Pressure is mounting on Assemblyman Chad Mayes to step down as Assembly GOP leader after he helped Democrats extend an anti-pollution program loathed by conservatives who already feel marginalized in deep-blue California.
At a gathering at Riverside’s Mission Inn on Thursday, July 20, the Riverside County Republican Central Committee voted to ask Mayes, R-Yucca Valley, to explain his support for extending the state’s cap-and-trade program at the committee’s next meeting. Otherwise, the committee will ask Mayes to relinquish his leadership post.
“There’s a great deal of contention and anger right now with Republican voters,” said county GOP Chairman Jonathan Ingram.
Between cap and trade, which is estimated to raise gas prices by as much as 73 cents per gallon by 2031, and the legislature’s earlier passage of a 12-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase, “You’re looking at a substantial increase to working people,” said Ingram, a Murrieta councilman.
A high-ranking California Republican official also is calling for Mayes’ ouster. In addition, Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, cited Mayes’ actions on cap and trade in announcing her resignation as assistant GOP leader Thursday.
The backlash erupted after Mayes and seven other GOP lawmakers, including Assemblyman Marc Steinorth of Rancho Cucamonga, voted for AB 398, which extends cap and trade to 2030. Cap and trade allows businesses to buy licenses to emit pollutants, with the number of licenses gradually declining in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.
Many Republicans see cap and trade as an over-regulating excuse for raising taxes that will boost already high gas prices and give Gov. Jerry Brown more money for high-speed rail, a project opposed by conservatives.
Mayes’ critics are incensed that he would not only vote for the bill, but encourage other Republicans to support cap and trade as well. After the bill passed, Mayes shared the stage with Democratic lawmakers at a Sacramento press conference.
Mayes, who was not available for comment Friday, has defended his vote, saying Republicans managed to get concessions from Democrats in exchange for GOP support of cap and trade, including the rollback of a fire prevention fee paid by property owners in rural areas.
“Today, we proved that Sacramento can rise above the partisan fray of our country to do right for all Californians,” Mayes said in a news release.
“This plan cleans up the environment for future generations and cuts the cost of taxes, fees and regulations by $16 billion a year for ordinary Californians. Protecting the earth and protecting your paycheck is no longer an either-or decision.”
Mayes, a former Yucca Valley mayor who was first elected to the Assembly in 2014, represents the Pass, San Jacinto, most of Hemet and desert communities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
With Democrats holding a supermajority in Sacramento, Mayes has been willing to work with them to further the GOP’s agenda. But that olive branch is considered a knife in the back to many conservative Californians who feel ignored if not powerless in a state where GOP voter registration has been declining for years.
Blowback started almost immediately, with self-described nationalist Joseph Turner on Tuesday denouncing Mayes’ cap-and-trade vote and accusing him of having an extramarital affair with his predecessor, former Assembly GOP leader Kristin Olsen.
“It is time for an actual Republican to lead the Republican Party,” Turner wrote in a news release.
Harmeet Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer and member of the Republican National Committee, took to social media to call for Mayes to be replaced as leader of the 80-member Assembly’s 25 Republicans.
“Many conservatives are rightly outraged at the Assembly Leader’s actions in not only voting for a bad bill on cap and trade, but also pressuring several of his colleagues to vote for the massive carbon tax scheme, and then taking a victory lap with the Democratic leadership and later comparing himself/his actions to Ronald Reagan,” Dhillon wrote on Facebook. “Nope.”
John Berry, a cabinet member with the Redlands Tea Party Patriots, said his group is considering pulling support for Republicans who voted for cap and trade.
“We’re just absolutely livid how (Mayes) sold out,” Berry said. “The whole idea that they’re going to sell us this whole nonsense about global warming and tank the economy (and expand government control over people’s lives), it’s as un-conservative as you can get.”
Ben Clymer Jr., president of the Lincoln Club of Riverside County, said Mayes “has had a solid pro-business voting record up to the cap-and-trade vote.
“While many Republicans like myself are not in favor of the vote, I personally want to give him the opportunity to explain his vote to the county party prior to me making a decision on him continuing in his leadership position,” Clymer added.
The furor over Mayes comes as Democrats face their own leadership struggles. Many in the party’s progressive wing refuse to accept Eric Bauman’s election as state party chairman, and liberals who want single-payer health care in California expressed outrage with Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s decision to shelve a Senate single-payer bill.
Marcia Godwin, a professor of public administration at the University of La Verne, said California’s Democrats and Republicans “outpaced the rest of country by polarizing in the 1980s ahead of national trends.”
“Ironically, there has been a slight shift back toward bipartisanship in California with the Democratic majority increasing,” she said.
With Republicans holding little power in Sacramento, “Internal feuding will not help,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
“The Capitol is a tough neighborhood,” Pitney said. “It’s gang warfare between the purists and the practicals.”
