What I've Learned About Electoral Politics in California from the 2022 Primary Races

Electing Better Legislators in California

Effective Government California has been studying the California legislature 2022 open seat races to find candidates to support who will take on the structural forces — narrow interests, progressive proceduralism, and anti-statism — that we previously described as the root of many problems plaguing California politics (9 min). 

This is our first foray into electoral work, and we’ve learned a lot. First, a bit of context on the 2022 races. 

2022 Race Context

2022 is the second-highest turnover year in California history – only 2012 had more open seats. 

Why are there so many open seats in 2022? 

There are a handful of factors: (1) The independent redistricting commission, which draws a new electoral map every 10 years, decided to draw a very different map from the 2010 map.  This new map significantly reshaped many districts, and led to many incumbents being drawn out of their districts and drawn into a fellow incumbent’s districts.¹  (2) Term limits are now 12 years, so the huge incoming class in 2012 was set to term out in 2024. But incumbents don’t like to run against one another², so many have left to seek other offices — Congress, county supervisor, statewide office, or even sheriff. 

In 2022, California politicians have been playing a massive game of musical chairs, and the result is ~36 open seats being contested across the State Senate and Assembly, which is approximately one third of the Legislature.  In a more typical year, only 5-10 seats are open. 

Learnings

Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed in these races: 

1. Money is Annoyingly Important

California’s districts are really large. There are 500,000 people in an Assembly district and one million in a Senate district, about 10 times the average population of equivalent districts nationwide.  

At these district sizes, there is virtually no way to get one's message out via town halls and door knocking alone. To reach such a large audience, candidates need to use scalable marketing channels, including things like mailers, digital advertising, and television. 

These races are also typically “low name ID”.  Because we’ve nationalized our politics, very few people pay attention to state legislative races, and very few people know much about the candidates who are running. Many insiders tell me the number one predictor of success in a race is name ID.  So if a candidate can afford to get their name out there, they are likely to win. 

What dollar amounts are we talking about? 

On the “hard money” side³ candidates will have a very good chance to win if they can raise between $500,000 and $2,000,000. On the independent expenditure side⁴, a few key races might involve several million dollars or more. 

2. A Few Key Players Are Putting Tons of Money Into California Politics

Because of the size of districts and the low name ID nature of these races, the money hunt becomes really important. In fact, when political consultants are assessing the viability of candidates, they often look to a candidate’s fundraising numbers as a proxy for viability. 

So where do these dollars come from? 

For legislators with strong professional networks, a decent chunk of money, maybe up to $500,000, can come from their personal relationships. A candidate who attended a top undergrad or grad program, and worked as a professional in law, tech, finance, or consulting may have hundreds of larger ($1000+) potential donors in their network who think it’d be fun to know a state legislator. 

For legislators from (1) poorer regions of the state, or (2) poorer districts within a metro area (e.g. Santa Monica vs. South LA), or (3) less lucrative professional backgrounds, personal networks will yield much less money (under $100,000).  

Even with strong personal fundraising, candidates in the most competitive races will need to raise a lot more. So where does the bulk of the money come from to close that gap? Narrow interests of one sort or another. 

Here are some names that crop up again and again in CalAccess searches: 

This is not a complete list. But insiders tell me that there are only about 50-75 entities that consistently put meaningful amounts ($100k+) of electoral money in California politics. 

3. There Are Different Types of Money

In one race we are involved in, the candidate opted into the voluntary primary fundraising cap of $649,000. From the CA Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC): “Candidates who accept the ceiling are designated in either the state ballot pamphlet (statewide candidates) or the voter information portion of the sample ballot (Senate and Assembly candidates) and may purchase space in the sample ballot to place a 250-word statement.”

As the candidate made progress toward that goal, I (naively) thought, “this is great, the money chase will be over, and then we can focus on policy, town halls, editorial board interviews, etc.”

But in addition to this “hard money” cap, candidates can hope* that some set of interests decide to fund an Independent Expenditure for them. I’ve heard the nomenclature in Sacramento is also called “run a program.” 

On rare occasions, a wealthy individual might put up money for an IE in a state legislature race. For example, in 2020 Reid Hoffman put up $500k to support his friend Josh Becker in his run for State Senate. But that’s an exceptional case.

