Alexei Koseff, CalMatters

This story originally ran at CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for WhatMatters to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.

Like many new political candidates at the time, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan first ran for the state Assembly in 2018 because she was troubled by the election of then-President Donald Trump and wanted California to fight back against his administration.

Six years later, that dynamic has flipped on its head. In the just-concluded regular legislative session, the San Ramon Democrat and her colleagues instead battled a surging rebellion from conservative California communities against the state’s liberal governance.

On issues including abortion access, election rules and LGBTQ rights, Democrats in Sacramento passed legislation this year to stifle emerging local policies that they argued undermine the state’s commitment to diversity, civil rights and other progressive values.

“In certain ways, we have the right to hold the line for our constituencies,” said Bauer-Kahan, who compared the relationship between the Legislature and local governments to a system of checks and balances. “And I think that’s what we’re doing right now — we’re checking them.”

Tensions over local control are nothing new in California politics, as anyone who has followed decades of debate about land use and housing development can attest. But the last few years have opened a new front of conflict around cultural grievances more typical of red states.

With Republican power waning in California — the party hasn’t elected a candidate to statewide office since 2006 and labors under a superminority in the Legislature — conservatives are increasingly using the relative autonomy of city councils, county boards of supervisors and school boards to protest liberal state policymaking and assert a competing vision for their communities.

“There’s just a lot of built-up frustration and that’s one valve that’s being used,” said Assemblymember Bill Essayli, a Corona Republican who is often an outspoken opponent of bills to shut down conservative defiance. “We’re in an era in politics where you need an adversary.”

The result has been local laws to require voter identification at the polls, block abortion clinics from opening, review children’s library books for sexual content and mandate parental notification when students change their gender identity at school — prompting legislative Democrats to respond with measures that would ban those policies.

“They don’t want free people to make up their own minds,” said Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau, who developed a library material review committee for his county because he was disturbed by the children’s books included in a Pride Month display at a local library. “We’re fighting for our lives, we’re fighting for our livelihoods, we’re fighting for our beliefs.”

The clash began intensifying last year, with a showdown over an elementary school social studies textbook. When a Riverside County school board refused to adopt the state-approved curriculum because it referenced assassinated LGBTQ rights activist Harvey Milk, Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to send the textbook directly to students and bill the district, which then reversed course. Legislators subsequently passed a law to penalize school boards that ban books because they include the history or culture of LGBTQ people and other diverse groups.

The Legislature also approved, and Newsom signed, a measure to limit when local governments can count ballots by hand, after Shasta County canceled its contract with a voting machine company because of unfounded election fraud claims pushed by Trump and his allies.

A spate of legislation has followed this year, most controversially Assembly Bill 1955 by Assemblymember Chris Ward, a San Diego Democrat, which prevents school districts from alerting parents when a student starts identifying as another gender. Such parental notification policies began sprouting up across California after the 2022 election, when Republicans focused on winning control of school boards, but critics argue they amount to forced outing. Essayli and Democratic Assemblymember Corey Jackson nearly came to blows on the Assembly floor over AB 1955, which Newsom signed in July.

Several other measures are headed to the governor’s desk after receiving final approval from the Legislature last week, including Bauer-Kahan’s AB 2085 to streamline the permitting process for reproductive health clinics. Though California has positioned itself as an “abortion sanctuary” since the U.S Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion — even putting reproductive rights into the state constitution — local opposition has prevented clinics from opening in cities such as Beverly Hills and Fontana.

“We saw the voters say they overwhelmingly support abortion rights, so it’s important that we as a state step in to ensure this access that they said they want,” Bauer-Kahan said.

Senate Bill 1174 by state Sen. Dave Min, an Irvine Democrat, would prohibit local governments from requiring voter identification in municipal elections, which Huntington Beach adopted this past spring as a security measure despite criticisms that it would create unnecessary hurdles for poor and minority voters.

And AB 1825 by Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, would outlaw the sort of citizen review panels that Huntington Beach and Fresno County recently created to restrict access to library books with “sexual references” and “gender-identity content.” Supporters argue the committees can keep inappropriate material out of children’s hands, while opponents contend that they target books with LGBTQ themes for censorship.

