A Tale of Two Lawmakers in the Sacramento Swamp
At least another Sacramento swamp creature revealed himself
By Katy Grimes, January 8, 2024 7:46 am
There is a reason the expression “Drain the Swamp” is used to describe rooting out corruption and bad behavior in politics.
“Swamps” exist in every city hall, state Capitol and in Washington D.C.
Sacramento’s swamp is one of the largest in the country, and members from both parties waddle in the muck. The Globe has written recently about just how swampy it is recently.
As the Globe recently reported, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s final expansion of full-scope Medi-Cal went into effect January 1, 2024, closing the gap by making more than 700,000 illegal immigrants residents between ages 26 and 49 eligible for full health care coverage – at a very precarious time with his $68 billion budget deficit.
If Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democrats – who surely flunked basic math – are trying to bankrupt the state, they are going about it correctly. This latest expansion of Medi-Cal will cost $2.6 billion annually on top of the $330 billion budget, which the Legislative Analyst’s Office warned, California cannot afford.
In response, Assemblyman Bill Essayli (R-Riverside) just introduced a bill to end all taxpayer funding for health care for illegal immigrants – those in the state illegally.
BREAKING: I just introduced AB 1783 to revoke all taxpayer funding for health care for illegal immigrants in the California State Budget.
It is unconscionable to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to give universal healthcare to illegal immigrants when our own citizens cannot… pic.twitter.com/70Ci93HRw9
— Bill Essayli (@billessayli) January 4, 2024
However, few other Republicans were willing to sign on to his bill as co-authors. The Globe contacted several Republican Assembly offices to ask if the member would co-author. We only heard back from one.
Within a day, Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R-Porterville) wrote an op ed on “Why a Republican lawmaker supports offering healthcare to California’s undocumented immigrants.” Mathis justified and supported Gov. Newsom’s coverage of illegal immigrants saying, “the new California policy saves money in the long run and ensures our communities stay healthy.”
Mathis said “It’s well-documented that preventative care reduces overall health-care costs by catching and preventing medical issues before they worsen to the point where a patient has to get treated in an emergency room,” as if that is justification for expanding health coverage to people in the state illegally.
Notably, California is the only state in the country to fund health care for illegal immigrants.
Then Mathis directly attacked Assemblyman Essayli over his new bill.
“Assembly Bill 1783, introduced on Wednesday, would just encourage the undocumented population to avoid or delay receiving preventative care, therefore ensuring that taxpayers and hospitals will continue to foot the bill for more costly procedures later on when these people inevitably end up in the hospitals and can’t afford to pay for their services,” Mathis said.
This elicited a response from Essayli on Twitter:
This is why Sacramento is broken and corrupt! I’m on the inside and can confirm. This “Republican” sounds and acts just like the Dems. Sacramento RINO @devonjmathis just published the below op-ed SUPPORTING taxpayers funding healthcare for illegal immigrants. Does he really support this position? Why did he vote against the bills when he had the chance? Or is he interviewing for his next job, a Sacramento Swamp Lobbyist. It’s obvious he’s already sold out and changed his position for financial gain. What a loser. Every elected CA Republican must take a position on this issue. We cannot fund healthcare for illegal immigrants when we are in a $68 Billion deficit.
— Bill Essayli (@billessayli) January 5, 2024
Assemblyman Essayli’s reference to Mathis interviewing for a new job is because Assemblyman Mathis announced in late November that he was retiring from the Assembly at the end of his term, and teased his “involvement with public service will continue.” This is secret swamp code for he will pursue a career in consulting and/or lobbying.
Typically, when an elected lawmaker announces what appears to be a premature “retirement” from public office, it is because they have lined up another job, usually lobbying or consulting.
Immediately bets were made about which political consulting firm Mathis would be working for.
However, after Essayli’s Tweet, Mathis lost it and went into junior high attack mode calling Essayli a “headline whore”:
Didn’t take you long #Noob
Before you try to launch red meat 🥩
Do your homework 📚🤓Looks like you’re just being a #HeadlineWhore
It’s clear you know nothing about how the healthcare system works.
I spent 8 years as the ranking member on BudgetSub1 Health&HumanServices
✌️ https://t.co/U81pRTofa8— Devon J. Mathis (@devonjmathis) January 5, 2024
Immediately others weighed in.
Brandon Saario said:
I read it sir and it’s pretty much something Nancy Pelosi would right You want 1. Amnesty 2. California taxpayers to cover medical expensive of people who break our laws 3. Offer nothing to Californians There is no difference between you and @AOC. @billessayli is right to call you out. Imagine if the CAGOP elected members had as much energy fighting for Californians as you do attacking fellow members who are right, maybe we would win more.
