Midway through Shawn Steel’s dark depiction of California politics, an impatient sounding listener shouted out from a table near the front of the Manhattan Country Club dining room, “How do we get the state back from the Democrats?”

The question reflected the fact that Democrats hold all six statewide offices, a supermajority (61 of 80 seats) in the State Assembly and 29 of 40 State Senate seats. Democrats also hold 46 of the state’s 53 Congressional seats.

Steel is a member of the California and National Republican committees. He was the keynote speaker at the annual South Bay Republican Party Awards Dinner at the country club last Saturday.

Steel’s response to the question shouted out to him was blunt.

“We’re not going to,” he said.

“We have a chance to win five California Congressional seats in 2020. My guess is we’ll win two. Four million Californians have fled the state since 1995. Two-thirds of them were Republicans,” he said.

California, under Democratic leadership, is not only dark, but getting darker, he suggested.

“We have rolling blackouts, like you’d get in Venezuela, or a war zone. We have burdensome taxes. Children can’t afford to buy the homes they were raised in. ‘Smash and grab’ criminals know if they steal less than $950 they’re issued a get out of jail ticket.”

“Homelessness is spreading like a cancer. We don’t have a homeless problem,” he said. “We have a transient problem. The state spends over $1 million [per year] on each transient and is considering giving them Uber vouchers. I’d put them on the beach and give them a valet. A valet at $80,000 a year would be cheaper,” he said, eliciting an uncomfortable chuckle from his beach city audience.

“One day, California will run out of money and there will be rioting by state employees,” he said.

Then circling back to how Republicans can “take back the state,” he observed, “I’m looking forward to those days.”

Steel defended his contrarian position by inviting a comparison of today’s California to 1910 when populist Republican Hiram Johnson was elected governor. The public, in the early 1900s, had become so angry with the legislature that they supported Johnson’s legislation to circumvent the legislature through initiatives, referendums and recalls. During Steel’s introduction Saturday evening by former State Assemblyman David Hadley, Hadley noted that Steel was the organizer and first signatory to the recall initiative against Gray Davis, which led to the election of Republican Governor Arnold Schwatzzneger in 2002.  
Following Hiram Johnson, Republicans remained in power for 70 years,” Steel noted.

Steel attributed the California Republicans’ dismal showing in the 2018 Congressional elections in 2018 to being out maneuvered and outspent. The Party lost seven seats to Democrats, including all four seats in Orange County, where Steel lives.

“I like Rohrabacher,” he said, referring to three-term Orange County Republican Dana Rohrabacher, who lost his seat in 2018 to Democrat Harley Rouda. “But pot and Putin were a bad combination. Dana should have kept them in the closet,” Steel said. During the 2018 election, Rohrabacher wore a baseball cap that read “Make Cannabis Great Again” and was dubbed Putin’s favorite Congressman. Rohrabacher once arm wrestled Putin and lost.

“Money doesn’t talk, it swears,” Steel said, after noting the Democrats poured $200 million into California Congressional races in 2018.

“In the 2020 Congressional elections, 15 Republicans are resigning.That’s a good thing. Because 12 are in safe districts and most of our candidates in those districts are women.” 
Earlier in the evening, South Bay Republican Club chair Janice Webb, who is black, spoke of the need for Republicans to shed their image as the party of old white men. “We are the party of diversity,” Webb said. As evidence, she pointed to the California Republican Party’s Latina chairperson Jessica Patterson, and to the California Republican Assembly’s first black president Johnnie Morgan.

Steel, during his comments about Trump, pointed out that nationally, 40 percent of voters are middle income whites. 
“Trump speaks to them in a way that hurts my ears,” he said. Later he said of Trump, “I can’t keep my eyes off of him. I don’t know what he’ll say next.”

Steel was a supporter of Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign but told his listeners, it’s important to reelect Trump.

The impeachment effort, rather than hurt Trump’s reelection chances, will help, Steel argued.

“Democrats think an impeachment will drive up the president’s negative numbers. But voters are tired of the political games. After Clinton was impeached his approval numbers went up. Democrats don’t understand that,” he said.

After glancing at his cell phone, and reporting that USC was down 13 to 23 against Notre Dame, Steel invoked a football metaphor

“We can’t go up the middle. We need to know where to push.”.

