How a California bill aims to make it easier for lawmakers, political candidates to pay for security measures

Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump sparked renewed conversations about the need to protect lawmakers. But violence and threats against legislators aren’t new.

Just last year, California legislators attempted to pass a bill allowing candidates and elected officials to use campaign donations to pay for security measures. 

Current law allows political candidates and elected officials to be reimbursed up to $5,000 for the cost of home and office security measures throughout their entire career, as long as they’ve received threats to their physical safety that can be verified by law enforcement. Legislators backing the bill said these protections needed to be expanded.  

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The bill was eventually vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom, who cited concern over potentially encouraging the misuse of campaign funds. But legislators are trying to pass it again this year, with some changes.

CapRadio’s Manola Secaira spoke to Sameea Kamal, a politics reporter focused on the Legislature for CalMatters, who previously covered the bill. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you tell me about the basics of this bill? 

Elected officials and people running for office have $5,000 as a lifetime limit that they can spend out of campaign expenses, so they are allowed to spend some of their campaign money. But what lawmakers said when I asked about this bill was that $5,000 doesn't cover a lot. It isn’t adjusted for the increase in cost of security systems, like home security cameras, and it's not enough to protect family members — which I think the Nancy Pelosi incident shows us why that might be important.

This year's bill amends what is considered a security expense. It also increases the disclosure requirements for transparency. And basically, it increases the limit that lawmakers or people running for office are allowed to spend, from $5,000 to an unlimited amount, but with those disclosure requirements in place to try and address the concerns that it could open the door to people spending money on whatever they want and without some sort of accountability.

The bill has passed the Senate Elections Committee and it is currently at the Senate Appropriations Committee. Assembly member Mia Bonta, the author, her office told CalMatters that they anticipate the bill will move to the senate floor shortly after they come back from their summer recess.

How common are threats of violence for California lawmakers? 

We only know anecdotally that the threats are common. I heard some specific examples, for example, from Assembly member Isaac Brian. He had introduced a bill that had to do with changing how ballot measures are presented to California voters which, you know, maybe you wouldn't think it incites threats, but it did. 

Assembly member Bonta, who introduced the bill herself, said that she received hundreds of threats when she didn't vote in committee on a bill that would have increased penalties for child trafficking. She later voted on the bill after it was amended. 

We hear anecdotal evidence of lawmakers being threatened for trying to do their jobs … but because of security concerns, the state doesn't release data on the number of threats that they assess. We do have some examples, high profile examples — the attack on Paul Pelosi in 2022, the husband of former house Speaker Nancy Pelosi. So there are a lot of anecdotal cases that we hear nationally as well as locally. 

There have been some studies [that found that] women and people of color tend to be more impacted than men or white elected officials. There was one specific study in San Diego — this was on a survey of local county and city officials — that showed that 82% of female local elected officials had gotten threats compared with 66% of men, and overall 75% had reported that they'd been threatened or harassed. So we have pockets of information that point to what it looks like. 

Given what we saw this past weekend, have you heard from any legislators about how that might impact the way this bill moves forward? 

Bonta says that what happened over the weekend makes a stronger case for why this bill is important. She said that the events show that political violence continues to plague our democracy and highlight the need for state candidates to be able to fund security for themselves, their families and their staff. She also pointed out that the bill had bipartisan support and I think the weekend's events show us that that is the case. 

You mentioned what happened with Paul Pelosi a couple years back. I’m also thinking about the Jan. 6, 2021 uprising when considering recent acts of political violence, and then of course, this recent assassination attempt. I'm curious about how you see these conversations looking like moving forward. 

The comparison to January 6 is interesting because in the aftermath of that, we saw Capitol buildings more secure. We saw more of a sense of heightened security measures in place. You also have to balance transparency and access for the public. It's never a linear conversation. Especially given that we don't have the data, we don't have the numbers on the number of threats, so we're trusting that this is something that is needed. 

But I think the approach that's usually taken is to be as safe as possible and still try to balance some of that public access to officials, whether that's at a rally, at a district defense, or at the Capitol.