🍊 🇺🇸 OC Conservative Brief - 2.17.23

Happy Friday morning, and welcome to the OC Conservative Brief, your weekly run down of Orange County's local politics from a conservative perspective. If you like what you read, please make sure to subscribe and forward to your friends. It's free!

Today we're digging into an Orange County Democrat's (second) attempt to remove the last three oil wells off the OC coast, Huntington Beach's latest fight with Sacramento (no, it's not about the Pride flag), an influential new assignment for Congresswoman Michelle Steel, and a few other bites of news that are worth sharing.

Pour a coffee (or a glass of wine if you're reading in the afternoon, it IS Friday after all), and let's get to it...

WELL OIL BE DAMNED! Democrat state Sen. David Min (D-SD37), who represents the bulk of central Orange County and is currently running for Congress to replace Congresswoman Katie Porter, is trying (again) to terminate all existing offshore oil drilling wells in California state waters...which would have serious implications for Orange County's economy and coastline.

First, some background. California has banned new offshore drilling leases for decades. There are currently only three active platforms in state waters....and they're all off the coast of Orange County (and they even have names: Eva, Emmy, and Esther).

• All three leases were issued by the state decades ago, and the state has continued to reauthorize their permits and allowed upgrades and drilling of new wells. The three rigs are still productive and profitable. Meanwhile, there are still 23 oil platforms off the California coast in federal waters.

Min's bill would terminate all existing leases by December 31, 2023, but would allow the state to pay the companies to walk away from their leases even earlier to cover decommissioning costs (which can range from tens to hundreds of millions of dollars), which the companies otherwise would have to pay out of pocket. 

Some Orange County Republicans aren't taking it lying down. Republican Assemblywoman Laurie Davies (R-AD74), whose district includes parts of southern Orange County, slammed the bill, arguing a ban would simply kill “high-quality union worker jobs." 

• Min says his bill is motivated by the 2021 Huntington Beach oil spill. But, as Davies also points out, Min's bill doesn't even address the suspected cause of that spill, a tanker ship anchor that struck the pipeline while waiting to unload its cargo in Long Beach.

It's unclear if Min's bill has a shot of passage, even in Democrat-controlled Sacramento. He introduced a similar bill last year, only to have it die in a committee run by Democrats amid concern about the taxpayer cost and opposition from the energy industry and trade worker unions.

In my opinion... Why is David Min spending time in Sacramento talking about taking even more power sources off-line when California's energy grid is already severely strained and gas currently costs north of $4.50?

SPEAKING OF LAURIE DAVIES... Did you catch the horribly cringe comments that CNN host Don Lemon made Thursday about Nikki Haley and when "a woman is considered to be in her prime"? 🤮 A LOT of women chimed in with their response, including our own Assemblywoman Davies. Tweet below, round of applause. 👏👏👏

HUNTINGTON HOUSING HICCUP... The new Republican majority on the Huntington Beach city council is wasting no time flexing its muscles, announcing this week a new legal fight against the state of California over its housing mandates.

Specifically, the state of California is mandating Huntington Beach zone for the construction of 13,368 new housing units by 2029, in what's known as a Regional Housing Needs Allocation, as part of the state's broader state-wide plan for more affordable housing. The city is fighting Sacramento's authority to impose such a mandate.

• Even more specifically, the city is also pushing a new city ordinance that would exempt Huntington Beach from the "builder's remedy" provision of California's Housing Accountability Act, which essentially allows developers to build new housing anyway if local governments don't comply with the mandates (here's an example of that provision in action in Orange.)

The city - which is still working on a plan for its housing allocation despite the legal challenge - is arguing that the builder's remedy provision is a "a reckless, blank check for developers" and that Huntington's housing future (or lack thereof) should be decided by the city, not by Sacramento.

