The Brief

Sacramento State political science professor Kim Nalder was working out at a Sacramento gym in 2003 when she overheard a conversation about the upcoming recall election of then-Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat.

She remembers “guys in the weight room just saying, like, 'How cool would that be to have Arnold Schwarzenegger as our governor?'" she said. “It had nothing to do with policy at all.”

A few months later, the international action film star triumphed in a field of 135 candidates to replace Davis, who’d been re-elected the year before but had come under fire for rolling blackouts in the state and unpopular vehicle license fees. “The Governator” went on to serve nearly two terms.

If the election were just about whether or not Davis should keep his job, and not also who should replace him if he were recalled, Nalder doubts the Republican Schwarzenegger would ever have taken office. Accompanying him on the ballot were a host of other colorful characters, including actor Gary Coleman and porn star Mary Carey. Per the rules of the recall, the candidate with the most votes, not necessarily the majority, wins.

“I just think the recall probably wouldn't have happened — because there wasn't that much upset at Davis himself — if we didn't, you know, have any fun alternatives,” she said.

California voters this year are deciding whether to approve Proposition 5, which would do away with “the second question” of who should replace a state elected official if they are recalled. Instead, depending on the office and the timing, a replacement would be appointed or elected in a special election.

The measure was placed on the November ballot by Democratic lawmakers in 2024 with the support of the secretary of state and good governance groups Common Cause and League of Women Voters. It came in response to the 2021 attempted recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Republican lawmakers voted against it, arguing that it would dilute the power of the voters and add costs associated with follow-up special elections.

However, with 14 propositions on the ballot and not a dollar raised so far in support or opposition, both sides may have to rely on voters’ gut reactions.

The “weak gazelle”

Aside from the recall of Davis, the only other successful state recall this century was that of the author of Prop. 5, Democrat Josh Newman.

In 2017, Newman was a freshman lawmaker representing a purple Southern California district when he joined 27 of his colleagues in approving the gas tax, which added a 12 cent surcharge to every gallon of gas purchased in California to fund transportation projects. Republicans fiercely opposed the effort, arguing new taxes weren’t necessary. The bill passed with the bare minimum of votes.

Less than two weeks later, then-conservative commentator and now-San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio told Orange County talk show hosts that gas tax opponents needed to use the “gazelle strategy,” to begin taking out lawmakers who’d approved the tax.

“We’ve identified that weak gazelle, the slowest gazelle, the one with the limp,” he said. “And that’s Josh Newman, in Orange County.”

Why Newman? Because he was elected by the slimmest margin of any senator, fewer than 2,500 votes.

In the ensuing weeks, DeMaio’s organization, Reform California, led the effort to recall Newman, helping to collect more than 64,000 signatures — equivalent to 20% of voters in the last election — and centering its campaign on Newman’s “deciding vote” on the tax.

Close to 60% of voters chose to recall Newman in June 2018, replacing him with Republican Ling Ling Chang. The recall ended the Democrats’ supermajority in the state Senate.

Gov. Gray Davis speaks at an anti-recall labor union rally in San Jose on Oct. 5, 2003.

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In a recent interview with CalMatters, DeMaio stood by his “weak gazelle” strategy.

“If voters want to stop something from happening and being repeated, then mid-term, sometimes the only thing they can do is to use a recall as a way of expressing their opposition,” he said.

But Newman said that kind of “political gamesmanship” was not what former progressive governor Hiram Johnson intended when he proposed the law in 1911.

In a speech, Johnson characterized the recall process as “the precautionary measure by which a recalcitrant official can be removed.”

Newman said he doesn’t feel he fit that bill.

“I didn't do anything other than cast a tough vote,” he said. “Was I malfeasant? I hardly think so. Especially given the state of the state's road systems at the time.”

Newman made recall reform one of his priorities when he was elected back into office in 2020. After an expensive recall election for Newsom, other Democrats had the political will and Newman put forward Senate Constitutional Amendment 1, which became Prop. 5.

Newman said the title of the proposition, which says that it “Changes Recall Election Process for Statewide Officers,” may confuse voters, since legislators do not hold statewide office, though all California legislative races would be affected by the change.