I read it sir and it's pretty much something Nancy Pelosi would right
You want
1. Amnesty
2. California taxpayers to cover medical expensive of people who break our laws
3. Offer nothing to Californians
There is no difference between you and @AOC @billessayli is right to call…— Brandon Saario (@SaarioBrandon) January 5, 2024
Another poignant reply came from attorney Julie Hamill:
I read the article and thought you made some valid points, but then I come here to see you acting like a little bitch and you’ve lost all credibility.
Make CA Golden Again offered an appropriate sentiment:
Essayli replied with an op ed titled California is broke. We cannot afford universal healthcare for illegal immigrants in the Orange County Register, saying:
“Mathis is not seeking re-election, and apparently no longer feels compelled to represent the values of his district, 62.5% of which voted Republican in 2022.
Lobbying is a Sacramento game and yields a lucrative income stream. You get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to peddle power on behalf of special interests who have no regard for how Sacramento policies impact the average Californian. In other words, his sudden change of position and op-ed appears to be a signal to the Sacramento elites that he is ready for hire.”
As Jennifer Van Laar points out at RedState, “Whether Mathis published his opinion piece and attacked Essayli as part of an effort to curry favor with the Sacramento lobbyists or not, I can’t say. But his actions are similar to those of another Republican sellout, Chad Mayes, who authored a $20 billion PG&E bailout bill on his way out the door and is now a partner at Capitol Advocacy, a Sacramento lobbying firm. Mayes and Mathis were part of a very small group of Republicans who voted for cap-and-trade in 2017, allowing Democrats in purple districts to abstain and still have the bill passed, so it’s not really surprising that Mathis is again acting like a Democrat.”
At least another Sacramento swamp creature revealed himself.
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Yes, Ms. Grimes. Drain the Swamp. Let’s take names and publish them. We need to identify the Republicans in Name Only 🙁 who run for office in California.
Wow. Such good CA swamp information here. Imagine a fellow “Republican” attacking Bill Essayli’s admirable standout leadership on this very important issue. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, Devon Mathis. On-the-nose replies from more admirable people – Jennifer Van Laar, Julie Hamill, Brandon Saario. YES! Thank you so much Katy for covering this and revealing the previously hidden creatures in the swampy Sacramento Deep State.
Sadly, most of the Republicans in the CAGOP are RINOs who are part of the Democrat/RINO uniparty swamp?
My only questions are is why the RINO is leaving office when he has 1 term left to run for? Why the Tulare County Republican party apparatus continually supported him. I see the possibility of the democrats stealing a second “gerrymandered” conservative seat through the March 5th primary with the top 2 primary scheme in place.
One more comment. It would be interesting to see if a RINO litmus test could be established so that these folks could be smoked out earlier before time and resources are expended on them. If one were to be established, what would it look like?
Hal, the problem with any litmus test is that those who would be the targets of such a “lintmus” [sic] test would use the published criteria to AVOID detection and get in regardless of attempts to thwart them.
Look at the words and language a suspected RINO uses publicly and to what extent they don’t just say what they mean straight out but inevitably pull back. All politicians might do that but RINOs do it more. Example from a Devon Mathis public statement published here at The Globe: “There are those who will say I’m not perfect…none of us are perfect.” Buzz words: “we want to be ‘inclusive’…” I’m a victim: “Do you not think some of us are taking flack from all sides?… you bet we are.”
(I knew L.A. County Fake Doctor Barbara Ferrer was BAD NEWS the moment she said “Latinx.” That was very early in her appearance as a tyrannical county public health officer. Most people were still Covid-terrified. Clues like “Latinx” almost never fail to tell you what you need to know.)
Read:
“At what point do we have a discussion about common decency in our society?” – Devon Mathis
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/exclusive-at-what-point-do-we-have-a-discussion-about-common-decency-in-our-society/
My comment below his article reflects that his piece ticked me off because, in addition to the ‘tells’ listed above, he calls for “civil discussions” with people he knows to be insane Dem/Marxists who seek to make harmful and unacceptable laws. He lectures us about acceptance of same-sex marriage, apparently because he doesn’t realize that radical activists who sought to take down civilized society —- not average citizens seeking rights —- were behind it. It’s an old saw by now but such a person is making a mistake because pandering to leftists doesn’t impress them or change their minds, it only alienates members of your own base of support.
Unfortunately I know ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ regarding Repubs in modern California and that is definitely a big problem and probably explains why we are where we are.
So what did our esteemed CAGOP Chairperson, Jessica Millan Patterson have to say about all this infighting???
Any ideas about which side of the ring she’d be on???
/sarc
“CA state health insurance to cover sex changes for illegal aliens”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-state-health-insurance-cover-sex-changes-illegal-immigrants
This is not the first time Mathis has voted Democrat, and I suspect it won’t be the last time, since he now has nothing to lose. We need REAL Conservatives in Sacramento, not fake ones, and Mathis is certainly a FAKE one!
This is all a smoke screen. Silly people the whole show is being run by the Mexican cartels. YES I said it. everything from Illegal Aliens industrial complex to the fiscal welfare rot to the communist democrat’s mirage.