Steve Garvey highlights homelessness in U.S. Senate campaign

From CalMatters politics reporter Yue Stella Yu:

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Steve Garvey made his first campaign appearance in Sacramento Wednesday afternoon, visiting a homeless encampment north of downtown to highlight the state’s homelessness crisis.

Squatting by a bag of abandoned brioche buns, Garvey — along with former Sacramento County Sheriff John McGuinness — asked a handful of homeless people how they stay warm at night and what politicians can do to help. At one point, someone yelled from a car driving by: “You guys are taking pictures. Do something about the problem!”

“You like baseball?” Garvey, a former L.A. Dodgers and San Diego Padres star, asked Lavell Wright, one of the homeless residents. 

“No,” Wright responded.

“I don’t either anymore. I can’t believe all the money that they are wasting,” Garvey said with a chuckle. He then went into campaign mode, promising to be a “loud voice” for the homeless if voters send him to Washington, D.C.

Garvey told reporters following the visit that he wants a “deep dive” into how funding to solve the homelessness crisis was used. “Career politicians don’t want to come here anymore. It’s easy to have a bill to sign off on it and they’ve thrown money at it and that’s it. I’m not a career politician,” he said.

When pressed on what he would do differently than existing federal and state programs, or what kind of deep dive he’s looking for, Garvey did not share detailed policies besides pledging to work with all other senators. 

“I’ll find that out,” he said.

Eric Wright, one of the homeless people Garvey talked to (no relation to Lavell Wright), told CalMatters he’s been homeless since 2006. What Garvey said to him “doesn’t really mean anything to me,” he said.

“I don’t listen too much to what politicians say. I watch what they do,” Eric Wright said.

This was Garvey’s third homelessness event, after visiting Skid Row in Los Angeles and the Alpha Project — a nonprofit helping provide shelter and services to unhoused people — in San Diego last week.

Garvey — who launched his Senate bid in October and pledged to stay in office for one six-year term if elected — has kept a low profile until recently, touring the border last month and several Southern California cities last week. He will talk to the Jewish community in the Bay area today, according to his campaign spokesperson Matt Shupe. 

More on U.S. Senate race: Garvey and the three big-name Democrats — Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff — are scheduled to debate for the first time this campaign on Monday evening. 

For voters who want to get beyond 30-second answers, Stella has a detailed look at the track records and positions of the candidates on some of the biggest issues facing the state: the border and immigration, crime and guns, economy and labor, housing and homelessness and foreign policy and defense. Some highlights:

• Immigration: While all three Democrats align closely on most immigration legislation and agree a generic border wall is ineffective, Porter has said some “site-specific” barriers do work. Lee also appears to be the harshest critic of allocating more funds to federal border patrol agencies, and said “ICE is rotten to the core.”

• Homelessness: Republican candidates say mental health problems are the main driver for homelessness, while the Democrats argue it’s the lack of affordable housing. Schiff and Lee have both touted their success securing earmarked funds for housing and homelessness, though Porter is a staunch opponent of earmark requests, saying the funding goes to lawmakers’ “pet projects.”

• Foreign policy:  A day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Lee called for a permanent ceasefire — one of the first members of Congress to do so. As fatalities rose in Gaza, Schiff and Porter both called for a “humanitarian pause.” Porter then shifted her stance in a Dec. 18 statement, calling for a “lasting bilateral ceasefire.” Schiff, however, has stood by his initial position, arguing that a permanent ceasefire would “perpetuate Hamas terrorist control of Gaza.”

To learn more about where the major candidates stand on these issues, read Stella’s story.

And today, another poll shows that Schiff is the clear leader, while Garvey has surged past Porter and Lee into second place in the top-two primary. The survey is from Inside Nexstar/Inside California Politics/Emerson.

For the record: Wednesday’s newsletter incorrectly said funding for the California State Park Adventure Pass would be eliminated under Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget plan. The funding is being shifted to another source. 

When Gov. Newsom signed the two bills in October that make up Proposition 1, the governor said the changes will “prioritize getting people off the streets, out of tents and into treatment.”

But how much of a difference could it really make? As CalMatters homelessness reporter Marisa Kendall explains, with 180,000 unhoused people in the state, experts caution against seeing Prop. 1 as the silver bullet to California’s homelessness crisis. By design, the program is meant to help only a small percentage of unhoused people.

• Bob Erlenbusch, Sacramento Regional Coalition to End Homelessness executive director: “It will be great for those individuals, but still leaves almost 98% outside or in shelters.”

Prop. 1 — the only statewide measure on the March 5 primary ballot — would reroute $1 billion raised by a 1% tax on millionaires into housing programs, and would allow the state to borrow $6.4 billion to add thousands of mental health and substance use treatment beds.

