SACRAMENTO —  Democrats have a growing problem with union members and working-class voters, a building block that’s been foundational to their political success.

Lorena Gonzalez, head of the California Labor Federation, thinks she has at least a partial solution.

“We’ve got to listen to them,” she said, “and not talk about things that do not play in their life, or that they don’t identify with.”

That may seem as straightforward as a palm-slap to the forehead. (Well, duh!) But it’s not necessarily something union leaders have done in the past. Often, Gonzalez said, the top-down instruction to labor’s political troops has been, “This is our message. Go sell it.”

Vote Harris. Elect a Democratic Congress. Stop Trump.

But none of that, she said, resonated with the large number of Republican and conservative-leaning California voters who also happen to be union members in proud standing. So the Labor Federation tried something different this election, avoiding words such as “Democrat” and “Republican,” “Biden,” “Harris” and “Trump” in its political pitch.

“The usual go-to, the top-of-the-ticket discussion with our union members, wasn’t going to get us anywhere,” Gonzalez said last week in a lengthy conversation at the Labor Federation’s downtown Sacramento headquarters. “And it would just shut them down for everything else.”

California was an oasis this November in a largely barren Democratic landscape. Even as they lost the White House and Senate, the party flipped three House seats in the state, helping Democrats to an overall gain of a single seat and holding Republicans to the barest majority in decades.

Several of those California races were very close, so the Democratic success can be attributed to any number of factors. But at least some credit goes to the Labor Federation and its speak-no-partisanship strategy, which helped yield a significant number of crossover votes in a several closely fought congressional contests.

As Democrats spend the next few years soul-searching and wilderness-wandering, it’s an approach to winning union members and working-class voters that, Gonzalez suggested, is worth studying across the country.

As recently as 2012, Democratic presidential candidates could count on the support of about 6 in 10 voters from union households. (That’s how exit pollsters typically measure the sentiment of union members; they ask whether a voter or someone they are living with belongs to a union.)

That percentage has fallen in every election Donald Trump has been on the ballot, to just about 5 in 10 voters. The decline may not seem like a lot, but even a small shift matters in close elections — especially in battleground states with large union memberships, such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The California strategy grew out of a series of focus groups undertaken soon after Gonzalez, a former state lawmaker, became head of the Labor Federation in July 2022. “What did I want to do?” she asked, as the clang of a trolley car rang from the K Street Mall below. “Not talk to our members, but listen to them.”

Discussions were held throughout the state, in the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, Orange County and the L.A. region — home to the half-dozen most competitive congressional races in California. The groups were split among men and women, Democrats and Republicans; the separation was intended, Gonzalez said, to avoid turning conversations into political arguments.

The survey found that in virtually every district there were more self-identified Republican union members than Democrats — which didn’t necessarily match up with members’ voter registration. “Take back the House,” the national Democratic rallying cry, was obviously “not gonna fly,” Gonzalez said, nor would a message built around keeping a Democrat in the White House — even if both were seen as being to the greater advantage of union members.

Instead, strategists drew on something that emerged from those focus groups: a fundamental belief in the value of diligent labor. “We would ask questions like, ‘What do you like about your union?’ ” Gonzalez recollected. The oft-heard response: “My union fights for me because I work hard.”

That, in turn, led to a campaign focused on the failings of the 118th Congress, historically one of the least productive in history. The message was simple. If you performed as poorly on the job as your representative in Washington, you’d be fired.

Variations on that theme were repeated to tens of thousands of union members in each of the six competitive districts. In mailers. In discussions on front porches. On refrigerator magnets sent to their homes. “If I got as little done at my job,” the magnets read, “this refrigerator would be empty.”

Care was taken to include documentation from the likes of CNN and Fox News, lest attacks on the do-nothing Congress came across as a one-sided attack.

(It was a somewhat tougher sell in the open-seat contest to replace Democrat Katie Porter, but union strategists counted on Republican Scott Baugh being tainted by association with the Republican-led House. Democrat Dave Min narrowly won the Orange County contest.)

Rather than telling union members who they should vote for — the usual approach — “we left them to come to their own conclusion,” Gonzalez said. Not by making a partisan argument, but appealing to their work ethic.

It seemed to work. Not perfectly. Democrats knocked off Reps. Mike Garcia in northern L.A. County, Michelle Steel in Orange County and John Duarte in the Central Valley. (The latter two by not much). They failed to oust Republicans David Valadao in the Valley and Ken Calvert in the Inland Empire.

But the strategy was successful enough that Gonzalez plans to sit down with national labor leaders for a debriefing.

It was admittedly difficult for the self-described “bleeding-heart liberal” not to press the hair-on-fire argument about the dangers of Trump and the need for a Democratic check on his authoritarian impulses. Typically, Gonzalez said, “That’s how we talk.”

