Scott Shafer: Also, Donald Trump’s legal problems are piling up, but that didn’t stop the Republican Party in California from changing its delegate allocation rules for the March presidential primary in a way that will likely benefit who else? The former president. And that’s where we’re going to begin today. That meeting of the Republican Party in Irvine this past weekend. It was covered by L.A. Times reporter Seema Mehta, who joins us now. Hey, Seema.
Seema Mehta: Hey, thanks for having me on.
Scott Shafer: So before we get to that delegate issue, let’s talk about what happened today in Washington. Of course, former president pleading not guilty to these charges that he conspired to stay in office even though he knew the election had been lost to Joe Biden. What is your sense of, you know, what are you hearing from Republicans or others in California? Anything that might surprise us? Or is it sort of like the talking points.
Seema Mehta: What we’ve seen, you know, all along, which is for his fans, for his base, they don’t they believe this is all which they don’t. They that he was many of them still believe he actually won the election, which we all know he did not. And, you know, this is also the third set of charges that he’s been in that alone. And that hasn’t put any sort of, you know, dent in his popularity. So it’ll be awesome to see how it unfolds. And, you know, there’s also still one more case out there in Georgia. But if it’s what we’ve seen to date, it probably won’t have much of an impact on his popularity among many Republican voters.
Guy Marzorati: And that’s been true here in California, too. I mean, he’s had a wide lead over DeSantis in state polling as well. Scott, you talked to someone this week who was happy to speak out about the indictments, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, the speaker emerita was in San Francisco. This was a celebration of the 150th year of the cable car. And afterwards, she had a little scrum with reporters. And of course, people did ask her about these latest charges against Trump. And, you know, she didn’t surprisingly didn’t want to get into the politics too much. But she you know, she was really proud, I think, of the committee, the January 6th committee that she created when she was still Speaker that investigated. They didn’t have, of course, the indictment power, but they pretty much, you know, created a roadmap that the Department of Justice and the special prosecutor, you know, Jack Smith, used to hand down this indictment this week. And so that was really her focus.
I mean, she did say she couldn’t help herself, that, you know, the Republican Party has sort of dragged itself into the mud on this and, you know, like seem, as you said, I don’t think she sees any change in that sentiment, at least not in the short term.
Guy Marzorati: And speaking of the party Seema, you were down in Irvine last weekend for a meeting of state party officials. And really the focus seemed to be about the the upcoming presidential primary here in California. It’s moving up for a presidential year to March. What were some of the changes that the delegates that the leaders of the state Republican Party were debating?
Seema Mehta: Well, because our primaries taking place earlier than it often does, and it’s taking place March 5th. The state Republican Party’s rules in terms of delegate delicate allocation have to align with RNC rules for early states. And this is a little in the weeds but one of those one of those requirements is having some proportionality in how you how you allocate your delegates. California has 169 delegates to the Republican nominating convention, the most of any state in the nation.
So even though the California Republican Party has not had very many successes statewide in California, and their numbers have obviously dwindled in terms of registered voters, they do have some clout when it comes to nominating, you know, a presidential nominee. So they had to change the way they sort of give out the states delegates. In the past, you know, we have currently have fifty-two congressional districts. We have 53. In the past, most of the delegates were allocated by congressional districts. And for each district, you’d get three delegates, which that was. There’s a rule change put in place about 20 years ago, which was meant to make the state more competitive, because, as you know, California is so big, it’s so expensive to campaign here. We have some of the most expensive media markets in the world.
So this delegate by a district by district strategy was meant that, you know, if a campaign doesn’t have the money necessary to advertise statewide here, that they could, you know, sort of strategically select the districts that they think have the best shot in. It could be the ones that most match their, you know, their background, their you know, their policy positions. Or one of the fun things was if you look at a district like San Francisco, like Nancy Pelosi’s district or a district in L.A., these districts have very few Republicans. But you’d get the same three delegates from that as you would from like Kevin McCarthy’s district. So that would have been interesting.
