California Update: Cancelling a Debate . . . and a Labor Icon

- It's Thursday, March 26th, 2026, and you're listening to Matters of Policy and Politics. A podcast devoted to the discussion of policy research from the Hoover Institution and issues of geopolitical, national and local concern. I'm Jonathan Movroydis. Every month I have the privilege of moderating discussion on politics and the economic situation of the Golden State with two Hoover fellows and expert experts on these issues. Bill Whalen and Lee Ohanian. Bill Whalen is the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism and the regular host of the show. And Lee Lee Ohanian is a, is a Hoover Senior Fellow and professor of Economics at the University of California Los Angeles, both right for Hoover's web channel, California on your mind. Good day gentlemen. How are you doing?

- Good, good. Hi fellas. Good to see you.

- So let's get right into it. The California State legislator announced its intention to rename Cesar Chavez Day to Farm Workers' Day, which will be commemorated on Tuesday, March 31st. And this turn is follows the New York Times lengthy investigation that revealed that the late head of the United Farm Workers Union groomed and sexually abused underage girls whose families were part of the movement. He led the city of Fresno, which took 30 years to name a boulevard for Chavez. Took one day to rescind it and UCLA. I see Lee has removed Chavez's name from its Chicano studies department website. Gentlemen, let's talk about the Chavez's legacy Bill. Is this a case of delayed justice?

- It is delayed justice and kudos to the New York Times. It took five years of investigation of how to get this story to emerge. I think our listeners should understand that while this is a national story in terms of its implication, its impact, it is a huge California story in this regard in that, you know, Lee and I live in different parts of California, but you go to almost any corner of California, Jonathan, and you'll find Caesar Chavez in some form. You'll find his name on a street, you'll find his face on the side of a building, you'll find his school named after him and so forth. And so what you have seen now in California is just this very quick, very furious effort to literally scrub him out of existence. See, the closest thing Lee and Jonathan comes to mind is Bill Cosby in this regard, bill Cosby was on television for I think 12 years in the eighties and nineties for five of those years, he was the number one show in America. But go onto your streaming channels, down your TV and try to find the Cosby Show. He's gone. He's not coming back. And the same as having with Cesar Shove, he's now being eliminated. But Lee, here's the question I think we need to talk about. You can erase him in terms of taking his name off of structures, but you cannot take away his role in the history of California. And so Lee, I'm curious, especially since you're an academic, how exactly should California be teaching Lee US about Cesar Chavez? Because yes, there is the, the TRE side and the, and the stories of grooming and sexually abusing young girls. But he is part and parcel of a very important labor movement in California in the 1960s.

- It's now become a very complicated legacy. Chabos was particularly active in the 1960s and the 1970s when he organized farm workers into the United Farm Workers Union. And in addition to raising their pay, he was instrumental in reducing farm workers exposures to, to pesticides and other unfair working conditions. And excuse me, those were very important, really almost monumental achievements. And that is why he was revered so much in the state. It turns out like so many well-known people, he is a very imperfect person. He's, there's very, a lot of complications involved and in his personal life is not something that is to be at all celebrated. So what we're seeing now, bill, is yes, an attempt to scrubbing, scrubbing the name at my institution, UCLA. There's a Chicano Chicana Hispanic studies department. I don't know what that's going to be renamed as or what the plans are, but he is an important part of California history. He will continue to be, and I think the lesson here is that he was very far from perfect. There was some important contributions he made and there we also need to be honest about, about what else happened with Chavez. You know, bill, another aspect that hasn't ever really come to light about Chavez and this relevant for today is that the United Farm workers were essentially the informal ice back from 1960s and 1970s Chavez referred to those illegally in California, I mean using very derogatory terms. And it was all about economics. The more illegals there were, the more downward pressure there was on the wages that were paid to those in his union, you could just simply skirt the UFW United Farm workers higher illegals and pay them to much lower wage. So ironically, Chavez might be considered the Tom Holman of the 1960s.