Steel said his efforts during the 2020 election will be focused on reclaiming Rohrabacher’s Congressional seat. The Republican candidate for the seat is his Korean-born wife Michelle Eunjoo Park Steel, an Orange County Supervisor. Steel did not mention illegal immigration during his talk, but spoke favorably of the fact that 15 percent of the residents in the district his wife is seeking to represent are Vietnamese.

Steel left his guests with a reason to feel upbeat about at least one branch of government. Under Trump, two Supreme Court Justices and 43 Appellate Court judges have been appointed.

“Those judges will be in the political bloodstream for 25 years,” he said. ER

The Republican National Committee (RNC) called out China’s notorious human rights abuses by passing a resolutionto condemn the Chinese regime’s “vile practice” of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting, making it the first “on record” statement from a major U.S. political party on the issue.

Unanimously passed on Aug. 2 by the 168-member body, the bill was the latest action by Western entities to raise awareness about the issue. In 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning China for such practices.

RNC Committeeman for California Shawn Steel, who spearheaded the effort, said he felt motivated after a June 17 ruling by a London-based independent people’s tribunal that concluded forced organ harvesting—or the practice of extracting human organs forcibly from individuals for profitable transplant surgery—has taken place in China over the past two decades “on a significant scale.”

He said the tribunal was probably “the most important fact-finding group” that has “gotten to the heart of the matter” on the issue.

The tribunal, headed by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who previously led the prosecution of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal, described forced organ harvesting as “unmatched wickedness, even compared—on a death-for-death basis—with the killings by mass crimes committed in the last century.”

'Unbelievably Cruel'

The tribunal ruling found that practitioners of Falun Gong (Falun Dafa), a spiritual discipline with moral teachings and meditative exercises that has been severely persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999, are the principal victims of forced organ harvesting in China.

The adherents make up the majority of China’s prisoners of conscience. Hundreds of thousands are detained at one time inside China’s detention facilities, where they are often subject to torture and psychiatric abuse, according to the Falun Dafa Information Center.

Many Falun Gong survivors, some who testified at the London tribunal, have recounted receiving medical examinations such as blood tests while in prison, despite continually being subjected to harsh treatment.

China performs about 60,000 to 90,000 transplants per year by conservative estimates, according to the tribunal. This is “far in excess of the number of their voluntary organ donations,” the resolution states. The tribunal had concluded that forced organ harvesting likely makes up the shortfall.

“Chinese hospitals are able to schedule transplants of major organs within two weeks, suggesting a nefarious intuition regarding the ‘donation’ of these organs,” the resolution states.

“You don’t get a vital human organ in two weeks in America. It takes a year, it takes a long time. People die every day waiting for a volunteer donor,” Steel said.

“It can’t go away because thousands of victims are being involved every year in China, that’s too big of a number to hide,” Steel said.

He called the medical examinations inside Chinese prisons for organ donation matches “unbelievably cruel,” and likened the practice to Nazi doctors such as Josef Mengele at German concentration camps who conducted medical experiments on Jewish prisoners’ bodies.

Raising Awareness

It took Steel some time to truly believe the organ harvesting allegations—until the tribunal’s findings became public.

Initially, he thought the horrific acts were an “anomaly,” he said. His first exposure to the issue was during a trip to Helsinki, Finland years ago, when a street exhibition by a group of local Falun Gong practitioners caught his notice. Steel said he was skeptical because it seemed “too incredible.”

“What kind of society would allow that to happen? … The story is so unbelievable that you mention this to most people—we have several doctors at the Republican National Committee, they didn’t believe it. They never imagined it.”

Steel said that passage of the resolution is just the first step in shedding light on the organ harvesting practice on an international stage.

The American universities, foundations, and doctors should disassociate themselves with Chinese medical entities or face penalties for collaborating with them on transplantation research, he said.

He also called for the United States government to follow the lead of Israel and Taiwan and enact laws preventing American citizens from traveling to China for organ transplant surgeries.

“They are getting it from young people who are being sacrificed … for their body parts,” he said.

