Senate Floor

Members of the Senate is called to order with the secretary. Please call the role.

[Roll Call]

Good afternoon, Members. A quorum is present with the Members and our guests beyond the rail and in the gallery. Please rise. We will be led in prayer this afternoon by Senator Durazo, after which, please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Senator Durazo.

Thank you, Mr. President. As we begin the work of this week, let us pray in gratitude for each other and for all who work at and for the state capitol. Let us dedicate our week to the practice of humankindness. First, feel compassion for yourself, as you say the following silently: may I be healed. May my heart open with kindness and peace. May I be filled with the spirit of lovingkindness. May I be whole. Now call to mind all who collaborate with you each day.

Hear yourself saying to them, may you be healed. May your heart open with kindness and peace. May you be filled with the spirit of lovingkindness. May you be whole. Finally, open your heart in a special way to all your constituents and let your compassion expand even to our whole country and world. As you say, may all beings be healed. May all beings be happy. May all beings be touched and healed by the force of humankindness. May the power of our heart, our goodness, our love, and our legislation bring healing to all. Amen.

Members, please join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance--

Good afternoon, Members. It's nice to see everyone back here on the Senate Floor. We have two distinguished guests in our presence today. I'd like to invite the Senate to give a warm welcome back, a warm welcome back to Senator Pan and Senator Huff. It's nice to see you both back here on the Senate Floor. We're going to move next to privileges of the floor, and for that, we're going to turn to Senator Rubio for purposes of introduction. Senator Rubio. Before you begin--Members, please give your attention to Senator Rubio. Senator Rubio.

Thank you, Mr. President, and ladies and gentlemen of the Senate. Today I would like to welcome and introduce some Members of the California Contract Cities Association who are here today in our gallery. Please allow me to introduce the President, Dr. Julian Gold, mayor of the City of Beverly Hills, their immediate past President, Jeff Wood, Council Member from the City of Lakewood, Executive Board Member Sandra Mentha, Council Member from the City of Rosemead, Johnny Garcia, Mayor pro tem of the City of Pico Rivera.

The California Contract Cities Association represents 80 cities in Los Angeles County, and this week they're all here for their legislative tour, and I want to thank them for the work they do locally on behalf of Californians. Members, let's please give them a very warm welcome. Thank you.

Welcome to the California State Senate. Welcome. Members, moving on to our agenda. Messages from the Governor will be deemed read. Messages from the Assembly will be deemed read. Reports of Committee will be deemed read and amendments adopted. Under motions, resolutions, and notices, I don't see any microphones up. We'll move next to introductions and first reading of bills. Secretary, please read.

Senate Bills 908, 909, and 910.

We're going to return now to motions and resolutions. Now is the time to address adjourn in memories. First up for the Senate, our President pro tem, Toni Atkins.

Thank you, Mr. President. Colleagues, I rise today to adjourn in memory of Peter Seidler, a humanitarian, a philanthropist, and the Chairman of the San Diego Padres, who passed away November 14 at the very young age of 63. Peter was born to Terry Seidler and Roland Seidler Jr. in Alhambra on November 7, 1960. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA.

After working in the lending arm of Bank of America, he founded Seidler Equity Partners, a private equity investment firm in 1992, creating a very successful business that now manages more than $5 billion in assets. Owning baseball teams ran in Peter's family. His grandfather, Walter O'Malley, owned the Brooklyn Dodgers and moved the team to Los Angeles. And his uncle, Peter O'Malley, owned the club until 1998. In 2012, Peter followed the family tradition and took the plunge into team ownership.

He partnered with Peter O'Malley and Ron Fowler to purchase the San Diego Padres from John Moores. In 2020, he became chairman of the Baseball Club. He pursued an aggressive spending approach, acquiring star players who helped the Padres reach the playoffs in 2022. His lifetime dream was for the Padres, of course, to win the World Series. Peter's legacy in San Diego, however, far exceeds his passion for establishing a winning baseball team. He is remembered fondly for his support of philanthropic causes.

Under his tenure, the San Diego Padres Foundation's annual giving expanded by 1000%. He was especially devoted to the cause of alleviating homelessness, and he served on the board of directors of Lucky Duck Foundation, a San Diego charitable organization dedicated to that effort. He also formed the Tuesday Group, an organization of business and civic leaders who worked on strategies to support the unsheltered.

In San Diego, Peter was known regularly to walk through homeless encampments in the East Village near Petco Park and also in the beach communities near his home, where he would talk with people experiencing homelessness to better learn what could be done to help ease their suffering. He also supported many other charities, including the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the American Cancer Society, Homestart, which works to prevent child abuse, and the Mayo Clinic.