- Yeah, you know, Jonathan, the timing of the Chavez News is curious in this regard. It comes right on the heels of the death of Jesse Jackson of the famous civil rights leader. And it comes right, while America is going through this cathartic exercise with John F. Kennedy Jr. And this, this miniseries on on television, it has people just going all crazy about how accurate it may or may not be. I mentioned this for this reason, Jesse Jackson likewise has a complicated legacy. Yes, a lot of involvement in civil rights and advancing a lot of good for society. But on his personal side, he did have a child outta Welock and his operation push was engaged for decades and shake down some business. It's not entirely pretty picture, we didn't spend much time talking about the Kennedy men and their, and their treatment of women, if you will. So it just, this is what has me. Interesting. So you look at say John the Lake John of Kennedy, and he's a sainted figure, but if you look at his personal life, it is not a pretty picture. And likewise, you look at Jesse Jackson and you look at the professional versus the personal side and it's complicated. And now we have Cesar Chavez in the same thing. But what strikes me here is with Chavez, just, you know, justice was delivered suddenly and just strongly in terms of just immediately, immediately just striking him, canceling him. It does show one other thing by the way, for as much as we complain about California government being slow sclerotic on this podcast, boy did they turn on a dime really fast and change Cesar Shop Fest Day to Farm Workers Day. They could not have done it any quicker and if only they would handle other problems as quickly.

- Gentlemen, let's talk about Lee's latest column in California on your mind about a 2016 tax hike to improve transportation in Los Angeles into an eight mile eight miles of bike corridor along the Los Angeles River. A decade on no single foot has been built and delays continuing cost continue to rise. It may cost as as much as $1 billion. Now Lee, let's start out with what went wrong and in the end, will it make any difference for LA traffic?

- Yeah, Jonathan, you know, we go back 10 years, LA county voters by almost 70% of the vote, agreed to raise their county sales tax and nine and a half percent that's, you know, one of the highest in the country because the money was going to go to improve transportation and, and obviously Angelenos suffer from enormous traffic ingestion, long commute times. There's poor road quality within Los Angeles County and all these things cost Angelina's substantial every year, higher car insurance, higher auto repair costs, wasted fuel, wasted time. So if you're an Angelina and you're willing to pay additional tax revenue for better transportation, you really want government to prioritize what's important and to do it on time and do it at reasonable cost. And this project is eight miles, eight miles for a bike path along the LA River and estimates could be as high as 1.2 billion. So when you look at that number, you just think like something's terribly, terribly wrong here. It's simply doesn't make sense to spend 1.2 billion for eight miles a bike path and the cost is escalated by over a factor of three. It was supposed to have been done by now, but when you get into complex projects, and this particular one turns out to be complex, I believe it needs utilities to be relocated to beliefs. I believe it needs to have some bridges built and may require acquiring land. All of these things make these projects over budget, they'd lay them, the environmental impact report was completed I believe, just at the end of last year. And I, I believe that the public comment portion, the a IR comments I think through the end of February. So this is not gonna get done anytime soon. It's not gonna get done for the Olympics, which of course it was supposed to have been. So Jonathan, when you look at this, you just have to ask, you know what Angelino is going to be supportive of one to $1.2 billion for any eight mile bike path. It's just, it's silly. And what I did in the column was to look at the alternatives and I did some backup of the envelope calculations. And what I found is that if that $1 billion was used to fix some roads ranging from ceiling roads that are in reasonably good condition to putting a top layer of asphalt on roads in in worse condition, you know, one could potentially address over 2000 miles of roads. So you think about, okay, eight miles of bike lane or we fix over 2000 miles of roads, you know, the answer is just obvious. And the question becomes, you know, what are the people in LA County thinking about this project? Why aren't they, why aren't they reacting? Like what I suspect is everyone else saying this is just outrageous. We shouldn't spend this money on Nick Mile bike path, but we are doing that and it is, it is going forward.

- Lee, could you put this in the context of Los Angeles and its fetish for bond measures to address social woes. The bike path was part of Measure M passed in 2016, half set sales taxes. You mentioned something like 70% support lease. So very popular idea, but obviously the execution's been terrible. But why does LA constantly do this, Lee go out and do bond measures and why do bond measures always tend to have these backfire? Kinda like Wiley Coyote buying something from Acme, if you will. What I'm thinking about in particularly is measure u la, which I think we should talk about, which is the 2022 measure. It's a so-called mansion tax and imposed a sales tax on property sales and has com just created a real hot mess in Los Angeles County because it turns out that, well it's not just mansions that get hit,

