My California Primary Ballot, 2024
There are some jokes, I promise
Who Am I?
I’m Aryeh (Ari) Zax. I grew up in upstate New York and graduated from Cornell in 2018 with a major in math and minors in physics and computer science. I’ve lived in the Bay Area since graduating, previously in Mountain View and recently moving to Oakland.
I enjoy politics and feel a civic duty to be informed when I cast my ballot, and that combination means I enjoy obsessively researching before I vote. In 2022 I compiled my research into a doc that some friends expressed interest in and/or gratitude for, so this year I decided to publish it to Substack for any who might appreciate it.
I am generally liberal (by real life standards) / center-left (by Twitter standards). I’ve been a registered Democrat for almost all my adult life, though in January I temporarily registered as a Republican so I could vote in their presidential primary.
I dislike the Republican Party. I remember disliking Republicans in 2010 for reasons including their stances on gay people, abortion, gun control, global warming, and government assistance. The party’s subsequent transformation into a cult of personality glorifying Donald Trump has not made me like it more.
The further you find yourself from me politically, the less useful you will find this document, though I hope it is still useful regardless. I make an effort to go through the inputs (“Joe Schmoe wants to increase penalties for unlicensed blorp hunting”) and outputs (“overhunting of blorps leads to high widget prices, which is bad”), so even if you favor high widget prices you can still learn something about the relevant factors underlying the decision.
I also like footnotes. I really like footnotes1. Get used to it.
Topline
US President — Nikki Haley
US Senate, full term — Steve Garvey
US Senate, partial term — Steve Garvey
US House, District 12 — Lateefah Simon
State Senate, District 7 — Jesse Arreguin
State Assembly, District 18 — Mia Bonta
Superior Court Judge, Office #5 — Terry Wiley
Superior Court Judge, Office #12 — Michael Johnson
Affordable Housing Initiative — Yes
Alameda County, Measure A — No
Alameda County, Measure B — Yes
Oakland, Measure D — Yes
Oakland City Auditor — Michael Houston
US President
I registered as a Republican about a month ago so I could vote for Nikki Haley in this contest, seeing as the Democratic primary is looking a bit sleepy2. I don’t particularly like Nikki Haley or believe she’d be a good president, but the orange man is bad.
If you’re voting in the Democratic primary, I recommend voting for Joe Biden.
US Senate, Full Term
This is an exciting top-two primary3 with the number of relevant candidates somewhere between three and five. Before we get to the boring part, I want to highlight some of my honorable mentions:
Didn’t Make The Ballot
Barack Obama Mandela is a Jewish (!) Republican with one of the most un-Googleable names I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately he is roughly as crazy as you would expect of a black Jewish Republican who changed his name to Barack Obama Mandela.
Fepbrina Keivaulqe Autiameineire is running for both the Senate seat and an unrelated House seat (not my district). Incredibly, as far as I can tell, it is perfectly legal to serve simultaneously in the House and the Senate. I admire her industriousness and ambition.
Made the Ballot, Still a Longshot
Stefan Simchowitz is a Los Angeles-based art collector, art curator, and art advisor. He is a vocal proponent of social media as a legitimate way of discovering, distributing, and popularizing the fine arts, primarily using Facebook and Instagram as platforms for self-promotion, discovering new artists, and endorsing those he already manages.
Simchowitz believes that conversations on social media hold a degree of influence over the artworld comparable to other canonical forums for artistic discussion and legitimization, including art reviews written by critics for key publications. Supporters see his method as concerned with diversifying the number of systems which recognize and produce credible artists. A number of them, including, but not limited to Sterling Ruby, Oscar Murillo, Paa Joe, Lucien Smith, Petra Cortright, Zachary Armstrong, Kour Pour, Jon Rafman, and Marc Horowitz have all been advised by Stefan Simchowitz.
