PASSED: Child Predators Allowed On Ballots

California lawmakers just decided that even people convicted in child sex abuse cases can still run for office, and the way it happened tells you a lot about who really holds the line on public safety.

Story Snapshot

A Fresno case of a man convicted over child sex abuse material sparked a bill to block all registered sex offenders from office.
Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria’s AB 2753 passed one committee, but died in the Senate after Democrats split over how “broad” it was.
Senator Scott Wiener pushed to limit the ban only to lifetime offenders; when that failed, the whole bill was killed.
A weaker bill moved instead, still letting people convicted of felony child sex crimes, including rape, run for school board or city council.

How One Fresno Candidate Turned Into A Statewide Fight

Rene Campos was not a name most Californians knew until he tried to run for Fresno City Council in 2023. Campos is a registered sex offender who was convicted in 2018 for possessing child sex abuse material, putting him on the state registry and triggering outrage when his campaign became public. Local leaders said bluntly that voters should never face that kind of choice on the ballot. Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria, who represents Merced and parts of the Central Valley, promised her community she would close that gap in state law.

At the time Campos launched his bid, California had no law stopping any registered sex offender from running for local or state office as long as they met basic age and residency rules. Soria’s response was Assembly Bill 2753, a simple idea that most people would assume already existed: if you are required to register as a sex offender, you cannot run for or hold public office in California. That blanket rule would have covered everyone on the registry, from lower-level cases to the most serious Tier 3 offenders who stay on for life.

What AB 2753 Actually Tried To Do

AB 2753 was written to apply to every person required to register under California’s sex offender laws, regardless of tier. The registry itself is already tiered. Tier 1 includes tens of thousands of people, like those convicted of indecent exposure or some lower-level child pornography crimes. Tier 2 includes more serious acts with minors, such as lewd conduct or non-forced sex acts with very young teens. Tier 3 covers the worst crimes: rape, sex crimes against children under ten, and sex trafficking of minors. Soria’s bill did not try to sort them. It drew one line: if the state still sees you as a sex offender, you do not get to sit in public office.

Supporters argued that this was basic common sense. Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza went to Sacramento to testify in favor, saying communities should not have to worry that someone convicted in child sex abuse cases could end up voting on budgets or school issues. The bill cleared the Assembly Elections Committee, which suggested at least some bipartisan or cross-faction support. For many voters, this looked like one of the rare times the Capitol was paying attention to victims and families instead of activists and academic arguments about “reintegration.”

How Senate Democrats Picked Apart The Bill

Everything changed when AB 2753 reached the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, chaired by Senator Scott Wiener. Wiener and others objected to the bill’s broad reach. They argued it did not clearly carve out so-called “Romeo and Juliet” cases, where two young people close in age have consensual sex but one ends up on the registry because of the legal age difference. They also raised a technical point: under California’s Penal Code section 290, judges can sometimes require registration for convictions that are not strictly sexual, which they claimed made registration a flawed shortcut for judging risk.

Wiener offered a deal. He said he would support the bill only if it applied to Tier 3 offenders, the group that includes life-time registrants for the most serious sex crimes. That compromise would have still barred people convicted of rape, child sex trafficking, and abuse of very young children from office, but left the door open for others who had served time and petitioned off the registry or were on lower tiers. Soria refused, saying that limiting the ban to just Tier 3 would not keep her promise to the community that had watched Campos announce his campaign and feared a repeat.

When “Overreach” Became The Excuse To Do Nothing

Once Soria rejected the Tier 3-only amendment, the committee moved to kill the bill in a near tie vote. That vote kept the law exactly where it was: with no automatic ban at all on registered sex offenders running for city council, school board, or even the state legislature, as long as they meet basic qualifications. One reporter covering the hearing spelled out what that means now. People who have been convicted of serious felony child sex crimes, including rape, are still allowed to run for public office, even after this supposedly “protective” debate.

AB 2753, Assemblywoman Esmeralda Soria’s bill aimed at preventing registered sex offenders from running for local or state public office in California, failed to advance Tuesday in the Senate Elections Committee.#AB2753 #CaliforniaPolitics #MercedCounty pic.twitter.com/0tg46Voosz

— Los Banos Enterprise (@LosBanosCaNews) June 30, 2026

Instead of AB 2753, the committee advanced a different, weaker bill authored by Assembly Member Don Addis. That bill was altered to avoid sweeping in “Romeo and Juliet” cases and other edge scenarios, but it ended up letting even people convicted of felony child sex crimes continue to seek office. Put bluntly, lawmakers chose theoretical concerns about rare teen relationships over the very real public anger around hard-core child sex offenders staying on the ballot. For many conservatives, that choice fits a pattern: California’s Democratic leadership talks about protecting victims, then backs away when it is time to draw bright lines.

What This Fight Reveals About Values And Power

The Campos case also shows how rare these situations are, and how much they still matter. Campos never gathered enough signatures to actually qualify for the ballot. Yet his attempt was enough to expose a hole in California law and to force a public debate on whether any sex offender should ever be trusted with public power. Victim advocates and pro-ban lawmakers answered “no,” and that answer lines up with the common-sense view of most parents and conservatives that some crimes should simply close certain doors forever.

Opponents in the Senate, led by Wiener, never pointed to a flood of harmless cases that would be unfairly caught by AB 2753. They focused instead on abstract rights questions and process worries. That may sound principled in a committee room, but outside Sacramento, it lands very differently. Voters see that, after all the talk, California still allows people convicted in child sex abuse cases to stand on a stage, ask for your trust, and write laws for your kids’ schools. For a state that claims to lead on “protecting the vulnerable,” that is a telling choice.