California Democrats Near Three-Fourths ‘Mega-Majority’ in State Legislature

California lawmakers will begin their new legislative session Monday with Democrats holding a three-fourths majority in the State Assembly, and one vote less than three-fourths in the State Senate — the biggest Democratic majority since 1883, the Associated Press notes.

The AP adds: “[Democrats will] have 29 of the 40 state Senate seats, two more than the two-thirds supermajority they need to raise taxes, suspend legislative rules and override vetoes without Republican votes. And they will hold a three-quarters majority in the Assembly — 60 of the 80 seats.”

Undaunted by political scandals, an epidemic of sexual misconduct, and habitual tax hikes, Democrats have what some pundits are calling a “mega-majority” — more powerful than an ordinary, veto-proof supermajority.

The AP cites “changing demographics and attitudes toward President Donald Trump,” but another key factor was a change in the state’s voting laws in 2016, which allowed “ballot harvesting” — the mass delivery of mail-in ballots by third parties, often Democratic Party operatives.

With virtually no opposition, Democrats are planning to pass a laundry list of favored policy initiatives — and to help themselves and their supporters to what George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times euphemistically calls “goodies.”

California may now be a permanent one-party state. With a slew of electoral laws designed by Democrats to ensure their party’s victory; the exodus of the Republicans’ traditional base of homeowners and small business owners to other states; an influx of new residents from countries with ingrained traditions of socialist governance; and media and culture industries adamantly opposed to traditional American values, there may be no Republican recovery.

Republicans who advocate the state party reinvent itself to appeal to the state’s changing electorate tend to overlook the fact that the last Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, lost support by moving left — and tend to represent a small elite of pundits, donors, and consultants whose careers are largely untouched by electoral losses.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.