RESOLUTION REGARDING CHINA’S ORGAN HARVESTING

WHEREAS, For the better part of two decades, China’s communist regime has been engaged in the vile practice of forced organ removal for transplant from incarcerated prisoners and it is believed these people are “prisoners of conscience,” Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners;

WHEREAS, China is experiencing an influx in “transplant tourism” wherein individuals critically in need of transplants are traveling to China to pay thousands of dollars for one of China’s 60,000 to 90,000 transplant surgeries each year—far in excess of the number of their voluntary organ donations;

WHEREAS, Chinese hospitals are able to schedule transplants of major organs within two weeks, suggesting a nefarious intuition regarding the “donation” of these organs;

WHEREAS, By contrast, America’s highly-developed organ donation scheme requires recipients be placed on a carefully curated list requiring many candidates to wait hundreds of days for a transplant the exact date of which cannot be predicted and often does not come in time;

WHEREAS, It is believed that since 2000, hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered and had their organs involuntarily harvested;

WHEREAS, In June 2019, the independent China Tribunal announced its finding that China’s regime has for decades practiced systematic forced organ removal from prisoners of conscience;

WHEREAS, The parliaments of Canada and the European Union, as well as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States House of Representatives, have adopted resolutions condemning organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience; and

WHEREAS, United Nations Special Rapporteurs have called on the Chinese government to account for the sources of organs used in transplant practices, and the World Medical Association, the American Society of Transplantation, and the Transplantation Society have called for sanctions on Chinese medical authorities; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the Republican National Committee (RNC) strongly condemns the practice of China’s involuntary organ harvesting; and

RESOLVED, That the RNC considers China’s involuntary organ harvesting as a major human rights violation.

By Andrew O'Reilly | Fox News

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, is spearheading a bill that would allow noncitizens to serve as state convention delegates and county committee leaders with the Democratic Party. 

California lawmakers proposed a bill last week that, if passed, would give noncitizens the chance to serve in state and local Democratic Party leadership positions.

While current state law limits the ability of noncitizens to participate in party politics, the new bill (SB288) would let them serve as state convention delegates and county committee leaders with the Democratic Party, allowing them to be involved in the party platform and other issues.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who was one of the lawmakers behind SB288, did not return Fox News’ request for comment but speaking to reporters last Friday said that the new bill was meant both as a way for noncitizens to have a say in the policies of the California Democratic Party -- and as a rebuke of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration stance.

PELOSI FACES SHOUTS FOR IMPEACHMENT AT CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC PART CONVENTION

“We need to continue to send a very, very loud message that we are ... going to embrace and uplift and support all American immigrant neighbors,” Wiener said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He added that the current White House has caused a great amount of "fear and anxiety" among many immigrants.

The bill would only be applicable to leadership and delegate positions within the Democratic Party, and would not apply to the California Republican Party.

Local Democratic officials, in discussing the bill, suggested it could apply to some undocumented immigrants including so-called Dreamers -- young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children who were given a temporary deportation reprieve under the Obama administration.

SB288 has been widely panned by Republicans in the state, who argue that the measure is less about helping immigrants and more about Democrats "pandering" to the party’s progressive base.

“It’s abject pandering and arrogance,” Shawn Steel, the Republican National Committeeman for California, told Fox News. “This is what happens when you have too much power…it’s just progressives trying to out-progressive each other.”

In an already liberal-leaning state, Democrats won supermajority control of both houses of the state legislature last November and retained control of the governor’s mansion when then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom easily defeated his Republican opponent, John Cox.

Given the party’s control in Sacramento and that the bill only pertains to the Democrat’s delegates and committees, SB288 appears poised to pass easily through the legislature and make its way to Newsom’s desk.

“Democrats can do whatever they want in California right now,” Steel said. “They think nobody is going to oppose them.”

 

“I was in a car accident several months ago and hired a personal injury attorney almost immediately. Initially, she was very responsive, returned my calls promptly, keeping me informed of everything. Then, suddenly, silence. I leave messages, am promised a call back, but nothing! Treatment for my injuries is on a lien basis with bills to be paid when the case is resolved, but now I don’t know what to do. Should I change lawyers? Thanks, Darlene.”

Unhappy or pressured to change lawyers?

I ran Darlene’s question by a friend of this column, southern California personal injury attorney Shawn Steel. His law practice is unique in that he not only represents accident victims, but also health care professionals “who have been badly dealt with by lawyers refusing to honor their contracts with doctors to pay their bills when the case settles.”

Steel provided practical advice for health care providers facing that situation in a recent article I wrote, “When lawyers refuse to pay a client’s doctor bill.”

