Tony Thurmond

A governor could sign enabling legislation if the Legislature passes it, and could back a qualifying ballot initiative, and could use the budget process to redirect revenue, and could use the appointment power to staff the Franchise Tax Board.

The California Constitution requires a two-thirds Legislature for changes to income tax rates, and a one-time wealth tax faces constitutional questions under the federal Due Process Clause if it is applied to non-residents or out-of-state assets. And a one-time tax is exactly that, a single event, so ongoing fiscal needs are not solved by a single revenue event.

Revenue redirected to backfilling Medi-Cal and to working-family credits would materially reach SELA households, and for mixed-status families the Medi-Cal backfill protects coverage that the Trump administration has threatened to cut, while the working-family tax credit lands straight in the tax refund.

A governor could sign enabling legislation for the bond and put it before voters, could direct the Department of General Services and the State Allocation Board on surplus school-land disposition, could direct HCD on pre-development funding, and could sign down-payment assistance legislation.

Surplus school land is the property of local districts and not of the state, so redirecting it for housing requires either legislation that overrides the Naylor Act and related statutes, or voluntary district cooperation, and the $10B bond requires voter approval. And 2 million units by 2030, which is only four years out, exceeds California's historical production rates.

SELA is predominantly renter, so what is most needed here is tenant protection, eviction defense, and affordable supply, and the bond would finance affordable supply, part of which would reach SELA. The school-land mechanism depends on which districts participate, which means districts like Montebello, Bell Gardens and the LAUSD east-side would need to cooperate, and the honest risk is that the 2-million target is a campaign promise at a scale no California governor has delivered.

A governor could direct state law-enforcement not to cooperate with ICE under SB 54, could direct DMV, CalHHS and the Department of Education to firewall personal data, could deny ICE access to state facilities by executive order, and could direct the Attorney General to pursue state-law theories against federal agents acting outside the scope of their federal authority.

The federal Supremacy Clause and federal officer immunity both limit state action against federal agents who are acting within their federal authority, and the federal government can enforce immigration law directly in California regardless of state cooperation, which means a California governor cannot literally "dismantle" ICE, because it is a federal agency.

Families who are currently afraid of routine DMV visits, school enrollments and clinic appointments would have a clearer state firewall, and for SELA that means protection for mutual-aid networks, safe routes to school, and community clinic appointments without fear of data crossover, although the honest framing question is whether "dismantle ICE" promises more than a governor can actually deliver.

A governor could sign amendments to LCFF (Local Control Funding Formula), could appoint the State Board of Education, could direct CDE staff and grant programs, could sign tuition-relief and teacher-pipeline legislation, and could use the budget process to push Prop 98 funding to the maximum.

The Proposition 98 minimum funding formula is written into the state constitution, so raising the floor requires either a ballot initiative or budget maneuvering within the existing formula, and charters are authorized by local boards rather than by the state.

SELA school districts, including Montebello, Bell Gardens, South Gate and the LAUSD east-side schools, are chronically underfunded relative to per-student need, so pushing Prop 98 would help, and universal child care would directly relieve costs on SELA working families, since child care is one of the biggest barriers to mothers' labor-force participation. The third-grade reading goal is the area where Thurmond's experience is most usable.

A governor could sign single-payer enabling legislation if the Legislature passes it, could direct the Department of Health Care Services to expand Medi-Cal, and could seek federal waivers under sections 1115 and 1332.

California single-payer requires either a constitutional amendment, a two-thirds Legislature, or federal waivers under ERISA and Medicare, and AB 1400 in 2022 died without a floor vote, while the projected cost runs $300B-$400B annually.

SELA includes large uninsured and underinsured populations, many of them mixed-status families that fall into the Medi-Cal eligibility cliffs, and the Medi-Cal backfill is the most immediately actionable piece of his health commitment, because it is not zero copays but rather coverage held against the federal attack, which makes it defense more than advance.

Nearly two dozen senior officials left CDE during Thurmond's tenure, and nine former officials spoke on the record with Politico about humiliation and intimidation, in an agency that has roughly 2,500 employees, and the departures themselves are documented in the original reporting from Politico, via KVCR.