But because there was not proportionality, there was winner take all by district, had to change the rules. They debated a couple of different ways to do it. At the end, they went with if a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, that he or she will receive all 169 delegates. If no one hits the 50% mark, then the delegates will be allocated proportionally based on the statewide vote. But by making it a statewide vote, it just makes it so expensive to compete here. And it’s a lot of people fear that a lot of the candidates just what they won’t even bother, because, you know, we’re in a Super Tuesday with more than a dozen other states. And, you know, to have the resources to invest here, it’s it’s really expensive.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, it is. And of course, the most likely person to benefit, as we said, is Donald Trump there on the Berkeley IGs poll in May that showed Trump leading DeSantis, who was in second place, 44 to 26%. That might change a little bit one way or the other. But, you know, assuming Donald Trump doesn’t hit 50, let’s suppose, you know, lightning strikes and all these charges begin to pile up or somebody gets traction and takes votes away. What happens then if nobody hits 50% plus one?
Seema Mehta: Well, I mean, so actually the former president’s campaign may pushed for this because they believe, based on polling, that he can hit the 50. But if he doesn’t hit 50% plus one, then the delegates will be allocated proportionately. So say somebody gets 40% of vote, somebody gets 20% of it, then you get 40% of delegates, 20% of the delegates. What the polling shows right now, I mean, he would still look like a substantial number of delegates. But, you know, obviously they hit their goal is to to get across that 50% mark, because in banking, 169 delegates, you know, in early March is like that goes a long way toward securing the nomination.
Guy Marzorati: And so is that really what’s behind the national party pushing this? They don’t want winner-take-all so early in the calendar where you could just amass a lot of delegates and potentially not draw out the primary contests?
Seema Mehta: Right, I mean, it’s supposed to … allow the debate about the nomination to continue for a little bit and not have it sewn up, you know, within a couple of weeks or months. And the other interesting thing is, you know, although our primary is March 5th, as you know, we all get our vote by mail ballots and those go out like in early February. So Californians will be voting not that long after people in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Scott Shafer: As you reported, there was quite a bit of division within the party or at least some, and it got pretty vocal. Describe what the divide was there. Was a between DeSantis and Trump people or some other faction?
Seema Mehta: It was really it was really confusing, honestly, because originally the state party was considering modifying their rules in another way. And I won’t get too into the weeds because it’s really it’s really in the weeds. But the way that they were initially doing it, backers of President Trump believed that it would harm him and would help Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The party ended up changing it because there was concern about how the delegates were allocated to this way that we just we just discussed, which, as I said, was backed by President Trump’s campaign.
But the Trump supporters and the protesters there, they weren’t happy for a number of reasons. First, there was confusion about how exactly what exactly is legal, how it is going impact the primary in delegates. Number two it was being voted on by the executive committee, which is made up of 100 leaders of the state party. And they wanted to see a voted on at the convention where more than 1400 delegates would have voted or would have a voice on it on the floor at the convention in place in late September, early October. And then they also wanted to see a floor so that if you say if you have a candidate who gets, you know, 4% of the vote, that that wouldn’t qualify for delegates. They didn’t have an exact number but they did want to see a floor like you have to have a minimum of X amount of support to get delegates. And the state party said that they had to act now because the RNC deadline is 8:59 p.m. on October 1st and the state Republican Party is meeting that weekend. So the vote, the start of a vote would take place less than 12 hours before this deadline. And if they don’t hit that deadline, they stand to lose half their delegates to the Republican National Convention, which is, that would be an enormous embarrassment.
Guy Marzorati: You’ve been to a lot of party junkets like this — the Medal of Valor is in the mail, we promise. But have you seen something like this? Have you seen it happen before where, as you described, it sounds like there was even, you know, violence or shoving or that breaking out in the in the meeting?
Seema Mehta: Yeah, I mean, there there are passionate people in both parties, and sometimes they get a little carried away. And in this case, like, you know, the protesters tried to enter a meeting room, which is the Marriott in Irvine. Security guards or police stopped them, cool tensions. And then later on, the two groups are out there. There’s sort of two factions who are, you know, chanting Trump, or American First and all that. And then one of them starts calling the other one white nationalist. And then the people who are being called white nationalists call the other group open border supporters, and then like they got in each other’s faces, like they’re, you know, winning, like wagging a finger in each other’s faces. And then they started kind of jostling and it looked like it was going to get get worse until some other protesters sort of stepped in between the two groups. So it was it was a very chaotic day.