The legislators behind these bills say they support local control on some issues, but it can go too far when communities use their power to challenge people’s rights or the values that Californians have broadly affirmed. That’s when they believe the state should step in.

“I see it as our responsibility for the Legislature to establish protections for all kids regardless of where they live,” said Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat.

Democratic lawmakers suggested the growing confrontation could be a symptom of the divisive politics of the Trump era. They said many conservatives took a signal from Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in the 2020 presidential election and, like liberal states during the Trump administration, are picking up the mantle to lead a political resistance — which they believe, in many cases, has gone too far.

“You’ve seen a lot of these people really thumb their nose at the rule of law,” Min said. “They’re trying to get around that through sneaky little tactics.”

Conservative politicians counter that they are simply reacting to a state government that has pushed much further left than their constituents by listening to the LGBTQ rights movement and other activists rather than the people who elected them. Essayli said the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature is over-representative of a progressive ideology compared to California voters, only 46% of whom are registered Democrats.

“There’s one side changing what the norm is,” he said. “Then we’re considered the instigators, the agitators, the provocateurs for saying, wait, that’s not the way it’s always been.”

A spokesperson for Newsom declined to comment on the legislation pending before him or when the governor thinks state intervention is necessary to override local policies. But even if he signs the bills on his desk, is it almost certainly not the end of this fight, as communities such as Huntington Beach — which has positioned itself over the past two years as a bulwark in the conservative war against “wokeism” — consider lawsuits and other forms of protest.Gracey Van Der Mark, one of the conservative majority on the Huntington Beach City Council, in her City Hall office on Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for CalMatters

Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark has already introduced a “parents’ right to know” ordinance as a direct challenge to AB 1955, the law prohibiting schools from reporting when students change their gender identity.

She said her city is more at odds now with Sacramento because state politicians are trying to stamp out ideological diversity in California and force all parents to raise their children in a certain way.

“That’s none of the state’s business,” she said. “We’re sick and tired of it. We need to push back.”

“It would be great if Sacramento could focus on homelessness, crime,” she added, “and leave the parenting to the parents.”

This story first ran at CalMatters.

Until the moment President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign crashed to an end last month, no one remained a more committed cheerleader than Gov. Gavin Newsom, who forcefully defended Biden in television interviews and on the campaign trail against calls to drop out.

But in the weeks since Biden did just that, passing the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, Newsom retreated from the role of surrogate.

In the early phase of the reformulated Harris campaign, California’s governor has made just a handful of social media posts and public statements in support of the new Democratic nominee as his focus has shifted to clearing homeless encampments and launching a new weekly podcast with with former football player Marshawn Lynch and sports agent Doug Hendrickson.

It’s a complicated dynamic for two of California’s most high-profile political leaders, who became friendly professional rivals as they rose simultaneously through San Francisco and statewide elected office. Newsom, widely regarded as a future presidential contender, could see his ambitions delayed and diminished if Harris is elected in November. Harris is working to quickly redefine herself for voters as her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, targets her as a radical who destroyed California alongside Newsom.

Their camps deny that Newsom and Harris have intentionally distanced themselves, whether for personal or strategic reasons. Yet what role Newsom plays at next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago — nothing has been formally announced yet — could be an important signal of how prominent the governor will be in the campaign amid fears that Trump will make the race a referendum on California.

“It will speak volumes,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. “It gives us a window into the Harris campaign’s thinking about his slot and his place.”

Newsom aides maintain that the governor always planned to take a break from the presidential race over the summer to concentrate on state issues and that he will begin campaigning for Harris after the convention. They also suggested that the change in his visibility appears more substantial because the Biden campaign relied so heavily on Newsom at the end, when few other Democrats were as willing to go to bat for the increasingly unpopular president.

“There’s no ‘step back.’ Few have been as aggressive in making the case against Donald Trump and campaigning for Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris,” Nathan Click, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. “We are finalizing plans with the Harris campaign for him to hit the national trail once more following next week’s convention. During that time, he has still been supporting VP Harris and her campaign from California — signing and sending fundraising emails on her behalf and attending the SF fundraiser over the weekend.”

