🍊 🇺🇸 OC Conservative Brief - 3.17.23

Good morning, happy Friday, and happy St. Patrick's Day!

This is your weekly edition of the OC Conservative Brief, your 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.

This week, we have a primer on San Clemente's new go-it-alone approach to tackle the homeless encampments on the beach, and updates from GOP and Dem HQs in Washington about which OC House seats they believe are in play in 2024 (spoiler: there's one OC seat both parties agree will be competitive, read on to learn which one...)

But first, we have alarming news about how a crushing new regulation from Sacramento might drive Orange County's iconic Balboa Island Ferry out of business...

IS CALIFORNIA KILLING THE BALBOA FERRY?! The iconic, family-operated Balboa Island Ferry has been offering locals and tourists (on foot, bikes, and cars) transportation between the Newport Beach peninsula and Balboa Island in Newport Harbor since 1919.

Unfortunately, regulations approved last year by Sacramento are threatening to sink Balboa's ferry operation entirely. That's because the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is requiring all of the state's "short run" ferries (there are only a dozen or so) to convert to electric, battery-powered engines by December 31, 2025.

• CARB says the ferries produce an outsized share of air pollution from harbor craft and that the new regulations will "reduce the cancer risk to over 22 million residents who live near the coast and up to 50 miles inland." 🙄

An op-ed from Gary Sherwin, President and CEO of Visit Newport Beach, has the alarming details:

It's clear that, unless a change is made, the ferry is going to go out of business, solely due to unmeetable mandates from the state of California. Politics about "going green" aside, the timeline dolled out to the ferries is grossly unfair. The state is requiring all new cars sold in California be zero-emission by 2035 (that comes with its own problems which we won't discuss here), yet it's giving local ferries - which don't have deep pockets, extensive R&D teams, or lobbying connections like Ford or GM - just a couple years.

Not to mention that the Balboa Ferry saves hundreds of emissions-producing automobiles a five-mile drive (one way!) around the harbor each day, encourages bike use, and provides affordable ocean and bay access for everyone...all which should be worthy goals of the state.

Fortunately, it sounds like Newport Beach's Assemblywoman Diane Dixon is aware of the problem and working to solve it, but Sacramento regulators don't budge easy. Residents of the city should contact their city council members and make sure they are doing everything they can to fight back and keep the Balboa Island Ferry in business. 

If Sacramento doesn't change course, the Newport Beach city council may need to step in and help preserve this iconic - and necessary - transportation landmark...

OC HOUSE BATTLEGROUND... The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the GOP campaign arm responsible for winning House races, rolled out its initial list of Democrat-held seats in Congress it's targeting to flip in 2024. There are only two California seats on the list, and they're both in Orange County:

• California's 47th District, currently held by Democrat Rep. Katie Porter, who is retiring to run for Senate. Porter only won re-election by three points last year in one of the most expensive House races in the country. Her opponent, Republican Scott Baugh, has already announced he is running again.

• California's 49th District, currently held by Democrat Rep. Mike Levin, who as of now is running again. Levin won re-election last year in this district, which covers south Orange County and north San Diego county, by six points against Republican Brian Maryott.

The Democrats haven't released their own list of targeted seats yet, but they are on the same page as the Republicans about CA-49. Last Friday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the NRCC's counterpart, released its initial defense list of 29 "Frontline" Democrat incumbents they believe are most vulnerable in 2024. Mike Levin is on it.

What does all this mean? This isn't just hopeful PR spin from the parties. Democrat incumbents on the DCCC's "Frontline" list receive extra fundraising, messaging, and strategy help from party HQ in Washington, and Republican candidates in the NRCC's top targets will receive similar help once the primaries are over, indicating that both sides view these races as ground zero for control of the House.

• These lists also send clear signals to outside spending groups where the parties think they should be focusing their resources.