Scott Shafer: You know, there is, I don’t know, conventional wisdom, I guess, that, you know, while Trump is the prohibitive favorite to win the nomination, he’s going to have a really hard time winning nationally. Although there was a New York Times poll this week showing him and Biden tied at 43. But I wonder if, you know, in quieter moments over a glass of, you know, whatever it is they drink. Do some of the party members, are they concerned that they’re really getting they’re putting their chips on a guy that can’t win in November?
Seema Mehta: Yes, there are people that are concerned about this. And there’s you know, as much as, you know, President Trump definitely has a large number of supporters here. There’s also a, you know, fairly vocal anti-Trump, anybody-but-Trump contingent. And a lot of them are really placing their bets on Ron DeSantis. But his campaign has really sputtered since he announced in May. I mean, I think a lot of the people who want a Trump alternative really had high hopes for him because of his leadership in Florida, in part because of his handling of the pandemic. And it’s since May. I mean, whether it’s money problems, you know, having to lay off a ton of your staff, making some unfortunate missteps, like saying were enslaved people learned skills that, you know, benefited them or supporting a curriculum that says that most recently. His numbers in the polls have not they’re not great against you know, President Trump is handily beating him in almost every poll.
So I do think that there is frustration, but there is not a they don’t they haven’t settled on who the alternative is, who they think could prevail in and get the nomination and then could be successful against Joe Biden. That said, you know, President Trump won in 2016 while two, that he would win. So, you know, we’d never say we have no idea what’s happening between now and November.
Guy Marzorati: Yeah, we’re out of the predictions business. Did this delegate process in California. Say anything to you about maybe where party leaders are and where they might be leaning more towards the former president or Ron DeSantis?
Seema Mehta: Well, I mean, the the state party is effectively controlled by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, even though not officially, but, you know, behind the scenes. And he, you know, has had I mean, I know he certainly has ups and downs with the president, but they’ve largely been allies for quite some time now. And McCarthy has used that to his advantage. For example, like David Valadao was one of the few Republicans who opposed Trump and that Trump didn’t go after him in terms of his reelection. And most people believe that is purely because because Kevin McCarthy was like, you know, let’s leave him alone, I need this district.
So I think, you know, there isn’t a number of people, you know, in 2016 who are not huge supporters of Trump who now say they are. But it’s it’s it’s yeah, I mean, there’s certain things they have to say. Otherwise, you know, they’re going to stand to lose standing or they and they all want they all want to be delegates at the convention and they want to stay in the graces of whoever the nominee is. And, you know, whoever the presidential next president is. So, you know, officially they’re, you know, not picking sides. But I think a lot of people do believe that, you know, that they support Trump and that they, you know, and that this rule change certainly benefits him.
Scott Shafer: Yeah. And, you know, it wasn’t that long ago maybe it was a while ago now. But, you know, the party did used to have a healthy, moderate contingent. You know, when Duff Sundheim, for example, was the chair of the party, he’s still a Republican, I think. But there are you know, there really doesn’t seem to be any semblance of that voice in the party. They’ve just sort of like been drummed out or just gotten frustrated. I mean, you know, some of them joined the Lincoln Project. But, you know, that, you know, that’s not really what they probably prefer to be doing. They’d rather be part of a party.
Seema Mehta: Right. It’s it’s it has changed. The parties changed, but also the state has changed. And this also reflects national politics, which is Republican politics nationally have been overtaken by Trump. So that’s why you see some policies they support now that they probably wouldn’t have supported ten years ago. And if you remember, Arnold Schwarzenegger, last Republican governor, if he showed up at one of these events, he would be like loudly booed. And, you know, I mean, it would not be pretty — not that he would show up at one of these events — actually the last time he spoke at one of these events, he gave a sort of famous speech about how he told them that they were ‘dying at the box office’ because of their beliefs, so there are definitely fewer moderates in the party, both at the state level and also nationally.
Guy Marzorati: I think all three of us were there in 2016 in Burlingame at the state party meeting, the last time the former president, at that Trump was running for office, came and spoke before California Republicans. I don’t know if you remember this Seema, he had to go under the freeway — the fence off of 101 in order to enter the hotel from the back. But news came out shortly after these party rule changes that Trump is coming back to California.
