squeaked through the primary, but polls suggested his prospects after that were hopeless. “We always knew that we’d have to catch 100 breaks to beat Gov. Brown,” McLear said.

Brown’s strategy was to ignore Kashkari and let his own record on the budget, immigration issues and other matters speak for itself, Williamson said. She described Brown's effort as a “non-campaign.” “That didn’t happen by accident,” she said.

Ace Smith, Brown’s top campaign strategist, scoffed at what he called Kashkari campaign “stunts.” For a rich former Goldman Sachs banker like Kashkari to pose on the streets of Fresno as a homeless person to highlight his poverty agenda was as authentic as Smith, who is nearly bald, showing up on stage in a toupee, the strategist said.

“I’m not saying there’s a no-stunt policy,” Smith said. “You’ve just got to do stunts that are believable.”

Smith suggested that Brown’s campaign last fall for ballot measures on water projects and state finances, rather than a traditional reelection effort, was a model for future elections, with candidates minimizing themselves and highlighting policies that advance the public interest.

As for Kashkari, McLear said: “Right now he’s looking for a job, because he doesn’t have any money left.”

Twitter: @finneganLAT

Republicans find it’s not easy being in charge By Carolyn Lochhead Updated 9:04 am, Monday, January 26, 2015

Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio narrowly won the post after 20 conservatives voted against him.

WASHINGTON — Three weeks into their historic House majority and after taking control of the Senate for the first time in eight years, Republicans find themselves in a meltdown over rape and charges that they quashed debate on a Keystone pipeline bill so their presidential hopefuls could make pitches to the billionaire Koch brothers in Palm Springs.

The two debates were supposed to be easy lifts on popular GOP issues. Instead, the dueling imbroglios showcased a backlash by more moderate Republicans and Tea Party conservatives and the appearance — fueled by Democrats — of a connection between the GOP’s pro-fossil fuel agenda and industry campaign contributions.

Rep. Charlie Dent, a Pennsylvania Republican, famously summed up the situation: “Week one, we had a speaker election that did not go ... well,” Dent said. “Week two, we got into a big fight over deporting children. ... Week three, we are now talking about rape and incest and reportable rapes and incest for minors. ... I just can’t wait for week four.”

A House bill to ban late-term abortions was timed to coincide with last week’s arrival of thousands of antiabortion marchers in Washington. The Senate bill to approve the Keystone pipeline to carry Canadian tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries has support from coal-state Democrats and a majority of the public, according to polls. But on Thursday, both chambers were in chaos, portending difficulties ahead on much thornier legislation, such as tax reform.

A blindsided House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield was forced to substitute a different abortion bill at the last minute after GOP women rebelled over language requiring women to report a rape before being allowed to legally terminate a pregnancy. Republicans once again found themselves talking about a subject that torpedoed two GOP Senate candidates in 2012.

Democrats had a field day. “There is nowhere (Republicans) don’t want to go, and it’s all about sex, and they just can’t get enough of it,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough.

The imbroglio followed a rebellion on immigration a week earlier, when GOP moderates, including Jeff Denham and David Valadao, Central Valley Republicans with large Latino constituencies, voted against a bill to to deport “Dreamers,” young people whose parents brought them across the border illegally as children.

'More difficult to herd cats’

That followed a vote for House speaker that Ohio’s John Boehner narrowly won after 20 conservatives voted against him.

“The more votes you have, the more your base thinks it can call the shots,” said Vic Fazio, a former Democratic House leader from Sacramento. But at the same time, he said, a larger majority inevitably contains more moderates from swing districts.

“It’s funny how when you get a huge majority it becomes even more difficult to herd cats,” Fazio said.

Bill Galston, a onetime adviser to former President Bill Clinton, suggested not reading too much into the turmoil. “The last time I checked, it’s still January,” he said.

Galston speculated that GOP leaders want to allow conservatives to blow off steam early to show “through actual experience the limits of the power of ideological conservatives to drive events.”