He and his wife, Sheel, were founding members of the Stand Up to Cancer Legacy Endowment Circle. He is survived by his wife, Sheel, his three children, his mother, Terry Seidler, and nine siblings. He was an incredibly genteel person. Anyone that met him could see that he cared deeply about those less fortunate, and we were lucky in San Diego to have him lead the Padres.

I ask that we adjourn today in memory of Peter Seidler, a dynamic, generous, compassionate, humble, and eternally optimistic man who left an indelible impact on San Diego and on California.

Thank you, Pro Tem Atkins. Please bring his name forward so he can be properly memorialized in the Senate journal. Thank you. Like to next call on Senator Stern.

Thank you, Mr. President. I would have risen on the first day back, but this is my first day back. In honor of Paul Kessler, a constituent of mine who was killed November 5 in what I would characterize as the most egregious example of the weaponization of free speech that we've been seeing over the last several months. In this case, he was literally struck in the face by a megaphone and fell back, hit his head, and died a few hours later.

He was there protesting a group that was protesting Israel, and for weeks had been standing on a street corner outside a gas station in our district, spewing rhetoric that was very close to the line of incitement. There is some evidence that firearms were even brandished and shown. Intimidation was certainly a part of this. But on that particular day, Paul was carrying an Israeli flag and was standing there with a few other constituents speaking out.

This was only less than a month after October 7. He was a congregation member of Temple Etz Chaim and actually grew up in Scranton, not far from our President, but had been working in the community for years and philanthropic activist, and had been reading about these things online. And thought, better go out and stand up. That got him killed. Finally, the DA decided to actually press charges under voluntary manslaughter, and they're still investigating whether this was a hate crime as well.

We, as you know, have enhanced penalties for hate crimes. And in this case, his close association with being Jewish and being a target as a result is part of what, in my view, got him killed. This is a dangerous time for speech that puts our own Members at risk on a daily basis.

Standing here looking at my colleague from San Francisco, who takes some of the most vicious and nasty attacks you can possibly imagine daily on the Internet, has to sort of brush it off just as free speech, and that's x being x. But speech crossed the line. That megaphone became a weapon. Paul is gone as a result. Our community is mourning.

I hope we all adjourn in his memory and resolve ourselves that when we use our voices, that we know the effect of that speech, and we know who we can harm, and we know who we can set off, and we know that people's lives are literally at stake. And we're not talking about overseas. We're talking about right here on our own soil. So thank you for taking a minute to remember Paul. And I hope his legacy is one of peace and of comity and of togetherness and a rejection of this kind of hatred in our communities.

Thank you, Senator Stern. Please bring his name forward so we can be properly memorialized in the Senate journal. Like to next call on Senator Durazo.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker--Mr. President. On the third day of Christmas last December 27, Ignacio Lozano Jr. passed away, surrounded by his children and grandchildren at his daughter Monica, a friend of mine, at their home. Ignacio Lozano, most widely known for decades as publisher and chairman of the country's largest Spanish language newspaper, La Opinion, was laid to rest in Orange County, El Dia de Los Reyes, alongside his beloved late wife, Martha. He would have turned 97 next Monday.

Many of us have personally known and admired the Lozano family for many years. I'm taking the opportunity to honor Ignacio and his life's work and make a little better-known the role of his and his family's daily newspaper, La Opinion of Los Angeles, in the making not only of Southern California's Latino community, but modern California itself.

To know our state is to know the role of mass media. In the news media, newspapers in particular, two families are taken as historically central, the Hearst and the combined Otis and Chandler families. This image includes north and south, San Francisco and LA, but leaves out most of Latino California. The story of the Lozanos in the southwestern US began with Ignacio's immigrant father, Don Ignacio Lozano.

He founded his first paper in San Antonio in 1913, La Prensa, alongside the Libraria Lozano next door, which is a bookstore, both the center of Mexican San Antonio's social and political life. Don Ignacio launched La Opinion Los Angeles on the 16 September 1926. He located his second daily paper in the downtown of Mexican Los Angeles, at that time, north Main Street with its own Libraria Lozano next door. The Libraria was more than a unique bookstore.

It also published original works of literary merit during the mass repatriations of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the early 1930s, the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943. Both La Prensa in Texas and La Opinion suffered devastating losses of circulation. Neither paper had fully recovered when Don Ignacio passed away, the founder, in 1953. Ignacio, his son, took over the still diminished La Opinion while his mother ran La Prensa in Texas.

