Gather around children, Let's hear the sordid tale of Republican incompetence. A Democrat elected to what should be a Republican state Senate seat, and a turn on a dime conversion from Democrat to Republican. This is the story of Senator Marie Alvarado Gill. Now her district is the fourth state Senate district, and this is kind of a new state Senate district.
It's a monstrously large state Senate district. It covers. Basically, one of the things for us to remember as Californians is that our state senators in California represent an absurdly large number of people. We have forty million Californians and forty state senators, so each state senator represents a very
large number of people. And the state Senator Alvarado Gill her district encompasses a huge portion of the California Nevada border, just this enormous mountainous area with very few residents, and then a good chunk of the North Valley, so the northeastern portion of the Central Valley, the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains, all of Death Valley, portions of Stanislaus Calveris, Amador, El Dorado, Placer Alpine to Illumini, Mariposa, Madera, Mono, and Inyo Counties
a right. So it's this geographically monstrously large district, but this is a district that should be Republican. Should be Republican. This district voted for Trump fifty one to forty six in twenty twenty. This district voted for John Cox for governor in twenty eighteen, fifty six to forty three. It voted for Brian Dolly for governor most recently fifty nine to forty. This is a very conservative leaning district. In twenty twenty two, this seat was up for reelection. Now,
this seat was largely created anew after the redistricting. We have redistricting that happens every ten years. Per the twenty twenty census, this new district was sort of carved up. But other Republicans had been holding a seat sort of similar to this, with a similar kind of geography and demographic So this is a Republican seat. And there aren't a lot of safe Republican seats in the state Senate. Okay, there are maybe eight or nine out of forty that
could be safe Republican districts. So in twenty twenty two, they have a primary. Twenty twenty two, they have a primary for this state Senate seat. And as you all know, we in California have this ridiculous jungle primary system. So basically, let's do the math this way. There are about it's about a sixty forty split between Republicans and Democrats. Within this district. Four Republicans ran, two Democrats ran. The Republicans each averaged about fifteen percent of the vote, and the
two Democrats averaged twenty percent of the vote. So what happens in a top two primary system. All the Republicans were shut out. None of the Republicans made it to the general election because the two Democrats each got more votes than any individual Republican. This includes, by the way, George Radanovich, who is now running for the state Assembly seat.
He's running for Jim Patterson's old state Assembly seat. And this is you know, I have I don't have much bad to say about George Danovich at all, other than I guess it's disappointing how he couldn't I guess, get the momentum going enough for this state Senate race to get over that twenty percent hump. It was an enormous embarrassment that Republicans couldn't get somebody in the top two. This is a sixty to forty Republican to Democrat district.
Basically four Republicans ran. Nobody had the common sense to just drop out so that somebody could kind of pull ahead and win this thing. And this led to the ridiculous situation of two Democrats being the top two vote getters in the twenty twenty two primary and Marie Alvarado Gill winning this seat. A Democrat winning this very heavily conservative seat, so state senators have four year long terms of office. She was elected in twenty twenty two. We
are approaching twenty twenty four. She is probably looking ahead. She is certainly looking ahead to the twenty twenty six elections. A lot of California politicians are starting this look ahead to twenty twenty six. Right now. We're going to have another governor's race in twenty twenty six. A lot of our statewide offices will be up for reelection. Twenty twenty six will be an important year for many many Californians, including all the half of the state senators that will
be up for reelection in twenty twenty six. So Marie Alvarado Gill was a Democrat. She was a member of the Democratic Caucus within the California State Legislature. She endorsed Kamala Harris, She co sponsored a resolution within the California State Senate giving their appreciation to Joe Biden about what a wonderful and historic and consequential president he was. And all of a sudden, just a few days ago, she announces she's leaving the Democrat Party. She's becoming a Republican.
