November 12 | Volume 40 No. 33

Westsidestory Newspaper

Sacramento: Becerra, Legislative Leaders Put Affordability First, but Details Remain Open

By Antonio Ray Harvey | California Black Media

Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra met privately with Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón (D- Santa Barbara) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) on November 5 before the three appeared together at a news conference at the State Capitol. It was the first joint public appearance by the “Big Three” Democratic leaders since Becerra won the gubernatorial election two days earlier. The leaders said affordability would be a central focus of their work, including housing, health care and energy costs. “Get used to this because I think this is what

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Black Voters Overwhelmingly Repudiated Trump in Mid-Term Election

About 90% of Black voters backed Democratic House candidates in 2026, compared with roughly 80% who supported Kamala Harris in 2024, according to the AP Voter post-election poll, with 61% saying they cast their vote specifically to express opposition to President Donald Trump. Similar voting patterns emerged among Latino and Asian American voters. Among Black men, about one in 10 voted for a Republican House candidate this year, compared with roughly one in four who supported Donald Trump in 2024, according to the AP poll. Black candidates also fared well on election night Nov. 3, creating many firsts. A poll released Nov. 4 by BSP Research, noted that 69% of Black voters had a very unfavorable opinion of Trump; 57% also had a very unfavorable opinion of Republicans in Congress. Black voters, along with Latinos and Asian Americans, delivered the margin of victory in many battleground states, resulting in a “Blue tsunami,” which delivered a resounding Senate majority for Democrats — 53-47, and the House, 250-157. In a key race in Mississippi, which had yet to be called Nov. 9, Black Democrat Scott Colom holds a razor-thin lead against Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde- Smith.

101 years later For DaMareo Cooper, co-executive director at the Center for Popular Democracy, the 2026 mid-term election results were a sign that the arc of the moral universe was indeed bending towards justice. “My great-grandfather got killed trying to go vote in 1927 in Newport, Tennessee,” Cooper told a post-election briefing Nov. 4, hosted by Word In Black. Historians have never established a comprehensive count of Black Americans killed for attempting to vote or register others. But documented cases over the past century note that Cooper’s grandfather’s tragic demise came amid several decades of attempts to suppress the Black vote. The Center for Popular Democracy, and its partner organizations, knocked on more than 2 million doors across the US, made more than 1.5 million phone calls, and had conversations with more than 300,000 people, said Cooper. The key to building a reliable electorate is consistent engagement with voters, not just during the election cycle.

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