Newsletter: Essential Politics: The race you weren’t paying attention to starts now

I’m Christina Bellantoni, welcoming you to your week with today’s Essential Politics.

With the presidential race dominating California politics, there has been little attention paid to the high-profile Senate race, with 32% of voters still undecided on who should replace retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer in our last USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

That could change tonight, as the top five candidates finally meet on a debate stage and California’s race for the U.S. Senate comes to life with less than two months until the June 7 primary.

A VERY LONG LIST

California voters this weekend started receiving official voter information guides — 31 pages in Los Angeles County — and might have noticed an especially long list of candidates seeking the nomination for Senate.

Among them: a woman running as a Democrat named “President Cristina Grappo,” who tells voters her core values “drive America,” and a no party preference candidate from San Francisco whose only statement in the guide is “01100101” — a protest of the campaign finance system and the per-word charge.

“Speaking as an engineer, my Candidate Statement was ‘01100101’. In computer programming, the binary code ‘01100101’ translates to the letter ‘e’, as in e-voting,” Jason Hanania explained on his website.

John Myers reports that the 34 candidates who are seeking the Senate seat aren’t just complicating things for voters studying the race. Elections officials are worried that such a long list poses a ballot design challenge that could create enough confusion to toss out some votes.

GOING HER OWN WAY HAS WORKED — SO FAR

Phil Willon and Noah Bierman introduce readers to Senate candidate Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, holding second place in the polls and hoping to advance to the general election.

Sanchez first splashed onto the national political scene in 1996 when she defeated arch-conservative Rep. Robert “B-1 Bob” Dornan, and she has served in Congress ever since. A few wince-provoking gaffes hampered her bid, but past rivals say it would be folly to discount her.

The congresswoman opened up about being raised by Mexican immigrants — and her Republican roots.

Our fall profile of Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris is here.

We’ll be covering tonight’s debate live on our Essential Politics news feed.

THE CALIFORNIA CAMPAIGN

Donald Trump is ramping up his efforts in the Golden State ahead of his speech to the California Republican Party convention Friday. The campaign is calling 1 million voters who are registered with no party preference with a message from Trump himself urging them to re-register as Republicans so they can vote for him on June 7 in the closed GOP primary.

Listen to Trump’s robocall.

Though it’s unclear how it will play out in California, Ohio Gov. John Kasich‘s and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz‘s campaigns announced that they would join for a divide-and-conquer strategy in three states -- Indiana, Oregon and New Mexico -- in an effort to stop Trump.

On Friday, word came that Kasich is planning a town hall in San Francisco at the end of the week ahead of his speech to the convention.

Meanwhile, several high-profile GOP donors in California are saying enough is enough: They’re not making any more donations in the presidential race, at least for the moment. “I think we’re taking a deep breath and trying to figure it all out. It’s gotten to be quite a tangle,” said Silicon Valley venture capitalist William H. Draper III. He gave $102,700 to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush‘s presidential run, and he wasn’t alone. The vast majority of the $55 million the state’s GOP contributors have spent has been in support of candidates who have dropped out, according to a Times analysis of financial disclosure documents.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced the three people who will lead her California efforts ahead of the June 7 primary: state director Buffy Wicks, political director Peggy Moore and communications director Hilda Marella Delgado.

Get the latest on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics.

ACCIDENTAL AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY MEMBERS WEIGH IN

A marketing professional, a UC Berkeley student, a lawyer and a retired forklift driver. These are the readers who have reached out to us about our project on confused independents signing up for the American Independent Party to say they made the same mistake. “How entirely misleading,” writes one reader from Oceanside. “It’s like Kellogg’s renaming Sugar Frosted Flakes, World’s Healthiest Cereal.”

We told you already about celebrities like Kaley Cuoco of “The Big Bang Theory” and Aaron Eckhart of “The Dark Knight” fame also being mistaken members of the American Independent Party. Then we found Rainbow “Rain Beau” Harmony Mars, yogi to the stars, who told The Times, “I feel misled. I feel that it should be more clear when you say ‘independent’ -- it should be in bold letters … very clearly, what does the party support.”

SQUABBLING OVER GUNS

State Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom are engaged in a war of words over an issue they both believe in: gun control. The two top California Democrats had a frosty exchange last week after De León sent Newsom a letter urging him to drop to his effort to put a gun control initiative on the ballot this November, Patrick McGreevy reports, detailing a terse set of letters the men sent one another.

JERRY BROWN’S LEGACY PROJECTS

George Skelton writes in his Monday column that lawmakers are stepping up to challenge Gov. Jerry Brown as he goes full steam ahead on his two biggest legacy projects, high-speed rail and the construction of water tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Anxiety over the economic and environmental viability of the projects is weighing on the minds of legislators and the public, but Brown has yet to show willingness to hear out those concerns, Skelton writes.

THE STATE’S POWERFUL CLIMATE CHANGE AGENCY NOW HAS MORE VOICES

Low-income communities often are disproportionately affected by pollution, and two new members of the California Air Resources Board are aiming to get the influential state climate change and anti-pollution agency to pay more attention to those neighborhoods, Liam Dillon reports. The new board members are the first legislative appointees to the board -- the other 12 come from Brown -- and it’s the latest effort by the Legislature to wield more power over the agency.

CONGRESSMAN OF JAPANESE DESCENT URGES OBAMA TO SEE HIROSHIMA

A 2002 trip to visit relatives in Hiroshima, Japan, made the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 real to Rep. Mark Takano, and he’s encouraging President Obama to make a similar visit to the site when he visits Japan in May.

Takano (D-Riverside) spoke with Sarah Wire about his trip, and why he thinks Obama should be the first sitting American president to visit the city.

PODCAST: STRONG POLL POSITION FOR TAXES

A new statewide poll shows 62% of likely voters support extending current income tax rates on California’s high-income earners. And in this week’s California Politics Podcast, Myers leads a discussion of how unusual it is for voters to be so willing to support taxes.

A reminder that you can subscribe for the weekly podcast either on Soundcloud or iTunes.

TODAY’S ESSENTIALS

-- Here’s the latest Bernie Sanders superdelegate strategy.

-- The same day Uber settled a big lawsuit over the status of their workers and allowed them to remain independent contractors, a California assemblywoman hit the pause button on her effort to give Uber and other “gig economy” workers the ability to collectively bargain for their pay and benefits.

-- The leaders of the state’s Legislative Women’s Caucus called on Assemblyman Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina) to take a leave of absence after domestic violence allegations. Hernandez told The Times the allegations are false and he’s not going anywhere.

-- A federal judge has ruled that a nonprofit backed by conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch does not have to reveal its donors to Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris in a case that pitted state law governing charities against 1st Amendment rights.

-- Meet Susan McCabe, a super lobbyist with influence over the Coastal Commission.

-- A former Carson city employee is suing the mayor for sexual harassment.

-- U.S. Rep. Mike Honda and former ESPN analyst Curt Schilling got into a social media back-and-forth after Schilling was fired for reposting a meme widely interpreted as anti-transgender on his Facebook page. Honda’s 9-year-old granddaughter is transgender.

-- What do you think of Trump? Readers can weigh in with our quick survey.

LOGISTICS

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