How would it work?

If Prop. 5 passes, eliminating the replacement question, the governor would call a special election within about four months to replace a recalled state senator or assemblymember. If the governor was recalled within the first two years of their term, the secretary of state would call a special election. If they are in the second two years of their term, the lieutenant governor would finish the governor’s term. The ousted official would be allowed to run for the same office in the special election.

If a statewide official such as the state treasurer, attorney general, or insurance commissioner were recalled, the governor would appoint their replacement to serve until the next scheduled election.

If Prop. 5 were to pass, DeMaio said the gap in representation may dissuade voters from approving a recall, even if they want a change.

“The argument will now be made, if Prop. 5 passes, that if you vote yes on recall, then you're going to be without a representative for months, if not longer, and so you're going to silence your community,” he said.

He said extra special elections would lead to higher costs to taxpayers. The 2021 attempted recall of Newsom cost about $200 million to administer — a cost that would double if there were two separate elections.

However, Nalder suspects the change would lead to fewer recalls in general, likely a guiding force in Democrats’ support of the effort.

“It's relatively easy to get the signatures, and it causes a lot of chaos and costs a lot of extra money,” she said. “That's easier for Democrats to want to change because they're the ones who win more in the races.”

A Public Policy Institute of California poll in early September found the measure faces long odds, though: 59% of likely voters said they likely would vote “no” and just 35% said they would vote “yes.”

Nalder said the poll was conducted before voters had done their ballot homework, and upon learning more, they’ll likely align with their party’s positions.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

California voters will soon be asked whether they want to keep taxing the incomes of the rich.

And they’ll be asked whether to start taxing the accumulated wealth of the even richer.

Wait, there’s more. They’ll also get to weigh in on whether we should ban wealth taxes altogether, subject the money raised by future taxes to a state spending cap and make it harder for voters to pass certain local taxes.

That doesn’t include any of the other propositions on the November ballot that are likely to affect the state budget. Nor does it include the roughly 300 tax and bond measures that will be popping up in local elections across the state.

And you thought tax season only came in April.

With 14 measures in total, the 2026 California ballot is a busy one. Voters haven’t been presented with this many choices in a decade. It’s an especially active year for tax-related measures — those that hike taxes, cut them, introduce new ones, jettison old ones or change the rules by which taxes are approved and enacted.

Five of those are on the ballot this time around, the most since 1994.

Altogether they have the potential to reshape the state’s finances, beef up or starve some of our largest public spending programs, change the rules around taxation and — if opponents of the proposed wealth tax are to be believed — trigger a Randian exodus of the state’s wellest-to-do.

The 'black hole' on the ballot

Though five tax measures are on the ballot, voters are really just seeing three big questions.

The first: Should California be the first state in the nation to introduce a wealth tax?

That question is “the black hole into which all political energy is going right now,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a group that advocates for low taxes.

Three measures — Propositions 40, 41 and 42 — provide opposing answers.

Prop. 40 would slap every Californian with a net worth of at least $1 billion (all approximately 200 of them) with a one-time 5% tax on their wealth, excluding real estate and retirement accounts.

This isn’t an income tax, which skims off a share of a person’s earnings, but a tax on the assessed, unrealized value of investments. Think of this like the property tax that homeowners pay on their houses, except it applies to stocks, bonds, business shares, Bugattis and the occasional machine gun collection.

A sign displayed at the Billionaire Tax Now booth at the 2026 California Democratic Party State Convention in San Francisco on Feb. 21, 2026.

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The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that the measure has the potential to raise tens of billions of dollars. Almost all of it would be set aside for the state’s public health insurance programs, which are bracing for dramatic federal cuts.

That’s assuming the measure passes and survives the blizzard of inevitable legal challenges. Though a number of countries have introduced wealth taxes at either the national or regional level, California’s would be the first in the United States.

No surprise, many of the state’s billionaires are pushing back hard. They’re doing that in the usual way, with literally hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign spending. But they’re also doing it with two additional measures on the ballot itself. Prop. 41 would, among other things, ban the state from collecting taxes that circumvent a 1970s state spending limit, which Prop. 40 is written to do.

