During Pride Month, Democratic State Senator Dallas Harris (SD-11) traveled to San Francisco for multiple fundraising events held by Sister District San Francisco, an LGBTQ organization that “works to turn state legislators from red to blue” and “build progressive power in state legislatures.”
According to her financial statements and the Bay Area press, Harris is relying on San Francisco Democrats to fuel her campaign.
Harris raised over $31,000 from the Bay Area over the previous quarter, making up a substantial portion of her individual contributions.
In an event on June 22, Harris was introduced by California Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener. The event was billed as “her meet-and-greet SF Kickoff.”
Senator Wiener was the author SB 145, a piece of legislation signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. SB 145 eliminated automatic sex offender registration for adults who have anal or oral sex with a minor and expanded discretion for judges, in certain cases, to exempt mandatory sex offender registration.
The LA Times reported: “The vast majority of the criticism toward the bill was focused on a provision that has been in the state’s sex offender registry law for decades — the 10-year age gap between the minor and the adult.”
At the time, Democrat Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez delivered one of the most intense statements of opposition to the bill, stating “I cannot, in my mind, as a mother, understand how sex between a 24-year-old and a 14-year-old could ever be consensual, how it could ever not be a registrable offense… I challenge everybody: Give me a situation where a 24-year-old had sex with a 14-year-old, any kind of sex, and it wasn’t predatory.”
Most recently, Governor Newsom signed another bill sponsored by Wiener, AB 1955, that prohibits public schools from notifying parents about “pronoun changes” made by their children at school. The signing of the legislation led SpaceX, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk to announce he would move business operations out of California as a result.
In 2023, Wiener proposed offering ‘Drag Queen 101 as Part of the K-12 Curriculum’ in public school, as reported by our sister site The California Globe.
Another bill proposed by Wiener, SB 407, would require every foster parent to agree to affirm the LGBTQ identity of their foster child if they express their gender or sexual orientation confusion.
During the last legislative session, Harris lobbied against parental rights in sponsoring SB 172, a bill that would eliminate parental consent by authorizing a minor to give express consent to certain health care providers for provision of services for the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, including the prescribing, dispensing or administration of a contraceptive drug or device, without the consent or notification of the parent, parents or legal guardian of the minor.
“I’m trying to address what is a very real problem here in Nevada… the proliferation of STD’s,” said Harris during the bill’s hearing, adding that “maybe [parents] shouldn’t find out from the child’s doctor that their child is having sex because [the child] wanted to do it safely.”
A registered nurse opposed the bill during the hearing, stating: “Do not further tear apart the nuclear family by removing parental rights. This gives yet another path to sex trafficking and criminals.”
Sister District San Francisco, along with a coalition of 40 groups in the Bay Area, holds weekly phone banking and fundraising for Harris as she seeks to save her seat in a district that was legislatively redrawn from a plus-17 Democratic advantage to a plus-7 advantage.
In 2018, Harris was appointed to the open seat in Senate District 11 and elected in 2020 with 58.6 percent of the vote. She faces Republican Lori Rogich in November.
Should Democrats hold their supermajority in the State Assembly and gain one seat in the State Senate, they will have a veto-proof superiority in both chambers.
Senator Harris did not respond to our request for comment.
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