An antisemitic screed made it into the official California voter guide sent at taxpayer expense to millions of households ahead of the June 2 primary election. Politicians in Sacramento are now preparing to introduce legislation to prevent that from ever happening again.
Lawmakers with the California Legislative Jewish Caucus said last week they want future guides to prohibit candidates from including hate speech in their statements.
“The antisemitic statement included in the state voter information guide is reprehensible,” Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), chair of the Assembly elections committee and a caucus member, said in an April 28 statement. “It does not reflect California’s values and has no place in voter resources produced and distributed by the state.”
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), who chairs the caucus, called the statement “dangerous, deeply offensive, and antithetical to California’s proud tradition of standing up to hate.”
The offending statement was submitted by Don Grundmann, a longtime fringe candidate who is running for governor, and included a link to the white supremacist group Goyim Defense League and antisemitic conspiracy theories. These included false accusations that “Israel ‘art students’” were responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the U.S. and that an Israeli “shape-charge bomb” killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.
The guides began hitting voters’ mailboxes in mid-April, shocking and bewildering both Jews and non-Jews.
Lawmakers who spoke with J. said they have yet to decide on the details of the bill they plan to introduce.
The state’s Jewish advocacy coalition has already begun galvanizing public support for new voter guide rules. Jewish California (formerly the Jewish Public Affairs Committee) published an online petition asking people for support. As of Monday, it has received over 1,300 signatures, according to Jewish California CEO David Bocarsly, who told J. that Jewish California plans to sponsor any new bill that the caucus develops.
Here are some questions and answers about the current protocol regarding voter guides, how new legislation might affect candidate speech and Grundmann’s political background.
How can a candidate statement be disqualified from entering the voter guide?
Current guidelines on the content of candidate statements are limited to prohibiting references to opponents and requiring candidates to stick to their own background and qualifications, according to the secretary of state’s website.
The state’s elections code also prohibits candidates from posting any false material with the intent to mislead voters.
(California Assembly)
Pellerin, who served as the elections administrator for Santa Cruz County for 27 years before she became a lawmaker in 2022, told J. that rejecting improper candidate statements from county voter guides is standard practice.
“If any of those candidate statements deviated from being a recitation of your own personal qualifications, background, education, why voters should vote for you, I would basically say ‘this paragraph is not compliant, it must be removed,’” Pellerin said.
In an email sent to J. last week, the secretary of state’s press office said it supports clearer guidelines, adding that they “must be updated to clearly address content that is not permitted, while preserving the ability of candidates to present their qualifications to voters.”
The email did not address J.’s further questions about the decision to print Grundmann’s statement.
Does the public get an opportunity to review voter guides before they are mailed out?
Yes. The state’s election code requires the secretary of state’s office to make a copy of the draft voter guide available to the public 10 days before it is certified. For the June 2 primary election, the public examination period ran from Feb. 17 to March 9.
During that time, members of the public are allowed to petition a court about any material they find is “inconsistent with the requirements” of the state’s election code. If the court agrees, it can order the secretary of state’s office to remove the material.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber certified the voter guide on March 9, and her office posted a PDF copy of the guide on its website shortly after. Physical copies began getting mailed out in mid-April.
Is it too late to intervene if the review period has passed?
Maybe not. In an April 24 letter to the secretary of state, American Jewish Committee directors from three regional offices in California asserted that “courts have the power to grant extraordinary relief where printing has not occurred.”
To that end, the AJC directors requested that officials pause the printing of any additional copies of the guide.
They also questioned why no Jewish advocacy organizations were notified when Grundmann’s statement was submitted to the secretary of state’s office.
“It’s possible we would have filed a petition but did not consider it as we were unaware” of Grundmann’s candidate statement, AJC Northern California regional director Seth Brysk said in an email to J.
Looking ahead, Bocarsly said he intends to keep candidate statements on Jewish California’s radar from now on.
“In the future, we need to be a lot more engaged in a lot of different spaces where antisemitic content could appear and be shared with millions of people,” he said. “That includes voter guides, but it includes so many other frontiers that we’re dealing with.”
The secretary of state’s press office did not respond to J.’s questions regarding how many voter guides still need to be printed and mailed.
Pellerin likewise told J. she “would have liked to have heard about this issue back in February” when the secretary of state’s office first received Grundmann’s statement. “Perhaps we would have had an opportunity to try to do some legislative fix.”
Would stricter guidelines intrude on candidates’ rights to free speech?
The legislators and Jewish community leaders who spoke with J. rejected such concerns. Pellerin, for instance, said Grundmann’s statement “went far beyond protected candidate speech.”
The AJC’s letter to the secretary of state argued that the rhetoric in Grundmann’s statement “is not merely offensive; it has the potential to incite real-world harm and the statewide circulation contributes to an environment in which Jewish individuals and institutions face heightened risk.”
Both Pellerin and Bocarsly said that an official state government document, such as a voter information guide, should not be treated as a public square where free speech rights take precedence.
“People have the right to say what this candidate said in other forums. It doesn’t mean that they have the right to say it” in a voter guide, Bocarsly said. “It’s really challenging to be in a moment where people are testing the boundaries of free speech by targeting Jews.”
Statements like Grundmann’s pose a risk not just to uninformed voters, but to children too, Pellerin said.
“The state voter guide is an official government publication. Distributing that content lends its credibility. And it exposes voters, including minors,” she said. “Voter guides are used in schools and libraries. Teachers use them for educational purposes. This is harmful material to be putting out into the public.”
Is this the first time that a candidate statement from Grundmann was published in a California voter guide?
No. Grundmann ran for U.S. Senate six times since 2010, but never gained enough votes to advance to a general election. His candidate statements have appeared in voter guides for five of the primary elections he’s run in, including this one.
In 2010 and 2016, Grundmann’s candidate statements were short, containing a single URL or a reading recommendation and his personal phone number. In later years, however, his statements became longer and extreme.
In 2018, Grundmann used his statement to target transgender people, branding their identity as a “mental, emotional, and spiritual pathology/sickness.” His statement for the 2022 primary election was wider in scope, from calling the vaccination of children a “crime” and climate change a “total lie.”
J. previously reported that this year’s primary election voter guide attached a disclaimer to Grundmann’s candidate statement: “The views and opinions expressed by the candidates are their own and do not represent the views and opinions of the Secretary of State’s office.”
The secretary of state’s office did not include a similar disclaimer above any of Grundmann’s candidate statements in previous voter guides.Grundmann, a Christian fundamentalist and anti-LGBTQ activist, has led several “straight pride” marches that resulted in heated interactions with counterprotesters in Modesto.