Sex Offenders Can Still Run for Office in California—Here's Why the Bill Failed

A proposal that would have blocked registered sex offenders from seeking public office in California hit a wall in the State Senate this week, and the reason reveals a genuine tension in how lawmakers balance public safety with concerns about casting too wide a legal net.

The State Senate’s Elections Committee rejected AB 2753 in a close 2-1-2 vote on Tuesday. The bill had sailed through the State Assembly unanimously, sparked by a concrete concern: earlier this year, registered sex offender Rene Campos attempted to run for Fresno City Council. Campos pleaded no contest in 2018 to a misdemeanor charge of possessing child sex abuse material. That candidacy prompted Fresno Democratic Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria to write the proposal, aiming to block anyone listed on California’s three-tiered sex offender registry from running for office at any level—city council, school board, state legislature, you name it.

But Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener, chairman of the Elections Committee, raised a significant objection: the bill was too broad. California’s registry tiers range from Tier One offenders (on the list for up to 10 years, including crimes like child molestation and enticing a child to prostitution) to Tier Three (lifetime registration). Wiener said he’d only support the measure if it applied exclusively to Tier Three offenders—the most serious, permanent designation. Soria refused the amendment. She argued that all offenses in each tier should disqualify someone from holding public office. The bill died in the stalemate.

What’s striking here is that Soria and Wiener aren’t on opposite sides of the issue—they both want to keep sex offenders out of office. The disagreement is about scope. Does the law catch everyone who poses a genuine threat, or does it inadvertently punish people whose crimes, while serious, don’t rise to the same level of danger? Tier One offenders include real crimes against children, but they’re typically not lifetime sentences on the registry. Should someone convicted 15 years ago for a serious but lower-tier offense be permanently barred from any elected position?

Meanwhile, a separate bill, AB 2961, did move forward through the same committee. It prohibits people convicted of felony sex crimes from running for office—but only primarily when victims are adults. The catch: the committee weakened it so that people convicted of felony child sex crimes like rape and sodomy can still run for school board, city council, and the state legislature. Democratic Assemblymember Dawn Addis, who wrote AB 2961, accepted those changes to avoid accidentally criminalizing what she called Romeo and Juliet situations—18-year-olds dating 17-year-olds whose relationships later encounter criminal justice involvement.

Lawmakers break for summer recess starting Thursday and return for one final month of lawmaking. That’s when they’ll have another shot at these bills. The question now: Can Soria find a middle ground, or will both bills stall again?