Dan Holler, communications director for Heritage Action for America, a political group influential with House conservatives, dismissed the idea that conservatives need to be mollified or disciplined.

When House GOP leaders “start to back away from those conservative policies is when you see these massive divisions open up,” Holler said. Republicans should acknowledge that President Obama will veto conservative legislation, he said, and pass bills that demonstrate what Republicans could do if they had the presidency.

“If they emphasize this governing vision ... they’ll be very united in that,” Holler said. “If they try to work hand in glove with the president, there’s going to be a lot of divisions within the party.”

As to whether that is a recipe for stalemate, Holler said Republicans have their majorities because voters “were fed up with the president, they didn’t like what he was doing and they wanted a Republican-controlled Congress to push back on him, not work with him.”

The Senate is a different problem. Republicans have a 54-vote majority but are well short of the 60 votes they need to break Democratic filibusters, and farther still from the 67 needed to override a presidential veto. The Keystone bill only has a chance to pass because it draws support from coal-state Democrats.

Free-for-all exposes rift

But Keystone also has become a testing ground for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s promise to return the Senate to freewheeling debate and amendments that Democrats did not tolerate when they were in the majority.

The free-for-all exposed a GOP rift on climate change, with GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky siding that humans are at least partly to blame and Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas disagreeing. McConnell abruptly pulled the plug on the debate late Thursday to allow senators to leave for the weekend.

Democrats claimed the reason was to let Rubio, Cruz and Paul attend the “Koch primary” in Palm Springs, a gathering of potential GOP presidential candidates. Republicans denied the accusation, but the process gave Democrats a political opening.

Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said the amendment process will help pass the Keystone bill by allowing senators to have their say. “Keystone is not just about one pipeline,” O’Connell said. “It’s about an energy argument that the Republicans want to have with the Democrats.”

Obama has promised to veto the legislation, but even making their point on energy is proving difficult for Republicans.

“I don’t think the House understands how powerful or important the 60-vote threshold is in the Senate, and they still can’t figure out why they can’t pass their sweeping agenda,” said Jim Manley, a former aide to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the former majority leader. “I went through it myself with Reid and Pelosi,” he said, referring to Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker when Democrats were in the majority.

Carolyn Lochhead is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @carolynlochhead

OPINION

Republicans should adopt the legacy of Eisenhower

By Robert Reich

Published 3:40 pm, Friday, January 23, 2015

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are zeroing in on inequality as America’s fundamental economic problem.

Bush’s new political action committee, called The Right to Rise, declares “the income gap is real” but that “only conservative principles can solve it.”

Romney likewise promised earlier this month that if he runs for president he’ll change the strategy that led to his 2012 loss to Barack Obama (remember the “makers” versus the “takers”?) and focus instead on income inequality, poverty and “opportunity for all people.”

The Republican establishment’s leading presidential hopefuls know the current upbeat economy isn’t trickling down to most Americans. But they’ve got a whopping credibility problem, starting with trickle-down economics.

Since Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, Republican policies have widened inequality.

Neither party deserves a medal for reversing the trend, but evidence shows that middle-class and poor Americans have fared better under Democratic presidents. Personal disposable income has grown nearly six times more with Democrats in the White House than with Republicans.

Under Bill Clinton, in whose administration I am proud to have served, even the wages of the poorest fifth rose.

More jobs under Democrats

According to research by economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, more jobs have been created under Democratic presidents as well. These broad-based job and wage gains haven’t hampered economic growth. To the contrary, they’ve fueled it by putting more money into the pockets of people who spend it — thereby boosting business profits and hiring.

Which is why the economy has grown faster when Democrats have occupied the Oval Office.

I’m not saying Democrats have always had it right or done everything they should. The lion’s share of economic gains over the past 35 years have gone to the top regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans inhabit the White House.

The most recent recovery has been particularly lopsided, President Obama’s intentions notwithstanding.

Nor can presidents alone determine how the economy performs. At best, they orchestrate a set of policies that nudge the economy in one direction or another.

