California GOP looks to dislodge Democratic control
May 6, 2018 by admin
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“This state is the most unaffordable state in the country, the highest taxes, the most people in poverty,’’ Republican businessman John Cox said of why Republican voters will show up at the polls in California. | Rich Pedroncelli, File/AP Photo
SAN DIEGO – California Republicans have been called an endangered species in this “state of resistance” to the Trump administration, but they insist that their party will beat the odds in 2018 and take back the governor’s seat.
The conservative movement against California’s controversial “sanctuary state” law, a ballot measure to repeal Governor Jerry Brown’s gas tax, and deepening concerns about rising housing costs and homelessness are fueling Republican hopes for a longshot upset.
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The California Republicans who gathered here this weekend for their state party convention say that’s because the Democratic Party – which controls every statewide seat and both houses of the state legislature – has too often tested the patience of taxpayers. With voters preparing to start mail balloting Monday for the June 5 primary, Republicans are casting solidly-Democratic California — the world’s sixth largest economy and home to Silicon Valley — as a broken state hobbled with rising crime and taxes that are sending businesses and residents fleeing.
And they’re attacking the two Democratic gubernatorial frontrunners, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, as part of the problem.
“People look around and they ask why we have the highest level of poverty in the United States?’’ said Assemblyman Travis Allen, a conservative populist from Huntington Beach who has focused his run for governor on the issue of illegal immigration. “Why do we have this exploding homeless population? And what have the California Democrats done to fix it?’’
Wealthy GOP businessman John Cox of Rancho Santa Fe — who’s now in second place behind Democrat Gavin Newsom in the governor’s race in California, where the primary doesn’t take party into account — helped finance an effort to put before voters a ballot measure to repeal the state’s new gas tax, which is overwhelmingly unpopular with Republicans.
“I think the people of this state want better management and they want a businessperson. They’ve got one in the White House,’’ he said in an interview. “The politicians have just run this state into the ground.”
Cox ticks off a list of issues that he says will drive GOP voters to turn out at the polls: “This state is the most unaffordable state in the country, the highest taxes, the most people in poverty. It’s got the worst education system. We were just voted the worst business climate in the country. Regulations are a joke. Small business formation is at an all time low. Businesses are moving out left and right.”
“I don’t know at all how any politician can claim they have managed this state well — and I think the people know it,’’ he said.
Many Republicans, like Jim Brulte, the state party chair, resist the notion of Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, who counter that the president’s unpopularity and current troubles – including the Stormy Daniels drama and Robert Mueller’s probe – will have a corrosive effect on GOP turnout in California that will help Democrats win back the House as well.
“You want to know why every word out of the Democrats’ mouth is Donald Trump?” Brulte said. “Because they don’t want the voters of this state focusing on what’s happening here. They owned the state, they broke the state – and Republicans, we’re the fix.”
Many Republicans this weekend at their San Diego convention, where “Make America Great Again” hats and “Repeal the Gas Tax” signs were snapped up, reserved their most intense ire for the SB54, the “California Values Act’’ — also known as the “sanctuary state” bill, which supporters say is aimed at protecting the rights of undocumented immigrants. Costa Mesa this week became the latest municipality in California to opt out of the bill, joining Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Simi Valley and Orange County among a crowd in what’s been called growing “revolution” against the measure.
Harmeet Dhillon, a member of the Republican National Committee and a civil rights attorney, told a packed crowd of Republicans Saturday that with the bill, California Democrats are attempting to unconstitutionally override federal jurisdiction and “force law enforcement into a more dangerous position that makes all of us a little less safe.”
“Californians are fed up,’’ said Dhillon, a former vice-chair of the state GOP. “We’re beginning to see a backlash with sanctuary city issues,’’ said Dhillon. “There’s a secret Trump support out there. Democrats feel very smug when they look at the polls, but people say one thing to the pollsters and another to other voters.”
But California State Senator Kevin de Leon, the author of SB54 — and a regular target of GOP candidates — told POLITICO the Republican playbook aims to mislead voters and pump up anti-immigrant sentiment this weekend is merely a desperate attempt to energize a weakening voter base.
“Like Trump, these fake patriots lie about what the bill does,’’ he said. “The fact is, SB 54 expressly exempts dangerous and violent criminals and promotes public safety by having local law enforcement focused on keeping communities safe, not enforcing federal immigration laws. By wide margins Californians see through Trump’s lies and reject his race based immigration policies.”
De Leon said, “Pro-Trump Republicans are out of step with California values. Try as hard as they might they cannot turn back the clock to 1994,’’ adding: “We simply refuse to go back.”
But Lanhee Chen, a former advisor to U.S. Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, says Republicans hoping for some wins this year in an overwhelmingly Democratic state may get traction — by using the bill to point to “a number of examples of gross mismanagement and public policy in California,’’ some of them related to immigration.
Along with fears generated by some high profile crimes like the Kate Steinle murder, there has also been a sense “that urban blight in California has gotten really bad,’’ with homeless encampments mushrooming in Democratic cities like San Francisco and Oakland. “Those law-and-order issues resonate with voters in the Republican party — and independent voters as well,’’ Chen said.