The party has just moved too far to the left. It's abandoned her, and she needs to she needs she can't she can't tell all right this anymore. So she's going to become a Republican and run for reelection as a Republican in twenty twenty six. Now this has pleased pretty much nobody. Obviously, the Democrats are upset. You ran as a Democrat. We supported you as a Democrat. What are you doing. You just endorsed Kamala Harris last week, you just co authored this resolution talking about what a
historically significant president, wonderful president Joe Biden is. Are sort of like, thanks Joe for dropping out from the California legislature. You just endorsed these things, and now you're a Republican all of a sudden. Similarly, the response from the Republican Party has been muted. I think some Republicans have sort of had to put some kind of a smiling face on it, because, well, look, we don't have a lot of state senators. She's just you know, increased the number
of state senators by twelve and a half percent. We only had eight of the forty state senators before. Now we have nine of the forty. So I think to a certain extent, the Republican powers that be had to sort of say, well, okay, well we welcome you in. But other Republicans with a bit more freedom to speak their minds, and I think the leading Republican on this front has been Bill Asie, who's a state assembly member from I think like Corona, California. Bill Assie comes out
and says, this is obvious, BS, this is obvious. Sheer nonsense. She's not a Republican. She just talked about how she's endorsing Kamala Harris for president. She is endorsing you know, she's giving this love note that she's helped co author to Joe Biden. This is like a week before she made her decision to switch parties. She's doing these things, so Essale is pointing out like this is obvious nonsense.
She wants to get reelected in twenty twenty six. She knows that the odds of the Republicans screwing this up again in the twenty twenty sixth primary are are going to be fairly low. Republicans have hopefully learned their lesson from the disastrous debacle of again running four people who all got about fifteen percent of the vote. So why I mean, of course that's what she's doing. But again it goes back to why are we in this situation in the first place. We're in this situation in the
first place because the California Republican Party is inept. The California Republican Party was so inept that they couldn't get at least one of these four people to drop out of the race. And it's this thing where Democrats fall in line. Democrats fall in line, Republicans don't, I think the California and the reason that happens in California is because the California Democratic Party actually has power. The California
Democratic Party can actually threaten people credibly. They can actually say hey, if they have both carrots and sticks, they can say, hey, if you run in the recall election against Gavin Newsom, we will end your career. Or they can say listen, in this race, it makes sense for you to drop out. If you do, maybe there's something else that we can kind of carve out for you,
some other position we can carve out for you. The Democrat Party in California has the power to dangle a carrot in front of you to tempt you for something good. They have the power to menace you with a stick, ruin your life, ruin your career if you don't do what they want, and the California Republican Party has no such power. We have nothing to entice people with because our ability to get people jobs or get people elected is fairly weak, and we have nothing to threaten people with.
As a result. You know you do this, you'll never run for statewide office as a Republican. Again, well knows statewide Republican's going to win anyway. Your threats don't matter to me. What is the California GOP going to do the California GOP, which by the way, has its own problems left right and center. So that is the heart of the problem, is the California GOP. We're still living with the consequences of the most ineftly run primary campaign
humanly possible. That we had four people splitting sixty percent of the vote going up against two Democrats who split forty percent of the vote. It was just an unbelievable episode of incompetence leading to this vast majority Republican district electing a Democrat because two Democrats were going head to head against each other. So now we have to decide what we're going to do. Are we going to allow
Marie Alvarado Guil to stay in office? And then Alvarado Gill had an interview with Ashley Zavala, who's this big time journalist who covers what goes on in Sacramento really one of the most a great follow if you want to follow anything that happens with Sacramento politics, Ashley Zavalla, and Zavala asked her such point of questions that Alvarado gil just stormed out of the interview. It's really it's
an unbelievably comedic episode. But yeah, this is the most glaring example possible of a politician just kind of licking their finger, holding it up to the wind and going which way the wind blows to such an absurd degree that she's actually changing her political party one week after endorsing Kamala Harris. Wait, we return my theory about why politicians become Republicans or Democrats in the first place. Next
on The John Girardi Show. Senator Marie Alvarado Gill the California State Senator representing the fourth Senatorial District, which includes pretty much a huge chunk of the central California Nevada border, all the mountainous areas around there, plus some chunks of the North Valley, chunks of Madera Mariposa to Alumni, Stanislaus County, all of Death Valley too. It's a massive, massive geographical area. Senator Marie Alvarado Gill has announced declared to all to
all in Sundry that she is now a Republican. She's going to run as a Republican in twenty twenty six for her re election for her state Senate seat. This is because Republicans were so stupid that in the twenty twenty two Senate primary for this state Senate seat, they ran four Republicans who each got about fifteen percent of the vote, and the Democrats ran two Democrats who got about twenty percent of the vote each. And in a top two primary system, the two Democrats won, the two
Democrats got to advance, and the four Republicans didn't. This in a seat that is about sixty forty Republican leaning. So this sixty to forty Republican district, this very safe Republican district, winds up electing having to choose on election Day twenty twenty two between two Democrats, Marie Alvarado Gill
gets elected. Marie Alvarado Gill wants to get re elected, and so she declares one week after signing this resolution from the legislature about how wonderful and consequential a president Joe Biden is and how and announcing that she was endorsing Kamala Harris for president, she announces that she is now a Republican. Oh, the Democratic Party has left her, amazing how it left her right at the moment when it became most politically expedient. And this gets me to
my sort of pet theory about politicians. I think most elected politicians, most I'm not saying all, but most most elected politicians don't have a very strong grounding for why they are of the left or of the right. Necessarily.