At a blockbuster fundraiser in San Francisco on Sunday, attended by many state politicians, Harris singled out her “friend and colleague” Newsom for praise, calling him “an extraordinary leader for California and a national leader,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Harris campaign declined to discuss the surrogate relationship with Newsom, but spokesperson Kevin Munoz wrote in an email that he “would strongly push back” against the idea that the governor had been given less to do because of his ties to California.

Newsom was everywhere in late June and early July, as Biden fought to keep his reelection campaign afloat following a disastrous debate performance that stirred fellow Democrats to try to push him aside. California’s governor appeared on television to swat down concerns about Biden’s cognitive decline, rushed to the White House for a damage-control meeting with Democratic governors that some participated in remotely, delivered a pep talk to Biden campaign staff on a conference call, and toured through swing states on the president’s behalf over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Yet when Biden abruptly ended his campaign on July 21 and endorsed Harris as his successor, Newsom’s initial response offered only an appreciation for the president’s legacy. It was more than five hours before he publicly threw his support behind Harris, even as much of the Democratic Party swiftly closed ranks behind her. While some top Democrats took longer, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Newsom’s delay prompted speculation that he was assessing his own path to the nomination, despite previous assurances that he would not run against Harris.

Since then, Newsom has rarely spoken publicly about Harris, foregoing national media opportunities as other Democratic governors auditioning to be her running mate flooded the airwaves. Newsom was eclipsed as a surrogate — and an object of political fascination — by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, among others. Asked for advice on debating Trump, Newsom did tell the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles last week that “Kamala will clean his clock,” a clip shared by the Harris campaign.

Newsom has posted occasional missives against Trump on social media in recent weeks, but did not mention Harris again until Aug. 6, when she selected Walz as her vice presidential nominee. Newsom called it a “brilliant choice” in a fundraising email that same day, asking supporters to split a donation between the Harris campaign and his own Campaign for Democracy PAC. A similar email was sent to the Harris campaign list over the weekend under Newsom’s name.

The Campaign for Democracy launched last year with leftover funds from Newsom’s 2022 reelection committee, serving as a vehicle to raise money for Democratic parties and candidates across the country and also to promote the governor through his advocacy for pet causes such as a constitutional amendment on gun control. Days before Biden abandoned his campaign, the PAC reported spending more than $800,000 on text messages on the president’s behalf.

People on Newsom’s PAC mailing list have actually gotten more updates in the past month about “Politickin’,” Newsom’s new podcast. In the opening minutes of the premiere episode, released a few days after Biden dropped out, Newsom recounted how he heard the news and said Harris was “lighting it up,” but the show has otherwise avoided the topic of the presidential race.

With his lighter campaign role, Newsom has turned more vigorously to the gubernatorial duties that he was criticized for ignoring while out of the state. He has kept busiest the past few weeks battling cities and counties over their response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave them more power to crack down on people who sleep on the streets — thrusting him into the national spotlight on his own terms.

The governor’s order for California officials to begin dismantling homeless encampments was announced in The New York Times, provoking Trump to complain online that “Gavin Newscum” was only acting for “political reasons” to help Harris’ campaign. Though perpetually a top concern for Californians, widespread homelessness has also tarnished the state’s image nationally and Newsom’s inability to solve it has given Republicans a potent attack.

Last week, Newsom threatened to withhold funding from local governments that don’t comply with his order and traveled to Los Angeles to clean up an encampment, documented for posterity by a photographer that Politico reported is being paid $200,000 per year by the governor’s office.

Now that national attention has shifted to Harris, these activities are another way for Newsom to get himself front and center, said McCuan, the Sonoma State professor, allowing the governor to build his profile beyond California without relying on the campaign of a political rival.

“It’s got to be chapping him that he’s not the guy,” McCuan said. “He needs to stay in the public eye and stay relevant.”

It’s something that Newsom, who terms out as governor at the start of 2027, will have to continue finding ways to do if he wants to seek the Democratic nomination for president in four or eight years. Should Harris win in November, essentially foreclosing a Newsom campaign until at least 2032, his best option might just be a post in her administration — and the job application starts with how he performs on the campaign trail this fall.