Proponents of Prop. 1 argue that it targets homeless people who are often the hardest to help and the most visible. As local officials struggle to clear encampments (a practice that could be impacted by an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling), voters have grown frustrated with what they view as the state’s lack of progress on the issue. Helping those with the highest needs — such as an individual in the throes of psychosis in the middle of the street — wouldn’t just matter to voters, but it’s also the humane thing to do.

• Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, Democrat from Stockton and author of one part of Prop. 1: “They count, too. We can’t just see people as a problem. You have to see people as people and (ask) how do we do our best to help those who need it the most?”

For more on Prop. 1 and homelessness, read Marisa’s story.

From CalMatters Capitol reporter Alexei Koseff:

When Gov. Newsom swiftly shut down talk this week of banning youth tackle football, he couched his prospective veto in the language of parental control — “ensuring parents have the freedom to decide which sports are most appropriate for their children.”

It was an unexpected triumph for “parents’ rights” activists, who were gearing up to fight the bill, introduced last week and shelved Wednesday, that would have gradually phased out tackle football for kids up to 12 years old.

Newsom has frequently found himself squaring off against these groups, which advocate for keeping government out of decisions they believe should be left to parents. Many first mobilized in 2019, when Newsom signed legislation to crack down on medical exemptions for vaccines required to attend California schools, and then actively protested his response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Now they are heavily involved in battles over LGBTQ+ issues, including pushing for schools to notify parents when a student identifies by a name or gender that does not align with their birth certificate. Newsom has joined with critics who oppose those policies as “forced outing.”

So it was unusual to see the governor quickly side with parents’ right activists — and literally on their terms — when it comes to football. A planned demonstration against the bill Wednesday at the state Capitol, complete with signs stating “parents, not politicians, should decide what sports their children can play,” instead became a victory lap.

“I’m glad the governor took our talking points,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher of Chico. “Parents get to decide, not the government. We decide what’s best for our kids.”

Erin Mellon, a spokesperson for Newsom, said the governor evaluates each policy affecting parents’ rights individually, reflecting “the need to balance between protecting safety, privacy, freedoms and government overreach.” 

• Mellon, in a statement to CalMatters: “There are times when government needs to step in and plenty of times that the government doesn’t know better. The Governor’s approach in policy making is always rooted in humanity — he will fight for values but won’t diminish the humanity of any one group.”

From CalMatters economy reporter Levi Sumagaysay:

The California Forever project, the tech billionaire-backed effort to build a new community in Solano County, on Wednesday unveiled the initiative it hopes to put before local voters in November.

The vision of the East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy Initiative: To alleviate the state’s affordable housing crisis by creating a walkable, mixed-use community with different types of housing, schools, transit, parks and open space, plus businesses that provide jobs that pay 125% of the average weekly wage in Solano County. Initially, that would mean 50,000 residents — which could grow to 400,000 — 15,000 jobs and 20,000 homes.

The project, which under the name Flannery Associates has been buying up a reported $800 million worth of farmland in the area — mostly in secret — for the past several years, is committing at least $700 million more from its backers. This includes $400 million for down payments and the building of affordable housing in the new community, which will be located on 60,000 acres between Travis Air Force Base and Rio Vista; $200 million to help revitalize the downtowns of Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun City, Vacaville and Vallejo; $70 million for college or vocational training, or toward small businesses; and $30 million for parks, protecting ecological habitats and to support agriculture.

Funders of the plan reportedly include Silicon Valley figures such as Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman; and venture capitalists Michael Moritz and Marc Andreessen. The initiative’s backers are likely to spend even more than the dollar amounts already mentioned: They are the master developers of the plan, which also includes what it calls legally binding guarantees such as helping fund transportation improvements to Highways 12 and 113, securing water, building schools and more. 

California Forever needs 13,500 signatures to get its initiative on the ballot, and has also courted residents by introducing a $500,000 grant program for Solano County nonprofits, which it announced in December and will distribute through June. It has opened offices in Vallejo, Vacaville and Fairfield where people can learn about plans for the new community. 

Jan Sramek, chief executive of California Forever, said during his unveiling of the controversial initiative at an event in Rio Vista that the plan was “forged with community input through and through.”

• Sen. Bill Dodd, a Democrat whose district includes most of Solano County: “They’ve certainly put plenty of money and time into their proposal, but there are still huge, unresolved issues like traffic, and I’m not sold. I hope decisions are based on facts, not slogans, misdirection and massive campaign spending.”

Solano Together, a group that includes the Sierra Club of California, opposes the project: “These types of projects divert much needed public and private resources away from cities and residents, leaving existing infrastructure to degrade and residents to suffer.”