Prop. 42 would ban new taxes on financial assets, private businesses and most other forms of wealth outright — an explicit reversal of Prop. 40.

If both the wealth tax and either of the countermeasures are approved by the voters, the one with the higher vote tally becomes law. That’s why the wealth tax could go down in defeat even if a majority of voters support it.

But voters shouldn’t think of Props. 41 and 42 as mere “no” votes on Prop. 40, said Kayla Kitson, a tax policy analyst at the California Budget & Policy Center, a left-leaning think tank. Prop. 41 would also require the state’s auditor to conduct a “pre-election” analysis of any program set to be funded by a future tax measure and then make recommendations on how to cut costs by 10%.

Beyond banning future wealth taxes, Prop. 42 would also prevent future taxes from applying retroactively before a tax is approved. That could remove the state’s ability to keep people or businesses from avoiding a tax they know is coming, said Kitson.

Two more tax questions

The other two tax measures have nothing to do with the wealth tax. One would make permanent a boosted income tax rate for higher earners. The other would make it harder for local governments to raise certain taxes in the future.

The high-earner tax is the third, and possibly final, installment in a decade-long electoral trilogy.

First proposed by former Gov. Jerry Brown as a temporary solution to fund education in the fiscal hangover of the Great Recession, the measure sticks a higher tax bracket on the state’s top 2% of earners. Re-authorized by voters in 2016, the tax has https://lao.ca.gov/ballot/2025/250421.pdfgenerated between $5 billion and $16 billion annually. Most of that money has gone to schools.

The tax expires in 2030, which is why the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest K-12 public school educators’ union, was eager to put its permanent renewal on the ballot this year. If it fails, the union will have two more chances.

Hence, Proposition 3, which would make the boosted tax rates for individually earned income above $360,000 per year a perpetual part of the state’s tax code.

Proposition 43’s backstory also goes back nearly a decade.

The measure would hike the share of votes needed to pass certain local taxes. Specifically, these are taxes that raise money for a specific program or purpose and that are placed on the ballot by citizen signature-gathering efforts, as opposed to local elected officials. If Prop. 43 passes, this very particular type of tax would need the support of at least two-thirds of local voters.

Business groups and anti-tax advocates have been wanting to put some version of Prop. 43 on the ballot since 2017 when the state Supreme Court ruled that so-called citizen-initiated special taxes only need a simple majority of the vote to pass. The anti-tax advocates got close two years ago, but were stymied by another court ruling. This year, the measure finally made it, but only after negotiations with the Democrats in the Legislature pared it down, applying the rule to future taxes only.

California tax measures tend to fail

This all makes for a tremendously confusing voting experience for most Californians.

That’s probably bad news for the supporters of these measures, since uncertain voters tend to err on the side of “no,” said Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California.

“When voters aren’t sure how to proceed, staying with the status quo and letting someone else decide at a later date is a safe bet,” he said.

That may partly explain why tax measures, which are inherently complicated and tend to come with unpredictable consequences, fare especially poorly on the ballot. Since 2000, a solid majority (57%) of non-tax ballot measures have passed compared to a mere third of tax propositions.

The sheer number of open questions surrounding the proposed wealth tax (Is it constitutional? Can the state effectively implement it? Will all the billionaires flee to Florida?) puts it on shakier footing with an electorate that tends to reject uncertainty, said Baldassare. A narrow majority of 52% percent of likely voters said they supported the measure in a recent PPIC poll.

The tax on high earners in Prop. 3, may face better odds because it makes permanent an existing tax rather than introducing a new one. In the same poll, 58% of likely voters indicated that they would support the measure.

“When people see the words ‘renew’ or ‘extend’ it gives them a sense that this is the status quo, we’re not being asked to make a change here,” he said.

But Prop. 3’s backers shouldn’t take too much comfort in that. Support for propositions tend to decline as Election Day approaches. The sheer number of tax measures on offer could also inflict voters with “tax fatigue” leading them to vote “no” across the board, said Baldassare.

