In a key swing district, Katie Porter clashes with GOP opponent over inflation and ‘Orange County values’
Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., and her 2022 rival, Scott Baugh, voiced sharply different views on tackling rising costs, abortion and same-sex marriage in interviews with NBC News.

In a rough year for Democrats, Republican Scott Baugh is trying to bring this Orange County swing district back to its GOP roots after it abandoned his party.

But he’s navigating a culturally changing region, now wary of a Republican Party transformed by Donald Trump, and a rising Democratic star in two-term Rep. Katie Porter, who, as one Republican operative lamented, “has more money than God.”

“I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t think it was winnable,” Baugh said in an interview

Heavy favorite and incumbent Democrat Alex Padilla and Republican attorney Mark Meuser have advanced to the November general election for U.S. Senate in California, Associated Press said Tuesday evening.

With 100% of the precincts reporting, Padilla and Meuser were outdistancing the 23-person field by enough votes to declare them the two winners who will now square off in November — not once, but twice.

Padilla has 53.5% of the vote, while Meuser was well behind him at 14.3% of the vote, but no one else in the field had more than 6.7% of the vote.

SAN FRANCISCO – As expected, Gov. Gavin Newsom cruised to a solid first-place finish in the primary election for governor, according to The Associated Press.

He will face off against Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle in the fall, making Newsom the prohibitive favorite to win a second four-year term.

Under California’s “top two” primary system, the first and second-place finishers in all statewide races, regardless of party, face off in November.

The battle to become California’s attorney general is perhaps the most contested race on the June 7 state primary ballot.

The race pits Democratic incumbent Rob Bonta against an independent, Sacramento Dist. Atty. Anne Marie Schubert, and two Republicans, former Assistant U.S. Atty. Gen. Nathan Hochman and Los Angeles attorney Eric Early — and comes amid debate about rising crime and the impact of decades of criminal justice reform in California.

California Assembly and Senate budget leaders announce a budget deal that includes stimulus checks, more in-state students at UC campuses and more money for public health and undocumented immigrants.

With a deluge of dollars flowing into California’s coffers from state taxpayers and Uncle Sam, Democratic leaders in the Legislature have agreed on a budget plan that would spend slightly less than what Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed, while still pouring billions of dollars into helping Californians recover from the pandemic.

The $267.1 billion plan the Assembly and Senate announced Tuesday largely mirrors the proposals Newsom laid out last month in his $267.8 billion budget. It embraces Newsom’s “Golden State Stimulus,” which will send at least $500 to every household that makes as much as $75,000 a year. It would pour even more into grants to help small businesses and into payments toward unemployment insurance. But it would launch fewer new social programs than the Democratic governor proposed.

Last fall, my former editor at The Fresno Bee called to ask: Would I be interested in covering California’s election administration for CalMatters?

That was the beginning of a three-month stint reporting for Votebeat, a nonpartisan “pop-up newsroom” in eight states whose mission was to cover the integrity of the 2020 election. Created by the news site Chalkbeat, Votebeat was a collaboration of media companies and nonprofits including CalMatters, The Bee, the Long Beach Post, and the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism in California.

My reporting allowed me to witness the historic 2020 election up close and investigate claims of fraud or funny business.