- You know, bill. That's right. The challenge LA faces is that there is a great need for capital investments, right? Capital investments, you know, are are, are are obviously multi-year projects. They last a long time. The way LA addresses that by saying, well hey, you know what, we'll take out, we'll, we'll we'll take out a a bond and then we'll spread the cost over time. And in principle there's nothing wrong with that particular approach. What is wrong is what happens when they actually dig into this and they say, oh it looks like it's gonna cost us 3, 4, 5 times more. It looks like it's gonna take us much longer to do this. And Bill, this also goes back to state bond measures we had in 2008. Was it Proposition one A that was the high speed rail pro that was 9.95 billion. And you know, we don't have any trains, we don't have any trains running 18 years later we've got various water bond measures that are moving at a glacial pace. So Calif, whether it's California State or CA or LA County or other forms of local government, there's a big disconnect between the idea and the execution. And some of this is tied to environmental challenges. California is very difficult to get things done because of California Environmental Quality Act and other laws. But you know, the solution is easy. You reform those laws,

- Right? The

- Question people need to ask is why aren't lawmakers making those? Why aren't lawmakers changing those laws so we can get things done on time and on budget?

- Yeah, and changing is the key thing to look at when it comes to ULA Lee, which one was passed, imposed a 4% sales tax on property sales between five and 10 million and a five point a half percent tax on sales above 10 million. It hasn't delivered the revenue is promised Lee. And also developers are now saying that it's impeding local housing construction. So along comes a reform idea put in front of the city council, which would have amended ULA by exempting apartments and condos and commercial and mixed use projects from the transfer tax for the first 15 years and the council wouldn't play ball league. So they're part of the problem. But I would draw your guys' attention to what could be a real knockdown drag out initiative fight this fall if it qualifies the Harvard Jarvis Howard Jarvis Tax Foundation has a, a proposed initiative. It's currently, I think looking at signer verification, what it would do, Lee, is it would cap transfer taxes like this at about, at roughly one 20th of 1% of the value of the property's value. LA's rate being about a hundred times that. And it would change the threshold for approving, this is the key here, Lee. It would've changed the threshold for approving special taxes like this in Los Angeles, which LA just thrives on. It would change the threshold from a simple majority to two thirds approval. Lee, that really changes how things are done in Los Angeles if it goes through,

- Oh huge. That would be a game changer. And given the way LA spends LA government spends, they would just fundamentally have to rethink how they do things. And, and you know, sometimes, sometimes one needs to confront a very tight budget to figure out that, hey, we just can't continue to burn through money like we have projects such as eight miles a bike path for potential as much as 1.2 mil billion would never even see the light of day. You know, the build the challenge California's faced right now, and, and what I'm going to say is really the fault of California voters is that they really don't have an adv, they really don't have effective advocacy in Sacramento from the standpoint of how many taxes they pay. It's, it's a super majority in the legislature, both the Senate and the legislative assembly. The state budget has just grown enormously in the last few years. There really is an an effective voice calling for tax relief. Taxes are very tilted towards the upper end of income distribution. And you noticed that that measure ULA was called the mansion tax. And again, that was, that was just a creative way I don't use create, and I use the word creative pejoratively here to try to extract more revenue from those with the ability to pay. And it hasn't generated nearly as much revenue as people had thought. And it had the, it had the, the consequence of really crushing multi-family housing.

- Yeah, it's a marketing PLO Lee. You can call it a mansion if you want to, but the reality with real estate, Los Angeles is a piece of property can be worth $5 million and as you said, it could be a multi-use condo or something like that. So it's not, you know, it's not the clamp, it's living in Beverly Hills.

- No, that's right. I mean, you know, not to get off topic too much, but I mean when I look at LA now and, and I don't live in Los Angeles, I, but I lived there for many years over different parts of my life. And I mean when I look at local governance, it just looks to me at the county level, at the city level, it just looks fundamentally broken to me. I don't know what LA is going to do going forward.

- And that's a question for the next mayor to solve. And Jonathan, we have polling on the mayor's race and we have polling on the governor's race and some polling on Kamala Harris and Gavin Newey. Do you wanna, you wanna walk us through it?

