The Brief

Drivers in the city of Orange could receive a $500 rebate for new vehicles, or $250 for used models, under a program approved by the City Council. But there’s a catch: the rebate would only go into effect if voters approve a one-cent sales tax in November.

Councilmembers John Gyllenhammer and Arianna Barrios opposed the agreement at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

They argued that the rebate benefits a handful of dealerships and uses public money to promote those dealers.

City Manager Jarad Hildenbrand said the goal is to incentivize Orange residents to shop locally and offset revenue pains that may be felt by the auto businesses as a result of the proposed sales tax.

What car buyers should know

Orange residents and businesses qualify for the rebate only on new or used vehicles purchased from the city’s five major dealerships — Mazda, Selman Chevrolet, Nissan, Toyota and Villa Ford of Orange.

The purchase price for the vehicle must be more than $15,000. The program would last for 13 years, mirroring the timeline for the sales tax.

Where is the rebate coming from?

Rebates are paid with the city’s general funds. This agreement is expected to cost the city $1.6 million annually — about $1.5 million earmarked for rebates and an additional $50,000 for marketing. More than $20 million is earmarked for the rebates throughout the 13-year deal.

It will be the city’s responsibility to market the program to residents, Hildenbrand said.

“The whole premise of the program is to influence purchasing behavior,” Hildenbrand added. “So if Orange residents don’t know the program exists, they might go shopping elsewhere.”

The city anticipates earning more than $118,000 annually from car sales, according to a staff presentation.

“This provides a very unique incentive to give taxpayers in Orange their money back for shopping in the city of Orange,” Councilmember Denis Bilodeau said. “I think it’s an important incentive to give our Orange residents to live and shop in Orange.”

What do opponents say? 

Opponents of the deal took issue with the focus on just the five big car dealers and the use of tax dollars to essentially market for these businesses.

The deal helps a certain group of residents, Barrios said, “It doesn’t hit the people who are going to be hardest hit by paying extra in the city.”

Gyllenhammer took issue with using public funds to benefit only a concentrated number of residents and car dealers.

“In this case, we’d redistribute tax money that everyone will pay, at every income level within the city,” Gyllenhammer said.

He added that those tax dollars under the rebate would go to five dealers, and if “we don't apply it to any other dealers within the city, there will be impact.”

And car buyers who purchase a used vehicle for less than the $15,000 threshold are also left out of the deal, he added.

“There’s absolutely no rebate for anyone else that’s buying any other car outside of these five dealerships,” Gyllenhammer said. “So it truly does create a situation where we are subsidizing and picking a specific industry that we have just created duress because of a sales tax increase.”

Gyllenhammer previously opposed a rebate program with the same five businesses back in 2024, when voters were considering a sales tax measure that ultimately failed.

Orange resident Chip O’Neal told the council the agreement doesn’t benefit taxpayers.

“I would like the City Council to explain why they would ask the citizens of Orange to approve a 1% sales tax and then use city funds to subsidize the very industry most affected by said tax?” O’Neal said. “The same industry that previously helped defeat the last sales-increase measure, which I imagine is why we’re looking at this measure now.”

What’s next? 

The deal will only go through if residents approve the sales tax hike in November. In recent years, the city of Orange has faced increasingly dire budget constraints.

The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.

The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.

“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”

In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.

“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.

Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.

How it works

To file, people in a multi-partner relationship will submit a form in person that will be provided by the City Clerk’s office — all members of the relationship will have to provide identification to the clerk. (The ordinance also offers an option by mail, if the signatures are notarized).

Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.

Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts.

As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.

That included in Florida, where multiple Democrats — Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz — won in redrawn districts, according to race calls by the Associated Press.

In North Carolina, Democratic Rep. Don Davis held on to his 1st District seat, even though Republicans in the state redrew it to be more competitive for the GOP. Trump would have won the redrawn 1st by nearly 12 percentage points, according to the Downballot.

Trump would have won by even more in Alabama's redrawn 2nd Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures held on to, according to the AP race call.

Republicans in Alabama redid the state's congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.

And in Texas, which was the first state to redistrict at Trump's urging, a few of the redrawn districts had gone to Democrats.

Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps.

But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the last. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night event in Garden Grove.

In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.

Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.

Around the room, the occasional person glanced at their phone to sneak a peek at the growing GOP carnage. More of the crowd instead looked at each other or toward the empty stage, where a lectern stood in front of a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.

Not long after, Hilton took the stage to concede the race — which had always been heavily favored against him in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.

“Maybe this isn’t the best year to be running for office as a Republican,” Hilton told his supporters, alluding to the election results that would soon lead the Democratic Party to win so big in the House and the Senate that many dubbed it a blue tsunami. “We see what’s going on around the country.”

Hilton knew the odds were long. He’d tried a number of tactics to win over California, including a suggestive advertisement suggesting voters should “Just Try” voting for him. He’d done his best to separate himself from President Donald Trump, who backed his campaign. He also attacked Becerra for staying largely out of the limelight since making it out on top of a chaotic primary.

None of Hilton’s appeals made a significant mark on the result, which trailed at around 36% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.

Standing outside the ballroom, Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the California GOP, conceded it was challenging terrain for Republicans this year across the country — and always in California.

“It’s pretty typical that the party that's not in power gains some seats, so I think that was pretty expected for the most part,” he said. “We'll plan on bringing the fight more intensely than ever in 2028.”

By 9:30 p.m., people were headed to their cars to go home.