Californians rank housing as their biggest concern — and Sacramento politicians seem determined to keep it that way.
To be sure, there are much-hyped new bills meant to speed up new construction — but they favor high-density around transit stops while imposing taxes on homes in places where people have to drive to get around. Read more
El Segundo’s Chris Pimentel may be California’s happiest mayor. As his counterparts in Los Angeles, San Jose and San Francisco struggle with budgetary nightmares, Pimentel has at his disposal rising revenues, a booming job market and an energetic business community.
In the coming weeks, the conservative media will have a field day thanks to the seemingly strong primary election performances of Republican Steve Hilton in the race to become the next governor of California and of Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayor’s contest.
Hilton, a former advisor to David Cameron in the UK, as well as a Fox News commentator, is certainly a brainy candidate, with personal appeal and a constructive platform. Pratt, a former reality-TV star, has run an eye-catching campaign.
But however much the Right will enjoy the notion of a Californian rebellion against its entrenched establishment, it very much remains a one-party state. Conservatives may party during the so-called “Pratt Summer” or tout “the revenge of the bourgeoisie” but the Republicans’ chances are between middling to non-existent.
It’s not even certain that either of them will reach the general election. California’s insanely slow-moving vote count leaves the possibility that one or another will fall behind once the union-led “ballot harvesting” of late ballots alters the result. This has become increasingly common, with conservative candidates often eliminated weeks after election day.
Indeed, political, demographic, and economic trends are against the Republicans’ chances. The state that spawned Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan is now reliably Democratic. Overall registration in the state is almost two to one Democratic over Republican. There has not been a Republican elected statewide for two decades.
California’s demographic profile is increasingly bad for Republicans. The state has been consistently losing its Anglo population, as well as the middle class, particularly families of all ethnicities, to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Those most likely to stay, notes the Public Policy Institute, tend to be young and often underpaid professionals, the very class that elected New York mayor Mamdani, public workers and their wards.
Long gone are the days when California was a job-producing machine in everything from manufacturing to logistics as well as tech. These constituencies were the ones who cared most about brutal income taxes, the nation’s highest unemployment (as well as youth unemployment), unaffordable housing, poor roads, mediocre schools and ever fewer good jobs. Increasingly, these constituencies and the companies they work for are just choosing to leave.
In the governor’s race, Hilton will also be up against the full power of current governor Gavin Newsom’s political machine, largely financed by public unions and Left-leaning oligarchs. Shawn Steel, the state’s irrepressible GOP National Committeeman, told me that Hilton’s financial resources are paltry compared to what his thoroughly mediocre opponent, former Biden cabinet member Xavier Becerra, will be able to draw on.
Read the rest of this piece at Yahoo News.
The piece first appeared on Telegraph.
RealClearInvestigations Podcast hosts, J. Peder Zane and James Varney speak with Joel Kotkin about his recent article for RCI exploring how and why fascism hasbecome a buzzword of American politics.
Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.
Homepage image: composite of election results from Wikimedia data accessed June 7.
California, a place not known for its psychological normality, went crazy last night. Two separate elections show the political direction of travel for the state, with many of the details still far from certain. In a gubernatorial race that was always slated to be close, overnight results point to Republican Steve Hilton narrowly leading Democrat Xavier Becerra, while Left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer trails in third. Read more
Tom Steyer proves one thing about California politics: As bad as things get, they can always get worse.
After Jerry Brown, a true intellectual whose ideas were often at odds with reality, we got Gavin Newsom, an ideological fashionista driven by vainglory and ambition.
The two combined to create a California reality that worked for their friends — greens, oligarchs, nonprofits and public employees — at the expense of pretty much everyone else. Read more
Reality TV stars have been fixtures of Los Angeles for decades, but now there’s a chance one could run the city. Spencer Pratt — who appeared in The Hills, among other series — may not succeed in his mayoral bid, but his candidacy has produced a social media campaign that is taking apart the progressive rot long embedded in LA’s politics.
In the last decades of the 20th century, California reinvented a brash new capitalism that created new, more innovative archetypes. Today, some of those companies – Apple, Google and Facebook – are among the largest in the world, with assets greater than those of all but a few countries.
California is a beacon for smart people. Yet we seem to excel in producing policies that hurt ourselves.
This is particularly clear in the present energy crisis. The showdown in the Strait of Hormuz has raised oil prices worldwide, but it is also unmasking the sheer idiocy of California’s current energy regime. Read more
The fall of Eric Swalwell following accusations of sexual misconduct has turned the California governor’s race on its head. To pick up Swalwell’s scraps of support and funding, each contender is now scrambling to appear more progressive than their rivals. A hard-Left candidate winning the Democratic nomination seems increasingly likely, and the result could have a devastating impact on the state economy — especially Silicon Valley. Read more
The migration of people, money, and companies out of California has evolved into a clear challenge to the economic future of the Golden State. Terrified by the loss of so much revenue — an estimated $91 billion between 2019-23 — the state, as well as other blue outposts, is looking at ways of forcing people to stay. California lawmakers have proposed further targeting of the ultra-rich, but the upper-middle classes are also at heightened risk; like the billionaires, they are seeking to move away to escape the taxman’s grip. Read more
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