Top Ten Winners & Losers In California Politics For The Week Ending 5/22 - And We Present The Worst Week In Politics Video…
Every week I'm closely following politics here in the Golden State. This is a weekly feature where we call out ten winners and/or losers. As usual, more losers than winners. Typical!
Below is our Top Ten List of Winners and Losers for the Week. This feature is available to all of our subscribers, free and paid. At the bottom of this post is our “Worst Week In California Politics” special feature. It's me, in rare form, on video, going on why someone’s week sucked. It is below the paywall for our paid subscribers, though. Please support my independent calling of balls and strikes, and unlock lots of content by upgrading today! It’s only $7 a month (or $70 for an entire year).
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⏱️ 5-minute read
Top Winners & Losers LAST Week in California Politics
WINNERS AND LOSERS OF THE WEEK! (THIS WEEK IT’S ELEVEN)
⬇️ LOSER: BRENDA LEE BROWN ARMSTRONG, FORMER SIGNATURE GATHERER
Federal prosecutors announced that Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong agreed to plead guilty in a scheme involving fraudulent voter registrations tied to homeless individuals living on Skid Row in Los Angeles. According to prosecutors, the operation involved paying homeless people to sign voter registration and ballot paperwork. The case immediately reignites long-running election-integrity concerns in California and creates terrible optics for political activists and organizations tied to aggressive ballot and voter-registration operations in Los Angeles County politics.
⬇️ LOSER: LAWYERS USING AI HALLUCINATIONS IN COURT FILINGS
The legal profession is learning the hard way that ChatGPT is not a licensed attorney. San Francisco attorney Jessica Barsotti was fined and ordered to undergo AI ethics training after filing court papers containing multiple fake legal citations, apparently generated by artificial intelligence. The bigger problem is that this is no longer an isolated embarrassment. More lawyers are relying on AI tools to draft filings and research case law without properly verifying the results. Courts are now dealing with fabricated precedents, nonexistent rulings, and legal arguments built on pure machine fiction. That is a dangerous direction for the justice system.
⬆️ WINNER: LINCOLN CLUB OF SAN DIEGO
For months, San Diego elected officials and civic insiders treated opposition to the city’s trash-fee hikes and paid parking proposal at Balboa Park as political noise. Instead, the Republican-aligned Lincoln Club helped turn the issue into a major taxpayer revolt. Most importantly, they gathered signatures to force a ballot vote, creating the leverage City Hall could not ignore. That pressure helped produce a sweeping settlement that dramatically reduced proposed trash fees and eliminated the Balboa Park parking plan entirely. In deep-blue San Diego, this was a rare and visible center-right win.
⬇️ LOSER: MATT MAHAN
Just a few months ago, Silicon Valley elites were hyping San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan as the fresh-faced “moderate Democrat” who could shake up the governor’s race. Now the wheels appear to be coming off. A pro-Mahan independent expenditure committee has shut down, while another refunded a stunning $1 million donation from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings after failing to hit fundraising goals. Meanwhile, polling still shows Mahan stuck in the single digits despite all the early hype and donor excitement. In politics, donors asking for their money back is about as damaging a public signal as a campaign can receive.
⬇️ LOSER: STATE SENATOR JESSE ARREGUÍN
California Democrats simply cannot help themselves when it comes to new gun-control mandates. State Senator Jesse Arreguín is now pushing SB 948, which would force firearm owners seeking a safety certificate to complete lengthy government-approved training courses that include live-fire exercises. The bill would also impose new requirements on people moving into California with legally owned firearms. It is yet another attempt to make lawful gun ownership more expensive, time-consuming, and burdensome for ordinary Californians already trapped inside one of the nation’s most restrictive firearm regulatory systems.
⬇️ LOSER: GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM
Gavin Newsom’s new executive order on artificial intelligence sounds less like free-market adaptation and more like a California experiment in government-managed collectivism. In discussing AI and economic disruption, Newsom floated ideas such as universal basic capital and broad wealth-redistribution mechanisms that would dramatically expand the government’s role in the economy. The most dangerous part is not that these ideas are politically impossible — it is that California Democrats increasingly view them as morally necessary. At a time when Californians are already struggling with affordability, Newsom keeps moving further toward statism instead of economic freedom.
⬇️ LOSER: ASSEMBLYMEMBER CHRIS WARD
Assemblymember Chris Ward is pushing yet another Sacramento intervention into the private-sector market economy, this time targeting so-called “surveillance pricing.” His bill would restrict how businesses use customer data to set individualized prices, wrapping a major new regulatory scheme in consumer-protection language. But the practical effect is obvious: more government control over pricing, more compliance burdens, and less room for innovation in a data-driven economy. California already makes it hard enough to run a business. Ward’s answer is to let Sacramento micromanage prices, too.
⬇️ LOSER: LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCILMEMBER NITHYA RAMAN, CANDIDATE FOR MAYOR
Nithya Raman built her political career as a progressive insurgent backed by activists, Democratic Socialists, and the hard left of Los Angeles politics. Now, many of those same allies are abandoning her. Several prominent progressive Los Angeles City Councilmembers publicly endorsed Karen Bass instead of Raman in the mayor’s race, exposing serious fractures inside the activist coalition Raman was counting on to fuel her campaign. That is a major political warning sign. When ideological allies sitting beside you at City Hall start defecting to the incumbent, it raises real questions about your momentum, coalition strength, and overall viability.
⬇️ LOSER: DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP IN THE STATE LEGISLATURE
California legislative leaders love preaching transparency and accountability — right up until the public tries to see how major lobbying battles actually unfold. A new report revealed that powerful interests routinely send private letters to lawmakers taking positions on legislation, while those communications often remain hidden from the public. That means lobbyists, corporations, unions, and advocacy groups can quietly pressure legislators behind closed doors while voters are left in the dark. In a Capitol already drowning in insider politics and special-interest influence, the secrecy only deepens public distrust in Sacramento’s one-party power structure.
⬇️ LOSERS: TRUSTEES OF THE LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT
The leadership of the Los Angeles Unified School District keeps proving that California’s public-sector spending culture has no connection to fiscal reality. LAUSD leaders approved generous raises and compensation increases for unionized employees while sitting on a looming financial cliff. Now the district is preparing to eliminate more than 1,000 jobs, with even deeper cuts potentially ahead. That is not responsible governance — it is political cowardice wrapped in labor peace. The same officials who celebrated expensive labor agreements are now forcing layoffs, instability, and uncertainty onto the very workforce they claimed to champion.
⬇️ LOSER: ATTORNEY GENERAL ROB BONTA
Attorney General Rob Bonta took large campaign contributions from tribal gambling interests, then used state power in a way that plainly benefits those same tribes by targeting their cardroom competitors. His Department of Justice pushed regulations restricting blackjack-style games and player-dealer operations at California cardrooms — rules the cardroom industry says could devastate jobs, local tax revenue, and entire city budgets. A judge has now blocked the regulations while the legal challenge continues. This is exactly what Sacramento corruption looks like: campaign cash in, government muscle out.
THE WORST WEEK IN CALIFORNIA POLITICS “AWARD” GOES TO…
Below is my weekly pithy video about the person in California politics who has had the worst week! You do NOT want to miss this rant — seven minutes of pure Jon. Upgrade today!
Who had the worst week in California politics last week? We have a runner-up, and then the “grand prize” winner!
