In summary
A resolution declaring the California Legislature’s opposition to the Trump administration’s proposal to expand offshore oil drilling, shouldn’t, on the face of it, be very controversial. But never underestimate the potential for politics to rear its head.
A resolution declaring the California Legislature’s opposition to the Trump administration’s proposal to expand offshore oil drilling, shouldn’t, on the face of it, be very controversial. The vast majority of Californians oppose drilling off the state’s coast. And a resolution doesn’t actually change the law anyway—it’s just a formal way to state an opinion.
But never underestimate the potential for politics to rear its head.
After news broke earlier this month that the federal government would exempt Florida from its plans to expand offshore drilling—widely seen as a move by the Republican administration to favor a state with a Republican governor—a GOP assemblywoman in California drafted a resolution saying that California wanted the same treatment.
“Protecting our California coastline has had bipartisan support for decades, and I think it’s much more impactful when someone from the same party is willing to bring colleagues together and say, ‘No. We think you should leave our coastline protected,’” said Assemblywoman Catharine Baker of Dublin.
Though Baker is a Republican, most voters in her suburban East Bay district are Democrats. Unsurprisingly, Democrats have been trying for a few years to snag her seat. They’re trying again this year—and the Assembly Democrats’ political consultant quickly seized on Baker’s resolution.
“There is no way Dems should allow Baker, who has a failing 42 percent grade on the Sierra Club Legislative Scorecard, to be a fake face of the state’s resistance against the Trump Administration’s rollback of protections of our coast,” political consultant Bill Wong wrote in an email to the Democratic caucus. “Dems should introduce their own legislation and denounce the Baker resolution as a deceptive effort to fool voters in her district.”
Wong said he sent the email because he didn’t want “Democrats to validate her lackluster record, her misrepresentation of her environmental record.” (It’s true that Baker earned a 42 percent score from the Sierra Club last year. It’s also true that she was among a handful of Republicans who voted to extend California’s cap-and-trade program last year, and was the sole Republican who voted in 2016 to mandate that the state drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.)
Sure enough, four days after Baker’s resolution was introduced, four Democrats introduced a similar resolution. The lead author, Assemblywoman Monique Limon of Santa Barbara, said she and her Democratic colleagues had announced their plans to draft a resolution before Baker introduced her version.
“Hers may have crossed the desk first,” Limon said. “But we made it very public to all our colleagues that this is something we wanted to work on.”
Baker said she was rebuffed when she asked last week if she could be included as a co-author on the Democrats’ resolution. But the tiff seems to have resolved after CALmatters began making inquiries. Now both resolutions, which are procedurally different, will have Baker and Limon as bipartisan co-authors.