What am I looking for in a new governor of California?
Like a large portion of the state's voters, I'm not exactly sure. But I've been watching and listening to your debate series for the last week, and I'm actually surprised by who I'm leaning toward.
I know who I am No I like it though.
Every time I see Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco with his Tom Selleck mustache, I can't help but think he should play a lawman on TV. A former member of the far-right Oath Keepers, almost all of his political opinions are bad:
The lack of affordable housing has nothing to do with homelessness, Bianco has said repeatedly. “This is not and has never been about homes. This is about drugs and mental illness,” he proclaimed Wednesday at the NBC4/Telemundo debate at the Skirball Center.
Bianco wants to get rid of (not reform) the California Environmental Quality Act – feared by developers everywhere – and abolish the California Coastal Commission, which for 54 years has guaranteed public access to beaches that would otherwise have been blocked by private development. When asked if he supports completing the high-speed rail linking Merced to Bakersfield, Bianco responded, “No, I'd rather arrest the people who stole our money.”
To which former Democratic U.S. Rep. Katie Porter chimed in: “That would be typical of you, doing something illegal,” alluding to the thousands of Riverside County ballots that Bianco confiscated in an attempt to raise fears about non-existent voter fraud.
I have always loved Porter and his famous white board. I don't think criticizing his staff or a journalist is disqualifying, and I'm glad he was able to joke about the leaked video that damaged his campaign. She concluded a recent ad by telling the crowd of followers behind her: “Now, could you please Get out of my shot?
However, I cringed at some of the things Porter said on the debate stage.
On Tuesday at East Los Angeles College, he called his opponents “guys” and chastised them for interrupting each other.
“Actually, you're interrupting them too,” Bianco complained. “I don't know why you want to act like you're not.”
“Oh, cowboy up, cupcake,” Porter replied.
At the Skirball Center on Wednesday, he repeated the insult during a debate about sanctuary cities, which Bianco opposes. “I think we should enforce existing sanctuary laws so there are no crazy cowboys taking the law into their own hands.”
Bianco suggested I tell that to a mother whose son was murdered by an undocumented immigrant. Porter, who is raising three teenagers as a single mother, said she didn't need any lectures from him about being a mother. “You could,” he said. The audience gasped.
Steve Hilton, the British-born, Trump-backed businessman turned Fox News host, became a US citizen in 2021. Who doesn't love an English accent? It sounds reasonable, brilliant and attractive, but deeply wrong.
Last month, in a radio interview on LAist, Hilton revived the creaky welfare queen trope. In a town near Modesto, he told host Austin Cross: “I was talking to some dairy workers there, who weren't making a lot of money, 50 grand, something like that. They were telling me that their girlfriends – none of them work – and they all make more money than them thanks to a variety of different benefits available, both federal and state.” And they all drive Cadillacs too. amirite?
Cross pressed him hard on whether Trump lost the 2020 election and Hilton refused to give a yes or no answer. That alone is disqualifying.
Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has been killing it on the debate stage, but his poll numbers are so low that the attacks he unleashed on the presumptive Democratic front-runner, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, probably aren't going to help. It does not seem that the heart of Villaraigosa, 73, is in this search.
I'm not sure what I expected from San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who at 43 is the youngest contender. A Silicon Valley favorite (and Mark Zuckerberg's former Harvard dorm roommate) who has made progress against homelessness in his city, he was hoping for someone with Pete Buttigieg's star quality. On the other hand, Mahan comes across as super competent, not at all ideological and a little rehearsed. (“My God, she's reciting her lines,” Hilton said during Wednesday's debate, in full mean girl mode. “Hilarious.”)
Honestly, it's a shame Mahan can't run for mayor of Los Angeles.
After former U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell imploded amid allegations that he is a serial sexual harasser, Becerra has emerged in polls as the Democratic candidate most likely to end up in a runoff with Hilton.
And that is why he has become the punching bag of other Democrats, who have hit him with accusations of how, under his tenure at HHS, the Office of Refugee Resettlement lost track of 85,000 migrant children, most of whom arrived in the country from Central America as unaccompanied minors between 2021 and 2023. The New York Times found that many of the minors, mostly teenagers, were exploited by sponsors, who illegally put them on working in various factories, food processing plants and as roofers.
In his defense, Becerra has said that HHS's legal authority ends once a child is matched with a sponsor, and the department has no legal way for sponsors to stay in touch.
“Calm down, Antonio, calm down,” Becerra said after Villaraigosa lunged at him. (Translation: “Take a tranquilizer”).
This brings me to billionaire Tom Steyer, who, as much as I hate to admit it, I've really liked. Yes, he is trying to buy the election. And yes, Californians have always despised billionaires with aspirations to run the state.
But, but, but… Steyer appears to be the most committed environmentalist of the group, despite, as his opponents repeatedly point out, having made part of his fortune investing in fossil fuel and coal companies and private prisons. He swears he has seen the light and Bernie Sanders supports him, although questions remain about Steyer's ties to Farallon Capital, the hedge fund he founded.
He is the only candidate actively advocating for closing the real estate tax loophole that has allowed commercial property owners to evade reassessment, thereby keeping their property taxes incredibly low. Closing this loophole, which voters narrowly rejected in 2020, would generate billions in new revenue for the state. He said he will vote in favor of the billionaire tax if he qualifies for the vote.
But he really won my heart last week when he declared at the Skirball debate that “ICE is a criminal organization. They're coming into our state, they're terrorizing people, and they're racially profiling people… I'm for abolishing ICE.” He promised to prosecute ICE agents and its leadership, “including Stephen Miller.”
Could it be that I'm falling in love?
Blue sky: @rabcarian
Rags: @rabcarian