This story originally ran at Cal Matters.

The presentation was unassuming, just a handful of picture books arrayed on the side of a bookcase — the ABCs of a Pride parade, biographies of the gay World War II codebreaker Alan Turing and 50 LGBTQ+ people who made history, the sex education manual “It’s Perfectly Normal,” a retelling of the Stonewall riot and “My Shadow Is Pink,” in which a young boy explores his gender identity.

But when Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau heard a complaint from a constituent that Clovis librarians had put together a graphic Pride Month display for the children’s section, he was concerned enough to check it out. It wasn’t the type of material that he thought should be available alongside books about skunks and pirates.

“I don’t like a kid going in there and seeing ‘I can choose to be a boy or girl,’” Brandau said. “It didn’t seem age-appropriate, especially without the parent being involved.”

After flipping through the books, Brandau said he left the library in June 2023 “horrified” by images he believed were too sexually explicit and topics he felt were too mature for young readers. He began reaching out to local officials elsewhere — in states such as South Carolina, Kentucky and Texas, where library book controversies have become commonplace — to learn what they were doing.

Last November, Brandau led Fresno County in creating one of California’s first citizen review committees for library books, which could soon decide whether to move material with “sexual references” and “gender-identity content” to a restricted area where it could only be checked out with a parent’s permission.

Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau stands outside his office in the Fresno County Hall of Records on Aug. 1, 2024. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

The committee, which has not yet been selected, is already a lightning rod for fears about parents’ rights, censorship, the politicization of libraries and LGBTQ people being pushed out of public life again. Supporters say they are concerned about sexual content, not LGBTQ themes, and they do not want to ban books from the library entirely.

Tracy Bohren, a queer mother of two from Clovis who helped rally local LGBTQ residents against the committee, said adults who object to books about gay and transgender people are applying their own biases to sexualize material meant to help children understand the world. She said it’s important to have library books about marginalized groups available to LGBTQ kids who don’t come from supportive homes and need the message that they are loved.

“Somehow in the ‘we need to protect kids’ platform that they have stated, trans kids, LGBTQ kids, have not been considered part of that population that they need to protect,” Bohren said.

Now the book battle has become another front in the intensifying clashes between more conservative pockets of California and the state’s liberal government over values and local control. A bill on track to pass the Legislature before the session ends on Aug. 31 would effectively outlaw book review committees and other policies that limit access to materials at public libraries — potentially shutting down Fresno County’s efforts before they ever get off the ground.

“It appears to me that they believe that children are best educated and raised as wards of the state,” Brandau said. “We have age limits for movies. We have age limits for alcohol. And it’s not unreasonable to have age limits on sexually graphic material.”

Books bans surging nationwide

Though disagreements over what constitutes suitable reading material for young people are nothing new, public libraries have been thrust into a pitched culture war over the past few years as conservative activist groups across the country organized to demand more books be removed from collections.

The American Library Association has tracked a massive increase in the number of books being challenged at schools and libraries, which soared by 65% in 2023 to a record 4,240 titles. Nearly half featured LGBTQ or racial themes, according to the association.

Many Republican-led states have subsequently embraced policies requiring schools and libraries to remove books with any sexual content — including nudity, masturbation and homosexuality — or keep them in a separate adult section. New statewide restrictions have taken effect in Utah, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee in recent weeks.

California is not at the center of this conflict, though it has faced scattered fights over school materials, including a high-profile showdown last year between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Temecula school board that tried to ban an elementary school social studies textbook because it incorporated a lesson about assassinated gay politician Harvey Milk of San Francisco. In response, Newsom signed a law to penalize local districts that block books for including the history or culture of LGBTQ people and other diverse groups, while voters recalled the school board president in June.

The public library in Huntington Beach Nov. 11, 2023. Photo by Lauren Justice for Cal Matters

Besides Fresno County, the city council in Huntington Beach, the iconic Orange County surf community, has also voted to create a citizen committee to review children’s library books, part of a broader push by local officials to establish a bulkhead against progressive California policies. In the latest salvo of a bitter brawl over the political future of the city, opponents are collecting signatures to place a repeal of the review board before voters next spring.

