State Capitol, One Way. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
California’s Capitol Has a Deep State
The sausage-making in the belly of the beast isn’t pleasant
By Katy Grimes, October 25, 2023 4:42 pm
At this moment in time in U.S. history, it is clear to most voters that Democrats have destroyed so much including our once beautiful big cities; how Democrats have weaponized government; how Democrats have damaged so much including the economy, the military, public schools.
Now that voters realize the destruction, what are Republicans doing? They’re fighting among themselves for positions of power. At the moment when Democrats are weak, Republicans are not seizing the day. They are not speaking directly to voters. Republicans are not showing leadership – they’re fighting over positions of power – in Congress and in California, according to Capitol sources.
Residents are fleeing blue states and blue cities for freer Red States and freer rural areas. The Democrats have caused this mass migration.
What have California Republicans done? As we reported recently, “CAGOP leadership are completely beholden to the ‘McCarthy Mafia’ and have kept everyone in line because they control the flow of money.”
The fight among Republicans is between the deep state and those who are fighting it, sources tell the Globe.
There are lawmakers in the California Capitol treated as pariahs if they don’t tow the caucus line… and not just by elected leaders, but by Legislative staff.
“Huh?” you ask through furrowed brow. With only 18 Republicans in the State Assembly, you’d think they could get along. But the real focus is power and control for many, even as they rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Years ago a friend shared his experience when he received a federal government appointment as an agency head from a new presidential administration. On his first day at the agency when he was being introduced to the staff, he said several of them just stared at him with arms crossed. He invited them into his office to introduce himself and ask about the chilly reception, and was told, “We are the ‘we be’s;’ we were here before you and we will be here after you.”
This is the deep state – Staffers who claim and believe they really run the show. They want the appointees and elected officials to know that without the “we be’s,” nothing will get done… the “agenda” is theirs and they can make the appointee’s and elected official’s job or break the appointee or elected official.
It’s about power.
Not all long time government employees are this imperious – but too many are.
Nine years ago, I had the opportunity to work for 10 months as a staff member in a State Senator’s office. I seized the chance so I could learn how the sausage is really made in California’s State Capitol. It was quite the experience. I was used to producing a great amount of work on tight deadlines however, that is not the pace of a legislative office – not until the final week of the budget process, or the end of the legislative session, when staffers pull all-nighters.
I learned first hand that there are Capitol staffers operating the levers of control. There are legislative staffers who can kill a lawmaker’s bill. There are legislative staffers who can arrange to cut funding for a lawmaker’s office staff. They can make things happen or make sure nothing happens.
There are also legislative staffers who may not hold the same political ideology as their elected member. There are married legislative staffers who work for different political caucuses. There are politically agnostic legislative staffers, and there are devout Republican and devout Democrat staffers.
And then there are legislative staffers who dictate to the elected member what they can and cannot say about certain political issues. And because so many of the elected members fought hard to get elected, they want to remain in office without conflict with the caucus leadership. Many do what they are told.
It’s fairly obvious when a staffer has gotten to a new member – the member says things like “I don’t talk about abortion,” or “I don’t talk about parental rights.”
I’ve even been told by a sitting member of the Legislature that it was the best job he’d ever had. They do what they are told.
One of the easiest ways to determine which legislative staffers are in charge – ie. the Deep State – is to look at the list of salaries – and weep for your state.
The $15,000+ a month salaried staffers run the show in their Assembly or Senate offices or work for a committee. Out of 1,182 total Assembly employees, I counted 69 Assembly staffers paid $15,000 a month or higher. All but one work for the Democrats.
The $18,000+ a month staffers are prominent – usually “Chief Consultant” level staffers or Policy Directors, and/or are also attached to a member’s office.
And the $21,496 – $23,000 per month staffers are top dogs – $257,952 annually to nearly $290,000 annually should buy an expert.
There are a couple of staffers making nearly $24,ooo per month. For $290,000 annually we hope the level of expertise is worth it.
Some Policy Directors are paid $18,798 for a $225,576 annual salary.
The above salaries are all paid to Democrat Assembly staffers, Chiefs of Staff or Committee Consultants.
A commensurate Republican Chief of Staff makes $17,050 for $204,600 annually. Granted there are only 18 Republicans in the Assembly compared to the 62 Democrats, making the Republican staffers with high salaries stand out.
A Republican Caucus Principle Consultant makes $14,746 monthly for $176,952 annually. Another Republican Caucus Chief Consultant is paid $15,193 a month for $182,316 annually.
This is all to show the huge budgets members of the Legislature who head up committees have, as well as the volume of and perceived power of some staffers.
