California Opportunities for the GOP

work from the ground up. And I think there are some smart, sort of think tanky type people, but there's very little intelligent political work being done in California at the state Republican level or what have you. I don't see a very good clear path forward. We're in a bad shape in this state where seeming to head in

worse shape. I mean, my wife and I have been just like groaning and rolling our eyes at the prospect that here's the California Air Resources Board announcing that basically they're going to introduce new regulations to make gas fifty

cents a gallon cheaper. The legislature went forward with this completely unnecessary special session over the last few months to go after price gouging by the gas companies who are price gouging no more than they are anywhere else in the country, and which, by the way, if the state could prove that these gas companies were price gouging, they would initiate anti trust proceedings against them. They wouldn't be

doing the kind of political posturing and Gavenusm's doing. They passed these ridiculous new laws to say, oh, gas refineries in California have to maintain an artificially high level of supply at all times so that there aren't spikes when there are spikes in demand, that there aren't spikes in price, which the refineries are saying, this is idiotic. You're just that's gonna put additional cost on us. You're just gonna

permanently have higher prices. So you see, California just doubling down on so many bad ideas, where like, bad things are happening, and the voters keep voting for people who doubled down on terrible ideas, and the voters themselves vote for terrible ideas. Our education systems not doing great. The voters vote to give our public schools a ten billion dollar bond measure. We're gonna give the schools ten billion, and it's going to cost us, the taxpayers, twenty billion

over time. We vote to give ten billion dollars to various unspecified environmental projects through Proposition four. That's proposition two in Proposition four that Californians voted for giving bond measure money to all these liberal pet projects. So in many ways I feel like California is going to get worse

before it gets better. However, I do think the seeds of some kind of a movement towards sanity in certain respects and with regards to certain kinds of things can be found in the results of the twenty twenty four elections. California went for Kamala Harris, Yes, of course. California voted for Adam Schiff by a massive margin. Yes, of course. However, there were some results that were surprising and surprisingly conservative.

Proposition thirty six passed with overwhelming support. Over seventy percent of Californians voted in favor of it. This reclassifies certain kinds of drug and theft offenses as felonies rather than misdemeanors. Californians were clearly tired of smash and grab robberies. They are tired of the state of criminal law enforcement in California that was accompanied by a couple of extreme left figures losing their jobs. The mayor of Oakland got recalled

two years into her administration. George Gascon, ultra left wing district attorney of Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States of America, got voted out of office. So you're beginning to see I think you're beginning to see something of an opening, something of a pathway. There are certain things that the voters of California are expressing. They are expressing. First of all, I think here's my first my initial thesis, the defund the police movement is dead.

Defund the police is dead. Defund the police, and the broader criminal justice agenda that surrounded it, which was basically one of criminal non enforcement on the basis of race. George Soros wanted to reshape criminal law enforcement in America.

Soros and others on the left believed this sort of fundamental premise that criminal law enforcement in America is hopelessly racist, that the criminal justice outcomes showing that African Americans are arrested, prosecuted, convicted, incarcerated at rates that far outstrip their share of the population is all evidence. These outcomes are all evidence of racism. The inequity of the outcomes is evidence of racism in

the system. Their proposed solution is we need to rethink criminal law enforcement, whether we need to be locking all these people up, so let's not lock all these people up, and they sort of recast almost crimes like theft as well, that's a that's a that's a crime of a status crime. That's a crime you only commit because you're poor. Why

are we punishing that so severely? Why are we punishing our brown people black and brown bodies, as ton Heasy Coats always says, which doesn't saying but there This became a trope on the left over the last ten years, saying why are we incarcerating black and brown bodies for the sake of our the preconceived notions of criminal justice? Saying black and brown bodies rather than black and brown people. It doesn't actually do anything to like change the meaning