Simchowitz is a noted photographer, describing his work as "The Simcoportrait". The Simcoportrait is a self created genre of photography in which he has collapsed documentation of anything and everything into a single thing - this includes still life, landscape, street, self portraiture, and documentation photography. The Simcoportrait is merely a portrait of the subject in whatever genre of photography it may fall. What is unusual about his practice is that it accompanies him everywhere as a live documentation under the seemingly nondescript amateur everyday photographer. There is a formal discipline to his image taking and image making that is reflected in the obsessive compulsion to capture and create. Simchowitz's "Simcoportraits" have been published in Flaunt and Vogue.
Oops! Sorry, sorry. I accidentally pasted a long series of excerpts from his Wikipedia page into my post4. I’m not going to slander him by saying he wrote his entire Wikipedia page himself; it’s possible his mom wrote some of it. The lamestream media takes a less sympathetic view of his art dealing practices.
Okay, fine. Fun time’s over. Let’s talk about the three big name Democrats running for the seat.
Adam “Adam ‘Shifty Schiff’ Schiff” Schiff
Quick summary: normie #resist lib
How is he different from the other two? came straight off the Democratic Congressperson assembly line
Position on Israel? “Israel has a right to defend itself,” deflects questions about Israel by blaming Hamas
What does he call homeless people? “those who are homeless”
Anything else? would be a major win for diversity as the first white man California sends to the Senate in my lifetime
Barbara Lee
Quick summary: anti-war left-winger
How is she different from the other two? somewhat further left and much stupider5
Position on Israel? Called for a ceasefire on October 8th but plays to both sides because she wants to win a statewide race
What does she call homeless people? “people who are unsheltered”
Anything else? only vote in Congress against the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that started the War on Terror
Katie Porter
Quick summary: Warren-style progressive populist
How is she different from the other two? Lee is populist and Schiff is normie but Porter is both
Position on Israel? Began calling for a “bilateral ceasefire” in December (previously “humanitarian pause”) because she wants to win a Democratic primary
What does she call homeless people? “people experiencing homelessness”
Anything else? She’s the Congress lady with the whiteboard from those videos you like
On paper I feel like a natural Barbara Lee voter. If you made a Barbara Lee robot that just votes against the War on Terror (and the Patriot Act) and votes randomly on everything else and put 535 of them in Congress for the last 25 years, it’d probably be a net positive compared to the status quo. Those policies have been orders of magnitude more consequential than most of the other stuff our government has gotten up to, with financial costs in the trillions and the human costs incalculable. Even if you don’t think her particular set of skills will be needed again in the near future, that kind of track record should be rewarded. Adam Schiff is an annoying showboat and a slimeball. Katie Porter is an annoying showboat who’s abusive to her staff6.
So what’s wrong with Barbara Lee? She’s 77 and won’t commit to serving a single term; at the end of a hypothetical second Barbara Lee term, she’d be older than Dianne Feinstein was when she died, in this very seat, after several years as little more than a puppet for her staff. Lee won’t shut up about her stupid $50 minimum wage. When I watched the debates I thought her age was catching up to her, but that’s subjective and maybe I’m biased.
The candidates have some distance rhetorically on Israel but I don’t think they actually differ much practically, and it’s not like California’s Senator is the deciding vote on such matters anyway. None of the candidates went out on any limbs at the debates, so potential tiebreakers like nuclear power and the bipartisan border bill are duds. In the end I don’t particularly like any of them. So who am I voting for?
Steve Garvey, obviously!
Who’s Steve Garvey? He’s a patriot, that’s who. He’s an MVP and a 10-time All-Star who spent his entire 19-year career in our great state. With the economy in the toilet, there’s never been a better time to vote for the two-time league leader in GDP.
Unrelated to his baseball career 40 years ago, he’s also running for Senate, and I guess there are enough old people here that he’s somehow polling neck-and-neck for second place.
What does he stand for? Look, don’t ask stupid questions, that’s not important. He’s a Republican, he’s polling at 15%, he’s a total clown7, and I’m voting for him.