These incidents caught the attention of Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat, who said public libraries are cornerstone institutions that should provide all Americans with a diverse range of perspectives.

“Teens exploring gender identity issues absolutely should have access to books that speak to their experiences and that may provide support or guidance,” he told CalMatters.

His proposal, Assembly Bill 1825, would require public libraries in California to establish a clear policy for choosing books, including a way for community members to voice their objections, but would prohibit banning material because it deals with race or sexuality. It also clarifies that library material can include sexual content that’s not obscene and leaves to the discretion of librarians where to display those books, though they could not prevent minors from checking them out.

“At the center of this bill is the fundamental respect for professionally trained librarians to be making the decisions as to what book titles and how to present them to the general public,” Muratsuchi said.

The measure has received the support of the California Library Association. Peter Coyl, the director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library and a member of the association’s intellectual freedom committee, said librarians want to provide people with information, not pornography. While parents have the right to decide what their own children read, he said, libraries need to have materials available to serve their full communities, including families with same-gender couples and children who are questioning their identities.

“Not every book is meant for every reader,” Coyl said. “You can’t then take your belief about what’s right for your child and apply it to everyone else.”

The bill, which won overwhelming approval in the Assembly in May and has advanced smoothly through Senate committees since, must pass the Legislature by the end of August to reach the governor’s desk. A spokesperson for Newsom said the governor would not comment on pending legislation.

If it is signed into law, it could still potentially face legal challenges from defenders of library book review committees, who argue the bill prevents parents from protecting their children from adult material.

“How do we make sure our public libraries really are tools that can be used by everyone?” said Diane Pearce, a city councilmember in Clovis, a fast-growing and Republican-leaning Fresno suburb. “We want to empower our parents in this situation and the state is telling us that they can do it better than we can.”

LGBTQ families feel targeted

The debate over the book review board in Fresno County has been deeply enmeshed with anxieties around LGBTQ rights, particularly transgender youth, underscoring how advocates on either side see the committee in starkly different terms.

Clovis City Councilmember Diane Pearce posted these photos on Facebook on June 28, 2023, warning constituents: “Might want to wait until June is over to take your kids to the Clovis Public Library.” Photo via Diane Pearce’s Clovis City Councilmember Facebook page

As Brandau was researching his proposal last summer, the issue blew up publicly when Pearce posted a warning on Facebook that people “might want to wait until June is over to take your kids to the Clovis Public Library” alongside photos of the Pride display and a page from a book about gender identity.

Pearce said she does not object to LGBTQ content, but rather to graphic sex education books and others dealing with “transgender ideology” being targeted to young children, which she said are not appropriate themes for that age.

“I looked at it as a public service announcement,” Pearce said. “I believe that parents should be involved in their children’s exposure to that. Those issues are controversial.”

Pearce asked her city council colleagues to send a letter to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors seeking a solution, though they did not ultimately agree.

That effort mobilized local members of the LGBTQ community, such as Boren, who said the library skirmish is part of a broader pattern of religious conservatives in Fresno County overlooking or discriminating against LGBTQ families.

The Clovis school district was one of the first in the state last year to require parental notification when a student changes their name, pronouns or gender identity — a policy that the Legislature and Newsom recently made illegal in California, effective in January and pending several lawsuits.

When advocates rallied against the review committee proposal before the board of supervisors last fall, Bohren said officials ignored their expressions of support for the library and seemed only concerned with serving their constituents who aligned with their ideology.

An art display in the children’s section in the Fresno County Library Clovis Branch on July 31, 2024. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

“I feel like it was contrived,” she said. “It’s one specific group of people — Christian nationalists — who are deciding what is appropriate or not appropriate for my children to see.”

Brandau said opponents fundamentally misunderstood his proposal, known as the Parents Matter Act, which he already considered a compromise. No books will be banned, he said; the committee will merely move material to a restricted section of the library that parents can access if they want, allowing Fresno County to set its own community standards for what books should be readily available to children.