I think it's easier to be of the left because I think the dominant culture media pushes you left, certainly pushes you towards a kind of libertarian way of thinking when it comes to ethical things, and that would naturally push you towards a more liberal view of various kinds of social issues. But I think most people who run for office they run for office because they're in some way, maybe prominent or successful, and they care about a few things.
There's probably a few political issues they really care about, maybe a few local government things, or tax things, or business things or something like that, business regulation, whatever it is, or maybe they have a background in public schools or university or whatever it is. They have a few things
that they really care about. And then for the rest of their ideology, though, because if you're an American politician, you kind of have a whole wide spectrum of things you have to care about and have to vote on. For a lot of this other stuff, you just kind of take on the chameleon appearance of whichever party provides you with a lane to power. I've been thinking about this certainly. I think Marie Alvarado Gill is a great
example of this. Okay, uh, Marie Alvarado Gill was sort of Democrat, Democrat inclined, probably cared about a couple of things that sort of made her a Democrat. She finds herself in this preposterously lucky situation of being in a heavily Republican state senate district, getting into the top two because Republicans were so stupid that they ran you know,
four people who split the vote between themselves. She somehow gets elected because she's able to convince the elector that she's more moderate as a Democrat than the guy she was running against. She becomes a California state Senator. And now she realizes, well, you know, I still like, you know, there are a few things where I can kind of fudget and say I'm with republic we need smaller government and blah blah blah blah blah, and she completely changes
her identity on a dime. She goes literally for one week talking about what a wonderful president Joe Biden's been and endorsing Kamala Harris to the very next week declaring that she is a Republican, which if you actually are an authentic Republican, there's no way you could a endorse Kamala Harris for president or b say that Joe Biden was this wonderful, historically significant president. It just does not make sense to do those things if you are actually
anything like a sincere Republican. Because I don't think she has much of a grounding of anything. I think the only thing that's really grounding her is the desire to stay in power. And I think this is true of a lot of elected people, maybe scarily far more than we would like to believe. The person that really I've talked about him a little on the show, but the person like this that really has bowled me over. Do
you guys remember Michael Steel. He was the former head of the RNC and he was like a lieutenant governor of Maryland. So Michael Steele went like full on on board with like the Lincoln Project people. Those are the former Republicans who are now anti Trumpers, and not just anti Trump, but aggressively pro Harris and not just aggressively pro Harris, but aggressively pro choice, aggressively just a complete MSNBC liberal cheerleader. He became like an MSNBC talking yet
and he's now like an aggressive liberal cheerleader. And I look at him and I think this man was the head of the RNC. His job was getting Republicans elected. He was like the lieutenant He was a Republican like lieutenant governor of Maryland, and then became the head of the RNC. His job was getting Republicans elected across the nation. And he has so thoroughly flipped that he's posting memes about Kamala Harris wearing like a Captain America outfit. So
was he totally insincere the whole time? What was he doing? Did he believe anything the Republican Party believes in? Was it all an act? Well, I think people changed their
political viewpoints to get themselves avenues towards power. He had a certain avenue to power as a Republican in Maryland, and he took it, and he had a certain avenue to power continuing to pretend to be a Republican and got to be the head of the RNC, got canned from that job, and then saw that he had some avenue to I don't know not I guess as a Lincoln Project flunky and MSNBC talking head, and he completely abandons all of his viewpoints so that he can talk
smack about Donald Trump, but not just talks back about Donald Trump, completely repudiate all this Republican stuff he used to stand for. I just think self interest for these politicians lately. You take the same guy and you have him grow up in Clovis, California, or run for an office in clothes California. Oh yeah, I'm a Republican. You take this same guy and have him run for the same office in Boston, Massachusetts. Oh yeah, I'm a Democrat.