The state of California is noticing. Not only did California Attorney General Rob Bonta send a letter to the city this week warning that their plans are illegal and threatening legal action, but Governor Gavin Newsom himself weighed in last December when asked about the rumored plans by a reporter:

• “When Californians ask why there isn’t enough housing, why the cost of renting continues to increase or why there are so many people experiencing homelessness, I tell them to look at Huntington Beach – another city where elected officials are resorting to cheap political stunts to avoid their responsibility to build desperately needed housing."

TAKING ON CHINA WITH STEEL... Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently announced the formation of a special new bipartisan Select Committee on China tasked with looking into both economic and national security between the U.S. and China. He invited Orange County Republican Congresswoman Michelle Steel (R-CA45) to be one of the just 13 Republicans and 11 Democrats on the Committee.

It's a big opportunity for Rep. Steel, a Korean-American and second term Congresswoman who will now play a prominent role investigating potentially hot topics, including the Chinese purchase of American agriculture land, spying, human rights abuses, and anti-competitive trade practices.

• For those of you who don't speak Washington, a "Select Committee" is a temporary committee authorized by Congress for a specific purpose or headline topic, like the Benghazi committee or the January 6th committee. In fact, the full name of the committee is the United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party

Keep an eye on Steel. If and when anything big comes the Committee's way, she will literally have a front-row seat.

That's not all that's on Steel's docket in this session of Congress, by the way. Steel also has a new seat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which writes and controls tax law. Before this Congress, the committee only had one Republican from the entire West Coast. Now it has two (but Steel will be the only Republican from California).

Steel has an extensive background in tax policy and reputation as a taxpayer advocate; she was elected to the California State Board of Equalization, which governs state tax administration, in 2006. According to her bio, Steel ran for that board after seeing how difficult it was for her mother, a Korean immigrant, to navigate California's tax lax.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🍊 The race for Orange County's Board of Supervisors 1st District seat is already underway, with two Republicans (former Assemblymember Van Tran and Westminster Councilmember Kimberly Ho) both announcing their campaigns on Wednesday morning. The seat for the 1st District, which includes Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley, and Garden Grove, is up for grabs in 2024; the current Supervisor Andrew Do, a Republican, is retiring due to term limits.

💵 With Ron DeSantis coming into town next month, the OC Register has an interesting piece explaining the political (read: FUNDRAISING) significance of DeSantis' event with the Orange County Republican Party next month. “Orange County is oftentimes considered an ATM machine for national candidates because millions of dollars are raised out of Orange County for national Republican candidates," says the former executive director of the OC GOP.

🐟 Some rare good news from Governor Gavin Newsom's office...after the state faced a torrent of (justified) criticism during last month's storms for not storing enough of the rain fall in reservoirs, Newsom announced he is suspending environmental regulations that dictate how much rainwater must be flowed back into rivers (to protect Chinook salmon and Delta smelt). The environmentalists are livid...which means it's probably good policy for California. 

🎲 Huntington Beach is getting monopolized! A Hasbro-approved Monopoly: Huntington Beach Edition is coming to stores this fall. The company has already issued Palm Springs, Napa Valley, and Sacramento versions, but this will be its Orange County debut. The company is even soliciting ideas from locals on what iconic Huntington Beach "properties" should be included on the board.

🏠 Orange County getting...less expensive? According to an analysis by the OC Register, the county has lost 12 "million-dollar" zip codes (where the median home price is $1 million or above) since last May, while gaining nine "affordable communities" with a median home price at $750,000 or below. Check out the Register's interactive map for details - the most expensive zip code in the county is currently Newport Beach's 92661.

🏙️ Speaking of home prices, the Apartment Association of Orange County (AAOC) is suing the city of Santa Ana over its controversial rent control law passed by the city council in 2021, claiming that the laws are “biased against property owners in the City.” The AAOC's lawsuit asserts that "the delta between inflation of the dollar versus inflation of rents in the City will...grow to unconstitutional proportions and deprive owners of a fair return on investment."

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Have a tip on a news item in Orange County conservatives should know about? Drop me a line at [email protected]