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⏱️ 8-minute read
Worst Week In California Politics
Some weeks, the medal stand practically fills itself.
This time around we have a lucrative public job ending almost as quickly as it began, a statewide tax campaign discovering that even some California Democrats have limits, a big-city incumbent getting squeezed by forces on her own side, and a governor learning the danger of declaring victory before you actually have the votes.
As always, these choices are subjective. Feel free to rearrange the podium, complain about the judging or nominate someone whose miserable week escaped our attention.
Let’s get to the podium!
Honorable Mention — Former Sausalito City Manager Elaine Forbes
Elaine Forbes is making a return appearance. She previously earned a medal after authorities allegedly found her barefoot aboard a 66-foot yacht that was not hers [ [link removed] ]⁠, with empty alcohol bottles and clothing strewn around. She had reportedly been blowing the horn, manipulating the boat’s controls and was accused of taking the owner’s clothing. Forbes later pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges.
This week brought the next chapter. On September 1, Sausalito announced that Forbes had resigned as city manager [ [link removed] ]⁠. She had started the lucrative job on July 1. Barely two months later, after one of the stranger arrests involving a California public official in recent memory, the job was gone.
The city said Forbes is stepping away to focus on her health and healing. Fair enough. But it is still quite a way to turn a prestigious new job into a spectacularly short tenure.
For following up an arrest that already landed her on this list by now resigning from the job she had barely started, Elaine Forbes earns an Honorable Mention.
🥉 Bronze Medal — Dave Regan and the Yes on Proposition 40 Campaign
There are tax increases. There are California tax increases. And then there are tax increases so aggressive that even the Democratic Party of San Francisco says: enough.
That is where Dave Regan and the Yes on Proposition 40 campaign find themselves.
Regan, the longtime president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, is one of the principal forces behind Proposition 40, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on Californians with more than $1 billion in assets [ [link removed] ]⁠, with most of the money earmarked for health care. His union backs it, and the California Democratic Party endorsed it. This is not some fringe proposal circulating on a clipboard outside a farmers market.
And yet the San Francisco Democratic Party voted overwhelmingly to oppose it [ [link removed] ]⁠.
Think about that. San Francisco Democrats were asked whether California should slap a new tax on billionaires, and 17 voted no while only four voted yes. For a campaign built around the idea that billionaires are undertaxed, losing the Democratic Party of San Francisco is almost performance art.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Xavier Becerra oppose Proposition 40 [ [link removed] ]⁠. The opposition list also includes the California Teachers Association, California Medical Association, California Professional Firefighters, California School Boards Association and the State Building and Construction Trades Council.
Apparently “tax the billionaires” works better as a slogan than as tax policy.
Regan’s campaign also has a money problem, which is admittedly funny for a campaign whose purpose is taking money from billionaires. Opponents have raised well over $100 million [ [link removed] ]⁠ and are preparing to bury the measure under an enormous advertising campaign. The Yes side acknowledges it cannot compete dollar for dollar and will rely heavily on union organizing.
Even winning a majority may not be enough. Two competing measures, Propositions 41 and 42, could potentially prevent Proposition 40 from taking effect [ [link removed] ]⁠ if either receives more votes.
So Regan has major Democratic politicians and important labor and professional organizations against him. San Francisco Democrats are against him. A nine-figure opposition campaign is coming at him, with two competing measures waiting on the ballot.
That is not exactly the coalition you draw up at the kickoff meeting.
For managing to make a billionaire tax too much even for the Democratic Party of San Francisco, while being badly outgunned financially and boxed in by competing measures, Dave Regan and the Yes on Proposition 40 campaign take home this week’s Bronze Medal.
🥈 Silver Medal — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass
Karen Bass has spent most of her political life well to the left of the average American. She traveled to Cuba repeatedly as a young activist, worked with the Venceremos Brigade and, when Fidel Castro died, initially referred to him by the revolutionary honorific “Comandante en Jefe.” And yet Karen Bass has managed to get outflanked on the left — in Los Angeles, by socialists.
Bass is running for reelection against City Councilmember Nithya Raman, and this week Raman landed two endorsements that should make the mayor uncomfortable. The first came from UNITE HERE Local 11 [ [link removed] ]⁠, the powerful hotel and hospitality workers union representing roughly 30,000 workers in Southern California. Local 11 is not a paper endorsement operation. Its members knock on doors, make calls and turn out voters. Now they are doing it for Raman.
The union has had its differences with Bass, including over a higher minimum wage for hotel and airport workers and the mayor’s approach to short-term rentals ahead of the Olympics. Whatever the reasons, the political reality is simple: A major Los Angeles labor organization that could have been helping reelect Bass is instead trying to defeat her.
Then came the Democratic Socialists of America. DSA-LA announced Wednesday that its members had overwhelmingly endorsed Raman [ [link removed] ]⁠, giving her another organization capable of producing volunteers, money and bodies on the ground. There is something almost impressive about this. Bass came out of the activist left, represented one of the most liberal congressional districts in America and has spent decades identified with progressive causes. Apparently that still was not enough for a meaningful chunk of the Los Angeles left.