I think people just kind of chameleon camouflage themselves towards their environment and whatever will give them a path to power when we return, when we return. Some commentary on the lawsuit that was filed against Community Hospital for diverting money from the Fresno downtown community to the Clovis downtown community. Allegedly. This is next on the John Girardi Show. There's a lawsuit that's gotten some coverage in local media. A lawsuit
that was filed against Community health system. And basically the long and short of the lawsuit is that Community Health, which receives medical money and part of the reason why Community Hospital or Community Health, the reason why it's a nonprofit is because of its agreement to take lots and lots of medical patients and thereby receive medical funding. Now, the lawsuit is arguing that Community Hospital was unlawfully diverting
more funding than is permissible. And this is kind of part of where I get a little I'm not quite sure about. This was diverting funding away from Community Hospital Downtown to Community Hospital Clovis, that that was the focus of what Community was trying to do, was to make the community hospital in Clovis, which has fewer medical patients more private insurance patients, is therefore more profitable to divert more and more funding to that, and that this was
done on lawfully or inequitably. Now, a couple of things I want to note about this lawsuit. First of all, is who is bringing it. And you know, you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover. You're not supposed to judge based on appearance. I understand in all that, and you should look at this stuff on the merits, you know, don't shoot the messenger. I get it, I get it. However, the group filing this lawsuit is none other than Fresno Building Healthy Communities, under the leadership of
an old favorite on this show, Sandra Celadon. Yes, that's right, Sandra, burn it all down Celadon. So Presno Building Healthy Communities is this nonprofit left wing activist group that basically exists to hang around city hall advocate for some altruistic liberal cause. But it's always with a handout. It's always well, you should do this wonderful altruistic liberal thing and give us a contract to do it. Oh, we were gonna help
the city with contact tracing during COVID. I think that was one of the It was either them or Barriosunidos that was doing that. Anyway, there are a lot of these old sure left wing from out of the region nonprofits that basically exists to advocate for some left wing cause but also get money. They Presno Building Healthy Communities.
This nonprofit are suing Community Health System for this alleged inequity of not diverting enough resources to Community Hospital Downtown, diverting too much to Community Hospital in Clovis, so Presno Building Healthy Communities and Cultiva la Salute this is the other nonprofit that they are the two plaintiffs in this case.
The lawsuit claims that Community Health funneled. I don't know if they are they funneling or just moving or allocating whatever billion dollars to the Clovis facility instead of providing better staffing and facility upgrades at Community Regional Medical Center.
This is the write up by Edward Smith in GV wire, which, by the way, Edward Smith or anyone from gv wire, if you guys are reading this, if you are writing about a lawsuit or a legal a decision that's issued by a judge, a complaint that was filed in a lawsuit, a charging document, and a criminal prosecution, provide the link to the pdf. Okay, don't just write a story about it. If your post, you're publishing it online, provide a link to the pdf. I hate. There's nothing I hate more.
And it's not just GV wire that does this, by the way, or the Fresno b or whoever, like major nationwide news outlets will write a whole story about some judge's decision in some court case without providing a link to the judge's decision so that you can read it yourself, which is insane, asinine, and for any lawyer who's trying to read or cover the thing, it's a huge pain of the butt because then you got to look for
some other piece that final actually links to it. So GB wire, next time you talk about any kind of lawsuit anything, provide the link to the PDF. Hopefully someone listens. Now. I actually pulled up the PDF of the complaint and was reading through. It's pretty long document. I was reading through. I won't say I read every single word, but I read most of it. The thing that I immediately was
trying to determine was this issue called standing. Okay, so standing is this kind of bedrock principle of American law. It's basically, why are you in this courtroom? What right do you have to file this lawsuit? Why are you the person filing this lawsuit? Why is it your business? I asked that about Sandra Celadon and her building presno building healthy communities. Why is she able to serve to sue community hospital for its decisions about allocating money one
way or another? What business is it of hers? How is she harmed by this? Because generally, for standing, you need to have some articulable, concrete harm that you have suffered that allows you to have standing. The example I always give for this is, Okay, if someone crashes a car into Agent Squire's house, I would feel bad for my buddy, Agent Squire's intrepid producer of the John Girardi Show. I would feel bad for him. I'd feel upset on his behalf. I'd be angry at the guy who negligently
crashed his car into Agent Squire's house. But I can't sue the guy. I can't sue him. Agent Squires has to sue him because Agent Squires is the guy who actually suffered the harm. Okay, if I try to file a lawsuit, I am suing this man for negligence causing damage, for crashing an Agent Squire's house, and the judge would ask me why are you here? Why are you suing? What harm did you suffer? Its all, I was really
upset your honor. Well, that doesn't count, so I immediately asked, looking at this, well, what standing does Fresno Building Healthy communities have to sue Community Hospital for its decisions of how it's allocating money between one hospital versus the other. Well, I look into it more in the grounds on which they're California law, apparently on standing is much more loosey goosey than it is in a lot of other jurisdictions.