- Yes, bill some recent surveys about the state of the Golden State Golden State politics as a whole. First up the Berkeley IGS poll asking California Democrats for their 28 20 28 choice. The results Governor Newsom 28% Alexan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a OC 14%, Pete Buttigieg, 11% Kamala Harris, 9%, second up, another ley IGS poll, this one on the Race to Succeed Governor Newsom as the Governor of California results Steve Hilton, 17% Bianca's 16% Eric Swalwell, 13% Katie Porter, 13% Tom Steyer, 10%, no one else top 5%. And that includes former Vice president and Senator Harris. Third up a Berkeley IGS Los Angeles Times poll. This one on the LA Mayor's race results incumbent Karen Bass, 25% council member at Natia Raman, 17% in reality TV Star and Palisades fire victim Spencer Pratt at 14%. Aside from the obvious that former VP and California Senator Kamala Harris is chilling and all of them, although the last one doesn't really apply to her, what are some of the key takeaways from these surveys, bill?

- Well, let's start with the, the first one, this is the, the 2028 field. Kamala Harris at 9% is, is a humiliating number. She two points less than Pete Buttigieg, who is not a Californian. And here is Kamala, a Californian former vice president, former US Senator, former State Attorney General at 9%. I just wonder what her path is moving forward. Let's save the governor's race for last. Lee, I'm curious to your thoughts on the, on the mayor's race in this regard. Karen Bass is in an enviable position. I think at least the way this works is if you don't get 50% of the primary, then there is a, a runoff in November between the top two finishers. So she is at 25%, she has pretty much punched her ticket for November and LA has not booted in incumbent governor in 20 years. So you probably say that she's the betting favorite to get in. But Lee, you look inside the numbers and her numbers are positively Trumpian and that her approval rating is something along the lines of 36% and she's in the mid fifties. Lee, when it comes to a negative and just, you know, this is not a very popular mayor.

- Oh, not a popular mayor And Bill, you know, at some level I find it inconceivable that she could be reelected, you know, and just given her performance, the Palisades fire was devastating and it is on her, in my opinion. And that just because she was out of town in Ghana, you know, for for the, for the election of the Ghana president, not because she said she had no idea that there was fire risk, not because only because the fire department budget had been cut relative to what they asked for. Not only because the closest reservoir was completely drained waiting months and months for repair to the cover. It just goes on and on. And what has come out recently is that according to some whistleblowers, I mean these are allegations, but the allegations are that she directed how the after action report of the Palisades fire from the LA fire Department was supposed to be softened. And you look at any of these things, you just say, Hey, we're not, we are not, no, this is no longer an electable person, but she's leading at 25%. She's got I think union backers right now, which I suspect is one reason why she's at 25%. The numbers you're quoted 25% for bass, I think. Did you say 16% for Ramen?

- Uhthe Ramen had 17% Lee and then Spencer Pratt, who is the third individual in the race, he's the reality TV star. And his claim to fame here is that he was a, a victim of the Palisades fire. He comes in at 14%.

- 14%, yeah. And you know, it's interesting that he is not in a one or 2% category. He has been incredibly prominent on social media exposing a lot of the issues about the Palisades fire. And I believe he, he brought the light some of these whistleblower issues regarding the fire. But you know, bill, if you add all those, if you add those numbers up, it sounds like there are an awful lot of undecided voters. And when you get in a campaign with undecided voters, I think there's a lot of people living in Los Angeles, I think of some lover who are throwing up their hands and just saying, well what do we do here?

- I think the phrase you're looking for, Lee, is hold your nose and vote. And that's what you have here with Bass. Now, if LA politics were like statewide politics, and here Jonathan's we're gonna tie this into the statewide race, what you would have is the unions who support the mayor would spend their money two ways. One would be propping her up to make sure that she makes the runoff. And then Lee and Jonathan, they'd probably be spending their money trying to attack Spencer Pratt. Why? The more you attack him, the more sympathetic you make him. It builds up his numbers. And so therefore you would get him in November. And he is a reality star. I think we'd agree is kind of easy. Pickens just, he's not gonna get there. And this is where it connects to the governor's race in this regard. Jonathan mentioned the numbers here. There is of course the possibility two Republicans could make the runoff, I'll believe it when I see it, but still the possibility maybe a one in three chance of that happening. I think the scenario most likely Lee, is this Eric Swalwell received s e's blessing recently. He's now Labor's darling. So I think Labor's gonna spend money pumping up Eric Swalwell and Lee, they're probably gonna spend money trying to going after maybe Chad Bianco the, the second of two Republicans. Steve Hilton has 17% Bianco 16%. Why they would love to get a Swalwell Bianco referendum come November because Republicans just, you know, have a hard time winning statewide. The problem with this in both Los Angeles and the governor's race is the question of who wins. And can that person really move California in a different direction? Karen Bass struggles to deal with the LA economy. I don't see the other two people in that race doing that. And then Lee, you look at the governor's race right now, Eric Swalwell has no record really of anything in Congress other than impeaching Donald Trump. He is not really a problem solver. Tom Steyer the billionaire who's spending like crazy in ads, he's running wild on the Billionaire tax and wanting to change Prop 13 and so forth. Katie Porter, the third Democrat in the race could possibly benefit from this attack, but not hard to see that. So again, it's just the question of what direction California's go with, with whoever prevails in these two contests.

