FRESNO, Calif. (FOX26) — A California bill that would have barred registered sex offenders from running for local or state public office failed to advance Tuesday in the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee.
Assembly Bill 2753, authored by Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, stalled after Soria rejected amendments that would have limited the ban to lifetime registered sex offenders.
“I am deeply disappointed and disheartened” by the committee’s decision, Soria said in a statement. She said she refused additional amendments because they “would have jeopardized” a promise she made to her community to prevent registered sex offenders from running for office.
The bill drew attention in Fresno after registered sex offender and Fresno City Council candidate Rene Campos announced his campaign earlier this year.
Campos praised the committee’s decision in a statement sent to FOX26:
Today the Senate committee did what Fresno refused to do: it stopped and remembered the Constitution. This was never just about one bill or one campaign. Fresno moved with remarkable speed when it wanted to gut an old Parks bill and turn it into a political weapon, yet the same urgency is missing on homelessness, housing, public safety, and the people begging City Hall for help. My CPRA investigations continue to show a deeper pattern around power, transparency, and whether Fresno officials used their positions to serve the public or protect themselves. So the real question is not why this bill failed. The real question is why Fresno was so willing to push it in the first place,
Campos said.
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Current California law does not automatically prohibit registered sex offenders from running for public office if they otherwise meet the legal qualifications for office.