XPost: alt.politics.democrats.d, alt.california, alt.society.liberalism
XPost: alt.politics.immigration, sac.politics

Sex trafficking of minors was the last thing California Democrats wanted
this year to be about.

Yet a few months into a legislative session that was supposed to be
focused on tackling affordability and restoring voters’ confidence in
their ability to address crime and homelessness, the state Assembly was engulfed on Thursday in a bitter debate around tightening penalties for soliciting sex from older teenagers that set lawmakers at odds with Gov.
Gavin Newsom and other Democrats.

Democrats found themselves once again fending off criticism that they
had lost their way on public safety. And while they largely faulted a
renegade colleague, the blowup has fed a troubling narrative — that the
party controlling Sacramento can’t get out of its own way when it digs
in on a politically unpopular stance.

“Our job right now is to be able to communicate effectively how
Democrats are serving Californians and making peoples’ lives better.
This does not help,” said former state Sen. Susan Eggman, who last year excoriated her party for becoming “laughingstocks” and losing the
center.

Eggman recounted her teenage daughter seeing a television segment on
Democrats seeking to curb the bill and struggling to explain why.

“It is hard to be taken seriously when you have difficulty articulating
the policies you continue to support or oppose,” she said, “and unless
you can articulate that in a way my 16-year-old can understand, then you
have trouble with the average voter.”

Demands by Democrats on an Assembly committee that people who solicit
16- and 17-year-olds for sex be treated less harshly than those who
target younger teens marked the second time in two years that Democratic
state lawmakers, who firmly grasp Sacramento’s levers of power, were
caught on the defensive as Republicans lambasted them for blocking or
watering down bills addressing sex crimes against minors. Democrats
tried to parry the assault, saying a solicitation law that treats
younger and older teens equally would do more harm than good, tying the
hands of judges and others.

The raucous and confrontational floor debate could provide easy fodder
for campaign videos as Republicans look to build on their gains in last year’s election cycle, when they flipped seats in counties where
President Donald Trump made considerable inroads.

“You’re trying to pull the con job over on the California voters,” said Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, but “I don’t think the voters are going to
fall for this, and I will spend every day working to ensure that.”

Both fights — over the same provision — fractured Democrats and exposed ideological disagreements over thorny criminal justice issues as the
public’s views swing from the left back toward the center. Both times,
Newsom intervened to publicly advocate for tougher penalties. The
governor, a likely 2028 contender, has strategically spoken out to
thwart politically combustible bills to ban tackle football and shield
more immigrants with criminal convictions from deportation.

This time, Newsom drew support from Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, San Jose
Mayor Matt Mahan and Christine Pelosi, who is widely expected to run for
the seat currently held by her mother, former House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi. Her broadside on X, in which she argued the measure would
demolish voter trust, spurred numerous comments that, if even a Pelosi
was opposed, Democrats had truly strayed off course.

And unlike last year, it was not a Republican pushing the bill forward
but a fellow Democrat.

First-year Assemblymember Maggy Krell, a former prosecutor who built her reputation targeting the site Backpage.com and drew law enforcement
support in her campaign, stunned her party and joined Republicans to try
and force through her bill rather than a compromise hammered out by
legislative leadership. (Krell did not return requests for comment).

Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas accused Krell of reneging on a deal.
Members of her caucus fumed that she had thrust them into an impossible position, exposed them to bad-faith Republican attacks and bolstered a narrative of Democratic disarray. In one particularly charged moment on
the floor, one Democrat accused “some of the highest constitutional officers” of spreading “misinformation” — an apparent swipe at Newsom and Kounalakis.

“Watching the Republicans be emboldened to attack us in the way they
did, that was a hard pill for people to swallow,” said a Democratic assemblymember granted anonymity to speak candidly about caucus
dynamics. “The Democrats were blindsided by one of our own.”

The bill also encapsulated changing dynamics around crime. Last year,
voters resoundingly approved a ballot initiative to strengthen theft and
drug penalties that Democratic state lawmakers and statewide officials,
from Newsom on down, overwhelmingly opposed. The fallout from Krell’s
bill has fueled concerns that the party’s reputation on public safety is alienating the voters they need to win back.

“Somehow, as our president tanks our economy and deports innocent
children, the American people still don’t trust Democrats,”
Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a moderate Democrat from Bakersfield who
was punished for breaking with her party in 2023, said during floor
debate.

Bains was one of only two Democrats who voted with Krell and
Republicans. The caucus was otherwise unified, accusing Republicans of manufacturing outrage and noting that current California already law
allows felony charges for purchasing minors for sex.

“The Republicans are looking for any opportunity to try to paint
Democrats as somehow soft on crime or not caring about crime, and it’s
so inaccurate,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, who has authored
controversial measures like a 2022 bill decriminalizing loitering with
the intent to commit prostitution. “There was a lot of politics going
on, a lot of grandstanding, even though we have strong laws on the
books.”

The struggle over Krell’s bill reflected a larger recalibration within California politics as lawmakers work to address voters’ clear public
safety concerns without reverting to the stringent penalties and
overcrowded prisons that came to define the 1990s and early 2000s.

The bill’s opponents warned it would remove discretion from judges, risk penalizing victims, and unjustly apply the same punishment to
18-year-olds as middle-aged solicitors of sex. That nuance was largely
obscured in a public debate that allowed Republicans to paint Democrats
as apathetic about horrific crimes against children.

Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political consultant who ran Krell’s
unsuccessful campaign for district attorney, said her arguments were
likely to resonate.

“She’s doing what she thinks is the right thing,” he said, “and I’m sure
that if you polled them, most voters would be in agreement.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/02/california-democrats-crime-00323
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