A governor has to manage roughly 250,000 state employees and a budget above $300 billion, so if the management pattern documented at CDE were to repeat at the scale of the state, the consequences would be material, since high turnover and the loss of experienced staff lead to morale problems at the agencies that deliver direct service, like DMV, EDD and CalWORKs, and for SELA the quality of state service affects working families every day.

The allegations are about style rather than illegal harassment, and some of the officials who left did so for political or career reasons unrelated to bullying, while the "two dozen" figure sounds high but has to be read relative to the agency's size. Even so, voters who weigh executive management closely can reasonably read this as a serious record.

Lee was hired in July 2020 at up to $179,832 for a position that was never posted, and the initial funding was a $700,000 Hewlett Foundation grant routed through the Californians Dedicated to Education Foundation, which was later converted to public funds. Lee was a Philadelphia resident running a Philadelphia business during the appointment, in apparent violation of residency requirements for state employees, and he resigned in December 2021, with the investigation documented by California Globe.

Three procedural questions tangle together here, because routing private foundation funds through a related nonprofit to fund a state position is the procedural question, hiring an associate without posting the position is the patronage question, and hiring an out-of-state resident for a state job is the compliance question, and if that pattern were to repeat at the scale of governor it would be material for an administration that makes thousands of appointments.

Lee resigned, the Department announced reforms, there was no prosecution or formal finding of misconduct, and the Hewlett grant was an institutional decision rather than a personal one. Even so, all three elements are documented, and voters can decide for themselves whether they reflect mismanagement or a deliberate workaround.

The first draft was rejected by the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, and the curriculum was revised before AB 101 (2021) made Ethnic Studies a high-school graduation requirement. AB 2918 was co-sponsored with the Legislative Jewish Caucus to require district review committees, but the bill was withdrawn on August 15, 2024 under CTA and ethnic-studies faculty opposition.

For Los Angeles Jewish families the question is whether Thurmond will protect their cultural safety, while for Palestinian, Arab and Muslim families the question is whether the revision cut too much Palestine content, and for ethnic-studies teachers the question is whether the district committee designation has a chilling effect, and all three questions are tangled together.

The first draft was rejected and the revision did happen, AB 2918 was his co-sponsorship rather than his opposition, and the withdrawal came under union pressure rather than by his choice, so voters can read his record either as responsive, since he revised the draft and pushed AB 2918, or as caught between competing constituents, since the bill still failed under union pressure.

For the May 5 CNN debate at East Los Angeles College, CNN required candidates to have raised at least $1 million and to have polled at 3% or higher in qualifying polls, and Thurmond met neither bar. Nine days later he was again left off the stage when CBS News California and the San Francisco Examiner hosted the final debate of the primary on May 14, a debate they limited to candidates who had qualified for the ballot and cleared a polling threshold, and the seven who made the stage were Becerra, Bianco, Hilton, Mahan, Porter, Steyer and Villaraigosa. He did take part in the earlier and broader April 28 debate, and the two exclusions are documented by CNN, CBS News and CalMatters.

Debate exposure is a campaign multiplier at limited cost, so missing both debate stages makes it harder for his platform, meaning the one-time billionaire tax, the Literacy Moonshot, and the 2 million units, to reach casual voters, and for a Latino community watching debates on Spanish-language TV or catching clips, his absence limits how far his message can reach the SELA electorate.

Both broadcasters applied published thresholds rather than singling Thurmond out, so this is not an arbitrary decision against him personally, although the interpretive question that remains is whether voters read the two exclusions as a media-gatekeeper failure or as a reasonable bar for a high-profile event.

Public schools were in distance learning from March 2020 through fall 2021, and Thurmond's authority over closure and reopening decisions is advisory rather than binding, because local districts and county health officials control the specifics, as covered by CalMatters.

SELA was among the communities hardest hit by learning loss during the prolonged closures, because working families without laptops, without reliable Wi-Fi, and with parents in essential jobs could not supervise remote learning, and if Thurmond had pushed harder for an earlier and safe reopening, SELA families might have absorbed less of that loss.

The structural limit of the Superintendent's authority is real, and the bully-pulpit critique is fair but turns on a counterfactual that cannot be settled, since we cannot know whether more public voice would have changed local decisions. Voters who weigh aggressive executive leadership may read this as a signal of his style, while voters who weigh institutional deference may read it as appropriate.