Polling shows Adam Schiff with a near-lock on the first runoff spot at around 25%, with Porter and Garvey duking it out for second place around 15% and no one else reliably breaking the single digits. This has led to some interesting dynamics. For Schiff, it’s in his interest to promote Garvey so he can have an easy opponent in November rather than a bitter fight against Porter. He’s been running backhanded ads “attacking” Garvey (“he’s too MAGA for California!”) and mentioning him by name every chance he gets in the debates. Porter has figured out her lane in this irregular war is to run ads boosting Eric Early as “too MAGA” while portraying Garvey as some kind of centrist coward. Not because she thinks it’s important we all know the grave threat posed by Eric Early8, but because she wants to fracture the Garvey vote and get second place herself.
In the end I find my interests are aligned with Schiff’s. The Biden v. Trump race is looking close, with Biden trailing at the moment but with time to address his major issues (economic sentiments and perceptions of his age), and the wildcard of Trump’s legal issues hanging over it all. The House is basically a tossup, with a lot of close races all over the country that could tip the balance. The Senate is extremely likely to have at least 48 Senators of each party a year from now, with Sherrod Brown and John Tester in particular having the fights of their lives ahead of them. Perhaps in a blue wave year we’d have the luxury of wasting tens of millions of dollars on a D vs D senate race in California9, but this year it’s just a bad investment.
US Senate, partial term
Why do we keep doing this? This is a special election to fill Feinstein’s seat for the lame duck period between the election in November and the new Congress being seated on January 3rd, 2025. We had a sham election like this for Kamala Harris’s seat too and I am Not A Fan. I understand that running one-off elections is expensive so it makes administrative sense to consolidate things onto one ballot, but the seat will end up vacant for 15 months and I’ll get to fill it for 2 of them. I have rights, you know!
This race matters a lot less than the full term one, though it would at least be funny if it managed to have different candidates. If any of the Democrats had covered themselves in glory I’d throw them a vote here just to show that I appreciate what they’re doing, but as-is I’m voting for Garvey again.
US House, District 12
Lateefah Simon is the heir apparent for Barbara Lee’s seat. Her life story is a little too on-the-nose inspiration porn: born legally blind, she became a single mother at 18. Her habitual shoplifting landed her at the Young Women’s Freedom Center, an organization to help troubled young women set their lives straight; a few years later she was its executive director, and her work there earned her a MacArthur fellowship. Since 2016 she’s served on BART’s board of directors and is probably its only member who can’t drive.
Simon has received Barbara Lee’s endorsement and close to 90% of the money in the race. She’s supported increased police presence on BART (and voted to increased police pay), and she says she’s a "radical pragmatist" looking to get things done. Her campaign website is light on details — she says "she plans to develop it in consultation with her constituents" — so she might well be sincere about her pragmatism (or she’s just playing it safe in a race that’s hers to lose). Regardless, she’s inspirational and seems like a solid candidate to fill Barbara Lee’s shoes, and I have some guilt to discharge over not voting for Lee for Senate.
The main alternatives are Tony Daysog, currently the vice mayor of Alameda, and Jennifer Tran, an assistant professor at CSU East Bay. Daysog’s platform is a mix of ideas, some of which are merely left-wing while others are left-wing and unconstitutional and/or stupid. Tran seems like a nice enough person but she’s clearly way out of her weight class when stacked up against Simon. The local newspapers both like Simon and so do I.
State Senate, District 7
For local(-ish) elections I am a single-issue voter and that issue is “build more housing”. This race has five Democrats, but it seems that Jesse Arreguin is no-contest the candidate most comfortable with the idea of building more fucking housing, so he gets my vote.
State Assembly, District 18
There’s only one Democrat in this race, but it’s Mia Bonta. She sounds like she might be related to Rob Bonta, our Attorney General whom I vaguely remember disliking, so let’s at least take a look at the other candidates.
