California’s Yes Man: Meet the Democratic lawmaker who has never said ‘no’ to a bill

The Democrats who control California’s Legislature vote “no” on average less than 1% of the time. But one Assemblymember stands out even among this group of “yes” men and women. 

Mike Fong, a Democrat from Monterey Park, is the only one of California’s 120 state lawmakers who has never cast a “no” vote on a piece of legislation, according to the Digital Democracy database. 

Fong has dutifully said “aye” during committee votes and pushed the green button at his desk on the Assembly floor 9,389 times since he was sworn in on Feb. 22, 2022.

Fong chairs the Assembly Higher Education Committee, and he sits on the Assembly’s appropriations and budget committees, giving the Los Angeles County lawmaker significant influence over how billions of Californians’ tax dollars are spent each year. 

Fong’s office didn’t respond to an interview request from CalMatters this week. His office also refused to make him available earlier this year to discuss his voting record for a CalMatters and CBS News investigation into the Legislature’s voting trends. 

The investigation in April revealed that California’s Democratic lawmakers vote “no” so rarely that critics say most of the 2,000-plus bills introduced each year appear to be decided in advance behind closed doors.

With the adjournment of the Legislature’s two-year session in August, the latest Digital Democracy data shows that the pattern hasn’t changed. Democrats voted “no” less than half of 1% of the time. Forty-seven of the 120 legislators voted “no” less than 10 times. During the two-year session, a Democratic lawmaker on average had around 4,800 opportunities to vote on bills.

The fact that Fong has yet to say “no” to any of the thousands of bills he’s considered in the past 33 months was one of the main reasons Long “David” Liu decided to run against Fong in this year’s election. Liu, a Republican lawyer who heads a City of Industry law firm, is a longshot in the safely Democratic district that includes large Asian American communities southeast of Pasadena. 

“It’s such a sacred sort of job to cast a vote as an Assemblymember on the laws that would affect every single person living in the state of California,” Liu told CalMatters. “And he just casts his basic vote without knowing what the bill is, without knowing what the bill is about. I mean, just that’s scary.“

Fong said ‘no’ but not to a bill

One of the Legislature’s most prominent critics was also flummoxed by Fong’s propensity to vote “aye” so often.

Scott Kaufman, a lobbyist for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and a frequent critic of Democratic spending policies, told CalMatters that at first he couldn’t believe Fong had never voted “no.” He checked his group’s internal vote tracker and confirmed Digital Democracy’s findings.

Kaufman said that since Fong votes “aye” on so many bills, he sometimes votes for the ones the tax-fighter group supports. Still, Kaufman said he hoped Fong wasn’t reflexively voting “aye” on everything. 

“If he’s hitting the ‘yes’ button just to hit the ‘yes’ button, I’m concerned,” he said.

Fong did cast a “no” vote earlier this month, but it wasn’t for legislation; it was on a procedural motion.

Fong pressed the “no” button along with 49 other Assembly Democrats in response to a Republican motion to adjourn Gov. Gavin Newsom’s special session on gas-price spikes. Republicans opposed the session, saying any new fuel regulations would just raise gas costs for consumers.

Moments after Fong and his colleagues killed the Republican motion, Fong pressed the green button, sending a bill on refinery regulations to Newsom’s desk.

Lawmakers say not voting is no big deal

CalMatters and CBS News in April revealed that instead of voting “no,” many lawmakers don’t vote at all. In the Legislature, a non-vote counts the same as voting “no,” because legislative rules require a fixed number of “yes” votes for a bill to move forward. Lawmakers regularly hold off on voting on controversial bills as a way to avoid irking colleagues or angering powerful lobbying groups that might see an official “no” vote as an insult.

When it comes to not voting, Fong’s only done that 75 times in 9,465 opportunities. In other words, for every 100 bills Fong had the opportunity to vote on, he voted “aye” 99 times. The average non-vote rate for Fong’s fellow Democrats is around 5%. 

The Legislature’s online vote-tracking database does not distinguish whether non-votes are due to absences, abstentions because a lawmaker has a conflict of interest or if he or she just declined to vote.

The Legislature’s Democratic leaders have repeatedly refused to answer CalMatters’ questions about concerns that not voting is avoiding accountability for their decisions. Some veteran legislators also told CalMatters recently they didn’t think not voting was a big deal.

“I think it’s a non issue,” said outgoing Democratic Assemblymember Kevin McCarty of Sacramento. “I think it’s an issue that, you know, you and reporters just kind of make up. I think the bill passes or it doesn’t pass. I don’t think there’s much drama to that.”

McCarty didn’t vote 120 times this year in more than 2,500 opportunities. He voted “no” nine times. 

Brian Maienschein, a Democratic Assemblymember from San Diego who is also termed out, agreed. Maienschein didn’t vote 55 times this year in more than 2,400 opportunities. He cast four “no” votes.

“A bill needs 41 yeses to pass, right?” he said. “So, I mean, if you’re not voting ‘yes,’ you’re not pushing that bill across the finish line. … I didn’t see that as something that I found was like a big deal.”

Thomas Gerrity and Hans Poschman, members of the CalMatters Digital Democracy team, contributed to this story.