It’s often said that politics makes strange bedfellows.
But in one California household, radical policy and ethical controversies are totally in sync.
Now, the wife of California’s Attorney General just made this move to free violent criminals.
California assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D) also happens to be the wife of California’s Attorney General.
Nevertheless, she has just unilaterally killed a bill that would raise sentencing for violent crimes committed with guns.
Republican assemblyman Bill Essayli proposed a bill that would have required California judges to add jail time on sentences for criminals who used guns in commission of a violent crime.
The bill would have axed a 2017 state law giving judges the option to dismiss such “sentencing enhancements” as well as a new law that requires judges to drop additional jail time “if it is in the furtherance of justice to do so.”
Killing the bill for the entire legislative session
But Bonta used her position on the assembly’s public safety committee to scuttle the proposal and she even took things a step farther.
Instead of a simple no vote, she blocked Essayli’s request to revise and reintroduce his legislation.
The majority of Democrats did not intervene, so the bill was tabled for the rest of the session.
All this comes as homicides and rapes, and other instances of violent crime are on the upswing.
In his capacity as Attorney General, Rob Bonta agrees with radicals like Los Angeles’s George Gascon, whose policies have led to a rise in crime.
Rob Bonta made a name for himself for his investigations of law enforcement.
“You don’t need to talk to me about mothers in Oakland”
While debating the bill, Essayli pointed out that violent crime disproportionately impacts minority communities like Oakland, which Bonta represents.
He said that in 2020, 65 percent of Oakland’s homicide victims were black, and told how a murder victim’s mother said she could never really heal “if there is no justice.”
Mia Bonta didn’t like that and retorted, “You don’t need to talk to me about mothers in Oakland. They are more worried that their sons and brothers and fathers and mothers being taken away from them because of the disproportionate impact that enhancements have had on their community.”
The Bontas have faced heavy criticism in recent weeks when Mia, who succeeded her husband after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) named him attorney general in 2021, was chosen to oversee her husband’s department budget.
Legal experts have called the move ethically dubious.
Stay tuned to Blue State Blues for any updates to this ongoing story.
