The laws stating that it's just a misdemeanor.
Under existing state laws, soliciting or agreeing to engage in an act of prostitution is defined as a form of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor. It's still a misdemeanor if the person solicited was a minor *and* the person doing the solicited "knew or reasonably should have known" that they were a minor, but in that case it's made a little tougher by a mandatory minimum of two days in county jail and a $10,000 fine. Two days doesn't sound like much, but that mandatory minimum is significant because it takes "no jail time" off the table, and this is still for a misdemeanor.
Keep in mind this is
only for soliciting. No actual contact whatsoever, and for that matter no proof of actual intent. There isn't an existing law that specifically covers "purchasing" a child, that is simply considered a form of soliciting prostitution.
Now, the context this is being brought up in the news is that there's a bill in the California state Senate which would create a new criminal offense specific to this. SB 1414 is a bipartisan bill with the primary sponsors being one Republican and two Democrats, and the original bill that they proposed would have made solicitation a felony and eliminate the "knew or should have known" element, and impose a mandatory minimum sentence of two years and sex offender registration for ten years.
What's being argued about is that the Senate Public Safety Committee, which the bill falls under, pushed through an amendment to the bill under consideration which would instead make it a "wobbler", i.e. a misdemeanor under some circumstances and a felony under other circumstances. Specifically, the committee's version of the bill would make solicitation of a child
fifteen or younger a felony in all cases, would apply the mandatory prison sentence only in cases where there was a previous conviction, and would retain the
status quo misdemeanor statute for those between sixteen and eighteen. The bill's original sponsors are against this, so they're kicking up a lot of media attention.
This is not a "liberals versus conservatives" thing; again, two of the three sponsors of the bill are Democrats, and the committee's version
still makes it a felony under the circumstances people are thinking of. It's not as harsh as the original but it is quite unreasonable to call it 'soft on crime'.