As he explained, the question of “to change or not to change lawyers” comes up under two different scenarios: 1) You’ve hired a lawyer on a contingent fee basis, but are not satisfied with the legal services provided; 2) You are being pressured into changing lawyers by friends, family members or some other attorney who wants your case (which is illegal in most states).

Steel set out four questions clients often ask:

• Do I have to give a reason before changing lawyers?

• Will I owe the first lawyer for time spent on my case?

• Should I wait and see if things get better?

• I signed a lien with the lawyer to pay bills, but if I change attorneys, what happens to that lien?

“You do not need a reason to change lawyers, and what your reader has described is one of the most common — a failure to communicate, ignoring you,” Steel points out. “But don’t fire your lawyer just because your phone call wasn’t returned immediately! You’ve got to be reasonable. And keep in mind that your old attorney has a right to be paid by the new attorney out of settlement proceeds. When you feel the relationship is a bad fit, end it immediately. Two or three months is no problem. Lawyers will take your case as not much of a fee has been earned in that short amount of time. Simply stated, the older the case, the less desirable it is to the new attorney and even good cases get rejected for that reason.”

What happens to the lien I signed with the first lawyer to pay my bills?

Financially an auto accident can become a nightmare lasting years if medical and chiropractic bills aren’t paid. Clients often think, “But as I had a lien with the first lawyer, it automatically transfers to the second lawyer, right?”

“Unfortunately, that’s not the law,” Steel emphasizes. “Changing lawyers extinguishes the lien. Unless a new lien is signed by everyone, a potential costly problem for the patient is around the corner, and this is my advice to health care professionals and their patients: Health care providers: When becoming aware your patient has a new lawyer, immediately get a new lien signed. If the attorney refuses, bill the client at once, don’t wait! Also, occasionally ask patients if they have the same lawyer. Patients: It is potentially damaging to your credit, and even to the ability of getting a job in some circumstances, if your case has been settled without the health care providers being paid and you wind up being sued. If you change lawyers, immediately notify all of your health care providers of this fact, with the name, address and phone number of the new lawyer. If you do not, you’ll have to pay out of your own pocket and could be hounded by a collection agency or taken to court.”

Resist pressure to change lawyers

Everyone has a know-it-all relative who will claim to know more than your lawyer, or has “a friend” who is an attorney, “So just drop the lawyer you hired and go with my guy!”

“Clients hear that often,” Steel notes, and warns his own clients that before doing anything, when hearing such advice from family members, “Just talk with me.”

“But that’s tame by comparison to lawyers who illegally attempt to steal cases involving serious injury, where the settlement value can be extremely high,” he observes. “There are predators out there, people who work for lawyers and get an illegal kickback. If you get approached, call your lawyer right away, as it is illegal for anyone from another law firm to contact you if you are already represented.”

Dennis Beaver practices law in Bakersfield and welcomes comments and questions from readers, which may be faxed to 661-323-7993, or e-mailed to Lagombeaver1@gmail.com. And be sure to visit dennisbeaver.com.

'My Polite Requests to Pay Our Bill was Ignored!'

The Lawyer Is a Fiduciary - Do Not Let Anyone Browbeat You Down!

Get it in writing.

Be persistent.

• Send a demand letter to the lawyer with a seven-day deadline. Attach the lien, your report and bill. In your letter state, "I am sure you are familiar with the Rules of Professional Conduct."
  
  

• On the eighth day, file a complaint with the state's Bar Association, send the attorney a copy of it and file your suit in Small Claims Court.
  
  

