Bob Egelko reports in the SF Chron:

The California Democratic Party is calling for abolition of the death penalty, defying conventional political wisdom and raising an issue that its candidate for governor might prefer to avoid.

Democratic leaders have previously passed resolutions opposing capital punishment, but the party says its records indicate it has never enshrined the position in its platform - the formal statement of its principles - until this year.

Those of us who fight in the trenches have been painfully aware for many years that the Democratic leaders in the California Legislature have been doing everything they can to block the enforcement of a law that the people overwhelmingly favor. So now we'll give them a point for candor by putting it in the platform. That may help to explain to regular folks that, in California, a vote for any Democrat for the Legislature is a vote for the murderers, regardless of the individual candidate's stand.

Will that actually cost them any seats? Probably not in the current gerrymandered state. Next year, though, we get a new apportionment through a new commission. If that really does produce competitive districts, as its backers planned, the will of the people may finally break through.