- Y and Bill in LA when Bass was first elected, sort of, there's an interesting little side story here. She ran against Rick Caruso and you know, Caruso was coming close in the polls just a couple of months before the election, you know, August, August, September. And at that point the Democratic party heavyweights and Caruso Caruso's Democrat. So you had two Democrats running in 22 and Democratic National Democratic Party heavyweights came out substantially for, for be Biden did. Kamala Harris, I believe made two trips to LA to campaign for bass. Hillary Clinton came out for bass and then there was a substantial separation between the two candidates. And Bill, you know, what I find interesting is, is the following Bass had no background to be mayor of LA I mean, you need to be a CEO to run such an enormous organization. You have to be a really good CEO. She, she had no background to

- To be good. Her back, her back, her background was, she was a longstanding member of Congress. She was actually, if you look on the short list of Joe Biden running mates in 2020, you'll see the name Karen Bes.

- Yeah, that's right. And you know, when she served in Congress, her areas were, I think, you know, foster children issues like this. She had never run an organization Caruso had. Caruso is a very successful CEO and I find it interesting that he's not running this time.

- But, but interestingly though, is he still engaged? If you follow his social media, which I do, he is out there constantly still lamenting the condition of Los Angeles. He's still very much in the game though. It's not clear what exactly he is doing. Now he does have a horse in the governor's race Lee and his horse is Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose State. And Mayor Mahan is one of the unnamed people that Jonathan referenced who cannot crack 5% in that poll. And this is a source of a big controversy right now in the governor's race. There was supposed to be a debate this week at the University of Southern California. And the controversy is this USC ended up inviting only six candidates. The debate, it left four candidates out. All four, the candidates who were not invited happened to be candidates of color. They were either African American or Latino or Asian. And it gets further complicated because USC decided, decided who made the cut and who didn't by using a formula. And the formula in Jonathan was essentially a combination of how much money you've raised and how long you've been running in the race. And it makes sense in this regard. If Jonathan Mon Reuters has been running for governor for a year and a half and he's at 2% in the polls and he doesn't have much money in the bank, it's pretty clear it's not gonna happen. So you shouldn't be on that debate stage. But where this gets controversial is they invited Mayor Mahan and the logic was, even though he is not doing well in the polls, he has not been running for long and he has raised a whole bunch of money in a hurry. So maybe he's still a player in the race. So USC had decide what to do and the candidates cried foul and USC ultimately caved and canceled the debate. I find this frustrating on a couple of levels. First of all, there's only one more scheduled candidates debate between now and the June 2nd primary. I believe it's on April the 22nd, it's in Fresno. So here we are in a, in a, in a very important race in California for the state's future and who's gonna run the state and people are getting scanned exposure. And meanwhile the question is who to blame for this? And enter Gavin Newsom who gave an interview recently where he was asked about why he's not really involved in the race and why these candidates aren't getting much traction. Lee, do you know what Gavin's excuse was?