Seema Mehta: As I said early the state Republican Party convention is in the fall, the end of September or early October. And he’s going to speak at the Friday luncheon, and those protests outside of Burlingame in 2016 were nuts. As I was writing one of my stories this week. I was looking for that picture, that image of him sort of crawling or, you know, clambering over this concrete divider and having to come in the hotel the back way. And there was a ton of protesters outside of that, and it got kind of physical and testy at times. You know, I remember getting caught between a police line and a line of protesters, and that was not fun. So I do wonder what the situation is going to look like in Anaheim.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, of course. Of course OC is a little different than San Francisco in terms of who’s going to get animated about something like that. But what does it mean to the state party to have Trump there? And DeSantis is going to go as well. What do they reap?
Seema Mehta: I’m sure there are going to be other presidential candidates. And it’s a huge sort of feather in their cap. I mean, it’ll excite their members. And as we said, they haven’t necessarily have much to be excited about in recent years in terms of their electoral success. So it will excite their members, it will excite donors and it’ll draw a ton of news. So, I mean, this is why one of the larger parties in recent and recent history, because just because of that. And I mean, if you remember back in the day they used to routinely get presidential candidates that Rick Perry, Chris Christie, all kinds of people. And recently they haven’t gotten as many. And so this will be I think this will be a very exciting convention.
Guy Marzorati: All that sounds really great for the state party leaders. Maybe not so great, though, for the California Republican House members in Orange County who have really tried to avoid anything having to do with Trump for the last few years. This convention in Anaheim, it’s happening two blocks from Michelle Steele’s district. What’s the outlook for for those kind of members with such a big circus coming to town?
Seema Mehta: Michelle Steel is in a little bit of a different spot because her husband is Shawn Steel and he’s California’s Republican National Committeeman. So, you know, when Trump arrived in California, they’ve greeted him on the tarmac. So that’s a little bit of a different case. But for some of these other people, like Scott Baugh who is running for that open Katie Porter seat and that’s a very, very tight district. I would be shocked if you saw him anywhere in the county, in southern California, anywhere near this thing.
Scott Shafer: Yeah. All right. Seema Mehta rom The L.A. Times, thanks so much.
Guy Marzorati: Thanks Seema.
Seema Mehta: Thank you.
Scott Shafer: All right. We’re going to take a short break now. And when we come back, we listened in on a conversation of voters in one of California’s largest cities about the politics of homelessness. And what we heard might surprise you. You’re listening to Political Breakdown from KQED Public Radio.
Scott Shafer: Welcome back to Political Breakdown. I’m Scott Shafer here with Guy Marzorati. And we’re going to shift gears right now. And, you know, there’s mayors in San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose are going to be facing reelection next year. You know, we’re never that far from another election. And top of mind for a lot of voters is homelessness and encampments.
Guy Marzorati: Yeah. And earlier this week, we got to be flies on the wall as a group of voters in San Jose participated in a focus group conversation about homelessness and the cost of housing. And Scott, this is like you mentioned, such a big issue for mayors facing reelection in 2024. It routinely comes up on polls as a top issue for voters all over California. So we wanted to hear from a few of those voters in San Jose, as we’ve seen a lot of the conversation around the response to homelessness shift from a conversation about money, about funding to now you’re seeing a lot of, you know, switching more towards kind of a law enforcement response. These encampment bans that are popping up in a lot of major cities in San Diego, one went into effect on Monday. Just today, San Jose’s mayor introduced a proposal to ban encampments around schools. So it’s definitely you know, the conversation is shifting in the political sense as we get closer to when a lot of these mayors are going to have to go back before voters and presumably show some results.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, And of course, Governor Newsom has also been very vocal about this. He’s done press conferences in San Francisco, wanted to clean up the all the encampments under like freeway on ramps and off ramps. And so, as you said, we wanted to get these voters together and we reached out to a organization that does a lot of this on issues, David Binder Research. And we found a handful of folks and tell us why focus groups are better than or not better than but different from polls. I mean, polls are very useful.
