Pity Us: One of These People Is Going to Be California’s Next Governor
[guest post by JVW]
We Californians go to the polls tomorrow for our primaries. You out-of-staters may recall that a few years back we voted to go to a “jungle primary” (officially known as the “top-two system”) in the Golden State, where all candidates appear on a single ballot irrespective of party affiliation and where the top two finishers advance to the November election. This is the system that gave us the 2016 Senate election of Democrat Kamala Harris versus Democrat Loretta Sanchez. This year will likely see another November choice between two Democrats, with incumbent Dianne Feinstein squared off against hard-left challenger Kevin de Leon. But the real action this year is in the race for governor: a spate of Democrat leftists of various flavors, with an open question as to whether a Republican can sneak into the top two in a divided electorate. Here are the key players:
Gavin Newsom – D, current Lieutenant Governor
Newsom has been leading the polls most of the way and is generally considered to be a shoo-in to make the top two runoff. As such, I am going to keep my powder dry for the time being. Rest assured I will have a great deal to say about this particular candidate as the November election draws closer. In the meantime, just take a look at this pretty boy and ask yourself: If you are casting Gavin Newsom in a movie would you cast him as the crusading hero out to save the day, or the sneaky, slimy villain who hides his evil beneath a layer of smarmy charm? I know which one I would pick.
Antonio Villaraigosa – D, former Assembly Speaker, former Mayor of Los Angeles
Most of us can remember the early days of his first term as mayor back in 2005 when Villaraigosa was considered a rising star among Democrats, a party depressed and leaderless nationally after having lost to George W. Bush in the 2004 election. The thought at one time was that the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles in modern times would easily win re-election as mayor in 2009, then parlay that success into winning the governorship in 2010. Come 2016, the thinking of the time went, he would be a successful second-term governor and a serious candidate for President to succeed Barack Obama — the first African-American President being followed by the first Mexican-American President. But oh my how reality had an ugly way of intervening. By the time he ran for reelection four years later, the good progressives at Los Angeles Magazine were describing his first term as a failure. It turns out that Villaraigosa’s charm and energy served to mask the fact that he was almost congenitally incapable of focusing on a task long enough to see it all the way through (he was often mocked as the ADHD mayor); he liked cutting ceremonial ribbons and making grandiloquent cheerleading speeches a whole hell of a lot more than he cared for the nuts and bolts of running a city government. Although he won reelection, his political momentum came to a dead halt and he was shoved to the sidelines as Jerry Brown took control of the state party.
Once derided for being an insatiable ladder-climber who prioritized positioning himself to grasp the next rung rather than focusing on the job at hand, Villaraigosa used his five years in the wilderness since leaving City Hall in 2013 to reposition himself as the sensible Democrat, much in the mold of Jerry Brown. While California Democrats fall all over themselves to endorse the idea of single payer healthcare (which they deceptively like to call “Medicare for All”), Villaraigosa is the one reminding progressives that it is an unbelievably expensive proposition, and that spending on healthcare may crowd out other progressive priorities such as education, green energy, and shoring up pensions. He may end up being the man who has been left behind by his party, though if he survives the primary tomorrow he is frankly the best option for keeping Newsom out of the governor’s office.
John Chiang – D, current California State Treasurer, former California State Comptroller
Chiang is the most puzzling of the candidates in the race. Once a green-eyeshade numbers-please frankly boring type of political accountant, he has suddenly made a hard-left turn and is trying to compete on Newsom’s turf for the adulation of the progressive crowd. The man who as comptroller once warned the state about the exploding costs of state employee’s health care obligations is now a proponent of single-payer, though he acknowledges that he has yet to see a rational idea for how to fund it. A guy who spent the Schwarzenegger and Brown years earnestly trying to keep the income equal to the outflow now seems to think we can jack up spending on education, health, all while protecting the golden handshake of public pensions. This will be accomplished by enacting “sensible reforms,” as if there has always been an easy and painless common-sense solution that we are overlooking. Honestly, I don’t believe I have ever seen a politician — what’s the voguish word to use? oh yes — “evolve” so much on a fundamental issue since Arnie decided that bond money was a gift to ourselves from the future” or whatever nonsensical phrase he used. Chiang deserves to finish well in the back of the pack.
Delaine Eastin – D, former California Superintendent of Public Education
She left this office in 2003, and Lord knows what she has done for the last 15 years. Her campaign is a hodgepodge of ideas from the Bernie Sanders playbook for how California can tax and spend itself into oblivion even faster under her than under Newson or Chiang. The less said about this obvious lunatic the better. She’s currently polling about as well as Samantha Bee is in the Kushner residence.
John Cox – R, businessman and broadcaster
A failed candidate for office in Illinois who relocated to Rancho Santa Fe and is now trying his luck in the Golden State. Endorsed by President Trump, Cox is fighting with Villaraigosa for the second spot in the November election. He has an agenda that seems almost certain to me to be a loser in the general election — imagine Bill Simon or Meg Whitman running as a America First populist in deep blue California. Heaven knows that California is overdue for a populist revolt against the Hollywood-Silicon Valley-San Francisco-Public Employee-Green five-headed hydra that is running the state, but I’m just not sure that Cox is the most credible of candidates for the task.
Travis Allen – R, State Assemblyman
Probably has the most principled conservative campaign of any candidate, but of course these days in California that will get you absolutely nowhere, kind of like being the most progressive politician in Wyoming. If Trump were to appoint a Californian to serve in his administration, he could do a lot worse than Allen, though I suppose Cox is probably more to his liking, being a fellow ex-Democrat and all.
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As I mentioned earlier, the race appears to be between Villaraigosa and Cox to see who will go up against Newsom in the fall. As has been discussed on this blog many times before, the [William F.] Buckley Rule states that one should vote for the most conservative candidate who stands a legitimate chance of winning. There might be a clever argument to be made that Cox could pull off an amazing shocker against Newsom and win on a forgotten man populist surge, but I think the more likely scenario in a state where Hillary Clinton beat Trump by over three million votes is that Newsom beats Cox by about the same 60% to 40% margin that Brown bested Neel Kashkari by four years ago. Villaraigosa on the other hand could unite the final few remaining relatively-sane Democrats with some Republicans scared to death of what Newsom has in store, and make a race of it. In addition, a Newsom-Villaraigosa race might end up exposing and deepening some of the fissures that exist in the state’s Democrat party: Northern California vs. Southern California, entitled white males vs. scrappy minorities, progressives vs. pragmatists, and other interesting possibilities. I still haven’t yet figured out how I am going to mark my ballot.
– JVW