The approach to California union members — more a nudge than a shove — also had to be sold to skeptics. There has long been a sense within the labor movement that if “we just … ‘educate’ them enough,” she said, “they’ll be good Democrats.”

But that bespeaks an arrogance the party will have to overcome if it’s going to stanch the bleeding among union and working-class voters. Only then will Democrats end their exile in Washington.

Tornado alley it’s not, but a section of California was hit Saturday with a rare tornado that has been blamed for injuring five and flipping vehicles as a storm moved across the state.

A tornado in Scotts Valley, a small city about 6 miles north of Santa Cruz “threw multiple cars off the road,” the city police department said on Facebook, where it posted images of overturned vehicles.

Police Capt. Scott Garner said five people, most in vehicles that were tossed or moved by the tornado, suffered injuries, but none of them were major. Three were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries while two refused treatment at the scene, he said.

Photos shared by the Scotts Valley Police Department showed cars strewn about on and around Mount Hermon Road, the city’s main street and retail district, where the tornado touched down in the afternoon.

Officers responding to the scene were called to reports of a multi-vehicle collision, but were astonished to see instead the aftermath of a tornado, including bent utility poles and extensive property damage, Garner said.

“You can imagine officers responding finding telephone poles at angles,” he said. “They stumbled into that.”

The National Weather Service issued a local storm report that confirmed a touchdown in Scotts Valley at 1:40 p.m. It does not estimate the tornado’s strength, a task completed in person when it’s safe to do so.

California averages only about 11 tornadoes each year, with the northern Central Valley being the part of the state most likely to see one, according to the weather service.

Earlier Saturday, the weather service had issued a tornado warning for San Francisco shortly before 6 a.m., but it was canceled after no tornado organized in the area.

The warning was the first for San Francisco city and county at least since the inception of reliable weather records in 1950, said Nicole Sarment, a weather service meteorologist in the Bay Area.

In Scotts Valley, the area of Mount Hermon Road was expected to remain closed at least through Sunday morning as authorities assess damage and Pacific Gas & Electric repairs infrastructure and restores electricity, police said in a series of statements on Facebook.

On Saturday evening, more than 8,800 utility customers in Santa Cruz County were in the dark, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

The tornado formed amid a potent Pacific storm that helped to transport an atmospheric river over the northern half of the state, with a “cold frontal rain band” bringing up the rear Saturday, forecasters with the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes said in a statement.

In the small city of Mill Valley, about 14 miles north of San Francisco, police said floodwaters stranded several vehicles. In Novato, about 28 miles north of San Francisco, there was a citywide power outage amid storm-felled utility polls and power lines, the city said on social media platform X. It urged residents to “stay home.”

The center rated the atmospheric river at moderate to strong, or AR2 to AR3 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the strongest.

The weather service office in Monterey blamed “a rather potent frontal passage” for the unsettled weather associated with the tail end of the atmospheric river, which included hail, ripping winds, and nearly 2 inches of rain in places, along with snow inland.

The weather service office in Reno, Nevada, forecast as much as 20 inches of snow in the Lake Tahoe and Mammoth Lakes areas of California between Friday and Saturday.

For the Bay Area, the forecast was for a night of freezing temperatures, bottoming out near 30 degrees, followed by “sunny skies” on Sunday, the weather service said in its forecast discussion Saturday.

Two cases of bird flu have been reported in California’s San Joaquin county, according to local health officials.

According to a press release issued on Friday and reported by the Sacramento Bee, health officials from San Joaquin county public health services said that both cases occurred in farmworkers who had had exposure to infected animals. Both individuals have exhibited mild symptoms and are recovering, officials said, adding that there are 34 confirmed cases in total across California.

In a warning issued on Facebook, health officials said that bird flu is “spreading in some farm animals like poultry and cows” and urged residents to take precautions to prevent the spread of the disease.

The precautions included using protective gear when working with poultry, dairy cows or other animals that could be infected, as well as when handling raw and unpasteurized milk.

Suggested protective gear include respirators approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, goggles or face shields, coveralls, head cover, boots and gloves.

Across the country, there are currently a total of 60 confirmed cases of bird flu. Although the majority of the cases are coming from California, other states with confirmed cases include Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Texas and Washington, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Symptoms of bird flu – which stems from a type of influenza A virus – include pink eye or conjunctivitis, fever, fatigue, cough, muscle aches, sore throat, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, stuffy or runny nose as well as shortness of breath. The majority of the recent cases of bird flu have caused pink eye and mild respiratory symptoms, Cleveland Clinic stated on its website.

Treatments for bird flu typically consist of antiviral drugs including Oseltamivir, Peramivir or Zanamivir.