Only La Opinion under Ignacio's leadership survived the 1950s and fully recovered by the 1970s, when he retired on the 60th anniversary of the newspaper's founding. It was not only the largest Spanish language newspaper in the country, but the fastest growing US paper in any language. Ignacio Lozano's La Opinion naturally covered and gave prominence to stories and developments in Mexico, Latin America, and the Latino community that went unmentioned in US mainstream media, but also differed in a deeper way.

While in their early years, the Hearst newspapers and the LA Times were eager promoters of U.S. Military intervention in Latin America and the Philippines, Ignacio personally in his newspaper emphasized the need for democracy and the freedom of the press. He became close to the newspaper-owning families of Latin America and was elected President of the Inter-American Press Association and designated U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador by President Ford.

All four Mr. Lozano's children worked at La Opinion at one time or another, with the three oldest serving as publisher or co-publisher. A lifelong Republican, Ignacio was still Chairman of La Opinion Board in 1994, when then Governor Pete Wilson endorsed and ran on the notoriously anti-immigrant Proposition 187 as part of his reelection. That led Nacio to change his party registration and thereafter called himself a Pete Wilson Democrat. It is impossible to capture Nacio Lozano's life in these remarks.

He was far too active and multifaceted for that. Among the many corporate and nonprofit boards he served on, he was especially passionate about education and his Alma mater, Notre Dame, where he and his wife established a scholarship program for Latino students. He raced cars in his youth, piloted his own planes, was an avid golfer, sailor, shooter, and a man of faith, a family man who enjoyed deep frying turkeys and who shipped his own grill to the US ambassador's residence in San Salvador.

It was appropriate to note, as I began, that Nacio passed and was entered during the 12 days of Christmas. He was truly a man of faith. His father's remains were transferred to the Basilica De La Virgen Guadalupe in Mexico City. He attended all Catholic schools himself, as did his and Martha's children. He was a US patriot as well as a proud son of Mexico.

Nacio, his family, and newspaper helped fashion Latinos of multiple generations, different national origins, and living, spread widely across Southern California into a community that finally achieved representation in this capital, in local and national government, and a wide range of US institutions. We ourselves, in a real sense, are part of his legacy. He has preceded in death in 2018 by Marta Novaro, his wife of 67 years.

He is survived by his daughters, Monica Cecilia Lozano, Leticia Elena Lozano, his sons Jose Lozano and Francisco Antonio Lozano, and nine grandchildren. Colleagues, please join me in sending our deepest condolences to his family for their tremendous loss. Rest in poder, Señor Ignacio Lozano Jr.

Thank you, Senator Durazo, on this adjourn in memory. Next, want to recognize Senator Allen.

Senators, I want to join in this adjourn in memory. I was an undergraduate who did my thesis in U.S. History, largely based on coverage from La Opinion back in the fifties and sixties. And I got to experience, firsthand, through hours and hours of research, weeks and weeks, months and months, comparing this unique source of American history. Under Nacio Lozano's leadership, La Opinion absolutely provided a very different perspective on American news, on California news, than the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles Times really shifted in the late 1960s to become a very different paper. But at the time, La Opinion provided a very special perspective. And of course, Nacio Lozano oversaw this transition from being a Latin American paper that was very much focused on Latin American news and Latin American perspectives to an American paper that just happened to be published in Spanish.

And it served an enormous population of Spanish speakers who, yes, wanted to know the news from the countries from which they'd come or their parents had come. But it became increasingly news that was very much based on the challenges and needs of the Latino community in Los Angeles and elsewhere. He leads an extraordinary legacy, and I do want to also just send a very personal note of condolence to a wonderful public servant in her own right.

Monica Lozano, who served on the Board of Regents in many other public capacities. She's obviously his daughter and was the CEO and publisher of La Opinion as well. This is a special man, an important figure in California history. And I join in asking that we join his memory.

Thank you, Senator Allen. Senator Durazo, if you could bring his name forward so he can be properly memorialized in the California State Senate Journal. Members, if there's nothing else under motions and resolutions, we're going to move to Committee announcements. We have one. Want to call on Senator Alvarado-Gil.

Thank you. The Human Services Committee will meet promptly upon adjournment in Room 2100.

Thank you, Senator. Seeing no other business before the House, Senator Atkins, the desk is clear.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. Colleagues, our next floor session is scheduled for this Friday, not Thursday, Friday, January 12, 2024, at 9:00 p.m.

The Senate will be in recess until 3:30 p.m, at which time the adjournment motion will be made. We will reconvene Friday at 9:00 a.m. Thank you very much, Members. Have a very nice rest of your day.