Former tech executive announces her Democratic bid to be California’s next senator

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GOOGLE ALUMNA LEXI REESE ANNOUNCES SENATE RUN, WILL RUN AS A DEM

Via Jenavieve Hatch...

Lexi Reese announced this morning that she will join the crowded race to succeed Sen. Dianne Feinstein and launch her bid for U.S. Senate. The San Mateo Democrat will run as a political outsider and progressive business leader “to fix California’s economy,” she said in her campaign launch video.

“To build a California where women and working moms get equal pay for equal work, freedom to choose when and whether to have kids, freedom from senseless gun violence that just has to stop, and the freedom to be who we are and love who we love.”

Reese is a first-time candidate with a background in tech and finance; she held senior positions at American Express, Google, and Facebook. She was the Chief Operating Officer at human resources platform Gusto, and served as Executive in Residence at General Catalyst, a “responsible innovation” venture capital firm.

“As a working mom, I’ve spent my career in nonprofits and at technology and financial services businesses — working to help create economic opportunity for women and small businesses,” Reese said.

Reese formed an exploratory committee earlier this month; polls for the committee showed that 47% of voters across party lines are still undecided about who they’ll vote for in the March 2024 primary, and that the major Democratic candidates — Reps. Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, and Katie Porter — are not well-known to most voters. Lake Research Partners, which also polls for President Joe Biden, found that Reps. Barbara Lee and Katie Porter especially have lower name recognition across the state (66% of poll respondents either have no opinion or have not heard of Rep. Lee, and 58% said the same about Porter).

Reese said her own experience suffering from financial insecurity is a major reason she is running. Her family’s trajectory changed when her father lost his job unexpectedly, resulting in her mom working full-time to provide for the family. Reese’s siblings battled addiction; she lost her brother, Peter, to the disease.

”So yeah,” she said. “I understand what financial uncertainty can do to a family.”

AS HIS TIME AS SPEAKER DRAWS NIGH, RENDON OFFERS SOME PARTING THOUGHTS

Via Lindsey Holden...

Outgoing Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon was in a reflective mood Wednesday at one of his last public appearances as a legislative leader.

The Lakewood Democrat looked back on his speakership in conversation with former California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye at a Public Policy Institute of California event.

Assemblyman Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, is set to be sworn in as the body’s new speaker on Friday, ending Rendon’s more than seven-year tenure in the role.

Rendon struck a professorial tone while talking with Cantil-Sakauye, who currently serves as CEO of the PPIC. He repeatedly referenced literature and philosophy while sharing existential concerns about climate change and the state of the country.

“I have a four-year-old daughter — will she live to be 25? I don’t know. The way the planet is trending, I’m not sure,” Rendon said. “Will we have Democracy in this country in two to three years? I don’t know. I think this question is unanswered.”

Here are a few highlights from Rendon’s hour-long conversation.

• On his proudest accomplishment as speaker: “A very local issue: my work on the redevelopment of the Los Angeles River — the lower Los Angeles River, in particular … it’s transformative, but it’s an analogy for the larger state. We seem to have incredible pockets of development and redevelopment throughout the state. And you see that all over the state where there’s uneven or unequal distribution of resources and those types of things.”

• On eating lunch in the Capitol rotunda when the Legislature left the building during the COVID-19 pandemic: “I’d take my sack lunch and I’d put the music on — it sounds great in the rotunda … it was just these sort of moments of, like, freedom. When you break from what you normally do, and you can do interesting things.”

• On his regrets as a leader: “I put up with a lot of s--t, like any manager. We can be overly forgiving at times … I removed some (Assembly committee) chairs from people and those types of things … But I think to a large extent, I always wanted to kind of be, like, forgiving and kind of provide people with opportunities for redemption. I don’t always know that I was as quick to punish as I should have.”

• On running for state Treasurer: “I’m incredibly proud of the work we have done as a state. Our rainy day fund is larger than the budget of 30-some states. That has real consequences for people. For me, being in that role is an opportunity to continue to work on the state’s fiscal future. As unsexy as that sounds, the fiscal future of the state has direct impacts on the programs and services that we all want to see as a state.”

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“I’m grateful the CA Supreme Court will take up the Constitutionality of Prop 22. The corporate gig companies have attempted to silence the voices of all the those who have challenged them: their drivers, worker advocates & legislators. We won’t give up.”

- California Labor Federation head, former Assemblywoman and AB 5 author Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, via Twitter.

Best of The Bee:

• California’s most hotly contested water proposal suffered a setback Monday after a budget deal reached between Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers dropped a provision that would have put the project on a regulatory fast track, via Ari Plachta.

• The number of anti-LGBTQ hate crime events reported in the four-county Sacramento area nearly doubled in 2022 compared to 2021, according to the Hate Crime in California report released Tuesday by the state Department of Justice, while the overall number of hate crimes in the region increased by nearly 50%, via Samson Zhang, Ellie Lin and Grace Scullion.

• California’s highest court has agreed to hear a challenge to Proposition 22, the controversial 2020 ballot measure that classified gig drivers as independent contractors rather than employees, via Maya Miller.

• Sacramento mayoral candidate Maggy Krell is dropping out of the race to run for a California Assembly seat, via Theresa Clift.

• California State Treasurer Fiona Ma urged the chief executive officers of the nation’s two largest public pension funds to hold special board meetings on a recent data breach that exposed Social Security numbers, birth dates and other personal information on nearly 1.2 million retirees and other beneficiaries, via Cathie Anderson.