Oddly, there are 17 Assembly staffers classified as “Overhead” and not to a member, caucus or committee.
The other issue is the Third House – the lobbying community. As some sources have said, the members and staff work for third house, thus the power struggle. Notably, former U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy also just indicated the same in Congress…
Kevin McCarthy said the quiet part out loud:
In his mind, the central quality of a candidate for Speaker of the House is what they will do for the lobbyists and special interests “across the street” from Congressional office buildings.
What an off-putting and debasing way to… pic.twitter.com/jLWYKQ3vRz
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 23, 2023
This is all to say that while the Democrat supermajority runs the show in the Capitol and up and down the state – thus explaining why the state is so dysfunctional and in rapid decline – Republicans appear to fight harder among themselves rather than working to expose corruption and the bad policies of the Democrats. Power struggles within a caucus of 18 are patently ridiculous. Even a tiny caucus can be a force to contend with if tenacious. Letting staffers dictate anything except to provide advice is also patently ridiculous and unhealthy.
We have more coming from inside the State Capitol… much more.
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This is great! “Inside the Legislature” — legislative staffers as the Deep State, lobbyists folded in — how it all REALLY works in detail and how petty and power-mongering so much of it is. Well of course we expected that but here we see the power is actually residing where we are not used to thinking of it as residing. Which makes sense, of course, but the specifics make it more tangible. The Deep State in our own California legislature is apparently even more absurd and infuriating than the bigger target in Washington we’re used to belly-aching about. Valuable information here, want to read it again in the morning to get all the detail straight. And really looking forward to more ‘inside dope’ on this topic.
And I thought that we were told that term limits were going to fix everything and that our government would be more response. I guess that was a bust as well. I see 4 ways to clean this mess up. End term limits, stop gerrymandering the districts to be safe seats (districts should be established with no more than 50% of 1 party in the district and not be race or any other factor) and make the legislature a part-time body with limited payrolls. The fourth and final idea would be to collect less in taxes at the State level and let localities decide if they want to raise local taxes to cover big ideas. By doing that you breakup the centralized lobbyist class.
I am looking forward to your next installment.
I agree Hal. We have been told for years that term limits would be the answer and make government more responsive to the people. California’s dysfunctional government disproves this idea. Term limits have institutionalized the California deep state and made the donor-class lobbyists all-powerful. If term limits are done at the national level, the same will happen there. I agree with the opponents of term limits in this respect- let the voters enforce term limits at the ballot box. But it has to be a FAIR electoral system and an educated electorate to make the system work properly. These are huge hurdles to overcome.
P.S. There needs to be election reform that removes the need for money in political campaigns and the influence of lobbyists. In our local elections for city council and mayor, the candidates cannot receive donations to fund their campaigns. They have to fund their own campaigns and there is a limit on how much they can spend. This policy levels the playing field in terms of finances. Food for thought.
I agree good comments. Thanks!
Hal I agree that term limits have not at all worked out as promised. In addition to ending terms when (good) legislators are just beginning to learn the ropes and (ideally) begin to build constituent familiarity and loyalty, these abrupt term limits seem to have only resulted in a game of political musical chairs. Thus we see so many termed-out bad-apple Dem/Marxist legislators, after going from Asm to Sen, then turn up in our local city councils, county boards of supervisors, school boards and etc. They don’t disappear from the scene after their legislative stints as I think the pro-term-limit people hoped they would.
Raymond noted additional downsides, and I’m sure there are even more that could be listed.
Term limits working out great, aren’t they?
You have to recognize the impact that term limits have had: handing power and influence to a permanent managerial class in Sacramento that is UNELECTED.
I know people will stomp and scream that term limits are super wonderful and needed – but judge the tree by the fruit it has borne. Term limits have been a disaster for this state.
One more quickly realized downside of “term limits”. Newly elected know- nothing legislators depend heavily on “staff” to tell them what to do. They scramble to hire the most wired in staff members they can find to teach them the ropes.
Term limits touted to provide fresh faces and break up the entrenched special interests has delivered just the opposite. Willie Brown looks like Mother Teresa today, compared to the rapacious takeover by SEIU and the teachers unions.
Staff can be co-opted by the same special interests that have amassed this deep state power. There are no longer any wise, pragmatic andlong- experienced members giving new members independent guidance to balance the guidance from co-opted deep state staffers. Everything now just swirls deeper into the special interest cesspools. With term limits there is no need to even fight back, just kick the can further down the road and move on.
Are there any conflict of interests statements that need to be filed by staff – any term limits for staff?
