Essential Politics: The two dozen times California came up in the GOP debate

I’m Christina Bellantoni, the Essential Politics host today joined by Sacramento bureau chief John Myers. Let’s get started.

This wasn’t the way California wanted to become a part of the presidential race conversation.

The Golden State was mentioned at least 24 times on the main debate stage Tuesday night as nine presidential hopefuls clashed on national security during a lively forum that will be the last of 2015.

From New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie using the Los Angeles Unified School District (hoax) bomb threat Tuesday morning to illustrate how he’d keep people safe to Ben Carson calling for a moment of silence in honor of the 14 people massacred in the San Bernardino attacks.

That's not counting Carly Fiorina mentioning her tenure as chief executive of Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard. And the CNN moderators did not ask about the climate change summit attended by a large California delegation.

Want to catch up fast? Get a detailed look from Mark Barabak and Melanie Mason. Noah Bierman finds it was a bad night for political correctness and Donald Trump in his takeaways from the debate.

You can catch up with every moment from the debate on Trail Guide.

Colleen Shalby rounded up the many times Jeb Bush went after Trump, with Facebook’s top moment of the former Florida governor declaring to the business mogul, "You're not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency."

Here’s one: "So Donald, you know, is great at — at the one-liners, but he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe."

Bush wasn’t alone.

Fiorina: "I offer myself as a leader to the people of this country because I think they're looking for solutions, not lawyers arguing over laws or entertainers throwing out sound bites that draw media attention."

Sen. Rand Paul: "I'd like to also go back to, though, another question, which is, is Donald Trump a serious candidate? The reason I ask this is, if you're going to close the Internet, realize, America, what that entails. That entails getting rid of the 1st Amendment, OK? It's no small feat."

"If you are going to kill the families of terrorists, realize that there's something called the Geneva Convention we're going to have to pull out of. It would defy every norm that is America. So when you ask yourself, whoever you are, that think you're going to support Donald Trump, think, do you believe in the Constitution? Are you going to change the Constitution?"

A few other highlights:

— Fiorina goofed when saying Snapchat and Twitter had been around "just for several years." Actually, Snapchat formed in 2011 and the first tweet was sent nearly a decade ago, on March 21, 2006.

— Christie had his own slip up, botching the King of Jordan’s name. He should remember the current king of Jordan is King Abdullah II, son of the late King Hussein, who died in 1999. Especially since Christie faced criticism this year after the New York Times reported that Abdullah had paid for part of the Christie family's travel in the Middle East after a trade mission to Israel in 2012.

— The candidates agreed they don’t want to bring new Syrian refugees into the United States.

Our video team produced Trump, fact or fiction. Watch here.

As the Republicans were touring the stage earlier Tuesday, Hillary Clinton was giving a forceful speech ridiculing their approach to terrorism and warning that some of the very slogans they have been using to tout their national security plans are making Americans less safe.

Evan Halper reports that Clinton used the speech in Minnesota to reposition herself as the steady, experienced hand in a presidential race otherwise dominated by what she characterized as dangerous blowhards.

WILL SPEIER BE THERE?

Rep. Pete Aguilar is returning to D.C. for the first time since the attacks in his San Bernardino district. The Redlands Democrat plans to lead a moment of silence for the victims of the Dec. 2 massacre on Wednesday morning.

As Sarah Wire reported just after the attacks, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough) has said she will no longer stand when that happens.

"I’m not going to stand up for a moment of silence again and then watch us do nothing," Speier told Wire. She is calling for stricter gun control measures. She said moments of silence are "hypocritical" because Congress has not addressed gun violence. "I’ve had it. I have had it with inaction. I’ve had it with the sense that it’s OK that we not act," Speier said.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson used his opening statement at the debate to call for a moment of silence in honor of the 14 people killed in San Bernardino.

L.A. RIVER GETS A BOOST

Sarah Wire reports that 13 Southern California members of Congress are asking President Obama to include $4.2 million in the fiscal 2017 budget for planning and designing the proposed Los Angeles River Ecosystem Restoration project.

Read the letter here.

SCHOOL FUNDING FIX FOR TERROR ALERT?

Tuesday’s shutdown of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District sent hundreds of thousands of students back home for the day. It also likely cost the district big bucks.

Under state law, school funding is linked to daily attendance. Long bouts of seasonal flu, for example, can mean so many absences that any school’s bottom line can suffer. But should it suffer for a potential threat? No, say state Senate leader Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton). Hours after the shutdown, the two Democrats both called for a change in state law. De León promised to exempt LAUSD from any funding hit, and Galgiani promised to introduce legislation once lawmakers reconvene in Sacramento next month.

TOBACCO TAX HIKE HITS THE STREETS

A closely watched 2016 initiative to hike California’s tobacco tax by $2 a pack was cleared for signature gathering late Tuesday. The proposed ballot measure is sponsored by a coalition of healthcare groups, doctors, and billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer. It would be used for everything from physician training to boosting the state’s Medi-Cal program.

As we’ve reported before, it’s looking more and more like the November 2016 ballot is going to be a doozy in the Golden State, with perhaps 19 propositions — or more — by the time signatures must be collected next year.

OBLIGATORY 49ERS MENTION

This newsletter is three months old today, and I have managed to avoid mentioning my beloved San Francisco 49ers thus far. Readers of my last newsletter, the PBS NewsHour Morning Line, often noticed the NFL team frequently earned mentions, when appropriate, of course.

So it is entirely OK, of course, to post this overlooked portion of a scrum reporters held Tuesday night with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. From the transcript provided by Pelosi’s office.

Q: The Warriors lost.

Leader Pelosi: How about that?

Q: I didn’t get to engage you on this.

Leader Pelosi: You seem to be — you never mentioned when they won 24 straight. Not to mention the four at the end of the season — making it 28.

Q: I told you who plays Sunday afternoon: the Bengals and the Niners.

Leader Pelosi: Well, how about the Bengals and whoever they played this week?

Q: The Steelers.

Leader Pelosi. How did that turn out? I was too busy.

Q: They beat the Steelers earlier this year.

Leader Pelosi: How’d they do this Sunday?

Q: They lost.

Leader Pelosi: Oh.

[Laughter]

Q: And they’ve won like six more games than the Niners have this year.

[Laughter]

TODAY’S ESSENTIALS

-- Donald Trump will appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" Wednesday. Javier Panzar notes that Kimmel tore into Trump after he bailed on an appearance at the last minute in October. Among his insults was telling the audience, "Don’t worry, tonight we’re gonna give everyone in the audience a basketball dipped in cologne so you can fully experience what it would have been like had Donald Trump been here."

-- Lisa Mascaro is tracking the sweeping year-end deal that would not only avert a government shutdown but also lift a 40-year ban on U.S. oil exports and make permanent a massive package of specialty tax breaks.

-- Garrett Therolf scoops that L.A. County probation chief Jerry Powers stepped down amid allegations of a romantic relationship with an aide.

-- The Sacramento Bee details a new searchable database of local government salaries, covering 602,377 positions with more than $36 billion in wages. It shows average wages in cities fell by more than 3% from 2013 levels to $59,614, while those in counties increased by almost 3% to $60,993.

-- Chris Megerian talked with KQED about the climate change accord and his coverage of the California delegation at the summit outside of Paris.

LOGISTICS

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