- I missed this one Bill. I can't wait

- Is accused. It's Donald Trump. Donald Trump is 24 7 soaking up all the oxygen. Now I would note that on the day that the USC debate fell apart, if you follow Alex Michelson's CNN show in California, the first segment on that show was not about the debate, it was not about Donald Trump, it was about Gavin Newsom and an interview he did with Politico, yet another exercise of Gavin Newsom showing leg for 2028. The problem here is not Donald Trump. The problem is Gavin Newsom Lee. And that Governor Newsom is just constantly beating the drum, constantly making news in some way that raises the specter of presidential politics and it's drowning out the governor's race. Playing is simple. So he can't blame Trump entirely for this one. But Lee, you also have to blame the system. You have to blame the system in that we don't do enough debates in California. We don't have a media that really gives these candidates attraction they deserve. So getting back to your Shakespearean like analogy leaves that, you know, the fault lies not into the stars but ourselves. California's, you know, some guards, they had themselves to blame for the situation, not just the open primary but also, you know, the way in which the media cover candidates out here.

- Yeah, bill, you know, it is, it's very, very fractured and I think there's really two interesting forces that are going on. One is that when you look at Hilton and Bianco's popularity, you know, Hilton is not coming across really as a moderate in my opinion, which right I believe is probably you need to do in California if you're a Republican. So there is a lot of dis fast dissatisfaction in the state regarding our outcomes regarding how much money is spent regard by, by state, state, and local government regarding affordability, regarding energy costs, housing costs, job opportunities. I mean, you name it in California, you name what people really are worried about when it comes to their household budgets. California's just an incredibly difficult place to live for a lot of people, those who don't have really large incomes or large wealth positions. So I think there's a lot, I think there is growing dissatisfaction with the status quo and that the Democratic party, you know, I think the other force Bill is that the state democratic party is not, is not managed this very well. They need some Democrats to drop out and nobody's dropping out. Katie Porter is, I mean she, I believe she feels that it is her time she ran for Senator and lost to Schiff because Pelosi, Pelosi gave her support to Schiff and that was pretty much that. So I think Porter feels it's her time. You know, I don't know her personally, but what I know, what I know about her is that she's not, she's not gonna be dropping out anytime soon. Steyer spent Bill, what, 50 million, 60 million of his own money.

- It's hard to keep track because it's just like watching the national debt just keep flying by. The last I saw Lee was 40, but that was a couple of weeks ago. So yeah, it could be conservatively 50, let's say 50 for the sake of our, yeah, so maybe 60 is more realistic. So spending money, like it's, you know, going out in print

- He has, so he has no inclination to drop out.

- Right.

- And then, you know, I agree with you that Swalwell, he's the most likable politician of those three porter's. Not, in my opinion, Porter's not particularly likable particularly after that, particularly after she blew up on social media, you know, being abusive to her staff. Steyers did not come across to me as a very effective politician. But Swalwell does come across as a likable politician. SCIU has thrown their support behind him. There's probably never been another time in the history of California where elections are so determined by unions. So I would think Swalwell would break out of that group and then the USC cancellation, I think that was, I think that was the wrong decision. Bill. You're absolutely right. Becerra has been running for a long time. Betty y has been running for a long time. Tony Thurman's burning, running for a long time via s has been running for a long time. They're I think all 4% or under. So yeah, you just, realistically they, they do not have a chance. I'm curious about why V OSA has not gained traction. I mean, I've watched the Democratic debates. To me, he seems like the most sincere, he did some good things in Los Angeles. I suspect maybe that people look at him and think that his political days are over. He was mayor for LA I mean it's been a long time, 20 ish years. So I am intrigued by why he does candidacy is not caught fire. But those should not be on the floor, in my opinion. And the, you know, the poor USC political science professor just got a ton of hate mail and he has a very sensible formula, which is how much are you polling? How much money do you have? And, and have you been running, have you been raising money recently? And that's how Mahan got in. Mahan I think made the, the strategic mistake of not entering the race soon enough. He's, he entered what, about a month ago or six weeks ago. So that's why his numbers are small. I don't know if he'll get traction. He's done some good things in San Jose, in my opinion. He's a much more moderate Democrat than some of the others. So anyway, I think USC made a mistake there.