But that’s exactly the point: Since Reagan, Republican policies have nudged it toward big gains at the top and stagnation for everyone else. The last Republican president to deliver broad-based prosperity was Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the 1950s.

America at its most equal

Then, the gains from growth were so widely shared that the incomes of the poorest fifth actually grew faster than the incomes of the top fifth. As a result, America became more equal than ever before or since.

Under Ike, the marginal tax rate on the richest Americans reached 91 percent.

Eisenhower also presided over the creation of the interstate highway system — the largest infrastructure project in American history — as well as the nation’s biggest expansion of public schools.

It’s no coincidence that when Eisenhower was president, more than a third of all private sector workers were unionized. Ike can’t be credited for this, but at least he didn’t try to stop it or legitimize the firing of striking workers, as did Reagan.

Under Reagan, Republican policy lurched in the opposite direction: lower taxes on top incomes and big wealth, less public investment, and efforts to destroy labor unions.

Not surprisingly, that’s when America took its big U-turn toward inequality. These Reaganomic principles are by now so deeply embedded in the modern Republican Party, they’ve come to define it.

As a matter of fact, they’re just about all that unite the warring factions of the GOP — libertarians, Tea Partiers, big corporations and Wall Street.

Yet because these very principles have contributed to the stagnation of American incomes and the widening gap between the rich and everyone else, Republican presidential aspirants who say they want to reverse widening inequality are faced with an awkward dilemma.

Republican dilemma

How can they be credible on the issue while embracing these principles? Yet if they want to be nominated, how can they not embrace them?

When Jeb Bush admits that the income gap is real but that “only conservative principles can solve it,” one has to wonder what principles he’s talking about if not these.

And when Mitt Romney promises to run a different campaign than he did in 2012 and focus on “opportunity for all people,” the real question is whether he’ll run on different economic principles.

That the leading Republican hopefuls recognize the economy has to work for everyone and not just a few is progress. But unless they disavow the legacy of Ronald Reagan and adopt the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower, their words are nothing more than soothing rhetoric — akin to George W. Bush’s meaningless “compassionate conservatism.”

© Robert Reich

Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com/submissions/#1.

Rich GOP leaders see poverty as key 2016 issue

By Carla Marinucci Updated 9:54 am, Friday, January 23, 2015

Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle Former California gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, seen in Milpitas in November, championed poverty as a key issue for Republicans.

Neel Kashkari, California’s 2014 Republican candidate for governor, saw his campaign go viral last year when he took to the streets of Fresno, posing as a homeless man in a YouTube video that showcased his unorthodox election theme — arguing that poverty should be at the top of the GOP agenda.

The former Goldman Sachs executive lost his race — handily — to Democratic incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown. But months later, top Republicans exploring possible 2016 bids for the White House appear to be stealing a page from Kashkari’s playbook.

This week, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — the 2012 presidential candidate who lambasted the “47 percent” of Americans “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them” — announced he intends to make poverty a top issue in his 2016 exploratory effort.

And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who will speak to the 23,000-member National Automobile Dealers Association in San Francisco on Friday, also recently echoed Kashkari’s call for Republicans to battle poverty.

Bush, the son of the 41st president of the United States, brother to the 43rd president and an enthusiastic backer of Kashkari, announced his intention to explore a presidential run with a mission statement that noted: “While the last eight years have been pretty good ones for top earners, they’ve been a lost decade for the rest of America.”

In a week in which a new study by the Oxfam organization confirmed that the inequality gap is widening — with the world’s richest 1 percent increasing their share of global wealth from 44 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2014 — the thematic moves by leading Republicans suggest poverty could be front and center as an issue in 2016.

Democrats’ reaction

Gleeful Democrats already are crowing that wealthy Republicans like Romney and Bush may well be paving the GOP’s way to a 2016 disaster.

“I view this with such great amusement because this is so counter to type, so foreign to people’s views of the GOP ... it would be like Homer Simpson declaring war on stupidity,” said Garry South, the sharp-tongued Democratic consultant who advised presidential candidate Joe Lieberman and ran two winning campaigns with former California Gov. Gray Davis.

