The oil and gas industry is pouring money into a closely watched Democrat-on-Democrat Assembly race in Southern California’s Inland Empire, an area that is feeling the effects of climate change and a seat that could help shape the state’s plans to slash greenhouse gas emissions.
California is struggling to keep its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 48% of the 1990 level by 2030, a goal that the California Green Innovation Index calculates the state is on track to miss by at least 15 years. Meanwhile, the 50th Assembly District, which stretches from Redlands to Rancho Cucamonga, is very much in the path of the climate storm and faces a potential future of weather extremes.
Adam Perez, a Desert Hot Springs police detective, is running for the seat now occupied by Eloise Gómez Reyes, who is campaigning for an open state Senate seat. A website for his campaign says Perez will “combat climate change” if elected. But environmentalists say that expenditures by fossil fuel companies supporting his campaign cast doubt on that promise.
From December through Oct. 15, Perez’s campaign was promoted by almost $1 million from a political action committee funded by oil and gas companies.
This month, that PAC, called the Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class, spent $527,849.67 on ads and other services to support Perez. The PAC is dispensing $12 million from California Resources Corporation, the state’s biggest oil driller, and Chevron, Phillips 66 and Valero to Democratic and Republican state Legislature candidates.
When Perez ran in the primary in March, the oil and gas PAC spent $403,800 supporting his candidacy.
The campaign also received $24,000 in donations from oil refiners Marathon, Chevron and Phillips 66.
Other PACs supporting Perez include the JobsPAC sponsored by the California Chamber of Commerce and the Alliance for Progress and Education. They bundle donations from an array of corporate donors, including Chevron, PG&E and Sempra. In total, PACs representing corporations, law enforcement, real estate and other industries spent almost $2.9 million supporting him.
His opponent is Robert Garcia, an assistant principal in the Ontario-Montclair School District who is backed by the California Democratic Party.
Garcia’s website says he pledges to “stand up to corporate polluters.” He has received $10,000 from the Jane Fonda Climate PAC — as well as an appearance by the actor at a fundraiser — and the California Environmental Voters PAC.
Larger donations have come from PACs funded by labor unions representing teachers, nurses and public sector workers. Garcia has benefitted from $712,110.02 in independent expenditures since announcing his campaign in early 2023.
California emits a small fraction of the world’s emissions, but its climate policies have set examples for other states and regions.
Regulations to fight climate change focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels, so the oil and gas industry tends to oppose them or interject with their own solutions. Climate change is very much an issue in the Assembly district, which is already experiencing a rise in extreme weather.
Much of the district the two are fighting to represent is among the most exposed nationwide to drought, according to the U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index, which pulls together nearly 200 data sets to examine threats across the country.
The communities in the district could also experience at least one additional day of very heavy rainfall most years after 2029. That’s what researchers at Cal-Adapt, a data analysis initiative sponsored by the California Energy Commission and supported by UC Berkeley and Eagle Rock Analytics, found after Capital & Main requested an assessment of climate risks in the district through the end of the century.
Wildfires scorch soils, damaging their ability to hold moisture. That means sudden deluges after fires increase the risks of mudslides. San Bernardino County, where the district is located, recorded more wildfires last year than all but five other counties in the state. A mudslide in 2023 near the northern portion of the district sent rocks and debris tumbling down a hill denuded by wildfire two years earlier, blocking a road.
Using software to simulate weather events at the scale of a few city blocks, Cal-Adapt also found that the district is on track to experience an average of five additional August days above 104 degrees starting in 2025. Each subsequent year is more likely to reach that level of heat. By the 2080s, it will consistently experience an additional week of deadly heat every year, Cal-Adapt found.
Rising temperatures also exacerbate air pollution as sunlight chemically reacts with car exhaust to form ozone (smog) — and San Bernardino County suffers from more ozone than anywhere else in California but Los Angeles County.
On Oct. 1, smoke from the Line Fire, which burned more than 43,978 acres of the San Bernardino National Forest, choked Fontana, increasing the amount of toxic particulate matter, known as PM2.5, in the air. At the same time, the temperature hit 102 degrees— far above the historical range of temperatures for that day of 61 to 86 degrees.
The air was so bad that the South Coast Air Quality Management District recommended that children, pregnant women, the elderly and asthmatics stay inside.
A Critical Swing Seat
Mike Young, the senior political and organizing director at California Environmental Voters, said he believes that the oil and gas industry donations means Perez will be less likely to support climate policies opposed by oil companies.
Perez’s campaign did not respond to Capital & Main’s request for an interview.
A campaign spokesperson for Garcia, Natalie Reyes, accused Perez of selling “out to the same corporations that are polluting the Inland Empire and worsening our health outcomes.”
“There’s so much back and forth with this seat,” Young said. He worked with the group when they helped propel Gómez Reyes to victory in 2016. This year California Environment Voters nominated Perez as one of the nation’s 12 worst state-level candidates for the environment, a list compiled by the LCV Victory Fund, a PAC supporting action on climate change.
The oil industry “sees an opportunity to elect one of their own and take [the seat] back,” Young added. Before its boundaries were redrawn, the Assembly district seat had been occupied by the Chevron-backed representative Cheryl Brown. Brown lost in 2016 to Gómez Reyes.
Gómez Reyes has endorsed Garcia, who received nearly 42% of 43,324 votes cast in a March primary. Perez split the rest of the vote with DeJonaé Marie Shaw, barely edging her out. With 255,000 registered voters in the district and the presidential race on the ballot, more could turn out in November.
The two candidates differ in their support bases.
Perez has endorsements from numerous local officials within his district, including the mayors of Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Redlands.
Garcia is endorsed by several high-ranking legislators, including state Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara), who told Capital & Main that Gómez Reyes’ endorsement “signals a lot to many of us in Sacramento.”
That level of backing may be a sign of oil and gas’s diminishing political sway in the state Legislature. Yet legislation to reign in pollution still passes or fails on tight margins, if it advances at all.
A bill this year to restrict local oil drilling passed into law only after garnering two crucial votes in the state Senate. Sometimes oil lobbyists succeed in watering down strong protections: A measure to penalize companies for wells that leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas, was amended to apply to just a single oil field after pushback from the Western States Petroleum Association.
In 2022, a bill to cut statewide greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in line with what the U.N. says will stave off worsening climate change died after six Assembly Democrats joined Republicans in opposing or withholding their votes.
Democrats in the statehouse who take money from the oil and gas industry vote with the oil industry and against environmental legislation about a quarter of the time, a CBS investigation found.
Perez has endorsements from key members of the party’s moderate bloc who have also accepted money from oil and gas interests, including Assemblymembers Blanca Rubio (Los Angeles), James Ramos (San Bernardino) and Blanca Pacheco (Downey).
Young views a lawmaker’s willingness to accept oil and gas money as a hindrance to cutting emissions and adapting to climate change.
“They win not by passing bills but by stopping things that reverse the damage they’ve done,” he said. “They don’t need a majority, they just need enough votes to block good things from passing.”