Are at federal law, and for individual kinds of claims, the parameters of who can sue can be much broader or much narrower. Now I'm not one hundred percent certain on this, but reading some of the different arguments about who has standing to sue for misallocation of funds by a recipient of medical state funding, it does seem to have a fairly broad pool of California seems to make
it easy to sue. Basically, California seems to have a very broad pool, a very broad category of the kinds of people who can sue to vindicate such a claim.
I think that that's preposterous. And from the complaint itself, it's saying, well, people who work for Presno building healthy communities, a lot of them live in South Fresno and they they've been harmed by not having downtown community be as nice a hospital as Clovis community, which again is very vague, it's very non specific, like like okay, well, what happened? Did you have a medical event that was harmed because the facilities at Fresno Community are not as nice. No, no,
we don't mention anything. The other thing that and this is another aspect of this that I find obnoxious. This is another aspect of how these nonprofits behave that I
find obnoxious. Is you know who died and made you the representative for everyone who lives in South Fresno, basically Fresno building healthy communities, saying well, we and the people whom we represent, the clients whom we serve that we help to try to get healthcare, have been adversely impacted by the allocation of money away from downtown community towards Clovis community. So this is a thing called third party standing. Third party standing is it's kind of what the name implies.
You're not the primary person harmed, but you have standing to sue on behalf of this group of people who are harmed. Ordinarily, though, if you're a third party, you don't have the right to sue on behalf of someone else. Again, I can't sue on behalf of agent Squires. When someone
crashes a car into his house, Agent Squires has to sue. Now, sometimes, though, you can have third party standing if you have close ties to a group of people, that group of people are prevented from filing a lawsuit in some way, shape or form. So again, you have to have some close connection, and the people on whose behalf you're trying to sue have to be sort of prevented in some way from
filing the lawsuit themselves. I guess I'm sort of not thinking that the people whom Fresno Building Healthy Communities purports to represent, why couldn't some of them be plaintiffs? Seems ridiculous to me, you know, why can't Okay, Marie Alvarez, a resident of Tower District in Fresno, is suing because Marie Alvarez and this group of this class of former patients who used to who received care at Fresno Community between this in this date, who receive substandard care, they
are all suing for this misallocation of medical funds. But this is a thing beyond just the scope of this lawsuit and the specific question of third party standing. Does Fresno Building Healthy Communities actually have the standing legally to sue on behalf of people who live in South Fresno beyond just the legal standing question. I feel like they always present themselves as like the official spokespersons of South Fresno, and they're not. It's this sort of act they put on, like, oh,
that's the constituency they represent. No, if you want to say that, you know, Miguel Arius represents the interests of that group of people, Okay, that's fair. He was duly elected by the people of whatever his at, whatever the boundaries of his city council district are. Or Analisa Perea who represents kind of tower district area. You want to say she represents that group of people, Okay, she was
elected to represent that group of people. But don't look at me with a straight face and tell me, oh ah, yes, Fresno building healthy communities. We're the true representatives of the people. Get out of here when we return the Belogney sandwich of Jordan Chiles, the American gymnast being forced or told to return her bronze medal next on The John Girardi Show.
Had a fun conversation earlier with Ck of Our iHeartMedia ck on Sports, which is on Fox Sports thirteen forty k is of Ck and Carmen on b ninety five. He's one of the main guys for our coverage via iHeart of Fresno State Sports, Fresno State Football. I think he'll be doing pregame and postgame stuff for Frisno State football this year. And he was asking me about Jordan Chiles. So, Jordan Chiles is the Olympic gymnast and in the contest for the floor exercise, Jordan Chiles did a routine. She
was given a certain score. The American coaches appealed that score, Giles was given a better score. Chiles goes on to win the bronze medal days later. A week later, the folks from the Olympics say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, sorry, we have I don't know what for an accent they would have. We have screwed up this going. And they say, no, America, you didn't file your appeal for the score quickly enough.
It was only supposed to be within like I think it was sixty seconds, and you took sixty seven seconds, like a matter of mere seconds. You were too late. So we have to take back her school. And she's not supposed to get the bronze medal. This Romanian girl is supposed to. So now the whole thing is tied up in litigation with this International Tribunal for Sport. So I would just say, hey, Jordan Chiles, just hold on to your bronze medal. They can't send an army to
take it from you. That'll do it, John Girlready show see you next time on Power Talk