- Yeah, I, I think Lee, you can relate to the OC professor 'cause I'm sure you get all sorts of interesting response to, to what you write about for the Hoover Institution, other outlets. But lemme address a couple points of what you said Lee. First of all, Katie Porter, I would not drop out off of her herb very simply. For one reason, it's California history. Let's go back to 1998. In that year's governor's race, Lee. So you had in that race three Democrats vying Gray Davis, then Lieutenant Governor Jane Harin, Jane Harman, Jane Harmon, a city member of Congress, and a former chair of Northwest Airlines named Al Checky, who spent a lot of money and thus are in the unfortunate nickname Al Checkbook. Now what happened in that primary was Harmon, whose husband had tons of money via the Harmon Cardin fortune. She spent a ton of money, as did Checky attacking each other. And the beneficiary of this was Gray Davis, who while the two beat each other up, just kind of smiled and kept going about his business and ended up winning the primary. So I imagine that Porter's people, Lee, are thinking the same thing, that if this in the next two months becomes just, you know, sort of in the Simpsons, itchy and scratchy, where Steyer and Swalwell just spend their time beating up each other, perhaps she's a beneficiary of that. So that's point number one. The second point I'd raise is the advertising of these campaigns that, here I'm gonna go after Tom Steyer for a minute. Our, our friend of the $50 million spent so far in this ad Steyer is running ads where he is denouncing Donald Trump. Steyer is running ads where he says he's gonna tear apart ice. Well, he's the governor of California. He does not tear apart federal institutions. But the one ad that caught my attention, Lee, I wanna get your thoughts on this, it's an ad that Steyer did, which talks about affordability. And this is a bug feature in all Tom Starr ads where he's complaining about how high the cost of living is California. So Lee Tom Starr decided to address the issue of affordability by focusing on a gentleman named Pedro who lives Lee in Mill Valley, California. Now, why am I concerned about this? Because Mill Valley, California Lee, this is not exactly Main Street, USC Mill Valley Lee's, its average household is about $300,000 per house. But yet here's a gentleman named Pablo complaining about he's working hard, but he can't get by in Mill Valley. Well, yeah, it's just, it's a bad mix On top of that, Lee, the San Francisco Chronicle did some very good reporting. It actually reached out to the Steyer campaign and said, well who exactly is Pablo, where does he live? How did you come across him? And the Steyer campaign just tap danced and didn't give an answer. So I'm not saying that Pablo doesn't exist or it's a real story, but it's kind of, they're very play, they're playing fast and loose. And the point here, Lee, there's a very serious discussion to be had about affordability in California. But I think when you're trying to lament about the sad existence of Mill Valley, that's not a good way to go about it.

- I wonder if he came up with that one. You know, it's interesting, bill, in, in my opinion, Steyer has actually probably the best, certainly among the Democrats, he has the best plan for housing, which is to substantially expand the use of modular housing and factory built housing, right? Which are built at a much lower cost per square foot than traditional artisanal house building. But you know, he just, I just don't, he doesn't seem to be, to be politically savvy, which is why I, I doubt his candidacy will go anywhere. And when you look at all three of those people, Steyer, Swalwell and, and Porter at 10%, I don't see any of them dropping out. If one were to pull away and another would, and they were taking votes away from the other votes, poll numbers from the others, then maybe, but we're getting close enough to we're what, nine weeks away? Nine weeks, nine, 10 weeks away from, from the election, right? I mean, at some point pulling out and then suggesting to your file, you know, throwing your support to someone else, at some point it gets too late. People get disenchanted and they lose interest. So I find it, you know, I find it very intriguing and the state Democratic party, they should have been trying to, you know, if if I was advising them, they should have been having these conversations a long time ago. Yeah. And of course, when do you think, at what point, if any, do you think Newsom says anything? Does he just withhold, does he just withhold

- Support? I think he stays adamantly because when you have Pulse this close, any of these three people could emerge as the yeah, as the, the winner and serious egg on his face if he picks the wrong horse. So I suspect he'll say out of it and somehow he'll blame Donald Trump for it. But now I wanna touch on Swalwell for a minute before we move on. Yeah, maybe he wants a likability contest versus Katie Porter and Tom Starr. But Lee, I would say that's like putting the limbo bar about six edge, about 10 feet off the ground to clear that one. Not very hard. But getting back to my 1998 parallel, here's my concern with Congressman Swalwell. He is union's darling. And we have seen this movie in California before when a democrat comes to office and he is the union back candidate. Let's look at what Gray Davis did when he came into office in 1999, his first year in office Lee, he and the legislature sign off on a deal for public safety employees. It's a so-called 3% at 50 DO Lee, it's a pension plan. And what it said was, at age 50, you get 3% of your salary for every year work. So do the math here, Lee, you've been working at a job for 25 years. At age 50 you get 75% of your pension, you can get up to 90% of that, of your, of your final salary. This Lee puts California on a financial course it cannot sustain. So you look at the challenges facing the next governor, there is a budget system that just needs soar revision in terms of revenue, but also the financial model of California and this mountain of debt that we're sitting on. Someone's gonna have to go to unions and someone's gonna have to, you know, break bad news. Eric Swalwell is not gonna be that

