A 600-vote lead is big enough for Leticia Castillo to declare victory in what would be an upset in the race for a state Assembly seat representing part of the Inland Empire.

“To the voters, thank you for placing your faith and trust in me,” Castillo, a Republican, said in a statement issued Tuesday night, Nov. 26. “I will work tirelessly in Sacramento to fight for the People, striving to improve the lives of my constituents and all Californians.”

Castillo’s opponent, Democrat Clarissa Cervantes, isn’t ready to concede.

“There are still well over a thousand votes likely left in this race, and we are committed to ensuring every single vote is counted,” Cervantes said via text. It’s not clear where she’s getting that figure.

Cervantes said her supporters have helped “hundreds” of voters correct problems with their ballots that prevented them from being counted.

“However, the Riverside County Registrar of Voters appears to be waiting until the last minute to review most of these cures, risking the disenfranchisement of voters whose signature cure forms are deemed to still not match their voter registration card signature enough,” she said.

“We urge the Registrar to act swiftly and fairly to ensure that every cured ballot is reviewed thoroughly and every voter’s voice is heard. This election is too important to let bureaucracy stand in the way of democracy.”

The registrar’s office did not immediately respond Wednesday, Nov. 27, to a request for comment.

Going into Wednesday, Castillo led Cervantes by 600 votes — 50.2% to 49.8% — out of more than 155,000 ballots counted in California’s 58th Assembly District, according to online results posted by the California Secretary of State.

According to Castillo, just 500 ballots remain to be counted in the district. It’s not clear how her campaign arrived at that figure, but in a Wednesday email Castillo said her campaign declared victory based on registrar’s data and its analysis of the estimated unprocessed ballots in both Inland counties.

The 58th — Jurupa Valley, Grand Terrace and parts of Corona, Eastvale and Riverside — is currently represented by Cervantes’ sister, Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, who is moving to the legislature’s upper chamber after winning a state Senate seat in the Tuesday, Nov. 5, election.

The plan was for Clarissa Cervantes, a Riverside city councilmember, to take her sister’s place in the Assembly. The 58th is friendly ground for Democrats, who make up 43% of the district’s registered voters compared to 28% for Republicans.

Clarissa Cervantes’ road to Sacramento got bumpy in 2023, when she pleaded guilty to drunk driving. It was her second DUI conviction in less than 10 years, and it became fodder for attacks against her in a primary featuring fellow Democrat and Riverside City Councilmember Ronaldo Fierro.

Despite that, Cervantes beat Fierro in the March primary and raised close to $1 million for her campaign, compared to roughly $81,000 that Castillo took in for her Assembly bid.

In her email, Castillo said her campaign is aware of the “significant voter registration gap between Democrats and Republicans” in the district.

“Our victory over the well-funded, well-supported, and well-known Clarissa Cervantes is a testament to the grace of God, the support of my family, the strategy and hard work of my team, and the will of Californians who have had enough of policies that have been detrimental to the daily lives of individuals, families, and businesses,” Castillo wrote.

If Castillo wins, two of the three assemblymembers representing the city of Riverside and its plurality of Democratic voters will be Republicans. The city is divided between the 58th, 60th (Assemblymember Corey Jackson, D-Moreno Valley) and 63rd (Assemblymember Bill Essayli, R-Corona) districts.

Castillo, a marriage and family therapist and Corona native, has consistently held a lead of at least several hundred votes in the days following the general election.

California takes weeks to count votes due to the large volume of mail-in ballots, which must be counted as long as they’re postmarked on or before Election Day and arrive no later than a week after Election Day.

Elections officials in Riverside and San Bernardino counties said they expect to wrap up vote-counting by Tuesday, Dec. 3.

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The 61-16 vote came after a lengthy and emotional back-and-forth between Democrats, who said the bill is necessary to protect LGBTQ+ youth, and Republicans, who said it would infringe on the student-parent relationship.

AB 1955 by Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward (D-San Diego) would shield teachers from retaliation for supporting transgender student rights and prohibit school policies that require “forced disclosure” of youth gender decisions to their families.

The legislation responds to a wave of conservative-backed school board policies that have sought to notify parents if their child changes their name or pronouns, or if students request to use facilities or participate in programs that don’t match their gender on official records.

Implementation of those policies are held up in court. But Democrats said Thursday that legislation is necessary to safeguard transgender K-12 students who may not feel safe at home to come out to their parents. They cited high bullying and suicide rates of transgender youth.

“It’s not the job of teachers to be the gender police. They want to teach, and they want to be able to provide a safe and supportive environment. And when they do, students will thrive,” a tearful Ward said on the Assembly floor, surrounded by his Democratic colleagues who stood in support of the bill. “Nothing in this bill gets involved in the parent-child relationship.”

The vote came after combative opposition from Assemblymember Bill Essayli (R-Corona), who opposed the measure over concerns about “parental rights” and accused Democrats of fear mongering.

Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Jim Wood (D-Healdsburg) repeatedly cut Essayli’s microphone during the debate and ruled that he was “out of order” for speaking about other legislation during his testimony against AB 1955, as well as for “disparaging the house.”

“I am tired of being interrupted by you,” Essayli told Wood.

Essayli, who compared state Democrats to the “Chinese Communist Party,” responded by attempting to block the testimony of his Democratic colleagues.

The floor debate was disrupted by several procedural votes required in order to cut Essayli’s time. The Democratic caucus ultimately paused the vote to take a recess after Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D-Perris) was physically restrained by his colleagues to stop him from confronting Essayli on the Assembly floor.

“I went blank. I lost it,” Jackson told The Times. “I don’t think sometimes that my Republican colleagues understand that for some bills, this is not about policy. This is about acknowledging people’s humanity. So of course it’s personal.”

