Assemblymember Tim Grayson touts his experience and voting record in his campaign for California’s District 9 Senate seat this year. His website hails him as “a leader with a proven track record.”
However, his track record is more complicated than the campaign slogan may suggest. In reality, he has offered conflicting stories about why he failed to vote on nearly a dozen significant bills during the California Legislature’s final week to pass laws in 2023 — including citing health issues that don’t seem to match up to legislative records.
While representing the Assembly’s 15th District, which spans Martinez, Brentwood and large swaths of unincorporated Contra Costa County, the Christian pastor, police chaplain and former Concord councilmember opted not to weigh in on bills that almost exclusively revolved around environmental regulations, renter protections, reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ rights, public safety and tech oversight.
Last month, the 57-year-old Democrat said those non-votes were recorded when he was “out for a few of those days” in September due to health issues around the regular session’s deadline. Grayson said he was “out for two weeks” while he and his family were recovering from MRSA, a contagious staph infection that can spread through skin-to-skin contact, according to another local news outlet.
“It’s easy to throw accusations (about not voting) out and not be forthright and truthful,” Grayson said in a Sept. 23 interview with this news organization. “Otherwise, I do really good at casting votes. If I’m not, it’s because I’m not there for whatever excused reason.”
This explanation, however, contradicts daily journals of goings-on within the Assembly’s chambers, which report that he was present and actively voting on bills for all but two days during September 2023 — absences that were due to “illness in his family,” not himself, according to the journals. Since taking office in 2017, he has frequently opted out of voting on legislation on days he was part of the Assembly’s quorum.
It’s not uncommon for politicians in both houses of the state Capitol to “lay off” voting on bills, often later saying they were in a meeting or the bathroom during roll call.
Critics say the refusal to outright support or oppose a proposed bill is a workaround that allows elected officials to legally avoid making waves with fellow legislators, constituents and political donors.
The California Legislature categorizes all non-affirmative votes the same, regardless if a lawmaker was absent or simply did not vote despite being present, these tallies are effectively counted as a “no” vote.
When Grayson was present in the Assembly, the timing of his non-affirmative votes largely coincided with bills that were opposed by numerous political action committees pumping tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign to fill the state Senate’s District 9 seat this November, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of public legislative and financial records.
During a four-hour session Sept. 11, 2023, Grayson voted “aye” for all but three bills, which Gov. Gavin Newsom later signed: AB 1033 allowed property owners to sell accessory dwelling units separately from homes; AB 251 propelled research to mitigate oversized vehicle collisions with pedestrians and bicyclists; and SB 253 required large companies to publicly disclose their annual carbon emissions.
When state Senator Scott Weiner first proposed a nearly identical emissions disclosure bill in 2022, it was killed in the Assembly by one vote; Grayson was one of 18 Assemblymembers who did not weigh in.
Grayson was also present and voted on a majority of bills considered on Sept. 12, 13 and 14.
However, he did not cast votes for legislation that, in part, increased penalties for violations of oil and gas regulations, established a system to cover potential cleanup costs when an oil well is sold, advanced the creation of a single-payer health care system, expanded guaranteed paid sick leave for most workers statewide from 24 hours to 40 hours annually, and called for gun safety measures to be added to the U.S. Constitution — making California the first state in the nation to do so.
As of Oct. 17, political action committees have spent more than $1.8 million in independent expenditures supporting Grayson’s campaign.
A large chunk of that cash, totaling nearly $400,000, has been pumped through an oil and gas industry PAC: the Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class, Including Energy Companies Who Produce Gas, Oil, Jobs And Pay Taxes. The coalition’s funders include Chevron, Phillips 66, Marathon Petroleum and Valero; a similarly named and funded PAC spent almost $940,000 on Grayson’s 2016 bid to the Assembly, and some of the companies behind it are headquartered in his Assembly district.
Grayson is seen as a business-friendly moderate Democrat. But his opponent, Marisol Rubio, is using this massive financial backing to paint him as a puppet of large corporations that “paddles left and right” to please stakeholders on all sides of a policy. Rubio says he has missed a total of 150 votes in 2023 and 183 in 2024.
A San Ramon City Councilmember and former director of the Dublin San Ramon Services District, Rubio specifically pointed to Courage California, a progressive grassroots advocacy organization, which has ranked Grayson in its “Hall of Shame” since he was a freshman state legislator in 2017. Measuring votes on watered-down bills, legislators’ non-votes and influence of corporate lobbyists, Grayson earned a “D” last year and six previous “F” grades on its scorecard — rankings that the group says reflect how Grayson is “a frequent recipient of big oil money, sidestepped votes on significant fossil fuel and emissions bills this session.”
When asked this week for clarification about his non-voting record during 2023, Grayson accepted accountability for 150 missed votes but doubled down that his absences were excused — arguing that his voting record stands for itself.
“I think for every vote that you can find like what you’re describing, I think you can also find 10 other votes to show that I voted in a way that would not have been in alignment with those donors,” Grayson said Wednesday, explaining that any framing other than he “was terribly, terribly sick” is “disingenuine (sic) and dishonest.”
“When you look at one single bill, you can try to pigeonhole a story or a narrative,” he said. “But when you look from a higher altitude, you can see that that narrative doesn’t fit.”
Grayson has also been criticized for not voting on bills opposed by other groups that have bankrolled his campaign, including the California Association of Realtors, California Alliance of Family Owned Businesses, California Independent Petroleum Association and the Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association.
But Grayson said voters should not worry that outside money will influence his vote. Instead, he said he works with all sides of an issue to find consensus. Specifically referring to past votes in support of punitive regulations on refinery pollution, fence-line monitoring systems and other environmental initiatives, he said his record shows he backs an incremental transition that will support jobs and the local economy, too.
“When it comes time to a tight budget and things are on the chopping block, it’s relationships that are going to still be able to deliver for the needs of the district,” Grayson said. “That’s something that I have been able to do consistently since I’ve been in office.”