As of now, we're in for another House toss up in 2024. Republicans only hold a single-digit majority in the House, and every seat is up for re-election next year. Because there won't be any "redistricting" next year, the same House lines as last year are in play again, making the battlegrounds far more predictable; most national political handicappers have declared control of the House a "toss up" in 2024.

SAN CLEMENTE TACKLING HOMELESS CAMPS... The city of San Clemente took a series of votes last week to crack down on homeless encampments on its beaches, mobilizing to clean up its image and protect public safety with or without county help...but also brushing up against a potentially fuzzy area of the law.

The city unanimously voted to spend up to $50,000 to hire a private security company to enforce the city's no-camping ordinances and other regulations on its beaches. The council also voted 3-2 against funding emergency inclement weather relief or any shelter for the city's homeless population, arguing that it's the state's, county's and non-profit groups' responsibility to do so and that any new city-run efforts could backfire and turn San Clemente into a homeless destination.

• As one resident put it: “Yes, we need to care for people, but we don’t need to make it where people get dropped off here or want to come here."

• Or, as Councilman Gene James put it more bluntly: "We don’t want to become the manure pit that Democratic cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego have become."

The council also lambasted the county government's failure to address the homeless crisis in their neck of the woods, instructing the city manager to ask the county to step up and help shelter San Clemente's homeless...though they agreed help from the county is not likely to come anytime soon (the Mayor says he has already asked.)

If the county doesn't help, San Clemente may be pushing against a fuzzy area of the law by enforcing anti-camping ordinances without any sort of sheltering plan in place from the city. A high-profile 2018 lawsuit against Orange County and various north OC cities resulted in a new settlement agreement, the execution of which is overseen by a federal judge, that those cities and the county must offer options to shelter homeless people before any removal actions are taken.

• The lawsuit is based on precedent from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Martin vs. Boise, which held the city of Boise, Idaho could not enforce anti-camping ordinances against the homeless if it didn't have enough temporary shelter beds to house them.

Notably, the OC settlement didn't specifically apply to south county cities like San Clemente; a similar lawsuit targeting those cities was tossed out in 2019 on procedural grounds. But, as one councilman pointed out, the nation-wide precedent established in Martin vs. Boise is still the law.

Potential lawsuit aside, San Clemente is in agreement that it has the right to keep its beaches clean...and that sheltering the homeless is a county and state problem. 

🤔 The question is: does the city have a right to remove the homeless from its beaches even if the county doesn't offer to help shelter them? The 2019 settlement spurred Orange County to spend millions on shelters and other resources to deal with the homeless crisis, but most of that assistance has benefited cities in the north. In the meantime, there's little appetite on the San Clemente council to fund a homeless shelter of its own.

We'll end on the good news...the number of homeless people in Orange County in 2022 dropped 17% over the previous three years, which officials attributed to more resources being dedicated to tackling the problem by state, county and city governments, and numbers are dropping across the state as well.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

📱 The OC Board of Supervisors voted this week to ban TikTok from all county-owned devices, following a growing chorus of advice from national security experts that the Chinese-owned social media app could pose a risk to county systems and data.

🚗 A California Superior Court judge upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 22 this week against a lawsuit from labor unions, protecting the law approved by voters in 2020 that allows Uber and Lyft drivers to remain classified as independent contractors.

🏠 The city of Newport Beach is moving to put an end to fractional home-ownership by regulating them like timeshares, which are effectively prohibited in the city.

💰 An analysis from WalletHub found that the median household in California pays $9,612 a year in state-and-local taxes, the ninth highest tax bill in the country, though it notes the state's tax rates themselves are more competitive.

🗳️ A new analysis is warning California Democrats that Republicans are making bigger gains in heavily Hispanic areas, finding a 10.8% swing towards Republicans in the state's 14 Latino-majority districts from 2020 to 2022, which was even larger than the 7.1% swing towards the GOP from 2018 to 2020.

🛢️ Governor Gavin Newsom has officially surrendered on his plan to cap oil company profits after Sacramento Democrats voiced concerns that the move could have unintended consequences for gas prices.

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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]