California's Democrat-controlled Senate just killed a bill that would have barred registered sex offenders from holding public office — while quietly advancing a separate bill with amendments that carve out exceptions for people convicted of specific sex crimes against minors.

The message to ordinary Californians is clear: your legislature thinks the right of a child sex offender to seek office deserves more protection than your right to be represented by someone who isn't on the sex offender registry.

The saga started when Rene Campos, who pleaded no contest in 2018 to a misdemeanor charge of possessing child sexual abuse material, announced a run for Fresno City Council. He couldn't collect the 20 signatures needed to make the ballot. But his campaign exposed a glaring gap in California law: nothing bars registered sex offenders from running for office.

Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria introduced Assembly Bill 2753 to close that gap, proposing to ban all registered sex offenders from seeking state or local office. The bill passed the Assembly with bipartisan support. On Tuesday, it died in the Senate Elections Committee.

The committee, chaired by Senator Scott Wiener, argued the bill was too broad. California's three-tier sex offender registry includes Tier 1 offenders, who register for at least 10 years, Tier 2 at 20 years, and Tier 3, who remain on the registry for life. Senators wanted the ban limited to Tier 3 offenders only. Soria refused.

"I was not willing to make additional amendments to this bill," Soria said. "I made a promise to my community that I would do everything in my power to ensure they would never have to go through something like this again. Accepting additional amendments to this bill would have jeopardized that promise."

Campos celebrated the bill's death as a constitutional triumph. "The First Amendment does not belong to the comfortable," he told Fox26 News. "Today, the Senate Committee did what Fresno refused to do. It stopped and remembered the Constitution."

Here's where the story gets worse. While AB 2753 died, a second bill — Assembly Bill 2691, introduced by Assemblywoman Dawn Addis — advanced through Wiener's committee last week. That bill bars individuals convicted of specific felony sexual assault or human trafficking crimes from running for office. But before advancing it, the committee amended the definition of "sexual assault" so that convictions for sodomy, oral copulation, or sexual penetration against minors under certain conditions are excluded — meaning those offenders could still run. The Daily Caller reported that Wiener has been accused of adding those exceptions to further narrow the bill's scope.

Fresno City Council President Nelson Esparza called the committee's decision on Soria's bill "a gut punch for our community in Fresno."

Soria's bill may have been broad. That's a legislative judgment. But the same committee that killed a blanket ban on sex offenders in office then carved holes in a narrower bill to protect people convicted of specific crimes against children. The question for Californians: who, exactly, is the Senate Elections Committee working for?