OB Rag

By Kate Callen

There are two schools of thought about how Michigan’s Haley Stevens should spend her final weeks as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Enraged Democrats reacted to her 11th-hour endorsement of Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers by wanting her stripped of office. She was booted from the Michigan Democratic Party. Long-time friends and mentors disavowed her.

Democrats with cooler heads preferred another outcome.

Forcing Stevens out of her job, if that were even possible, would make her an ideological martyr. Letting her stay would make her a pariah. If she shows up in the halls of Congress after this, she will be shunned like a skunk – publicly ostracized every minute of every painful remaining day.

Revenge is a dish best served cold. For maximum effect, it should be brought to the table slowly. Which is why a new campaign to recall Mayor Todd Gloria is a bad idea.

On October 29, a group of activists led by attorney Genevieve Jones-Wright filed a notice of intent to gather signatures for a recall petition. If all goes smoothly, the petition can begin circulating before Thanksgiving. If signatures from 15 percent of registered voters are collected within 120 days, the City Council must call a special election.

That election would cost money the city doesn’t have. It would bring Gloria’s YIMBY and labor minions out of the burrows where they’ve been hiding. It would overshadow the 2028 race for mayor and hinder the candidates already gearing up to succeed him.

And to what end? Gloria can’t inflict much more damage on San Diego. His “strong mayor” power has run out. He squandered it by racking up enough failures and transgressions to power a website.

Nicole Crosby is “cautiously optimistic,” she told the Rag this morning, the day after her apparent victory over former Republican Richard Bailey for the District 2 city council seat. Currently, she leads Bailey by 9 percentage points and by a little over 3,000 votes. Ballot counting continues.

Crosby leads Bailey 54.5% to 45.6%, with 18,188 votes to 15,218.

Crosby spoke to me this morning when I called to congratulate her. She sounded happy but exhausted.Yet she felt the numbers would hold. She also told me that Bailey had yet to call  her to concede or congratulate her.

Crosby:

“This race has always been about fighting for my neighbors in District 2. From the parents and teachers at my daughter’s school, to the librarians, emergency service workers and skilled trades workers in our community, we did this together. Working families are the backbone of San Diego and we deserve results from City Hall.

This was first published on June 3, 2046. The Rag was the first publication to predict this.

By Frank GormlieWith the clarity of the morning after, the California Primary results of 2026 show that Xavier Becerra — the top Democrat in the slugfest that was the gubernatorial race — will be the first Mexican-American to be elected governor of the state. This will be the first time since 1846 when the last Mexican governor, Pio Pico, fled to Baja as American military forces swarmed into Alta California after war between the U.S. and Mexico began.

A bold assertion? Just look at the numbers. Steve Hilton, the top Republican, received 27.8% of the total vote to Becerra’s 25.4%. But if one adds up the percentages for Tom Steyer, Katie Porter and Mike Mahan — you get 28.3%, and coupled with Becerra’s, you have 53.7% of the vote available for Xavier. That smashes Hilton even with Bianco’s numbers — a total of 39.1%. (A Republican has not won a state-wide race in California for years.)

Absent some unforeseen upset or crisis or calamity, Becerra will journey to the General Election in November — and win it.

This victory 6 months away will result in the first Mexican-American elected as governor for California — the first time since the state has been in the Union.

From ACLU

This election reaffirmed the power of people coming together to defend our democracy and the values we share. When the federal government sought to undermine voting rights and intimidate voters, Californians stood firm. And when asked to pass Prop 39 and add unnecessary hurdles to exercising the right to vote, California voters sent a resounding message to those who tried to roll back voting rights: hands off our elections.

ACLU-SDIC Executive Director Norma Chávez-Peterson said:

“Yesterday, California voters showed up at the polls to protect their voting rights and reject an anti-democratic agenda — and they succeeded. Prop 39 has been defeated, but the fight to protect our constitutional rights is far from over.

>Nov. 3rd:– the Day Americans Take Back Our Country

8:40 pm Democrats take the Senate

Democrats Clinch Senate as Voters Deliver Blistering Rebuke to Trump; Democratic candidates won races in Republican strongholds, flipping Senate seats in

• Kansas,
• Ohio,
• North Carolina,
• South Carolina and even
• Texas. On a night shaping up as a Democratic rout, President Trump told The New York Times that he would accept the election results.

8:14 pm Crosby and Abraham take early leads in San Diego City Council races 2 and 4 with 689,666 ballots counted overall county-wide

Nicole Crosby at this stage has a 9 point lead over Richard Bailey in District 2, 54.5% to 45.5%.

Martha Abraham is in a much tighter race with incumbent Henry Foster III with a 3.3 point lead, 51.7% to 48.3%.

