SCA-5 is Dead, but the Ghost of SCA-5 Continues Haunting on Stat

Summary:

On March 17th, 2014, State Assembly Speaker John Perez(D-AD53) announced sending SCA-5 back to State Senate citing the lack of support of the bill in current form and the request of the bill's author, Ed Hernandez(D-SD24). The original bill was passed strictly along the party line because of Democrat Party held the two-thrid of seats (super majority) in the Senate on 1/31. As of today, Democrat Party doesn't hold super majority in State Senate due to two members of its caucus are on discipline leave. So effectively SCA-5 is dead in current legislative session until new State Senate and Assembly takes effect in 2015-1016 session.

SVCA Analysis:

The result of sending SCA-5 back to State Senate effectively announced the death of SCA-5 in current legislative session. Let's give everyone working hard in last one month a well deserved congratulations and everyone needs to take a short break.

But as the title says, the ghost of SCA-5 is still looming large on State Capital, because there are certain sectors of politicians in our government are firmly believe in the spirit of SCA-5 and like to use social engineering to "encourage, support and defend voluntary and mandatory affirmative action measures aimed at enhancing equality in employment, education, and business opportunities. Education is just the first step to achieve its long term goal. So the battle is over, but the war is not finished.

Based on current situation, while we continue being vigilant on any movement of SCA-5 and keep our pressure on elected officials, we will put more effort to the elections this year (6/3 Primary and 11/4 General). The following are the immediate work we will focus on:

1) Actively join in a few selective local elections (state senate, state assembly and city council), in both primary and general elections
2) voter registration drive and voter education
3) voter turnout drive on both in person and mail ballots

We are open to work with anyone who put their "no-on-SCA5) into action and fully believe in providing equal opportunity to everyone as long as they have the ability and determination, regardless of their background, groups, party affiliation.

Appendix: Elected officials and candidates' stand on SCA-5 as of March 17th, 2014:

State Assembly:
1)Republican Assembly members: based on the promise of Assembly minority leader, all of the GOP caucus members plans to vote No on SCA-5. A few of GOP assembly members made public statement against SCA-5.
2) Ed Chau (D-AD49): The first assembly member to officially announcing against SCA-5 in current form, and ask for amendment before consideration;
3) Sharon Quik-Silva (D-AD65): officially declare against SCA-5 at this time, privately sending email to community members to clarify she is against SCA-5 in current form
4) Joan Buchanan(D-AD16): announced privately in a meeting to group of over twenty community members she will be abstain from SCA-5. Her own words: "I have always been a believer of making informed decisions based on data. Based on my research, I will not vote for SCA-5"
5) Phil Ting(D-AD19): announced on Chinese newspaper support SCA-5(at least its spirit), but ask for amendment
6) Paul Fong(D-AD28): privately sending email to community members to state he is against SCA-5 in current form, but never made any official announcement and refused to meet community even when the community presented him thousands of signatures (including over one thousand signatures of registered voters from San Jose City Council District 1 which he will seek the seat for in Nov election). And further his apprentice and heir-apparent Evan Low made a public TV appearance to support SCA-5 (see below)

State Senate:
1)Ted Lieu(D-SD28), Carol Liu(D-SD25) and Leeland Yee(D-SD8) . The three Asian American State Senators voted YES on 1/30/2014 on SCA-5. In past few weeks, they publicly changed their stand after hearing the community input and ask for Senator Hernandez to withdraw the bill even though they don't have the voting power anymore. Particularly Senate Ted Lieu publicly announced his motivation to vote YES for SCA-5 and also announced he changed his mind after the community input and will vote No if the bill comes back to Senate.

Federal Congress:
1) Judy Chu(D-Congressional District 32, California): publicly announced her opposition to SCA-5, together with Ed Chau. Federal Congress has no oversight of SCA-5 since it is a state legislature
2) Mike Honda(D- Congressional District 17, California): publicly announced his opposition to SCA-5 on 3/17/2014 and ask for expanding public education to provide more opportunities. Federal Congress has no oversight of SCA-5 since it is a state legislature

SVCA