Who will start the investigating the key Sacto staffers, their documented legislative bias and perhaps history of questionable kickbacks. Who are the key staffers newly elected “term limited” legislators fight to get on their team? Or do they just wait for the deep state unions who backed their election to hand them their talking points.
Yes, Jaye. Direct action against the Deep State will require reducing the size of government following the Reagan doctrine. There will be tremendous resistance…..many “unlawful termination” lawsuits brought by well-compensated Sacto staffers backed by the lobbyists and the unions.
Jaye, just a comment on your last point.
“Or do they just wait for the deep state unions who backed their election to hand them their talking points?”
Apparently it is even worse than that. It seems to me that Katy Grimes has written more than once, more than twice, that the “special interests” actually WRITE the bills themselves that are then handed over to the legislative staff and thus the legislator who knows what’s good for him and thus toes the line. It’s a different way of saying the same thing as handing over “talking points” but worse, of course. I think it hits us as such an utterly outrageous practice that even some of us who are seasoned observers somehow manage, in spite of knowing of it, to retain a certain naivete or state of denial that lawmakers, especially Republicans, will seek to do “the right thing.” This Katy Grimes article also helps us to blast through whatever is left of that naive thinking.
Showandtell, a few years ago I helped a Washington D.C. based trade association do a presentation on new employee-training software that was being shown to local employers (their members). Their information looked fine to me. Trade associations like these and other lobbying groups are behind most of the bills introduced in Congress. As you say, they even help or actually write the bills for congressional staffers who work for the people we elect. I think that we get lulled into complacency because (not naively) we believe (or want to) that it does not matter who writes the bills, just so long as they are GOOD bills that benefit us and the state/country. So, the bottom line up front (BLUF) is that the ELECTED OFFICIAL is responsible for making sure that the bills benefit her/his constituents and not solely or mainly the special interest groups. The people we elect are the ones who need to be held accountable. How do we do this? If the people we elect are being influenced by money given to them, that is where we need to start fixing things. It all comes back to the election process.
Thanks, Raymond. It IS ultimately left up to (what’s left of our) election process. May it one day be cleaner than it appears to be now. And yes, part of it is that we WANT to believe. Also as you indicated, I think we stubbornly always want to hold the individual (the elected person in this case) responsible. But it is good to know from this article the specifics of how that individual can be backed into a corner (a corner of the broom closet, you might say) by the unelected bureaucrat staffers who hold more actual power than we might have considered or imagined.
I don’t consider myself naive after all these years of seeing plenty of sausage made with my own eyes but would definitely benefit from actually seeing what goes on first hand, as we all would. Thus articles like this one, and names named, give us a better view than we had before.
Wrote my Congress critter a few days back. After 40 years of pulling the lever for the R, I am done. Repubs cant run a lemonade stand. State or National, my votes will go to Libertarian or Independent. D or R, theyre two sides to the same bad penny.
Katy, do a little research on California senate senior staffer (initials KL.) He won’t be hard to find. If KL wants a bill killed, it dies. Period. In this sense he is more powerful than the governor and the entire legislature.
I have written many times about Kip Lipper, including this from 2012: https://calwatchdog.com/2012/12/05/ceqa-reforms-blow-political-smog-over-state/
Often called the “41st senator,” Kernan “Kip” Lipper, Senate President Darrell Steinberg’s executive staff director, is the godfather of California’s environmental bills.
Lipper is officially classified as an “environmental consultant” to the state Senate. Any environmental bill that has come out of the Legislature in the last decade has only done so because Lipper allowed it, or because he made it happen. “Lawmakers used to jokingly ask whether a bill had been ‘Lipperized’ — and they still say that, only no longer in jest,” Capitol Weekly reported in 2010. When a bill becomes “Lipperized,” it is altered into a far different bill than the original. Or the bill will die in a committee upon Lipper’s orders.
“’He has more influence than some senators,” said state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Thousand Oaks, “but that’s not necessarily a compliment,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2009. ” ‘You can’t fault Kip for being good at what he does,” Strickland said, “but I personally believe the voters would rather that the power lies with the people they elected.’”
The damage he has inflicted on this state is evident in the leftist environmental policies. And there are more like him –
Corruption is in both parties. It’s very disheartening. Those elected by the people sure don’t work for the people that elected them.
Excellent research. Reading this, what I have suspected for some time becomes glaringly apparent; that it is well past time to throw the moneychangers out of the temple, and that we have little hope of doing it successfully with the ballot box or the jury box. One box left. Interesting times are upon us…