He said he took months to develop a policy that was “not targeting one lifestyle,” though he acknowledged that language limiting “gender-identity content” and other “content deemed age-inappropriate” encompasses books about sexuality and transgender people.

“I’m not against this material. I’m against it at the wrong age,” Brandau said. “If this didn’t involve children, it’s not the biggest deal on the planet.”

Librarians under siege

California librarians say morale in their profession has plummeted in recent years. The backlash to certain books has fomented public distrust of their intentions and stoked a host of stressful and sometimes terrifying new threats — protesters, prank calls, bomb threats and “First Amendment auditors,” who record their encounters with library workers on their phones.

“These are things we never worried about before,” said Coyl of the Sacramento Public Library. “It’s not what we signed up for as library workers. And it is probably the worst that it’s ever been.”

Books on shelves in the children’s section at the Fresno County Library Clovis Branch on July 31, 2024. Photo by Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local

Some libraries that have not faced a huge number of book challenges are making precautionary changes to their policies, such as requiring that demands come from someone who proves that they actually reviewed the material and not allowing another challenge if the library keeps the book on the shelf.

“Not every book is meant for every reader. You can’t then take your belief about what’s right for your child and apply it to everyone else.”

peter coyl, director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library

The tumult has stretched even to liberal California communities not used to conflicts over cultural values. Programs where drag queens read stories to children have become a particular flash point. Two years ago, members of the far-right militia group the Proud Boys stormed a drag storytime at a library in the East Bay city of San Lorenzo.

The library in Redwood City, on the San Francisco peninsula, started a drag queen story program remotely during the pandemic. When it hosted the event in-person for the first time in 2022, several groups protested that the library was grooming and indoctrinating children. The protesters included people associated with the Proud Boys and a local homelessness nonprofit with an evangelical Christian affiliation, according to Derek Wolfgram, interim director of Redwood City’s parks and recreation department.

Wolfgram, a past president of the California Library Association, said he tries to use these situations as an opportunity to engage positively with the community. The evangelical nonprofit wanted to host a Bible storytime in response to the drag queen event, so the library created a series of story hours with faith leaders of different denominations, which Wolfgram said has been popular and appeared to draw new library users.

He recalled another exchange with a man who said the library didn’t have enough books with conservative viewpoints. Wolfgram asked for a list of recommendations, some of which were already in Redwood City’s collection and at least one — “Why I Stand,” the memoir of NBA player Jonathan Isaac — that the library added. It has since been checked out several times.

“Don’t tell me what you want to take away from anybody else. Tell me what you want to add so you feel included,” Wolfgram said.

Parents divided over review committee

In Fresno County, another Pride Month has come and gone and the library book review committee still has not launched. The deadline for applications was in April, but more than three months later, the board, which will primarily be selected by county supervisors, remains vacant.

Brandau said he received more than 40 applications, which he is reviewing. He expects to finish interviews and choose his two representatives to the committee by the end of the month.

“We have age limits for movies. We have age limits for alcohol. And it’s not unreasonable to have age limits on sexually graphic material.”
Fresno County Supervisor Steve Brandau

A spokesperson said the library is waiting to receive direction from the review committee before it moves any material. In the meantime, the Clovis branch put together an elaborate Pride display in June, with a case of featured books, a historical timeline and, in the children’s section, a banner depicting melting popsicles of every color in the rainbow, with the slogan “Love is Love.”

John Gerardi, executive director of Right to Life of Central California, is among the applicants waiting to find out whether he’ll be on the committee. The Clovis father of three “frequent library-goers” under the age of 10 said he wants to move books about sexuality that he believes are being presented to children who are far too young.

On several library visits, Gerardi said, his wife has found books in the children’s section that included explicit material that did not seem appropriate for the marked grade level, such as “Sex Is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth. The sex education comic book for 8- to 10-year-olds has been one of the most challenged books in the country in recent years because of its frank discussion of sexual topics. Gerardi objected to an image that depicts a character masturbating in a bathtub and a passage about the meaning of the word sexy.