Guy Marzorati: Something we wanted to try out as kind of another reporting, you know, tool in our tool kit, so to speak. I think polling you get a sense from voters about maybe what issues are on their minds, what issues they’re hearing about. And you do routinely see homelessness as a top issue. But to hear actually voters talk through what kind of solutions they’d like to see, how, you know, when they say it’s a problem, how it’s actually, you know, affecting their life or, you know, how they’re thinking about it in a policy sense was interesting. And in a focus group, you are getting, you know, a bunch of people together kind of sounding off of each other. It’s not you know, we often do the man on the street, woman on the street. VOX You go up, ask someone a question, they’re not prepared for it. They’re, you know, maybe they give you 30 seconds. This was, you know, hour and a half of really just talking about housing affordability and homelessness in San Jose. And it started really with a discussion about, you know, folks entering homelessness, people who are experiencing homelessness in the community. You know, how does that process come about?
And I was a little bit surprised off the bat that we didn’t hear a lot of the myths that you often hear about homelessness. These, you know, oh, it’s warm in California. Oh, you know, the services that are offered are a magnet. You didn’t hear a lot of that. And I think this, you know, excerpt kind of speaks to that.
Focus group excerpt: I think housing is the problem. It’s expensive. To maintain an apartment or I mean, not only do you have your rent, but the utilities here are ridiculously high.
Guy Marzorati: So that was the first thing you heard ‘I think housing is the problem’ and you’ve seen that. I mean, I would point folks to this fascinating UCSF study that came out a few weeks ago that found 90% of people experiencing homelessness in California were living in California, two thirds of them born in California. So this is it’s not someone else’s problem.
Scott Shafer: And, you know, one of the things that came up during the conversation earlier this week with these voters, and we should say was a cross-section of voters from all over San Jose and different backgrounds, different kinds of professions. And one person was was unemployed. You know, a lot of discussion about, you know, maybe it would be smarter rather than trying to solve homelessness to prevent it. You know, if you can if you can keep people and so many people are living on the edge, they’re one disaster away from being evicted or not being able to pay the rent. And, you know, these folks really thought that through.
Guy Marzorati: Totally, and I think that prevention angle is interesting because we have seen there was a study out today or this week about Santa Clara County and the effects, the positive effects that homelessness prevention have had in terms of, you know, cash assistance or, you know, eviction protections, just an amount of money that may seem small that can prevent someone from falling into homelessness. Because another thing that, you know, this UCSF study pointed out was the time span people often have when they find out they’re evicted or find out they have to leave a family members house is really short. It could be one day, three days, and you have to totally plan your life is really difficult. But from a political standpoint, there’s something about prevention that it’s not seen. Right?
Scott Shafer: It’s the problem that didn’t happen.
Guy Marzorati: Right. Exactly. And I think that’s why we get to these discussions about encampments that you have seen politicians to turn to as far as making a show of clearing encampments. Another thing I, you know, that came up pretty early was the solutions part of this and to what extent these voters who may identify homelessness as a problem actually want to take part in a solution. And this often comes about in the context of would you like to see either temporary housing, affordable permanent housing built in your neighborhood? And we heard a lot of the same things that you hear anecdotally. There’s going to be, you know, crime. I’m worried about that. There’s going to be, you know, graffiti, debris. I’m worried about that. My property values are going to go down. And we’ve seen this in San Jose. I’ve done some reporting about temporary housing there and how a lot of the concerns don’t come to pass ultimately. But that was prevalent.
Scott Shafer: And, you know, we saw here in San Francisco, you know, very liberal city by and large when that navigation center was on on the books as a possible, you know, place to be cited down in South Beach, along the waterfront. A lot of criticism, huge numbers of people coming out to protest that it’s been up and running. And, you know, as I as we’ve reported from our housing desk, yeah, like you said, a lot of those problems have not come to pass. Most of them have not come to pass. You know, and I was surprised some people in this group, one person in particular even said, look, I’ve got two spare bedrooms in my house. You know, if we could somehow, you know, sort of clear people ahead of time, I’d be willing to rent my place out. Now, You know, I don’t know that if that would actually come to pass when push came to shove. But I think you did hear among these folks is some real compassion, you know, in wanting to solve the problem, not just punish folks who are experiencing homelessness.
