Essential California

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, Nov. 7, and I’m writing from Los Angeles. Famous people have been throwing their celebrity behind presidential candidates for nearly a century. Many date the first noteworthy celebrity presidential endorsement to September 1928, when baseball legend Babe Ruth refused to pose for a photograph with then Republican presidential candidate Herbert Hoover, saying “I’m for Al Smith.” New York Gov. Al Smith was the Democratic nominee, and if you don’t recognize his name, it’s because he didn’t win. We’re still early in the 2020 presidential election cycle, and most celebrities have yet to formally endorse a candidate, but they have been opening their wallets — hosting fundraisers, writing checks and eating stale canapes at multimillion-dollar homes, all in the name of democracy. So who’s winning the Hollywood primary thus far? Our data team pored over more than 15,000 entertainment industry political contributions to create a database that tracks which celebrities are supporting which POTUS contenders. Using that data, they also ranked the candidates by the star power they’ve amassed. (Quite a few celebrities have given to more than one candidate, which is noted in the database.) Despite tanking in the polls, home state Sen. Kamala Harris remains the clear Hollywood favorite, with more star-studded contributions than any other candidate. We hear a lot of hand-wringing about celebrity endorsements, but do they actually matter? Well, not all celebrities are equal. The importance of the endorsement depends heavily on the celebrities themselves, and their relationship with their fans. “The entertainment world is increasingly fragmented and people who can be really, really famous to some people can be utterly unknown to others,” said David Jackson, a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University whose research focuses on the links between young people’s entertainment and political preferences. “You have to first clear that threshold of knowing who the person is for them to have any influence.” In his view, there are three issues that really matter when it comes to celebrity endorsements: familiarity, likability and credibility. Speaking on the phone from his office in Ohio, the professor brought up another interesting concept that I’d never encountered before: the idea that a celebrity endorsement can serve as a kind of shortcut for a busy person to come to a decision on a complicated topic. “In public opinion, we talk about the concept of heuristic devices, which are just shortcuts that people take to get to a position on something that they haven’t necessarily thought a ton about,” he explained. Partisanship and ideology have historically served as those kind of shortcuts for many. Imagine a voter who had previously voted along party lines for either Democratic or Republican candidates. They might take a look at an upcoming ballot race and think to themselves, I voted for the Republican before. I don’t have time to do a bunch of research about this particular election, so I’m just going to vote for the Republican again. “Well, celebrities, I think, are increasingly playing that sort of role,” Jackson said. So, how does all of this play out along party lines? Celebrity endorsements have typically run far more blue than red, and the Republican Party “traditionally has stood against the idea of celebrities being involved in politics because the celebrities overwhelmingly came out on the liberal and Democratic side,” Jackson explained. But the ascent of Donald Trump, a celebrity who had never previously held elected office, may have an unlikely effect on that celebrity endorsement calculus. Valerie O’Regan, a political science professor at CSU Fullerton who also studies the influence of celebrities on politics, recently completed research on the “Trump effect” during the 2016 presidential election. “Republican voters, who usually are more critical of celebrity endorsements, were more likely to listen to celebrity endorsements during the 2016 election,” she said. And now, here’s what’s happening across California:

TOP STORIES There’s still no definitive verdict in San Francisco’s nail-biter district attorney race, but interim Dist. Atty. Suzy Loftus extended her lead over public defender Chesa Boudin to 2,205 votes on Wednesday. Votes are still being counted in the first open election for San Francisco district attorney in more than a century. San Francisco Chronicle How the Google walkout transformed tech workers into activists: A little over a year ago, Google employees in Los Angeles walked out in protest of sexual misconduct at the company, joining some 20,000 Google workers around the world. A year later, the legacy of the walkout has been far-reaching and complex. Although most of the protesters’ demands remain unmet, their efforts have given rise to a network of worker-led movements inside Google and in the broader tech industry, marking a new era of tech companies being challenged by their own employees. Los Angeles Times