California’s path hinges on the presidential race: ‘No state has more to lose or gain’

Whoever wins the presidency, the 2024 election has outsized implications for California.

The elevation of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris to the highest office in the land would make her the most powerful Californian in nearly four decades. Former President Donald Trump’s return to the White House would thrust the state back into leading the resistance against his Republican administration, as it did during his first term from 2017 to 2021.

With public polls showing the two candidates in a dead heat and a distinct possibility that the outcome of the race won’t be called for days — not to mention the weeks or months of legal wrangling that could follow — state officials, industry leaders and activists are already preparing for either scenario.

What lies ahead is a nerve-wracking fork in the road that hinges on perhaps tens of thousands of voters in a handful of states thousands of miles away. If Harris wins, a political perspective honed in California would shape the future of the entire country, potentially bringing the state’s priorities nationwide and additional resources home. If Trump wins, Californians would face another four years of governance consumed by combative showdowns between the state’s Democratic leadership and Washington, D.C., potentially distracting from or even setting back progress on addressing California’s own problems.

“No state has more to lose or more to gain in this election in November,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said during a press conference last week, as he reflected on the “chilling effect” that Trump’s mass deportation plan would have on California’s economy.

Newsom’s office declined to discuss the stakes of the presidential election for California. Nor did representatives make Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire or Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, both Democrats who will shape the legislative agenda and state budget next year, available for interviews.

But across state government, officials are gaming out California’s response, especially if they find themselves once again trying to “Trump-proof” the state. Newsom and his budget team are developing a proposal for a disaster relief fund after the former president repeatedly threatened to withhold emergency aid for wildfire recovery from California because of its water policy.

“The best way to protect California, its values, the rights of our people, is to be prepared, so we won’t be flat-footed,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose team has been working with advocacy organizations and attorneys general in other states on how they would answer another Trump administration. “We will fight as we did in the past if that scenario unfolds.”

During Trump’s first term, California sued more than 100 times over his rules and regulatory rollbacks. Bonta said his team has preemptively written briefs and tested arguments to challenge many of the policies they expect the former president could pursue over the next four years: passing a national abortion ban and restricting access to abortion medication; revoking California’s waiver to regulate its own automobile tailpipe emissions and overruling its commitment to transition to zero-emission vehicles; ending protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children; undermining the state’s extensive gun control laws, including for assault weapons, 3D-printed firearms and ghosts guns; implementing voter identification requirements; and attacking civil rights for transgender youth.

“Unfortunately, it’s a long list,” Bonta told CalMatters. “We are and have been for months developing strategies for all of those things.”

“Hopefully we’ll never need it because it will be President Harris,” he added. “It’ll gather dust on a shelf.”

What does a Harris presidency mean for California?

The impacts of a Harris presidency on California are less certain. While Trump routinely made the state a punching bag in his campaign, Harris distanced herself from her deep California roots as she sought to strike a more moderate image for swing voters.

“It’s always great to have someone from your state in the highest office,” said Jennifer Barrera, president and CEO of the California Chamber of Commerce. “Whether or not that would benefit California, it’s hard to say.”

Many elected officials and other political figures, including outgoing U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler and Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, developed close ties with Harris during her decades rising through the state and could jump to her administration, giving California a further voice in national policy.

That in turn could help drive more resources home on priorities where California is closely aligned with Harris’ platform, such as expanding access to abortion, and ensure extra attention for issues of greater importance to the state’s economy, such as tourism, international trade and skilled immigration.

Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning tech industry association, said that while Trump is viewed as a wild card who could punish major companies that he believes opposed him, “there’s widespread optimism that Harris will care again.” 

Tech hopes for a more productive relationship with Harris, who “had an open door for the industry” during her time in California, than the Biden administration, which is regarded as antagonistic, Kovacevich said — and that could pay dividends for the California budget.

“It’s tech industry success that plays a huge role in funding the state’s social safety net,” he said.

Lowering the cost of housing, which voters routinely rate as the biggest problem facing California, is a central plank of Harris’ agenda. Though federal regulations, namely updated code requirements, only make a marginal difference, according to Dan Dunmoyer, president and CEO of the California Building Industry Association, he believes the spotlight could encourage a change in approach at the local level, where permit delays and excessive fees are the most significant impediments to development.

“Rhetoric is powerful and it can focus the attention,” Dunmoyer said. “It’s nice to have candidates fighting over who is going to do the most for housing.”

Some advocates hope that a Harris administration would provide a sympathetic channel to export more of the California way to the rest of the country.