With just eight months until the first GOP presidential debate in California, the moves by Bush and Romney underscore how national Republican leaders appear more willing to take up an issue that Kashkari made his hallmark, much to the surprise of many in California’s political establishment.

“Neel chose to use his candidacy to shine a giant spotlight on this crisis” in California, a state with the nation’s highest poverty rate, at 24 percent, said Aaron McLear, a GOP strategist who advised Kashkari’s campaign. “From a political standpoint, Neel knew it wasn’t a winning issue, but he didn’t care. ... He should get credit for talking about this issue from Day One, even when it wasn’t politically expedient.”

McLear said Kashkari, by using creative social-media outlets to spotlight California’s high poverty rate, “has shown Republicans how to talk about poverty by articulating how conservative solutions of economic opportunity are more effective than simply addressing the symptoms without curing the disease.”

South laughs at the idea.

“There are certain issues that are already baked in: People think Democrats are better on education, the environment, women’s issues and poverty issues,” he said. “They think Republicans are better on taxes, running the government and foreign affairs. “When you try to go counter to type ... there’s just not enough time and attention span to pull that off,” he argued. “No matter how much money you have in a campaign, you won’t convince people that stop signs are green.”

But Professor Jack Citrin, who heads the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, said the trend line is evident: In 2015, the issue of inequality has penetrated both parties.

“Obviously, it’s a natural for the Democrats to go for it,” he said. “But the Republicans have clearly seen that this is an issue they will have to address.”

Republicans’ challenge

The big challenge for GOP leaders and candidates now, Citrin said, will be to “craft a set of proposals that focus on growth, lifting all boats, training and skills on the one hand — without going to a lot of high taxes on the other. That’s their Reaganesque game plan.”

Citrin said Democratic attacks on wealthy candidates like Romney and Bush as being unlikely “fat cat” poverty crusaders may not hold water.

Democrats have no dearth of rich party members — the Kennedys, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein among them — who have successfully raised the issue, as have billionaire politicians like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has been both a Democrat and a Republican and is now an independent.

“I don’t think you have to be poor to talk about poverty, or a minority to talk about minority rights,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Still, regarding Romney and Bush specifically, “it feels like a pretty quick shift,” especially considering some of their more recent public comments lambasting Democrats and President Obama on income-inequality issues, which have been defined by some disapproving conservative Republicans as “redistributing wealth.”

While raising the issue could help both Republicans reach some low-income Southern and Bible Belt supporters, it may not help them expand their appeal to traditionally Democratic Latinos and African Americans, Levinson said.

Levinson also noted that the theme may not be a winner with some of the most influential decision-makers when it comes to the 2016 GOP nominee. “In every campaign, you’re talking to voters — and donors,” Levinson said. Kashkari had to confront a question that both Romney and Bush will soon face, she said: “Is talking about poverty music to Republican donors’ ears?”

Carla Marinucci is senior political writer at The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: [email protected] Twitter: @cmarinucci

Harris has been laying the tracks for a Senate race for a long time

By CATHLEEN DECKER contact the reporter February 1, 2015

In the real world, Kamala Harris' campaign for the U.S. Senate began just two weeks ago, days after Barbara Boxer's Jan. 8 announcement that she would retire in 2016. In the political world, her preparations for the race have been apparent for a long time.

Last fall, for example. The Democratic attorney general spent close to $1.5 million in the first 18 days of October — the last calculations available — and most of it went to the airwaves.

That level of spending certainly was not necessary for Harris to eke out a victory over Ronald Gold, a Republican who spent less than $17,000 over the same period. Don't remember Ronald Gold? Voters didn't, either. Harris won by 15 percentage points.

California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, a candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks at UCLA on Jan. 30. Her preparations for the 2016 race have been apparent for a long time. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

That money was spent to craft an image for Harris for a campaign that her strategists could not yet see but knew was coming, like a train whistling closer but still around the bend. Boxer and her Senate colleague Dianne Feinstein, both elected in 1992, were seen as potential retirees in 2016 and 2018, respectively. Jerry Brown was running for his last term as governor, offering an opening there in 2018.