Then there’s the general political vibe.

Earlier this year, PPIC asked a sample of Californians whether they preferred lower taxes and fewer services or higher taxes and more services.

Fifty-five percent said they’d prefer the lower tax bill.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Food assistance to pay for groceries is still available to many low-income California families who receive summer food assistance for their kids.

Nearly $106 million of the federally funded SUN Bucks benefits are still unspent — but eligible families have just a few weeks left to tap the money, according to the California Department of Social Services. The benefits are only available to households that have already gotten the SUN Bucks in the mail this summer.

Families must spend the funds within 122 days of receiving them, or they expire and return to the federal government.

The program works like this: Every summer, California sends eligible low-income families electronic benefits (EBT) cards preloaded with $120 in food benefits per child. The state provides two meals a day to all public K-12 students, and the cards are meant to help families afford groceries for their kids throughout the summer when school is out.

Families receiving SUN Bucks cards have kids who are eligible for a free or reduced school lunch or who are enrolled in other assistance programs such as Medi-Cal or CalFresh. This year the state automatically mailed cards to the families of 3.8 million children.

Though the state tries to remind families about the benefits through text messages and other nudges, households sometimes still leave a lot of money on the table. Last year, nearly a quarter of the summer food benefits — $118 million — went unspent, according to records from the Department of Social Services obtained by New York-based public policy consultant David Rubel and shared with CalMatters. And nearly a fifth of cards mailed out last year were never activated by the recipients.

Many of the cards this year haven’t expired yet because California mailed SUN Bucks to families in different batches throughout the summer. If a family got a card in mid-June, they may only have a couple of weeks left to use the benefits. The last cards were mailed out in late July and expire in mid-November.

If a family receives both SUN Bucks and the traditional CalFresh food assistance program, Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel says the state recommends they use the SUN Bucks first because they expire soon.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Want more information on CD9 candidates? Read our CD9 Voter Guide and watch our break down of each candidate (in English and Spanish) on Instagram.

The differences between the two candidates for L.A. City Council District 9 became crystal clear for South L.A. residents during an energetic community forum in South Central on Saturday. 

Attendees, who braved the extreme heat, told The LA Local they were happy to hear candidates Jose Ugarte and Estuardo Mazariegos discuss transportation, housing and making the community safer. 

“It was exciting,” said Sandy Ramos, a local attending her first ever forum. Ramos said Mazariegos focused on building housing and community aid, while Ugarte was oriented toward neighborhood safety and cleanups.

Gio Garcia, chair of the local Voices Neighborhood Council, said Ugarte’s platform is built around leveraging existing systems, while Mazariegos wants to make deeper changes to those systems. 

Garcia helped organize the forum along with the rest of the collection of community groups called the CD9 Coalition. LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters and youth journalist Charli Padilla moderated the CD9 candidate forum. Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, District 4 Councilmember Nithya Raman, also spoke during the event. 

Whoever of the two candidates comes out on top after polls close on Nov. 3 will replace departing Councilmember Curren Price, Ugarte’s old boss, who is terming out after 12 years representing the district stretching from downtown L.A. through South Central.

Ugarte and Mazariegos are both Latino immigrants who each said they came to the US as undocumented children. Either would be the first non-Black councilmember for District 9 since 1963. 

The two candidates reflect a larger demographic shift in the district, which historically was the center of Black political power in L.A., but today is nearly 80% Latino. Both candidates have stressed the importance of Black-brown solidarity during their campaigns. 

Residents of the district have pushed for the city to do more to make a safer community, address homelessness and deliver basic services from street repairs to trash pickup. At times, community members have taken the issues into their own hands with neighborhood patrols and street cleanups. 

Ugarte, a former aide to Price, wants to ban RVs in neighborhoods, build a rail line down Slauson and hire more police officers. Community organizer Mazariegos wants to build more housing, hire young people to clean streets and bring social workers into some traditional police domains.

Locals have also worried if the Olympics in two years will actually bring dollars to local businesses and workers, or if the international attention will gloss over the neighborhood while driving more intense policing. The district is home to L.A.’s cornerstone Olympic venues, including the Crypto.com Arena, Exposition Park and L.A. Memorial Coliseum. 