Raman admittedly has the stronger claim on the socialist lane. She has been a DSA member since before her first City Council campaign and generally positions herself to Bass’s left. DSA-LA did not even endorse Raman in the June primary, partly because some members considered her insufficiently reliable. Faced with Raman or Bass in November, though, the socialists took another look and decided Raman would do. That has to sting.
Bass still has substantial organized-labor support and could certainly win reelection. But she spent this week watching two organizations with real political muscle announce that they would rather have somebody else running Los Angeles.
All of this comes while Bass continues presiding over homelessness, housing shortages, budget pressures, public safety problems, Olympic preparations and the ordinary dysfunction that comes with governing Clusterfuckistan. Most mayors would consider that enough. Bass got two more headaches for free.
For losing both a powerful labor union and the Democratic Socialists to her opponent in the same week — and discovering that even Karen Bass can be outflanked on the left in Los Angeles — Mayor Karen Bass wins this week’s Silver Medal.
🥇 Gold Medal — Governor Gavin Newsom
Gavin Newsom wanted to finish his final regular legislative session as governor with one more big Sacramento deal.
The problem he was trying to solve was real. California utilities face enormous financial exposure when their equipment causes catastrophic wildfires. Newsom warned that without changes to the liability system, another major fire could threaten utility solvency, drive electric rates even higher and potentially produce another PG&E-style bankruptcy.
So Newsom went big. His original proposal would have substantially reduced utility liability after major fires, including limiting what insurance companies could recover from them. Fire victims, insurers, consumer advocates and plenty of legislators hated the idea. They argued it shifted too much of the burden away from utilities.
Newsom could not get it through.
By the final days of the session, most of his original proposal was gone. Newsom nevertheless managed to negotiate what his office proudly announced on Saturday, August 29, as a “three-party compromise” [ [link removed] ]⁠ with legislative leaders. He praised the package as “real progress” [ [link removed] ]⁠ and touted protections for wildfire victims, restrictions on utility executive bonuses and a statewide wildfire strategy.
It was not the sweeping liability reform he originally wanted. But this was Sacramento. Declare victory, issue the press release and move on.
Except the Legislature had not actually passed it.
Lawmakers extended their session into September to finish the deal, and Newsom personally returned to the Capitol as negotiations continued. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas ultimately refused even to put the measure up for a vote [ [link removed] ]⁠, dismissing the package as a collection of “half measures.”
That was that.
Newsom had spent weeks negotiating a major end-of-session agreement and publicly announced the compromise as progress. Then he watched his fellow Democrats in the Assembly kill it without so much as a floor vote.
Things got awkward from there. After the deal collapsed, Newsom released a statement saying California could not settle for “half measures” — essentially adopting the same criticism Rivas had just used to kill the compromise Newsom himself had been celebrating three days earlier.
Apparently “real progress” has a very short shelf life in Sacramento.
The failure had immediate consequences. The next day, PG&E announced it would defer roughly $2 billion in planned California investment for 2027 [ [link removed] ]⁠, including money for new housing connections and renewable-energy projects. The company said California’s unresolved wildfire-liability system forced it to conserve capital and reduce borrowing.
That is quite a kicker. Newsom’s deal was supposed to bring financial stability to California’s utilities. Instead, it died, and one of the state’s largest utilities promptly announced it would spend $2 billion less on the housing and clean-energy infrastructure Newsom says California desperately needs.
Newsom’s week was not improving outside California, either.
Chris Cillizza, the veteran political analyst who spent years at CNN and The Washington Post and now has a large independent audience on Substack, YouTube and X, published his latest ranking of Democrats most likely to win the 2028 presidential nomination [ [link removed] ]⁠. For much of this year, Newsom had occupied the No. 1 spot.
Not anymore.
Cillizza dropped Newsom to third, behind Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, writing that Newsom has “failed to consolidate his position as the race’s frontrunner.” Newsom may be traveling the country and positioning himself for 2028, but one prominent handicapper who once had him leading the field thinks he is losing altitude.
There is a larger political story here. Newsom has spent nearly eight years mastering the Sacramento end-of-session jam: negotiate behind closed doors, unveil the deal at the last possible moment, then dare Democratic legislators not to give the governor what he wants.
This time, they dared.
Newsom tried to close out his final regular legislative session with one last big deal. His original proposal was gutted. His compromise was rejected. PG&E immediately pulled back billions in planned investment, while a prominent national political analyst knocked him from first to third in the 2028 Democratic field.
For trying to cap his final legislative session with a signature wildfire deal, only to watch his own Democratic Legislature refuse even to vote on it — while his presidential stock headed in the wrong direction — Gavin Newsom officially had the worst week in California politics, taking home this week’s Gold Medal.
This Week’s “Winners” Collect Their Medals…
This week’s honorees covered a pretty broad spectrum of political failure.
One discovered that a spectacularly bad first impression can eventually catch up with a lucrative public job. Another learned that building a campaign around taxing billionaires does not guarantee applause from California Democrats. A third found out there is always somebody further to the left. And our Gold Medalist learned that announcing “real progress” before the votes are actually there can age badly in a hurry.
That is all for this week. The medals have been awarded, the podium is cleared, and California politics can get back to creating next week’s nominees.
-JSF

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