There’s some bad blood between Pechenuk and Kenney over the perception that Kenney is intruding on Pechenuk’s turf; this erupted in an incident last month where Kenney’s dad tried to beat someone up for calling her a prostitute. In my opinion, this is slightly more inter-Republican drama than is warranted for a seat that Republicans most recently lost by 80 points.
I’ll be voting for Mia Bonta, wife of Rob Bonta, our great Attorney General for whom I have nothing but respect.
Superior Court Judge, Office #5
Terry Wiley is running unopposed for this seat. I haven’t been able to find anything negative about him (opposition research seems scant) and the only information I can find is that he was recently appointed to the San Francisco Sheriff's Department of Accountability, which I guess is a positive sign (though he’ll probably have to resign from one of his jobs).
Superior Court Judge, Office #12
Another judicial race, this one actually contested! Both candidates are experienced law-knower types. No one has anything particularly bad to say about Michael Johnson. The local newspaper claims that Mark Fickes is bad at judicial independence and falsely listed himself as a civil rights attorney on the ballot a few years ago. Yikes!
Affordable Housing Initiative
This is a two-part initiative; the first part is a bond measure to fund construction of new housing and treatment facilities, while the second part redistributes how some previously allocated money from the Mental Health Services Act of 2004 can be spent. I think the first part is clearly good policy on the merits, though it’s unfortunate that California’s running a large budget deficit and attempting to take out loans given current interest rates.
The reallocation of existing funds is harder to evaluate; broadly speaking it represents a shift away from fuzzier, community-focused interventions for low- and medium-risk people and towards housing and treatment beds for severely mentally ill. Is an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure? How many of the people who lose their ounce of prevention are actually going to end up on the street? How badly does California need increased treatment capacity for the most severe cases? It seems immensely complicated to calculate, far beyond the scope of this piece.
The LA Times and Chronicle both endorse this measure, as does Governor Newsom; see here for a sample argument for No. I think the newspapers and the governor at least have their interests roughly aligned in the direction of good policy, in the sense that the newspapers value prestige and Newsom wants to run for president in 2028. The big talkers on the No side are people like Cal Voices, exactly the kind of community-oriented services set to lose funding if the initiative passes10. I also think the burden of proof should be on the people defending the 20-year-old system that’s been in place as our problems have gotten worse.
I dislike having complicated issues like this on the ballot — rather than asking 20 million people to become experts in mental health treatment policy, why not pay a few dozen elected representatives to sort that out on their own? — and bias towards voting No on this type of measure for that reason. But in this case the MHSA was itself put on the ballot and can only be amended via the ballot, and I think issuing new bonds also has to be done via initiative.
On a fundamental level I do think it’s clear that (e.g.) San Francisco’s homelessness rate is roughly what you’d expect given its high rents and mild climate11, and not necessarily indicative of some horribly defective mental health infrastructure. At the same time, overdose deaths have gone way up recently, and it makes sense to have some aggressive treatment programs in place. So on the merits I think a two-pronged approach of trying to build more housing and address the most severely mentally ill makes some sense, and I’ll be voting Yes.
Protect the Immortal Souls of Dialysis Patients Initiative
It is a sad fact of life that dialysis patients die, sometimes while undergoing treatment. This proposition would require that privately operated dialysis clinics have an ordained minister onsite during patient treatment so that patients can be provided spiritual comfort in their final moments. Each clinic would need to have a minister (or religion-appropriate equivalent) from the following major religions, and to provide a minister from other religions at the request of a patient: Christianity (Catholic & Protestant), Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Independent.
Ha! Just kidding. There’s no dialysis prop this time.
Alameda County, Measure A
This measure would reduce the minimum required time for a civil service exam to be advertised from 25 days to 14 days. The argument in favor vaguely gestures at the competitive job market12 and says 25 days’ notice is too burdensome a requirement. I guess in those extra 11 days all the top civil servant candidates get hired by neighboring counties with a shorter waiting period13? They take private sector offers from employers that aren’t required by law to move slowly? It’s also easier to find out about job postings in the Internet age, so maybe 25 days is a relic of the past.
