{"id":88706,"date":"2025-12-10T05:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T05:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/88706\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T05:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T05:10:11","slug":"one-party-dominates-californias-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/88706\/","title":{"rendered":"One party dominates California’s elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Submit your letter to the editor via this form<\/a>. Read more Letters to the Editor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

State\u2019s elections still
dominated by one party<\/p>\n

Re: \u201cGovernor race runoff system is very flawed<\/a>\u201d (Page A8, Dec. 7).<\/p>\n

Unless Richard Grenell<\/a> runs for governor, I don\u2019t think Democrats need to worry about a Republican candidate winning in November.<\/p>\n

It would be nice if we had an election with some real competition between the political parties and where the candidates are aggressively challenged and the winner is the person who provides our state with the greatest opportunities for success. For me, if a candidate has a proven track record of success, a list of commonsense and actionable solutions and the courage to do what they say they are going to do, then we shouldn\u2019t care what letter is next to their name.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this is not how the game is played in California, where only one team gets to play.<\/p>\n

Bill Behan
Brentwood<\/p>\n

The healthy choice is
living in a blue state<\/p>\n

CDC data show big differences in death rates between red and blue states concerning gun violence and other leading causes of death.<\/p>\n

Red states consistently show a higher overall firearm mortality rate<\/a> per 100,000 population than blue states. States with the highest total rates of gun-related deaths \u2014 including murders and suicides \u2014 are often red states like Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, while the lowest rates include blue states like Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Red states had higher COVID-19 death rates<\/a>\u00a0in 2021 compared to blue states. The disparity was bigger after vaccines became available, suggesting that lower vaccination rates in red states contributed to higher excess death rates.<\/p>\n

Life expectancy is lower<\/a> in red states vs. blue states. In fact, every state (except Delaware) with a lower-than-average life expectancy voted for Donald Trump in 2024.<\/p>\n

Conclusion: CDC data suggests that the best safety move is out of Republican states.<\/p>\n

Patrick Mitchell
Pleasant Hill<\/p>\n

With penny gone, let\u2019s
get rid of nickel next<\/p>\n

Re: \u201cPenny\u2019s run ends following 232 years<\/a>\u201d (Page C9, Nov. 13).<\/p>\n

The penny disappeared due to inflation. Such a disappearance has happened before.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid in the 1940s and 1950s, plastic mills worth one-tenth of a cent existed. By the end of the 1960s, they had disappeared with little consequence. Further, in the early 1950s, I could buy a comic book for 10 cents. Today, a new comic book costs around 500 cents<\/a>, some fifty times more, suggesting a penny is now worth 50 times less, and production has become uneconomical. With the penny gone, the nickel and quarter will inevitably be goners too, since in our base-10 number system, rounding to the nearest dime is much more feasible.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s speed up the process and, in one fell swoop, get rid of both the penny and nickel, and replace the quarter with a two-dime coin.<\/p>\n

Wallace Clark
Concord<\/p>\n

Bird statistics paint
a skewed picture<\/p>\n

Re: \u201cLiberals forget about protecting birds<\/a>\u201d (Page A6, Oct. 22).<\/p>\n

In response to Mike Heller\u2019s letter to the editor regarding birds killed by wind turbines, he quotes one set of numbers from the American Bird Conservancy that estimates about 1 million birds are killed each year in the United States by wind turbines.<\/p>\n

However, one set of statistics doesn\u2019t always paint the whole picture. He conveniently neglected to include statistics by the same organization that estimates about a billion birds<\/a>\u00a0are killed by flying into buildings. I wonder if he would like to recommend that we tear down all buildings?<\/p>\n

Sydney Stull
Clayton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor. State\u2019s elections stilldominated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[184,7798,3642,7,9,8,390,16753,391,392,1751,332,393,383,2782,181,2953,1564,975,12464,13,1748],"class_list":["post-88706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bay-area","tag-birds","tag-brentwood","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-central-contra-costa","tag-clayton","tag-concord","tag-contra-costa-county","tag-democrats","tag-east-bay","tag-east-contra-costa","tag-economy","tag-healthy-living","tag-latest-headlines","tag-letters","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-pleasant-hill","tag-politics","tag-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}