More often, it is the set of narrow entities listed above who “run programs.” This makes sense, because (1) campaign finance laws effectively limit how much money these entities can give directly to candidates, and (2) running an IE takes more skill and operational capacity than giving money directly to a campaign, so only longstanding entities with a persistent interest in electoral outcomes would invest in this capacity. 

IEs can be either negative or positive in tone. In a defined two-person race, an IE can tear down an opponent — if both candidates have decent name ID, the next biggest factor in winning is positive vs. negative sentiment about the candidate. If it’s a crowded race with low name ID, a positive IE to help the preferred candidate boost their name ID can be very effective. 

4. A Few Key Staffers At Narrow Interest Entities Are Calling Lots of Shots

The “political person” at the narrow interest group is the day-to-day practitioner who helps make decisions on how to transmute their entity’s money into political power. These staffers are skilled at reading polls, understanding the shifting demographics of the district, and discerning race dynamics. They have knowledge of the local lay of the land, and are calling many of the investment shots. 

These political operatives serve as both strategists and gatekeepers early on: they meet with candidates, run them through questionnaires, and gauge (1) the viability of each candidate and (2) how that candidate will be on their interest’s issues. They discern whether the candidate is just telling them what they want to hear to get their money, but will not necessarily follow through in office. 

In the case of all of the narrow interests above, which derive power from organizing funds from various “members,” be they union or association, there exists the possibility of principal-agent problems, where the actions of the top-level entity is in conflict with the interests of some of its members. 

To analogize, the members are like shareholders in a company, who have in turn delegated responsibility for day-to-day management of their interests to the management team (sometimes with oversight via a board). That management team (e.g. the narrow interest’s CEO + their political person) makes decisions on who to fund, or at least strong recommendations to a board of decision-makers. 

Since the management team is so much closer to the day-to-day realities of the politics, they have meaningful influence over the decisions the entity takes. And then, like a company, their results are judged over time. 

5. Relationships Wend Through Everything in Politics

Sometimes the decision of an entity to back a certain candidate over another can be a bit inscrutable on the surface. With a bit of digging, it often comes back to a relationship. 

In one case, the CEO of an entity got his start from the father of a candidate. Even though that candidate is probably a bit less good on the issues this narrow interest cares about, they will still get that interest’s support. Loyalty is a big deal in politics, in a way I’m still trying to wrap my head around. 

6. Contested Democracy All The Way Down

Modern Power is fractal. Just like you can build power by organizing interests to show up at a specific town hall meeting, you can use organizing principles within these narrow interest entities. Oftentimes there is a disconnect between the will of at least some members, and the judgments of their representatives. If you want to stop an entity from putting money into a race, find a few of their members who back your candidate, and have them call to let their positions be known. If you make enough of a ruckus, and you are at least partially right on the merits, the management team will decide to sit it out rather than deal with the headache. 

What To Do With These Learnings? 

So what are the implications of all of this? Some early thoughts: 

• One way to lessen the impact of money in California elections would be to increase the number of districts to get closer to the average district size. This would allow candidates to build relationships via local enthusiasm, volunteers, door knocking, etc. instead of just through ads. 

• Right now the two main groups of entities that play in electoral politics are some version of “organized capital” and “organized labor.”  We need a third category: “organized citizens.”

• Voluntary caps seem productive, but IEs make them less relevant.  “Organized citizen” groups need to invest in the capacity to run IEs as well as make hard money contributions. That means having staff who can run polls to test messaging, come up with creatives, and run ads across print, digital, and other mediums.

• It’s important to understand who the key political players are at each of the narrow interest groups. They are quite powerful.  

• Organizing members within these powerful groups can be a mechanism to change the way the narrow interests behave.

1. A fair question here is: why did this cycle’s independent commission differ so widely from last cycle’s? The simplest answer I’ve heard is they, for whatever reason, decided to start drawing lines from scratch vs. starting with last cycle’s map.

2. Why? Because incumbents have high name ID and a donor rolodex. So even if you have the same, you’d rather find a weaker opponent in another jurisdiction, especially if you’re going to be termed out in two years anyway.

3. This is the money that is directly donated to a candidate’s campaign committee and is subject to campaign finance laws that limit contributions to $4,900 per individual per election cycle. The primary and the general election are considered two different election cycles.

4. This is money that is spent by an independent entity to support one candidate or attack another. The concept is similar to “SuperPACs” at the Federal level, where there are no spending limits, as long as the funds aren’t coordinated with the candidate’s campaign.