Advice for Clients/Patients Caught in the Middle

WHAT HAPPENED

Pre-Election

• “When planning for the November 2018 election, California’s Democrats … were bent on eliminating every Republican congressman they possibly could, and they did pretty well [only 7 gop congressmen remain out of 14] … The way they did this was to pass laws designed to rig the system. Three laws in particular combined to stack the deck against Republicans. First came the Motor Voter law … Second, the state legislature authorized counties … to send absentee ballots to voters even if they had not requested those ballots. Third, the rules governing ballot custody were changed so that anyone could turn in absentee ballots … According to a Republican campaign worker who operated in … Orange County … for a week prior to November 6, the Democrats had over 1,000 people on the ground, going door to door, collecting ballots … [from] registered Democrats … For each congressional district in play, the cost-per-thousand full-time paid vote harvesters was approximately $125,000 per day. The Democrats spent tens of millions.” — American Greatness, 12/4/18
• “I came here to pick up your ballot … we’re offering this new service for only people who are supporting the Democratic Party … where we pick up your ballot and show you how to do it if you don’t know.” — “Lulu,” Democrat ballot harvester in Santa Clarita, caught on video, YouTube, 10/16/18
• “[dreamer] Gabriela Cruz, who was brought to the U.S. illegally when she was one, couldn’t vote, but in the final hours before the Nov. 6 election, she was making one last run to get people to the polls … [S]he found Ronald Silva, 41, smoking a cigarette … behind a group home … [S]he reminded him he had a right that she as an immigrant without citizenship didn’t have … Half an hour later, she was helping Silva [with ballot] … he said. ‘I was going to leave [my ballot] in my drawer.’” — The Los Angeles Times, 1/1/19
• “[O]nly a fool would think [Ms. Cruz] didn’t tell the indifferent [Silva] who to vote for, effectively voting by proxy. Which … amounts to foreign nationals voting, without any fear of prosecution … Today, noncitizens vote by getting hold of indifferent Americans and filling in the ballots by proxy, no fingerprints visible.” — American Thinker, 1/2/19
• “California’s 2015 ‘Motor Voter’ law empowered the Department of Motor Vehicles automatically to register as voters those who get driver’s licenses. Secretary of State Alex Padilla claimed that protocols and ‘firewalls’ would keep ineligibles from voting, but there was room for reasonable doubt. After the 2016 election, Padilla refused to release any information to a federal probe of voter fraud … by March 2018, the dmvhad issued licenses to more than one million illegals and from April to August registered 182,000 ‘new voters.’ Padilla isn’t saying how many illegals actually voted or how many illegal ballots were among those ‘harvested’ to flip close races for Democrats.” — “Crock the Vote: Grand Theft Election in California,” FrontPage, 12/4/18
• In addition to ballot harvesting and Motor Voter, dubious tactics California enacted in the last two years to guarantee Democrat wins: noncitizen voting in San Francisco and elsewhere; “taxpayer-funded voter registration drives in county jails to register a record number of inmates”; a downgrade of numerous felonies to misdemeanors to skirt rules that disallow convicted criminals on parole to vote; an adoption of same-day voter registration, or “conditional voting.” — Shawn Steel, in The Washington Times, 11/27/18

Post-Election

• “In California, voting doesn’t stop on Election Day. Absentee ballots need only be postmarked by Election Day, with ballots counted that arrive up to three days late. If ballots are sent to the wrong county, the ballot is valid for an additional four days.” — The Washington Times, 11/27/18
• “Young Kim was poised to become the first Korean-American woman elected to Congress. Her 14-point lead [on election night] evaporate[d].” — Shawn Steel, The Washington Times, 11/27/18
• “In Orange County, Republican Rep. Mimi Walters of Irvine saw her 6,074-vote lead over Democrat Katie Porter turn into an 11,866-vote deficit.” — The San Francisco Chronicle, 11/30/18
• “In Orange County alone, where every House seat went Democratic, ‘the number of Election Day vote-by-mail dropoffs was unprecedented — over 250,000,’ Fred Whitaker, chairman of the county Republican Party, said in a note to supporters. ‘This is a direct result of ballot harvesting allowed under California law for the first time. That directly caused the switch from being ahead on election night to losing two weeks later.’” — The San Francisco Chronicle, 11/30/18
• “In California, 40 percent of the votes were tabulated after election night. Who were these 40 percent? Why is it they were overwhelmingly supporting Democrats?” — American Greatness, 12/4/18
• “This process of vote-harvesting swept across California, funded by well-heeled public sector unions (which collect dues in excess of $800 millionper year in California), and by leftist billionaires such as California’s own Tom Steyer.” — American Greatness, 12/4/18
• “For weeks, Republicans seized on [Rep. David Valadao’s] survival as a rare glimmer of good news from Election Day. But as election officials counted mail-in votes over the following weeks, Mr. Cox [erased] Mr. Valadao’s lead.” — “David Valadao Concedes House Race in Another Setback for California Republicans,” The New York Times, 12/6/18