County election officials have already begun mailing ballots out to voters, and voting will continue until Nov. 3. Voters can mail their ballots, drop them in dropboxes, or vote in person once vote centers open on Oct. 24.

L.A. County residents need to register to vote by Oct. 19 in order to cast a ballot for this election. 

Mazariegos wants to bring social workers into policing, Ugarte wants more community police officers

Jose Ugarte, right, candidate for LA City Council District 9, speaks during the candidate forum that also featured his opponent, Estuardo Mazariegos, that took place at A Place Called Home on Oct. 3, 2026.

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Mazariegos said the district is over-policed, and that too much funding goes to paying for officers instead of other services. As an alternative, the candidate proposed bringing social workers into situations historically in the domain of police.

“We need to ensure that when there is a mental health crisis, it’s a social worker showing up. When we have a family crisis, it’s a social worker showing up,” Mazariegos said.

Ugarte, by contrast, said the city doesn’t have enough officers and that police response times have grown too long. He wants more women officers and more officers with college degrees, more officers on foot, horseback and bicycles and a greater focus on community policing.

“I want an officer to just walk by and patrol to make sure that our community feels safe and secure,” Ugarte said. 

Ugarte would ban RVs, Mazariegos would audit homelessness spending

Jose Ugarte, right, a candidate for LA City Council District 9, speaks during the candidate forum that also featured his opponent, Estuardo Mazariegos, that took place at A Place Called Home on Oct. 3, 2026.

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Ugarte wants to ban RVs, campers and trailers from residential neighborhoods.

The candidate said he wants unhoused people to get mental health, detox and job training resources before the city provides housing. Many California homelessness service providers currently use a “housing first” approach, based on the logic that services are less effective if a person doesn’t have housing. 

“The last seven years haven’t worked, so I’m taking a different approach,” Ugarte said.

Mazariegos countered that homelessness in L.A. has increased because public dollars are being misused.

“The first step is holding accountability at the top by auditing and making sure that every homeless service, every dollar is being spent the right way,” Mazariegos said. “Enough of the corruption.”

Mazariegos said he wants to solve homelessness by increasing wages and lowering rents in order to stop people from losing their homes. 

Mazariegos wants to hire locals for cleanups, Ugarte wants to start business improvement districts

Estuardo Mazariegos, left, speaks during a candidate forum that also featured his opponent, Jose Ugarte, right, that took place at A Place Called Home on Oct. 3, 2026.

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Mazariegos wants to increase the city’s budget for services like cleanups and to hire young locals to do the community cleanups around the clock, seven days a week.

“We could feed two birds with one hand,” Mazariegos said. He swiped at Ugarte for the lack of local services while Ugarte was working under Price.

Ugarte agreed that South Central hasn’t been getting the services it needs due to past funding cuts. 

He wants city services to be fully funded, and to bolster city efforts with with business improvement districts, a type of self-funded organization that pays for services like maintenance and security with taxes on property owners.

“You see the trash everywhere,” Ugarte said. He said with the Olympics coming, cleanup crews should be working all the way down Figueroa Street and Vermont Avenue to Slauson Avenue.

Ugarte wants to  keep pushing developers for local hiring, Mazariegos wants to tap into major event revenue

Ugarte touted his work in Price’s office to get developers to commit to local hiring when they build major projects. He referenced his plan to bar RVs from residential neighborhoods, saying that the L.A. Chamber of Commerce told him all they want is clean and safe areas to do business.

“I have a plan to clean up the district,” Ugarte said. “If the government and politicians have not done that for small business, we failed it.”

Mazariegos said he wants to make it easier for local small businesses to afford brick-and-mortar spaces.

He said he wants to tap into the flow of money into the district’s entertainment venues by putting a surcharge on tickets to events — like Laker games, concerts and the Olympics — then divert that money back into local businesses and parks.

“We need to make sure that money isn’t being extracted and that it’s coming back to the neighborhood,” he said. 

You can read more about both candidates in The LA Local’s voter guide for District 9.