I find this argument…not particularly believable? It’s put on the ballot by the local government, so they could easily know something I don’t about the difficulties of staffing the local government. But are civil service needs really popping up left and right such that the government only ever has 2 weeks (but not 4 weeks notice) to find the right person for the job? I’m skeptical. The argument against is that the Alameda County Board of Supervisors has some corruption issues and shortening the waiting period is just a way to get their cronies into civil service jobs against easier competition. I can’t comment on the merits but that at least has an air of plausibility.
I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise but for now I’m voting No.
Alameda County, Measure B
If passed, this measure would align Alameda County’s recall procedures for elected officials with the state’s recall procedures. The most substantive change would be changing how the required number of signatures to kick off a recall is calculated, upping it from around 75,000 to around 95,00014. The current law also allows the recall of appointed officials, not just elected ones, and that would change if this measure passes.
The Yes camp focuses on practical issues with the current recall language, such as the fact that it’s likely unconstitutional in several respects15 and has numerous practical issues, e.g. giving the local government 10 days to verify 100,000 signatures and then only a few weeks to print a million ballots in half a dozen languages. I will ding the Yes camp very slightly for dishonesty for not mentioning the implications of increasing the signature threshold for the ongoing recall attempt of Alameda’s woke District Attorney16.
The No camp lies brazenly and often. Let’s go through their claims (some formatting omitted):
Measure B limits your Alameda County recall rights. Existing law has worked well for 97 years holding officials accountable.
Alameda County has never had run a recall election for a local official.17 To be extremely charitable, you could say that our recall laws have been so good for 100 years that no one’s even dared to be corrupt. Sorry, not buying it.
The supporters' argument is extremely misleading. It claims that "any recalls underway ... will move forward" and that Measure B "won't stop these efforts."
Somewhat true, though note that the ellipses elide the very non-misleading words “that submit their signatures by March 5, 2024”.18 My understanding (which I would not bet my life on) is that from the county’s perspective the current DA recall attempt does not exist, and won’t exist until it gathers the 75,000 signatures required to become noticed. If this measure passes and they don’t have the 75,000 signatures in time, they’ll have to get an extra 20,000 signatures.
Your right to elect a replacement for a recalled official would be taken away and given to the same three County Supervisors who approved Measure B.
Extremely misleading. State law provides for a recall election, and if the recall succeeds, a subsequent election is held to fill the seat. Supervisors might appoint an interim replacement in the meantime. Current law has the recall and the subsequent election on the same ballot.
"Measure B's supporters openly admit that you would lose your right to recall anyone whom Supervisors appoint."
There would be a recall election to replace any appointed, temporary holder of the office. You would lose your right to recall officials who hold appointed offices, which is currently a weird perk that Alameda County voters get (but have never actually invoked).
"The supporters incorrectly argue that we are `the only county' that has different recall election rules than California law."
No, they claim we are the only county with rules that substantially deviate from state law. Come on!
In an ideal world this wouldn’t be on the ballot at the same time as a somewhat serious recall attempt19. But we do have horribly written and probably illegal recall laws, and copy-pasting the existing recall laws seems like the best fix, especially if there might be a recall election around the corner. The opponents are lying brazenly. Seems like an easy enough choice to me.
Oakland, Measure D
In 1979 California passed Proposition 4, which forever set a spending limit for city governments. The limit starts from a fixed baseline and is adjusted for population growth and inflation. This isn’t a debt limit; we still have to collect tax money to pay for government services, but we also have a hard limit on the per-person dollar amount of government services.
In a completely unforeseeable twist, Oakland wants to spend more money per capita than they did 40 years ago. Many of these expenditures have been approved directly by voters at the ballot box; others indirectly via taxes and policies enacted by our elected officials. Regardless, because of Prop 4 they have to ask the voters for permission to do so.
The argument against allowing this is that Oakland sucks, crime, drugs, schools etc. and maybe the government should get its shit together before asking for more money.