- Person. No, a heavily union backed candidate will be awful for the state. Jerry Brown in his last couple of years tried to make some pension changes. He made some modest ones. He remarked that what he did get done was about all he could get through the state legislature. But the SEIU, the Service Employees, international Union, California Teachers Association, these are very powerful unions in the state, the Prison Guards Union. And when you look at compensation, not just wages, but also pension contributions and other non wage benefits, we just have expenses that we cannot realistically deal with without substantial tax increases going down the road. The, you know, we've talked about the billionaires taxed before and how that appears to be backfiring. That still might be on the, the, the ballot. This is a state that's been taxed about as much as you can at the top end. Realistically, if you do not wanna lose that tax base, he, I would be very concerned about a swallow wall governorship. The next governor needs to be someone who will actually not just rubber stamp what unions want. And at various times Jerry Brown did that. Jerry Brown at various times was that governor, he was willing to give substantial increases to the California Prison Guards Association. And the compensation of prison guards in California is I think about twice as much as the national average. So these are things that just are not affordable. And again, this goes back to my earlier comment about taxpayers really not having an effective advocate in SA in Sacramento.

- Yeah. One final thought on the, on the governor's race, Lee, you have, let's say five principles right now. You have Swalwell, Porter and Tyr on the Democratic side and Hilton and Bianco on the Republican side. When I went to work for Pete Wilson back in the 1990s when he was governor of California, he had people in various positions of state government, Lee, who had worked with him for the better part of almost 30 years. Wilson came into the state legislature in 1967 and then he was mayor of San Diego for 12 years and a US Senator for eight years. Then finally governor of California. So think about it as rings on a tree, as people who've been with him for various distances of time, he had a team in place when it came to office. All of these five people will be coming to Sacramento in the same position that they don't have established political aids around them. People experienced a running state government, so they're gonna have to pick and choose and where to hire. So Swalwell may be tapping into Gavin nuisance people. Well, okay, cue the joke about rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic. Who knows where Tom Starr goes for help. Katie Porter's probably gonna turn to people who like Elizabeth Warren and a OC 'cause that's her politics. I'm not sure where Steve Hilton and Chad Bianca would go. And some, you're gonna have very green, very inexperienced governors. And again, this is a problem for the state.

- Yeah, and you know, bill, even if, I mean at some point Becerra and V OSA and Betty and Tony Thurman dropout, I don't think that's more than maybe 9% among them. I mean, if, if they all drop out and that support is roughly evenly divided between Swalwell and Steyer and Porter, you really haven't changed much. I mean, the, the, the, the Democrats get a little bit closer to Hilton and Bianco, but who knows if the support for say Tony Thurmond or via Roso would go to Katie Porter or go to any of those Democrats, their supporters may, their, their supporters may simply become disenchanted. Not even, not even show up and vote. So, I mean, the Democrats gotta figure this out within I would think, what, within the next month, month to six weeks.

- Well, the problem is even if you drop out, your name can still stay on the ballot. We have this in initiatives all the time where the initiative just gets canceled. It falls apart and, but it's on the ballot, stills called a Ghost initiative. You'll have ghost candidates. But even if you're one of these one or 2% candidates and you drop out, Lee, the fact that most Californians don't know you're running for office. I barely sa I saw a be, I saw a Betty Yi ad on television yesterday. It's the first one I've seen. I think I saw a Tony Thermo a as well a few days before that. So it's kind of the equivalently of, of Tree falls in the forest and no one's around. Does it make sound. So I'm just not sure if any of these one or two percenters drop out. It's gonna really make that much of an impact. In other words, I think, I think the Die has already been cast.

- Yeah.

- Well, thank you gentlemen, as always informative and very interesting. Thank you Jonathan. Thank you Lee.

- Thanks Fellow, be yeah, we'll have a lot to be seeing in the next couple months.

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