Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Democrat representing the oil-rich Bakersfield area, found that out the hard way. Back in 2023, as a newly elected legislator, Bains stood alone among her fellow Democrats when she voted against a bill backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that aimed to crack down on oil company profits. It was a vote that reflected her district’s economic ties to the petroleum industry, but it also marked her as an outlier within her own party.

That independent streak may have cost her. When Bains launched a bid for Congress this year, she lost the Democratic primary to Randy Villegas, a college professor whose more progressive platform resonated with primary voters. Villegas will now face off against Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao in the November general election, while Bains’ moderate approach — and her willingness to cross party lines — appears to have left her on the outside looking in.

Her defeat raises a pointed question for other lawmakers in Sacramento who occasionally vote against their party: What’s the political cost of independence, and is that kind of maverick behavior becoming an endangered species as California’s electorate grows increasingly polarized?

Assemblymember Juan Alanis, a Modesto Republican, isn’t backing down despite the risk. He knows that a future primary opponent from his party’s right flank could someday use his votes for Democratic-authored bills as ammunition against him. But he says he plans to keep voting according to his conscience and the needs of his district, regardless of the political fallout.

“If a right-wing challenger wants to make an issue of that, then so be it,” Alanis said.

A recent analysis of legislative voting records conducted by CalMatters’ Digital Democracy team examined just how uncommon these breaks from party orthodoxy have become. The review found that lawmakers like Bains and Alanis — willing to cast the lone dissenting vote when the rest of their party lines up the other way — are a rare breed in today’s Capitol, among both Democrats and Republicans.

Reporters interviewed several of these outlier legislators from both parties about why they feel comfortable straying from the party line, and whether they worry that partisan primary challengers might one day use those votes against them at the ballot box. Their answers shed light on the shrinking space for political independence in an era of hardening partisan divides — a dynamic playing out well beyond the Central Valley and increasingly shaping races across California, including here in the Inland Empire.

In other news around the region and state:

California continues to make gradual progress on student reading scores, but a shortage of literacy coaches — educators best equipped to help struggling readers catch up — is complicating the state’s multibillion-dollar push to improve literacy outcomes. Mississippi, by contrast, saw its fourth-grade reading rankings jump from 49th in the nation in 2013 to 9th by 2024, a turnaround officials there credit in part to an aggressive expansion of literacy coaching programs. California, meanwhile, has struggled to fill those same coaching positions, even as it climbs from a 47th-place ranking in 2013 toward the middle of the pack nationally.

Closer to home, a federal judge has ordered improvements at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County after detainees alleged dangerously poor drinking water and inadequate medical care. U.S. District Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes issued a preliminary ruling last week finding that detainees who sued over conditions at the facility were likely to succeed in proving their constitutional rights had been violated. The GEO Group, the private, for-profit company that operates Adelanto under contract with the Department of Homeland Security, did not comment on the ruling; DHS has argued in court filings that it bears no responsibility for its contractor’s conduct. The lawsuit followed the deaths last fall of two detainees, 39-year-old Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a former DACA recipient, and 56-year-old Gabriel Garcia-Aviles — both of which remain under federal investigation amid growing scrutiny of detention conditions nationwide under the Trump administration.

Original source: CalMatters

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