8:05 pm Xavier Becerra is first Mexican-American elected as governor of California

Xavier Becerra, a Democrat and former Biden administration official, began the race for California governor with poll numbers so low that his own party chairman urged him to drop out. Now, Mr. Becerra will become the next governor of the nation’s most populous state, The Associated Press said on Tuesday, a rise that was considered improbable a year ago. Mr. Becerra, 68, is the first Latino elected as governor of California, a milestone that punctuates a decades-long demographic shift in the state.

Mr. Becerra will succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat who could not run again because of term limits. Mr. Becerra is likely to continue Mr. Newsom’s battles with President Trump, and he often referred during the campaign to the 122 lawsuits he filed against the first Trump administration when he was California’s attorney general. But with his mild-mannered demeanor, Mr. Becerra is expected to be less fiery than Mr. Newsom.

Mr. Becerra is likely to govern as an establishment Democrat, having won the backing of major labor unions, industry groups and the California Chamber of Commerce. He refrained from making many detailed promises during the campaign and instead sold voters on his long résumé of government experience, including his four-year tenure as state attorney general and more than two decades as a congressman.

Mr. Becerra also benefited from voters’ overwhelming disapproval of Mr. Trump in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a roughly two-to-one margin. Mr. Becerra defeated Steve Hilton, a Republican and former Fox News host, who had what Mr. Trump called his “COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT.” The president’s support helped Mr. Hilton in the primary but doomed him in the general election. California voters have not elected a Republican to statewide office in 20 years, and Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the state, which included deploying Marines to the streets of Los Angeles last year in response to immigration crackdown protests, have made him particularly unpopular. Mr. Hilton tried to appeal to anti-Trump voters by focusing on California’s high cost of living in his general election campaign, arguing that conditions would only improve with a partisan change in the state’s political leadership.

Mr. Hilton’s closing argument to voters wary of the G.O.P. was to “just try it.” He spread that message with ads that played on sexual innuendo and spoofed Californians as sage-burning hippies and Hollywood hangers-on who would like Republican policies if only they’d give Mr. Hilton a try. Mr. Hilton, 57, grew up in England and moved to California in 2012 for his wife’s career in Silicon Valley. He ran an energetic campaign and proposed lowering gas prices, building more houses and creating an Office of Fun and Freedom “to cut the killjoy rules crushing nightlife.”

Mr. Becerra will become California’s first Latino governor elected by voters but not the state’s first Latino governor. Romualdo Pacheco had that honor when he rose to the role by succession in 1875. Mr. Becerra routinely talked about his family’s Mexican roots as he campaigned in both English and Spanish this year.6:50pm Texas Senate

6:46pm POLLS CLOSE: Polls have closed in more than half the country and results are rolling in. Recent polling suggests Democrats are in a strong position to retake the House, while the Senate majority could come down to competitive races in traditionally red states.
NBC NEWS EXIT POLLS: Early results from the NBC News Exit Polls show a dissatisfied electorate, with President Donald Trump’s disapproval rating at a dismal 62% and more than three-quarters of voters saying they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, as well. Nearly half of voters say they view the election as an opportunity to rebuke Trump.

SDPD Investigating

By Dana Williams / 7SanDiego / Nov. 2, 2026

Two fathers had a frightening experience after their children picked up what appeared to be candy from a porch in Ocean Beach while trick-or-treating, only to discover the packaging identified the treats as psilocybin mushroom gummies.

The San Diego Police Department is investigating the Halloween incident, but questions remain about who left the gummies outside the home and whether they actually contained illegal drugs.

Frank Cary and Cameron Hunter were trick-or-treating with their children and several neighborhood families Saturday night when they made the discovery.

The parents said they were walking just a few yards behind their children when the kids approached a porch with a bowl of what appeared to be candy.

Cary said his 2-year-old grabbed one of the packages before he noticed something unusual about it.

By Natalie Hausmann / Democracy Docket / November 2, 2026
The Supreme Court swiftly rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to force California to segregate ballots from more than 20,000 people it alleges may be noncitizens. 

The decision hands the administration its third and final defeat in its effort to intervene in the state’s ongoing election.

The justices denied the administration’s emergency application without explanation, just hours after it was filed Monday. Justice Elena Kagan referred the request to the full Court, which rejected it with no noted dissents. 

By Lindsay Whitehurst / PBS – Associated Press / Nov. 2, 2026

Trump administration appeals to Supreme Court to sideline 20,000 disputed California mail ballots

See Below — Analysis: More than 40% of names on DOJ list of alleged noncitizens not on California’s voter rolls

President Donald Trump’s administration appealed to the Supreme Court on Monday — today, Nov. 2 — in its push to sideline thousands of disputed California mail ballots the day before the pivotal midterm elections.

