California’s campaign drama entices political junkies, but serious issues get short shrift

This year’s political campaigns gave California’s political junkies plenty of chaotic events to savor: gerrymandered congressional districts; the sudden, scandalous downfall of a frontrunner for governor, and running feuds with President Donald Trump over voting.

However, for those of us who just want effective governance that addresses the multitude of challenges arising from California’s socioeconomic complexity, the campaign season has been drearily disappointing.

Few, if any, office seekers have even mentioned such serious issues as unstable water supplies, budget deficits, homelessness or rising living costs, much less offered voters clear-eyed approaches to them.

The Democratic playbook has often been to blame Trump for everything negative, even though those important issues afflicted California long before he appeared on the political scene.

Meanwhile Republicans, with very slim chances of making gains in such a blue state, have pinned every unresolved problem on outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom, even though he inherited many of them when he took office in 2019.

Polls tell us that Californians are in a sour mood. They’re worried about soaring living costs and the economy in general and are unhappy with the status quo. Yet they seem unwilling to make big political changes — preferring the known to taking a chance on the unknown.

That contradictory attitude is particularly evident in the campaigns for the two most important offices being filled this year, the governor and mayor of Los Angeles.

Despite having served in public offices for decades, including a stint as attorney general, Xavier Becerra’s support for governor in polls last spring was in the low single digits. Back then the odds-on favorite, Congressmember Eric Swalwell, self-destructed as multiple women accused him of sexual harassment or even assault.

Swalwell not only dropped out of the race but resigned his congressional seat. The only other candidates with double-digit support were left-leaning billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer and Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco.

But they were unacceptable to Democratic leaders and their labor union allies, who immediately chose Becerra as a known quantity and therefore the most acceptable of the single-digit candidates. With Democrats holding a massive edge in voter registration, that made Becerra the likely next governor, and he still is.

Becerra’s campaign has consisted almost entirely of blaming Trump and refusing to offer any tangible approaches to the multiple issues he’ll likely inherit from Newsom. He knows he can win without committing himself publicly, so he doesn’t.

While Becerra represents the don’t-rock-the-boat stance at the state level, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, another veteran of multiple offices, is his counterpart in the state’s largest city.

But she, unlike Becerra, cannot coast into victory. Bass is carrying heavy baggage from her sloppy handling of the wildfires that swept through Los Angeles and its suburbs early last year.

Bass was junketing in Ghana when the fires erupted, even though there had been forecasts that hot winter winds could create wildfire conditions. She tried to blame others for the miscue, fired the L.A. fire chief and later attempted to alter an official report on how the fires were handled.

Bass is highly unpopular but offers herself as a known quantity, while her left-leaning opponent, city councilmember Nithya Raman, represents the potentially disruptive unknown. The outcome could go either way.

Thank goodness the cacophony of shrieking TV spots making promises that cannot be kept or portraying rivals as devils incarnate — and the fliers filling our mailboxes — will all end soon.

Sometime after the polls close Tuesday — maybe weeks later in some close contests — we’ll learn who survived. The losers will be disappointed, the winners will be jubilant and once again we will hope that they’ll do more than plot how to climb the next rung on the political ladder.