Child sex offender drops outrageous claim after California bill to ban him from office fails

A registered child sex offender in California who sparked outrage earlier this year with his failed bid for Fresno City Council is celebrating after state lawmakers killed a bill that would have barred him — and others like him — from running for public office.Rene Campos, who failed to collect the 20 signatures needed to qualify for the Fresno City Council ballot in March, hailed the demise of the legislation as a victory for constitutional rights.“The First Amendment does not belong to the comfortable,” Campos told Fox26 News.“Today, the Senate Committee did what Fresno refused to do.

It stopped and remembered the Constitution.”Campos’ comments came after Assembly Bill 2753, which sought to prohibit registered sex offenders from seeking local or state elected office in California, failed Tuesday to advance out of the Senate Elections Committee for a vote to become the law of the land.The high-profile legislation was introduced by Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria after Campos’ controversial campaign drew statewide and national attention, with critics demanding California close what they called a loophole that allowed registered sex offenders to seek elected office.Under the proposal, all registered sex offenders would have been barred from running for office, regardless of which tier of California’s sex offender registry they fell under.The measure ultimately stalled after Soria and members of the Senate Elections Committee, chaired by Sen.Scott Wiener, failed to reach a compromise.Committee members argued the bill was too broad because California’s three-tier sex offender registry includes offenders convicted of lower-level crimes.Senators proposed limiting the ban to Tier 3 offenders, who must remain on the registry for life, but Soria rejected the amendments, arguing they undermined the purpose of the legislation.California’s registry places offenders into three categories based on the severity and frequency of their crimes.Tier 1 offend...