That’s why party activists may be banking hopes on their chances of beating one of the Democratic “flawed candidates”– such as Newsom or Villaraigosa, who have both been the focus of independent expenditures efforts hammering away way at past sexual transgressions of both men. Chan says some Republicans believe that may create “an opportunity for a Republican to sneak in here.”
But Steve Frank, a longtime party activist and publisher of California News Views — a conservative website — cautions that if Republicans really want to take back the governor’s seat in California, they need to follow the example of the man in the White House, who got there despite the predictions of pundits.
“Trump had a message — and he had solutions,’’ said Frank, who hasn’t endorsed either Cox or Allen. Neither of the Republican candidates has gained traction, he said. “They have headlines, but no solutions.”
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US condemns China for ‘Orwellian nonsense’ over airline websites
May 6, 2018 by admin
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By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House on Saturday sharply criticized China’s efforts to force foreign airlines to change how they refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, labeling China’s latest effort to police language describing the politically sensitive territories as “Orwellian nonsense.”
Amid an escalating fight over China’s trade surplus with the United States, the White House said China’s Civil Aviation Administration sent a letter to 36 foreign air carriers, including a number of U.S. carriers, demanding changes.
The carriers were told to remove references on their websites or in other material that suggests Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are part of countries independent from China, U.S. and airline officials said.
The White House said in a statement that President Donald Trump “will stand up for Americans resisting efforts by the Chinese Communist Party to impose Chinese political correctness on American companies and citizens.”
“This is Orwellian nonsense and part of a growing trend by the Chinese Communist Party to impose its political views on American citizens and private companies. … We call on China to stop threatening and coercing American carriers and citizens.”
Taiwan is China’s most sensitive territorial issue. Beijing considers the self-ruled, democratic island a wayward province. Hong Kong and Macau are former European colonies that are now part of China but run largely autonomously.
On Sunday, China’s foreign ministry responded to the White House comments, saying that overseas companies operating in China should respect its sovereignty and territorial integrity, follow Chinese law and “respect the national feelings of the Chinese people”.
“No matter what the United States says, it cannot change the objective fact that there is only one China in the world and that Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan are indivisible parts of Chinese territory,” spokesman Geng Shuang said in a statement on the ministry website.
The White House’s sharp criticism follows contentious trade talks between senior U.S. and Chinese officials last week.
The Trump administration demanded a $200 billion cut in China’s trade surplus with the United States by 2020, sharply lower tariffs and a halt to subsidies for advanced technology, people familiar with the talks said.
“My group just got back from China. We’re going to have to rework China because that’s been a one-way street for decades,” Trump said at an event in Cleveland on Saturday.
“We can’t go on that way,” he said, although he also said he has a lot respect for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump earlier this week praised his relationship with Xi but there were no signs of significant progress at the talks on Thursday and Friday, raising fears of a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday discussed bilateral ties by phone, with Yang saying relations were at “an important stage”, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
It was unclear if the call came after, or was a response to, the White House statement – or if the two had even discussed the issue of how Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are referred to by U.S. companies.
According to a Chinese foreign ministry statement late on Saturday, Yang told Pompeo the two countries should strengthen exchanges, maintain close communication over economic and trade issues and respect each other’s “core interests and major concerns”.
China and the United States should “properly settle disputes and sensitive issues”, keep up communication and coordination on major international and regional issues and “push bilateral relations forward along the right track”, Yang said.
TARIFF THREATS
Trump has already proposed tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese goods which could go into effect next month.
China has said its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, including soybeans and aircraft, will go into effect if the U.S. duties are imposed.
It has also requested that Washington treat Chinese investment equally under national security reviews and stop issuing new restrictions on Chinese investment.
The dispute over how airlines refer to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau is another area of tension in U.S.-China relations.
A spokesman for Airlines for America, a trade group representing United Airlines , American Airlines and other major carriers, said on Saturday it was working with the U.S. government to determine “next steps” in the dispute.
In January, Delta Air Lines , following a demand from China over listing Taiwan and Tibet as countries on its website, apologized for making “an inadvertent error with no business or political intention,” and said it had taken steps to resolve the issue.
Also in January, China suspended Marriott International Inc’s Chinese website for a week to punish the world’s biggest hotel chain for listing Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as separate countries in a customer questionnaire.
The apparent intensification of efforts to police how foreign businesses refer to Chinese-claimed territories – even if only in pull-down web menus – underscores how sensitive the issue of sovereignty has become in China.
China’s aviation authority said in January it would require all foreign airlines operating routes to China to conduct comprehensive investigations of their websites, apps and customer-related information and “strictly comply with China’s laws and regulations to prevent a similar thing from happening.”
Australia’s Qantas Airways said in January it had amended its website to no longer refer to Taiwan and Hong Kong as countries rather than Chinese territories after China issued a similar warning.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI; Editing by Leslie Adler, Jonathan Oatis and Richard Borsuk)