Jackson said he apologized to his fellow lawmakers for the distraction and that he did not speak to Essayli about the matter.

“We stand with you. We do not want anyone to be bullied or hurt or erased or any of this stuff,” Essayli said after ultimately being allowed to speak on the floor about the bill. “When a child is going through this, it’s a very difficult and emotional time…. We do not believe that the government — the schools — have any authority to withhold information from parents at all, period.”

Several members of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus shared their own coming out stories in support of the bill and their experiences with unsupportive families.

Assemblymember Lori D. Wilson (D-Suisun City) said a teacher was the one to tell her that her child is transgender. She was “disappointed” by that teacher’s judgment.

“If my teacher had told my parents … I don’t know if I would’ve survived that day, because that was the level of abuse that was happening in my home,” Wilson said. “I don’t care how old you are. That is a personal decision.”

Newsom will have 12 days to sign or veto the bill, which cleared the Senate 29-8, once it officially hits his desk.

The Democratic governor is a staunch LGBTQ+ advocate. He signed a bill in 2022 that named California a sanctuary for transgender children and their families seeking healthcare and support they can’t get in red states.

But he shocked LGBTQ+ advocates when he vetoed a bill last year that would have required judges in custody battles to consider a parent’s support for their child’s gender identity. In a veto message, he said, “I urge caution when the executive and legislative branches of state government attempt to dictate — in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic — legal standards for the judicial branch to apply.”

Newsom does not typically comment on pending legislation.

When asked about the issue last year, he told The Times that he understands parents’ concerns but said that the school board policies are being used as a guise by Republicans to “bully” the LGBTQ+ community.

The governor, a father of four, said he “draws the line” at requiring teachers to “out” students.

“I take very seriously the work I do as a parent at home to meet their needs, and I don’t honestly expect teachers to sub my role as a parent,” Newsom said in November. “I want them to teach my kids, and I want them to keep them safe and make them feel included and not outed.”

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But last week they stood on the floor of the California Assembly and persuaded their colleagues to advance legislation that would have California join a handful of conservative states in passing laws requiring pornography sites to verify the ages of visitors to ensure they’re adults. 

“This bill is not about harming the adult entertainment industry or attacking those that work for it,” said Alanis, a former crimes-against-children detective. “This bill is simply about protecting children – and the harmful exposure to increasingly available and increasingly violent sexual material online.”

Bauer-Kahan, a leading women’s rights advocate in the Legislature, told her Assembly colleagues that research shows 40% of college-aged women have reported being choked during sexual encounters, something she said their partners learned from watching porn. 

“We may think this is a purity issue, but it goes well beyond that,” she said. “It is about the safety of our children. It is about making sure that they learn healthy behaviors.”

Their arguments resonated. None of the 80 members of the Assembly voted against Alanis’s Assembly Bill 3080, though 15 were listed as not voting. As CalMatters reported, lawmakers regularly decline to vote to avoid going on record against a controversial bill. 

Under the bill, porn sites would need to take “reasonable steps” to verify a user is an adult, such as using age-verification software or having the user provide the site a credit card or government-issued ID. The bill would require that any data collection would ensure the user’s anonymity and would not be used to create a record of the user’s online activity.

The bill now moves to the Senate. There, the Democrat-controlled chamber is likely to hear testimony from the same parents rights and church groups, free speech advocates and porn producers who testified last month before the Assembly’s judiciary and consumer protection and privacy committees.

Porn stars, conservative family groups orgs testify

Joseph Kohm, director of public policy at the Colorado-based Family Policy Alliance, told the Assembly Judiciary Committee last month that children regularly visit online porn sites featuring sexual violence and verbal degredation.

“And what this means is that they are learning about sexuality from a perspective that portrays sex as physical abuse,” Kohm told the committee.

Free speech advocates countered that if California enacted the bill, it would stifle the First Amendment rights of adult Californians to access online porn. Members of the porn industry also testified it would reduce traffic to their sites if the restrictions are enacted as they have been in other states.

“It’s a customer deterrent,” queer porn performer Jiz Lee told the judiciary committee. “And if it was enacted in California, where a lot of our subscribers are based, it would hurt our business.”

Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry trade group, told the judiciary committee that less than 1% of pornsite users actually complete the age-verification process in states that have passed the requirement. 

 “What they do, according to our data, is hit the back button and find a site that doesn’t comply with the law,” she said.

Porn ID laws in other states

Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Kentucky have adopted age-verification requirements for porn sites based on “model legislation” from the Center for Renewing America, a conservative activist group, according to the California bill’s legislative analysis. The organization’s website lists its motto as “For God. For Country. For Community.”

The bill’s legislative analysis noted that the online porn site Pornhub blocked users in those states after the age-verification requirements became law. 

Last month, Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a similar bill.

Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the Free Speech Coalition’s challenge to the Texas law, which had been upheld by a federal appellate court.  

The laws are new, and some were immediately blocked from taking effect due to legal challenges, so there’s little public data about how effective they’ve been in preventing kids from accessing porn or the impact on web traffic to porn sites.

The European Union in December passed its own age-verification law. Bauer-Kahan told the Assembly that California should follow those European countries’ lead. 

“Europe, which has much stronger privacy laws than our country, has done this,” she said. “They have found a way to put the verification of your age on your phone. A token is sent to the website without your personally identifiable information, and then you, if you’re an adult, can access legal pornography.”

Alanis told the Assembly last week that his bill isn’t that different from how retailers have traditionally prevented children from accessing other types of adults-only products. His bill, he said, would include porn sites in the same California law that prevents children from purchasing products including tobacco, fireworks, spray paint and firearms.

“I believe that California requires its own tailored approach,” he said. “That’s why my team and I have worked … to craft a workable bill using an existing statute that California has long used to protect our children from other types of harm.”

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