Flips

• “An analysis of data from eight states … found the Latino vote grew by an estimated 96 percent from 2014 to 2018 … [and] helped move 20 House districts held by Republicans to Democratic control in California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Florida, New Jersey, and New York … [The] increase in Latino voter turnout contributed to flipping six gop-held congressional seats in California — four in the once conservative bastion of Orange County and two in the Central Valley that have long eluded Democrats.” — The Los Angeles Times, 1/1/19
• “[C]alifornia’s famed ballot-harvesters, who flipped places such as Orange County blue in the last midterm … did it by ‘helping’ voters fill out, and turn in, and continue to turn in, ballots from otherwise uncommitted voters until they got the result they wanted.” — American Thinker, 1/2/19
• “In eight states, the Hispanic vote doubled in four years? … Let’s be clear. The Democratic Party employed the manpower of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of foreigners living in the United States to affect the outcome of an election … Further, there were no controls on the actions of those involved with ballot harvesting … in how they handle ballots … In most states, laws require political activity at polling places to be a certain distance from … voting to limit undue political pressure. But in ballot harvesting, there is no such thing. Quite the opposite, with people hunting down registered voters who had not voted … [to turn] out Democrat votes by people too indifferent to … vote until someone knocks on their door and essentially does it for them.” — Rod Thomson, host of Tampa Bay Business, 1/7/19

HOW IT HAPPENED

The Catalyst: AB 1921

• “In [September] 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law [Assembly Bill 1921,] a change to Section 3017 of the Election Code that allows any person [as opposed to those living in the voter’s household] to collect a mail-in ballot from [unlimited numbers of] voters … ‘After marking the ballot, the vote-by-mail voter shall do any of the following: (1) return the ballot by mail or in person to the elections official from whom it came, (2) return the ballot in person to a member of a precinct board at a polling place within the jurisdiction, or (3) return the ballot to the elections official from whom it came at a vote-by-mail ballot drop-off location … However, a vote-by-mail voter who is unable to return the ballot may designate any person to return the ballot…’” —new wording of California election code allowing ballot harvesting, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 12/10/18

They Were Warned

• “ab 1921 would allow anybody to walk into an elections office and hand over truckloads of vote-by-mail envelopes with ballots inside, no questions asked, no verified records kept. It amounts to an open invitation to large-scale vote buying, voter coercion, ‘granny farming,’ and automated forgery.” — Counted As Cast, watchdog group, after the passage of ab 1921
• “Many organizations have digital copies of millions of signatures … It’s not hard to create copies of vbm [vote-by-mail] envelopes and ballots … All you need is to vote in place of people who don’t vote. That’s not hard to find out, because whether or not you voted is a public record. Just comb through the records to find the people who are registered, but don’t vote. Get out the vote [gotv] campaigns … find out, legally, who has not voted by, say 5 p.m. on Election Day, so that the campaign can call … the person … [and if] they are not going to vote, you’ve got their signature, and everything else you need. Just vote in place of the nonvoters. Truckloads of them.” — Counted As Cast
• “The voter has to sign the outside of the envelope … That doesn’t prevent the harvester from telling the voter which candidate to vote for or even lying about what the issues on the ballot are. Harvesters can be compensated — by campaigns, even.” — Red State, 10/16/18

GOP Fail

• “…Republicans could have taken advantage of these same corrupt laws to harvest votes from registered Republicans. But not only did the Republicans rely primarily on a vastly outnumbered handful of unpaid volunteers, they didn’t even bother to provide their volunteer canvassers with up-to-date data…” — American Greatness, 12/4/18
• “Why did the gop permit this? Why did the gop not have poll watchers at every polling station in California on Election Day? Why are there no lawsuits? Why has there been no demand for a Department of Justice civil rights investigation into California’s many elections issues? Where is the cagop?” — Katy Grimes, investigative reporter, Canada Free Press, 12/8/18
• “[W]hile Democrats are reveling in the California Blue Tsunami, Republicans throughout California … are asking ‘What Happened?’ Yet nary a word since Election Day from California’s Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte … on the staggering Republican losses.” — Canada Free Press, 12/8/18
• “In November, Blood-Orange County seemed to turn blue, but the denizens still are blood-orange. Alas, Republicans were caught flat-footed … They blew it on immigration, daca, and the wall. They fell on a sword for reducing Form 1040 deductions for property taxes and home-mortgage interest. And the same hapless state gop … went awol when the Democrats of California changed balloting rules so that votes could be delivered by Harvest Moonbeam volunteers, opening the door to other forms of election fraud.” — The American Spectator, 12/14/18