The emergency appeal came after a divided appeals court rejected the request to set aside ballots from some 20,000 people the federal government suspects may not be citizens. It also came just hours before another federal judge ruled against the administration’s efforts to make last-minute changes in California’s election.

The federal government says those ballots should not be counted until the voters’ status can be verified. California officials say the list is highly unreliable and likely includes many people who are U.S. citizens.

The Republican Trump administration has prioritized identifying noncitizen voters this year, despite them being rare.

A district court judge had previously denied the Justice Department’s request and warned that the demand could disenfranchise citizens in Tuesday’s midterm elections to determine control of Congress.

Impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful accountability tools Dems will have

By Bill Blum / Common Dreams – Truthdig / Nov 01, 2026 Truthdig

It’s not enough for the Democrats to win the midterms. Whether they take back one or both chambers of Congress, their overriding objective must be to cripple the remainder of Donald Trump’s presidency and dismantle the MAGA movement he leads. Holding Trump and his key enablers to account for their lawlessness and corruption will be the standard for success. Without accountability, there will be no justice and no end to the growing threat of fascism in America.

Of all the accountability tools that will be available should the Democrats prevail on November 3, impeachment and court reform stand out as the most powerful. Both are implicitly on the midterm ballot, and while neither is a magic bullet for checking Trumpism, they can and must be deployed far more aggressively and urgently than in the past.

The road ahead won’t be easy, but the party may never get another opportunity.

Impeachment
The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision on presidential immunity (Trump v. United States), penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, has made it all but impossible to hold Trump accountable through ordinary criminal prosecutions. As legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has noted, Roberts’ opinion contains language that “suggests the president cannot even be investigated for his official actions,” much less indicted.

Elections are always split in their results; Tuesday’s could be the same

By Bill Eddy / Substack /  Nov 01, 2026

Over the past few weeks, we have seen a flurry of rallies by President Trump around the country, including this weekend, in desperate support of his troubled Republican candidates. It’s tempting to see this effort as futile for him since his approval ratings have now sunk to 30% according to some polls. However, I believe quite the opposite: by making urgent intense emotional attacks on Democrats he will claw back some of his reluctant followers to turn out the vote and dampen any Democratic wave. Remember that his power is based on right brain emotions rather than left-brain logic. (See last week’s blog: Right Brain Politics II.)

How Splitting Works

In 2012, a psychologist friend, Don Saposnek, and I wrote a little book titled: Splitting America: How Politicians, Super PACs and the News Media Mirror High Conflict Divorce. I was working as a family lawyer at the time and we were struck by the similarities of people with high-conflict personalities in high-conflict divorces to some politicians who were entering politics. People with high-conflict personalities tend to have four key characteristics: blaming others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions, and extreme behaviors. “Splitting” is a psychological term for seeing some people as all-good and others as all-bad, which is common for people with high-conflict personalities. As we wrote then:

Last week we ran Debbie Sklar’s post about Devil’s Pot in the Sunset Cliffs area. At that point, no one was certain where it used to be as it no longer exists, what due to the tremendous erosion the cliffs suffer every year.

Then “Larry OB” or Larry O’Brien responded to the post with this:

“In all fairness to Dave Bunnnell, [ed.:who performed a study of sections of cliffs cited by Debbie] back in 2008 he probably wasn’t aware of this (attached) photo of the early development of Sunset Cliffs.  I think Devil’s Pot was filled and buried out in front of the mansion at Osprey Street.”

The San Francisco-based court also said federal officials must stop demanding that ballots from selected voters be segregated.

Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney / rsn – POLITICO / November 2, 2026

A federal judge on Friday ordered the Justice Department to stop threatening state and local election officials with criminal prosecution over their handling of disputes about voter qualifications.

U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson also ordered the Trump administration to cease demanding that election workers remove voters from statewide rolls, refuse to issue ballots to specific voters or segregate ballots cast in the midterms based on the administration’s claims that some voters are ineligible.

November 2nd Monday 12 pm – 1 pm Interfaith Vigil for Earth Justice
November 3rd Tuesday — Last Day to Vote in Mid-Terms; protect the vote — keep in tune; be aware of Trump’s efforts to rig the elections. The OB Rag will have an all-day Live Blog. 

November 4th  Wednesday 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm Monthly Social for Makers, Tinkerers and Creatives

November 4th Wednesday 8 pm – 9 pm No Kings Post-Election Call: What Happened In the event of election interference or sabotage,

November 5th Thursday 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm BikeSD’s Gears & Cheer 2026

November 6th Friday 6 pm – 9 pm Boot Scootin’ Boogie fundraiser for SNAP Spay Neuter Action

November 6th Friday 10 am -1:15 pm  FILM SCREENING : WHAT THE RIVER KNOWscajon/

November 6th Friday 5 pm – 9 Final Market! San Diego Sustainable Night Market