The message in Harris' television ads provides something of a road map for what we might see in the upcoming Senate race. The contours of the contest are not fully known — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa may yet jump in, and Harris is untested in a big race — but the basic argument forwarded by her will probably not change.

Her messaging also suggests that the image crafted for female candidates now, two decades removed from the Year of the Woman in which Boxer and Feinstein won their seats, is not terribly different from how images were crafted then. It's also not terribly different from the way that men frame their images, apart from a more overt emphasis on toughness. Harris' ads show her from two perspectives. One starts in a courtroom.

"As attorney general, Harris aggressively prosecuted creditors who victimized the vulnerable," a male narrator intones. "Harris cracked down on sexual trafficking of women and children into California, took on the transnational gangs, prosecuted sexual assaults and enforced laws requiring equal pay for equal work."

Sen. Barbara Boxer's announcement that she will not seek reelection put an end to years of frustration on the part of a younger generation of California politicians who can now start elbowing their way upward in the state's first wide-open U.S. Senate race since 1992. California's strongly...

As short-and-sweet biography goes, that covers a lot of bases, many of them affecting women, the majority of the state's voters and a huge majority of the state's Democratic voters. It exudes toughness —wouldn't you have to be to take on transnational gangs? — but ends on a human note, Harris walking away from the audience down a courtroom hallway, holding the hand of a child. Presumably, a child who needs her protection.

A second ad flipped the toughness-and-humanity visuals, showing Harris seated at a table with young kids but speaking firmly.

"As prosecutors we always start with the chain of evidence," she says. "The evidence is clear. If you are chronically truant from elementary school, you are four times more likely to drop out and to become a perpetrator or a victim of crime. That's why we're taking on the truancy crisis in the California Department of Justice. By stopping crime before it starts, we can save billions and we can save lives."

Note that Harris doesn't say "by stopping truancy" but "by stopping crime" — an emphasis that historically has been more in the Republican wheelhouse. But the human element is there too, in the high-fives she exchanges with the kids, everyone smiling.

It echoes, less dramatically, the ad that put women on the map politically in California, the ad that lofted Feinstein from being almost unknown outside her home base of San Francisco to winning the Democratic nomination for governor in 1990. She lost that campaign, but the image she defined eased her way to a Senate victory two years later, much as Harris clearly hopes her attorney general ads will boost her campaign for a seat in Washington.

In the annals of California political advertising, a Dianne Feinstein TV commercial known as "The Grabber" is in a league of its own. ( Shelby Grad ) Feinstein's ad opened with video footage of the awful moments in 1978 when Feinstein had to announce to San Francisco that Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had been assassinated. Feinstein had become, in that moment, the city's ranking political authority.

"Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot … and killed," Feinstein says. Around her, San Franciscans stood, some stunned, some groaning, one woman screaming. Feinstein herself is calm.

If the first moments, and the words "forged from tragedy," wielded a punch, so did the tagline, which Feinstein strategist Bill Carrick said at the time was the candidate's description of herself: "Tough and caring."

In some ways, any Democrat running today may have it easier. Feinstein, in her early campaigns, faced fierce Democratic primaries and tough Republican opposition. The state is now far more Democratic in its voting habits, with far more female and minority voters. (Harris, whose mother is Indian and father Jamaican, checks both boxes.) It's hard to conjure a powerful Republican opponent for Harris; her toughest competition would look to be fellow Democrat Villaraigosa.

Though he entered office dancing with optimism, Villaraigosa had the bad luck to serve as mayor during tough economic times, never a source of goodwill for politicians. But if he does run, Villaraigosa can be expected to adopt some version of the theme of his winning campaign ads, his version of tough and caring.

"Hands-on leadership, straight from the heart," the ads declared.