After organized labor scored major wins under Biden, Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, said unions would push a Harris administration to continue expanding workers’ rights. Many of their priorities are policies California already adopted, including extending organizing rights to farmworkers and domestic workers, rewriting classification rules for independent contractors, and creating protections for employees that refuse to attend anti-union captive audience meetings.

“The amazing thing about Kamala Harris is that she was in California while we were passing all these forward-thinking bills,” Gonzalez said.

What does a Trump presidency mean for California?

With Democrats in control of every state office and holding supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, a Trump victory would completely upend policymaking in California. During his first term, legislators focused on counteracting his federal agenda — though not always successfully. Jerry Brown and Newsom, whose governorships both overlapped with Trump, took executive actions to limit the fallout of his rollback of environmental regulations, including launching a pollution-tracking satellite and negotiating with auto companies to maintain higher mileage standards. 

CalChamber’s Barrera said those conflicts between federal and state rules that put business in the middle — such as a law that restricted employer participation in workplace immigration raids — are a greater concern for industry than any particular policy a president might pursue.

“Having the state react, it sort of puts things in limbo,” she said. “When the two aren’t aligned, it creates some problems for our members that operate on the national level.”

Others worry that California would resist Trump’s plans by going further in the opposite direction, in potentially counterproductive ways. In 2019, as the Trump administration narrowed federal water protections, California adopted even more expansive state regulations that developers complained made it more complicated and costly to get building permits. 

“The anti-Trump factor is real,” Dumoyer said. “I expect that if Trump says the sky is blue, they’ll say it’s black today.”

Divided partisan control could also further gridlock Congress, setting up the nation’s largest state as the battleground for major policy fights, especially in areas that are not of interest to Trump.

Kovacevich, from the tech association, said advocacy groups seeking more oversight of the industry have been very active in Washington, D.C., for the past four years and enjoyed a lot of success with the Biden administration. If Trump wins, they will turn to California to lead the way on regulating artificial intelligence and children on social media, as well as enforcing antitrust law.

“Congress is an environment of legislative scarcity,” he said. “California is an environment of legislative abundance.”

In many ways, California is more protected from swings in federal regulations than other states, because it has a robust regulatory framework of its own that often goes much further than the federal government.

Gonzalez said unions see an ongoing challenge to the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board as a much bigger threat than any actions Trump might take, given that California law is already stronger than federal law on minimum wage, overtime pay and wage theft protections.

“He can’t do anything through the Department of Labor that would undo that,” she said.

Immigrant community on the defensive

With frustration and anger over the U.S.-Mexico border growing among voters and both candidates emphasizing tougher enforcement, immigration is likely to be a major issue regardless of who wins the presidency, plunging California’s large immigrant community into an uncertain and terrifying moment.

As Newsom put it last week, “the impacts from valley to valley, Silicon Valley to Central Valley, will be outsized” — particularly if Trump also revives his push to limit legal immigration, including refugees, foreign workers and international students.

The California Immigrant Policy Center, an immigrant rights advocacy group, has already led 15 scenario-planning exercises with hundreds of people from organizations across the state to prepare. Executive Director Masih Fouladi said the immigrant community, millions of whom are undocumented, will be on the defensive either way the election goes, though the mass deportations Trump has threatened are a more immediate concern.

“We know that the Trump administration is going to target California. They’ve been targeting California throughout this election cycle,” Fouladi said. “We need to do a lot in California to make sure that we are defending, protecting our communities.”

Under Trump, Fouladi said, immigrant rights groups would lobby to make sure state and local resources are not used to detain and deport people and that non-citizen residents continue to have access to health care and other public services, which the state has significantly expanded over the past decade.

One likely priority is strengthening the California Values Act, the 2017 “sanctuary state” law that limited police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. After a contentious legislative battle, the version that passed was scaled back from what supporters originally envisioned, exempting people convicted of hundreds of more serious crimes from the protections and allowing state prison officials to continue handing over individuals facing deportation orders.

With Democrats drifting right on immigration policy, activists are unsure where a Harris administration would land, though they plan to keep advocating for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Fouladi said community groups would play an important role in amplifying positive messages about immigrants as public opinion has turned against them.

California has also addressed the needs of border communities without demonizing migrants seeking asylum, he said, which should be promoted as a model for the federal government. Last year, the state funded $150 million in grants for local nonprofits providing shelter and migrant support services.

“What we hope for is to address the rights of the immigrant community in a humane way,” Fouladi said.