I think this is a fine argument, though probably solving Oakland’s problems will require spending money and they’ll never get solved if we demand people solve them before we let them spend money. More broadly, I hate being asked to micromanage government. That’s what I pay you for! If I think you are taxing me too much to pay for dumb government services, I will let you know by voting for someone else.
Oakland City Auditor
The previous auditor went off to go audit someplace moderately bigger than Oakland, so we’re running a special election for the remaining two years of her term. Michael Houston has been the acting auditor for the last 6 months and is running unopposed for the office. He seems like his head is in the right place, he’s been running the office competently so far, and I see no reason to write in a protest vote against him.
However many footnotes you’re expecting, you’re underprepared. I got frustrated when I learned Substack doesn’t let me add footnotes within footnotes.
Keep fighting the good fight, Dean!
i.e. Democrats and Republicans all run in the same primary and the top two advance to a runoff in the general election. I mention this dynamic (which is true of almost all our primaries) because it’ll come up later.
I recommend the (somehow still very flattering) “Controversy” section.
I am bullying her for saying in both debates and on Twitter that California should have a $50 minimum wage (equivalent to $100,000/year). I want to believe this is a cynical but poorly executed ploy by a losing candidate to differentiate herself from the competition. Part of me wonders if she’s just a nut who happened to strike gold on the Iraq War thing.
You’re entitled not to find the bad boss allegations credible. I’d note that her website boasts two (!) endorsements from members of Congress, Elizabeth Warren and a relatively unknown California representative. Schiff has endorsements from 29 California representatives; Lee has endorsements from 4 in California and almost two dozen from other states. The vibe here seems to be that no one who actually works with (or for) Katie Porter has much nice to say about her. This is bad both morally and from the perspective of electing a dealmaker who can get things done.
There are a lot of ways he is a clown, but by far my favorite is how every time he’s asked how he feels about Donald Trump, if he’s voting for him in November, if he’d accept an endorsement, etc. he acts extremely offended at the idea that the voters should get to know anything about his personal politics before electing him to public office.
I still don’t know who this guy is! I remembered him as a candidate from the governor recall and I still don’t know who he is!
Moreover, one where the three candidates have gone out of their way not to differentiate themselves on policy!
Out of fairness I am not counting the doctor and hospital lobbying groups’ Yes endorsements as an argument for the measure, since they are similarly conflicted.
e.g. rents in New York City are also quite high, but homeless people don’t accumulate in the same way there because living outside in the winter can easily kill you.
Not that it matters, but I can think of another way to make civil service jobs more attractive to top talent.
Even accepting this as true, should we respond by doing a race to the bottom on civil service exam announcement periods? What do we do when those dirty San Franciscans reduce their announcement period to 7 days? Shouldn’t the state just step in and set some universal time period to stop everyone from competing self-destructively for the same pool of qualified applicants?
The current signature requirement is “at least fifteen percent of the entire vote cast within the County for all candidates for the office of Governor”; the 75,000 number comes from 15% of the roughly 500,000 Alameda County votes cast in the 2022 gubernatorial election. The 95,000 number comes from what the new requirement would be, which is 10% of Alameda County’s registered voters.
This claim is backed up by the nonpartisan summary, page 2 of the linked PDF.
There is currently a moderately serious effort to recall said woke DA. My guess as to the arrow of causation here is someone took the recall seriously, looked at the recall laws, and realized they were a catastrophe and had to be changed to have any hope of administering a valid election. Did the change have to be “revert to state law”? That seems like a pretty reasonable change, but maybe if they’d wanted the recall to succeed they could’ve invented a more complicated one.
This is claimed by the YES side in the above-linked nonpartisan summary, and confirmed by the Secretary of State here.
After publication, the recall effort submitted 123,000 signatures, very likely enough to trigger a recall under current rules even after some get tossed during validation.
The recall attempt seems to be fairly cagey about how many signatures they actually have, so I wouldn’t take it as a given that they’re actually going to hit 75,000 any time soon, or ever.