Guy Marzorati: Yeah. And I think here’s where the turn happened, is when it started to be phrased as, okay, you’re upset about encampments in your neighborhood. What if these temporary housing or shelters that were built, if that was framed as an alternative to the encampments that you’re seeing when that idea was thrown out, when that message was thrown out, you heard a kind of change in the tone in the room.
Focus group excerpt: “I’d say yes, because it’s better than having tents everywhere. They have to keep them clean. And, you know, there have to be rules, you know, with it…But yeah, if they move them from the tents in the neighborhood to the temporary housing in the neighborhood, that helps your property value.”
Guy Marzorati: And I think there’s your messaging challenge for whether it’s London Breed, Matt Mahan, Todd, Gloria, all these mayors, in getting this housing built — framing it as, look, there are people experiencing homelessness in our community. They can be living in encampments or they can be in temporary housing. That kind of tradeoff might be more palatable for voters.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, And also, people talked about motels, hotel rooms that are vacant, you know, even tiny homes. I mean, it’s interesting because a number of these folks said, well, I don’t listen to the news. But they certainly seemed informed. I mean, they knew some of the intricacies of some of the policies that Mayor Mahan has been talking about down there in San Jose and, you know, very open to many things. But, of course, you know, one of the problems is just that it’s so expensive to build affordable housing. And where are you going to put like a sanctioned, you know, sort of
Guy Marzorati: RV encampment.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, exactly. You know, you see that kind of thing proposed and, you know, there’s organized and not so organized protests.
Guy Marzorati: And as I mentioned, the latest policy Mahan is putting forward that he announced on Thursday with a councilmember, a more progressive councilmember he often spars with is this idea of an encampment ban. One rolled out in San Diego as well. I know you’ve been following in San Francisco ongoing litigation around the idea of clearing encampments. And this was raised, you know, in the conversation with voters. And I was surprised how many of them were pretty honest in viewing this as not a real true solution and more of a Band-Aid.
Focus group excerpt: “Should the homeless encampments be cleaned out or it’s like, wait, what do you think? You all named a couple of services that… ‘Cleaned up, not out. Cleaned up not out? Yeah, I mean. Where are they going to go?”
Guy Marzorati: So that was interesting to hear voters kind of identify that as not really a true solution.
Scott Shafer: And of course, you know, San Francisco spends a lot of money. The state is, you know, spending a lot of money, at least when the state was flush with a big budget surplus. And now we’re coming into leaner times, you know, city budgets, county budgets, the state budget, there’s less money to go around. And so it’s going to be interesting to see like some of these programs that did get some traction, for example, during the pandemic project, Homekey, that sort of thing. What happens to those? And can they build on some of the successes that they’ve had? And how are voters either, you know, in here in the Bay Area and elsewhere are going to react?
Guy Marzorati: So what does this all mean for 2024? For one thing I’m really interested in following is to what extent do concerns about homelessness, so something you’d identify in a poll as a top issue actually translate into people becoming activated or feeling like, this is my issue and how I vote in a mayoral race is going to be really hinge on how this issue improves or doesn’t. And what we heard a lot of was people just feeling dispirited, people feeling, feeling defeated. It wasn’t that sense of I’m going to march in the streets about this. It’s you know, I think this cut kind of sums up a lot of what we heard from voters:
Focus group excerpt: “That’s kind of why it was sad to me because it is expensive to live here and we don’t know their circumstance, but there was kids that were clean and playing outside and and that’s how they live now, you know, and I wish there was a better solution, but it seems like it’s just a big problem right now.”
Guy Marzorati: So you hear that, you know, I’m sad about it. It seems like a big problem. Does that translate into mayors getting voted out? That’s I think what what I’ll be interested in watching.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, exactly. And we’re going to find that out probably sooner rather than later. As you said at the top, we said three elections coming up for mayor in San Jose, San Francisco,
Guy Marzorati: San Diego.
Scott Shafer: So we’ll get some answers. All right. Well, that’s going to do it for this edition of Political Breakdown. It’s a production of KQED Public Radio.
Guy Marzorati: Our engineer today is Jim Bennett. For more politics coverage from KQED subscribe to our newsletter at KQED.org/newsletters. I’m Guy Marzorati.