An image from the sex education comic book “Sex Is a Funny Word” by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth depicts a character masturbating in a bathtub, which some parents argue is too graphic for the children’s section of the library. Photo courtesy of John Gerardi

“Some of these books just seemed completely inappropriate for healthy childhood development around sex,” Gerardi said.

Gerardi said he has lost confidence in library officials, who he believes have been dismissive of parents’ concerns even though they are not all experts on early childhood development.

“There’s this idea that they have access to some secret hidden knowledge that we don’t have. And I just don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I think that appropriate presentation of sexual themes to children is something that the taxpayers who are paying for this darn library can understand.”

Others are seeking positions on the library book review committee precisely because they do not believe it should exist at all.

“It’s absolutely disgusting trying to control a public library that way,” said Jamie Coffman, a Fresno mother of four children ranging in age from 2 to 11. She said it’s a parent’s job to monitor what their kids are reading, not anybody else’s, and people should trust the librarians’ judgment about what books they put on the shelves.

Coffman said she submitted her application with vague answers that she hoped would conceal her true intention to “take it down from the inside.” She has yet to hear back.

Raised in a conservative, Southern Baptist family, Coffman said reading helped expose her to other viewpoints as she was growing up. She worries that society is moving backward on accepting diversity and said she’s scared that her own children might have fewer books available to them.

“You can’t hide the world just to make your children into who you want them to be,” she said.

This story was originally published by CalMatters, nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

Here we go again: Conservative activists who worked on the failed recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021 have launched another attempt, arguing that conditions in California only worsened in the two-and-a-half years since then as Newsom’s attention shifted to national politics.

Rescue California, one of the main political committees behind the 2021 recall, announced today that it was pursuing a campaign to remove Newsom from the governor’s office before he terms out in early 2027.

“We’ve got to do it again, because he’s a better governor when he’s under a microscope,” Anne Dunsmore, a fundraiser and campaign manager for Rescue California, told CalMatters. “We cannot do this trajectory for three more years.”

Newsom defeated the 2021 recall, which was fueled by anger over his response to the coronavirus pandemic, by nearly 24 percentage points. Then he won a second term a year later by almost the same margin, suggesting overwhelmingly liberal California voters have little appetite to toss the governor.

But Dunsmore said she has been frustrated to watch Newsom tout California’s success in the national media and become a surrogate for other Democratic candidates across the country when the state is losing population, smash-and-grab robberies are out of control and there is a high rate of homelessness among veterans. She said extending health coverage to undocumented immigrants while California is facing a budget deficit estimated to be tens of billions of dollars was a breaking point.

Dunsmore said she hopes the recall campaign will either force Newsom to refocus his attention on solving California’s problems, or damage what many presume are his ambitions to run for president in the future.

“He cannot own any bragging rights on a national level,” Dunsmore said. “If he stays home and fixes these problems, he’ll be a political rock god. I have no problem with that.”

Prominent California Democrats immediately circled the wagons, dismissing the recall petition as political gamesmanship by Republicans. In a fundraising email, Newsom asked supporters to help him keep “some anti-science, anti-woman far-right conspiracy theorist from becoming governor of California.”

“We are taking it seriously,” Newsom spokesperson Nathan Click said in a statement. “These Trump Republicans are targeting Gov. Newsom because he is out there defending democracy and fighting for the reelection of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. He’s not going to be distracted from that fight. Democracy’s on the ballot, and he’s going to keep fighting.”

Rescue California could begin gathering signatures on its recall petition within a matter of weeks. The committee needs about 1.31 million valid signatures from registered California voters to qualify for the ballot, some 180,000 fewer than last time — though that attempt only qualified after a judge granted proponents additional time to collect signatures.

Dunsmore brushed off the notion that another recall campaign would primarily be a financial boon to political consultants and said her team “learned so much about what we went through two years ago,” including how to qualify their petition at less cost.

She blamed the failure of the 2021 recall on voters’ distaste for Larry Elder, the libertarian radio host who was the leading replacement candidate, and suggested things could go differently with a more viable alternative to Newsom on the ballot.

“The job now is to find someone who’s qualified,” Dunsmore said.