Swalwell rejects Senate run, endorses Harris

By Carla Marinucci Updated 4:23 pm, Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Photo: Greg Kahn, Special To The Chronicle Congressman Eric Swalwell, right, talks with Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, left, during a meeting at Congressman Swalwell's office on Feb. 4, 2014 in the Cannon Building in Washington, D.C.

East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell, who strongly hinted he was considering a 2016 run for Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, has instead endorsed Kamala Harris for the job, adding to the growing ranks of Democrats backing the California attorney general.

Swalwell joins Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Cory Booker of New Jersey, along with Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee as early endorsers of Harris, fast solidifying her support for the seat to be vacated by Boxer, who announced her upcoming retirement this month.

Swalwell, like Harris, is a former prosecutor from the Alameda County district attorney’s office. He told The Chronicle on Wednesday he was “thrilled” to support “a good friend” who was an early backer of his own 2014 re-election bid.

Though they did not work in Oakland at the same time, “there’s a special bond among the alums of that office,” Swalwell said, adding that Harris has been both “innovative and effective” on key crime issues, including crime prevention and consumer and environmental protection as the state’s top cop. 'Leadership we need’

“She is a very strong force for the leadership we need in California and in the U.S. Senate,” Swalwell said.

Swalwell, 34, a prodigious fundraiser and one of the youngest members of Congress, said he has pledged to head up Harris’ campaign fundraising and outreach to young professional and Millennial voters in California.

“I’m concerned about the next generation of Californians and who is going to be their voice — and she’s in touch with that,” he said.

“She understands that right now, although we’re seeing the tech boom across our state, it’s not reaching everybody and there are still many unconnected and disconnected from that economy,” he said. “She has a message that she is going to speak for all Californians — and for me, that’s really important.”

Boxer, who has held the seat since 1992, set off a flurry of speculation about possible candidates earlier this month when she announced her decision to retire at the end of her term.

Building support

The move by Swalwell could be the harbinger of a groundswell for Harris in what is expected to be a crowded field.

Already, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has said he is “seriously” interested in the post and billionaire hedge fund activist Tom Steyer has recently laid out a possible agenda for the seat, even suggesting he would be open to serving just one term. Steyer has said he would decide soon on a run, but other possible Democrats could include Reps. Loretta Sanchez and Xavier Becerra, both from Southern California.

Swalwell’s decision to support Harris suggests it is unlikely that former East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher — Swalwell’s House mentor and longtime friend — will get into the race, as has been speculated. Former Southern California Rep. Jane Harman, who made an unsuccessful 1998 bid for California governor, has also been mentioned as a possible candidate.

Swalwell’s decision to back out of a Senate race he never officially entered comes just weeks after he was handily re-elected to a second term in the 15th Congressional District.

Key positions Swalwell, 34, became one of the youngest member of Congress when he defeated 20-term Rep. Pete Stark, 80, in 2012. The congressman has been named by House Democrats to be a point person on the party’s communications committee, to reach out to younger voters.

A member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Swalwell was also recently named to a plum position on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in making the appointment, cited Swalwell’s “determined leadership and energetic, fresh perspective.”

Carla Marinucci is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: [email protected]

Odds of gas-tax hike grow with quiet support of GOP senators

Photo: Tim Hussin / Special To The Chronicle Tsegni Berhe of San Francisco fills up his truck at the Arco station on Divisadero Street on Friday.

Photo: Michael Short / The Chronicle Santa Rosa Rep. Jared Huffman (center) said a few Republicans have “quietly said they’d be open” to changing the calculation of the gas tax to reflect the carbon content of various fuels over their life cycle. But he won’t name them because “I don’t want to get them into trouble.”

With Washington’s most famous climate-change skeptic expressing interest in raising the federal gasoline tax, Bay Area Rep. Jared Huffman sees an opening to grab the brass ring of the environmental movement: a tax on carbon.

Taxing gasoline is, after all, a form of taxing carbon — a step that environmentalists believe could reduce America’s global-warming emissions. Huffman reasons that if Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, who once wrote a book calling climate change “The Greatest Hoax,” can get Washington talking about raising the gas levy, it’s a good time to make the tax a little more sophisticated so it reflects the carbon content of all fuels. The San Rafael Democrat said a few Republicans have “quietly said they’d be open” to changing the calculation of the gas tax to reflect the carbon content of various fuels over their life cycle. But he won’t name them because “I don’t want to get them into trouble.”