Left-Narrative: Trump’s Fault

• “Laboring against a strong tide of disdain, and even disgust, for President Donald Trump, Republicans lost their grip on the wealthy enclaves along the coast in northern Orange County that comprise the district held by 15-term Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. They lost by a much larger margin along the coast farther south in the district of retiring Rep. Darrell Issa, which includes the San Clemente home where Richard Nixon holed up to write his memoirs after resigning from the White House.” — cnn, 11/16/18
• “Instead of investigating, the state’s slavishly pro-Democrat establishment media pins the results on anti-Trump backlash.” — FrontPage, 12/4/18
• “Democrat Secretary of State Alex Padilla mocked Republican concerns, telling Politico: ‘What they call strange and bizarre, we call democracy.’ But it is democracy as practiced almost nowhere else in the world — except for one-party banana republics in failed third-world states, where the sight of ruling party apparatchiks dropping off bundles of ballots is not unusual.” — Albuquerque Journal, 12/30/18

WHAT WILL HAPPEN: THE THREAT

• “This election, a 14-point lead wasn’t enough for a Republican victory [for candidates like Young Kim]. By 2020, a 20-point lead on Election Night won’t be safe.” — The Washington Times, 11/27/18
• “Come to California to see what’s going to roll out across America in time to guarantee a progressive landslide in 2020. It may be perfectly legal. But it’s so rigged it would make Boss Tweed blush.” — American Greatness, 12/4/18
• “The Democrats passed laws in California that allowed them to harvest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of votes from people who are the least engaged politically. They have built a system that harvests millions of votes from the most apathetic, most easily manipulated, low-information voters in the electorate. And that strategy, because it worked so well, is on its way to every state in America. Count on it happening fast — wherever Democrats control a state legislature, California’s new election rules will become law. In those states, using government union money and foot-soldiers, augmented with limitless funds from globalist left-wing billionaires, Republicans will be wiped out forever. The massacre will not spare countless battleground congressional districts currently held by Republicans.” — American Greatness, 12/4/18
• “At least three distinct kinds of fraud can occur when political operatives ‘assist’ in returning absentee ballots [i.e., ballot harvesting]. First, those collecting the ballots can intentionally discard (or conveniently lose or misplace) any ballots they suspect or know (perhaps even by opening the ballot envelopes) have been cast in favor of the ‘wrong’ candidate(s). Second, those collecting the ballots can open the ballot envelopes and change or alter whatever votes the voter originally recorded. Third, those collecting the ballots can collect unvoted ballots (or partially voted ballots) and complete the ballots themselves.” — Steven F. Huefner, law professor, Ohio State website, 12/9/18
• “Imagine … the ‘possibilities’ if you’re a Dem. What happens if, for example, [a ballot harvester’s] … house visit has a ‘Make America Great Again’ flag planted in the front yard? Could [the operative] go there, pretend to be a Republican, then toss the completed ballot in the trash on the way to Ben & Jerry’s? Of course she could, and the likelihood of getting caught would be next to zero. Could she then go to someone’s home who had no intention of voting, then ‘convince’ them to vote Democrat and give their ballot to her or else their next Social Security check won’t be coming? Again, yes she could.” — Townhall, 12/3/18
• “[T]he Democrats set themselves up for … allegations [of fraud] when they passed what really is an overly permissive ballot collection law. It was written without sufficient safeguards, and suspicions of abuse were inevitable. But … [ballot harvesting] does open the door to coercion and fraud and should be fixed or repealed before the next election … The potential for misuse first became apparent in a special election in Los Angeles last year between two Democrats for an open seat in the state Assembly. In the final weeks of the race, complaints surfaced about aggressive campaign workers pressuring voters to hand over ballots on behalf of [the candidate] who ultimately won the race … Doesn’t it also encourage ballot collectors to gather the ballots and then ‘lose’ them — oops! — on the way to the dropoff? Isn’t there the possibility that they might pay voters to hand over their unfilled mail ballots?” — The Los Angeles Times editorial, in a rare media rebuke of California’s ballot harvesting scheme, 12/7/18