Is California Shifting to the Center?
In the election’s wake, California remains part of the Left Coast, clinging to the western edge of Trump world, more an outlier than a trendsetter. Nearly 60 percent of Golden State voters picked the homegrown presidential candidate, and solid majorities voted “blue no matter who” in other races, as well.
And yet, the election shows that California may be turning a somewhat lighter shade of blue. More than 70 percent of voters—and a majority in liberal San Francisco—backed Proposition 36, the ballot measure that toughens the state’s lenient criminal-sentencing laws. In Los Angeles, voters tossed out the George Soros-backed district attorney George Gascón by a remarkable 20-point margin, replacing him with Nathan Hochman, who ran as an independent but had run for statewide office as a Republican as recently as 2022. In Alameda County, home to Oakland, voters recalled yet another Soros district attorney, Pamela Price. Oakland voters, disgusted by rising crime, also recalled Mayor Sheng Thao. Both lost their races by a two-to-one margin. These votes followed the recall of San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, as well as several radical school board members, in 2022.
Nor are these the only signs of California’s race to the center. A handful of Republican representatives may have managed to win reelection this week despite being heavily outspent by Democrats. Results in high-tech California are reported at horseback speed. The Republicans may even pick up the seat currently held by Representative Katie Porter (who was not running for reelection).
Two issues seem to be driving California’s shift: crime and the weakening economy. In both areas, voters seem to have soured on progressive “solutions.” Not only did voters overwhelmingly support strengthening criminal sentencing; they also rejected several left-wing ballot measures, including one that would have raised the minimum wage to $18 an hour (Prop. 32) and another that would have repealed the state ban on local rent control laws (Prop. 33). Economic reality is suddenly back on the agenda in the Golden State.
The state certainly needs a dose of reality. Once the nation’s economic trendsetter, California now consistently lags the U.S. and is increasingly dependent on a small group of tech firms, their investors, and employees to drive what economic dynamism remains. Research from the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University suggests that, since 2019, the state has either lost jobs or failed to add them in virtually every basic industry, from manufacturing to finance to business services. A mere 5,400 private-sector jobs have been created since 2022, with only government-funded education and health care showing significant job growth.
Virtually all of California’s economic bulwarks are crumbling. Entertainment, L.A.’s signature industry and a key funding source for progressives, is losing jobs, including at Disney’s formerly golden Pixar Animation Studios, as film production moves to other states and countries. California’s once-promising space industry was also kneecapped by SpaceX’s recent departure to Texas.
Read the rest of this piece at City Journal.
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 and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.
Homepage photo: Cory Doctorow via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.