With gas prices plunging, “it’s absolutely just a no-brainer that we should do it,” said Dan Kammen, co- director of the UC Berkeley Institute of the Environment and former chief technical specialist for renewable energy at the World Bank. “What Jared is doing makes perfect sense.”

A carbon tax is about the last thing most Republicans in Congress would embrace in public. But suddenly confronted with the necessity of paying for repairs to crumbling highways and bridges, Inhofe is among several who have said they would consider raising the federal gasoline tax.

The gas tax is the main source of money for federal transportation projects, but has been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993 and produces increasingly less revenue as cars become more fuel efficient.

When gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon, raising the tax was tantamount to political suicide in both parties. But since gas has plunged to just over $2 a gallon nationally, and about $2.50 in California, a tax increase would be far less noticeable.

May deadline

Republicans face a May deadline when the federal Highway Trust Fund will run out of money because falling gas tax revenue will leave a $100 billion hole in highway and transit funding over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Senate committee in charge of the issue, Environment and Public Works, is now chaired by Inhofe, who replaced California Democrat Barbara Boxer this month when the GOP assumed majority control.

'One of the options’

Inhofe said raising the gas tax is “clearly one of the options” to fix roads and bridges. Two other Senate Republicans with leadership responsibilities in the area, Orrin Hatch of Utah and John Thune of South Dakota said they were open to the idea, and GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, a former mayor fed up with Congress’ refusal to pay for road and bridge upkeep, has sponsored a bill to raise the tax.

Conservative groups have mobilized to kill the idea.

“It’s a little bit of a shock to us that it’s happening and it’s coming from Republicans,” said Diana Banister, director of Citizens for the Republic, a conservative political action committee. The influential Club for Growth warned Republican leaders last week not to touch the gas tax, saying that while rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure is a top priority, highway projects should be returned to the states.

But borrowing from former President Ronald Reagan’s playbook, Inhofe has called the gas tax a user fee. Reagan won a gas tax increase in the 1980s, arguing that taxing the users of public services where possible makes sense, and that a gas-tax increase would cost the average driver less than a new pair of shock absorbers.

Changing the tax Huffman’s bill, introduced last week mainly as a discussion point, would tax gasoline and other fuels based on their life cycle for carbon emissions.

Gasoline, corn ethanol and biofuels made from urban or agricultural waste have wildly different carbon emissions over their “well-to-wheel” lives. Even the carbon content of power for electric cars can vary dramatically, Kammen said. A car charged by a coal plant in Wyoming will have much higher emissions than a car charged by a solar plant in California.

“Our mixture of fuels is changing pretty dramatically,” Kammen said. “It’s not just about the physical amount of liquid in your tank.”

Calculating fuel taxes based on their life cycle for carbon emissions is much more complex than the current flat tax on gasoline, but California and the Environmental Protection Agency already have developed such measures. A tax that reflects the carbon content of various fuels “will lead you down different roads in the long term,” Kammen said.

All quiet in California

On Jan. 1, California began imposing a form of carbon tax on gasoline as it brought transportation fuels under its cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Despite organized opposition from the oil industry, the transition occurred with little outcry from motorists.

For one thing, no one noticed because gas prices were plunging, and for another, the move has had no discernible effect on gas prices, said Dave Clegern, spokesman for the state’s Air Resources Board, which runs the cap-and-trade system.

“Right after Jan. 1, the price went up a couple of pennies in some places and down a couple pennies in some places,” Clegern said. Whether refineries pass the added cost to consumers is up to them, but Clegern noted that emissions prices have remained quite low, at about $12 a ton of carbon.

With a range of vehicles now coming to market powered by electricity, natural gas and a wide range of biofuels, Huffman said it makes sense to change the gas tax to reflect the total carbon content of fuels.

“We’re going to use less gasoline in the next 10 years and in the next 20 than we have in the past,” Huffman said. “But our infrastructure funding needs are going to stay the same, if not grow. We have to think beyond this completely gasoline-based revenue stream.”

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. E-mail: [email protected]

OPINION Introduce urban Californians to what John Muir sought to protect

By Glen M. MacDonald

Published 3:00 pm, Friday, January 9, 2015

The pioneering environmentalist John Muir was no fan of cities. In 1868, he hightailed it out of San Francisco as fast as he could for the Sierra Nevada. He later referred to Los Angeles as “that handsome conceited little town” and similarly skedaddled away pronto to the San Gabriel Mountains.

Yet it was in Los Angeles, on Christmas Eve 100 years ago, that Muir took leave of this world. A century after Muir’s death, will the cities of California serve as the graveyard of his legacy or a place of rebirth?

Muir was focused on the preservation of nature. “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world — the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness,” he wrote. To him, a place like Yosemite was the “people’s cathedral” and he had faith that if people experienced it, they would become converts to the cause of preserving wilderness. He felt that the national park system was the only sure way to protect these sacred places.

Today, 95 percent of Californians live in urban areas. Some projections suggest that overall visitor numbers to our national parks will decline over the next century, despite a rise in total population. Membership in environmental advocacy groups such as the Sierra Club (which was founded by Muir) and the Nature Conservancy is overwhelmingly white and aging. The constituency for conservation as we have known it is melting away.

If we want to preserve America’s appreciation of nature and support for wilderness preservation, we must focus on cities and those who live in them. What easier way is there to expose people to nature than right in their own backyards? When I was a boy, my parents took me to Yosemite and it made an impression, but I spent more time at home in San Jose playing along the banks of Penitencia Creek in Alum Rock Park and Coyote Creek in Kelley Park. This inspired a love of nature and a life devoted to working on the environment.

If cash-strapped agencies work together, they can afford to conserve land that is accessible for urban populations. Take the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Through a joint partnership of federal, state and local government and private parties, 450,000 acres have been put aside for conservation and recreational uses. This has been done incrementally over a 36- year period and costs are shared between the partners. Thanks to these efforts, mountain lions again roam the hills above Hollywood.

Millions of visitors also have easy access to diverse communities of plants, birds, mammals and fish at places such as San Bruno Mountain State Park in the midst of the San Francisco Peninsula, and the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy and Coyote Creek Trail that run through the very heart of Silicon Valley in San Jose. San Bruno Mountain is a refuge for endangered butterflies such as the San Bruno Elfin, Mission Blue, Callippe Silverspot, and Bay Checkerspot, while chinook salmon migrate up the Guadalupe River. Other charismatic species such as the California beaver, wild turkey and gray fox have been newly sighted roaming San Jose’s riverside parks.

If you conserve it, will urban residents come? In 2013, the Santa Monica National Recreation Area had 633,000 visitors and San Bruno Mountain had just over 55,000. A good start, but these are urban areas with a combined total population of more than 20 million people. Clearly, more needs to be done to engage people with the natural world in the midst of the city. Several organizations are leading the way, such as Outdoor Afro with its local nature hikes to the redwood groves above Oakland and the Santa Monica Mountains. Or the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, with its new three-and-a-half acres of Nature Garden in the heart of L.A.. Even Muir’s Sierra Club has joined the effort with its Inner City Outings program.

By expanding on Muir’s vision to value and explore the nature that is right here in our cities, we just might be able to build a new constituency and preserve his legacy. In the 21st century, the fate of nature in California is more likely to be determined by the young Hispanic girl who becomes fascinated by a butterfly in a reclaimed brownfield than by John Muir and the distant peaks of Yosemite.

Glen MacDonald is the John Muir Memorial Chair and Distinguished Professor of Geography at UCLA. He wrote this for Thinking L.A., a project of UCLA and Zócalo Public Square. To comment, submit your letter to the editor at www.sfgate.com/submissions/#1