of what you're saying. It just sounds more dramatic anyway. A lot a lot of lefty writers like using that turn of phrase and always annoys me because it doesn't actually mean anything different from saying black and brown people. Anyway. Although I will note, as I've noted to some of my Hispanic friends, the days of quote brown people being a protected category may be shortened. Given that Latinos voted. I think it was like forty five percent of Latinos

voted for Trump. It was like forty five to fifty five or something. So you're guess what, Latino's Your days of being a put upon, oppressed minority subject to liberal largesse and liberal concern about, oh, the plight of oppressed communities of color, your days of getting that kind of

concern from the left may well be numbered already. Nicole Hannah, Oh gosh, what's her name, the gal from the sixteen nineteen project, Nicole Hannah Nicole Hanna Jones, the former New York Times columnist who was the author of the sixty nineteen projects. She's already started to say, based on these election results, that Latinos don't count as communities of color. So let's just note that any Hispanics, your inclusion in the club may now be revoked due to the fact

that too many of you voted for Donald Trump. Now, where the heck was? I? All right? The project on the left was, let's just not prosecute whole swaths of crime because we think the enforcement of these laws is racist. It's racist in its effect, therefore it's racist, and so let's not have as much policing in those neighborhoods. Let's not have our prosecutors actually prosecute those crimes. And if the prosecutors don't prosecute those crimes at that immediately undercuts

the policing. Why would police arrest people for doing stuff if they know that the prosecutor is not going to prosecute. So Sorows and others realized, well, a lot of these district attorney races don't have huge dollar amounts and don't have large numbers of people who actually vote in them, Like the District Attorney of Manhattan, for example, Alvin Bragg. He got elected by a grand total of I think what was it was like eighty thousand people voted for him.

He's the District Attorney of Manhattan, the Borough of Manhattan, which I don't know how many people live in just Manhattan. It might be like a million people or something. At least it's not all of New York City, but just the Borough of Manhattan. That's a really small number of people voting. And what realized is that in a lot of these DA races, he could swamp these races with campaign money, completely outspend all the other candidates, and install

people who through what's called prosecutorial discretion. That's the principle that a prosecutor doesn't have to prosecute every single crime to the max every single time. The prosecutor needs discretion to decide, well, I'm going to bring this case, I'm not going to bring this case. I'm going to bring this case as a manslaughter case rather than a murder charge. You know, in order to get a plea deal. You know,

that kind of discretion a prosecutor needs to do. What these liberal prosecutors were doing was just saying we will use our discretion to just basically not prosecute whole swaths of In the case of Georgia Gascon in Los Angeles, California criminal law, so that whole movement, even in California, it seems like it's dead. Seventy percent of people in California voted for Prop thirty six LA County votes out George Gascon. San Francisco had already voted out Chase A. Boudin.

Clearly California's fed up with this approach to criminal law enforcement. And that makes me look towards twenty twenty six, who are all these people who are going to be running for governor? Well, on the left, it's going to be a lot of people who said a lot of positive things about the defund the police movement. Possibly you could see a lot of people who were really down with

left wing approaches to criminal law enforcement. Javier Bessera, Rob Bonta, you know, these are names that are being floated as people who may want to run for governor. I think

there could be a window for report Publicans here. If Democrats are foolish enough to nominate someone like Rob Bonta, whose career as ag was characterized by embracing this sort of left wing approach to criminal law enforcement, if they nominate someone who opposed Prop thirty six and supported Prop forty seven ten years ago, I think you could see an opening for a Republican. It would have to be

the right kind of Republican, couldn't just be anybody. But I think if you have a Democrat who is clearly weak on criminal law enforcement, who didn't support Prop thirty six, if they go against a Republican gubernatorial candidate in twenty twenty six who did support Prop thirty six and who really wraps him or herself in the mantle of Prop thirty six, that could be an opening. I feel like

we need to make Prop. Thirty six into like a cape that every Republican candidate running for any office throughout the state wears, and to compare in contrast, and to hammer any Democrat they're running against over the head with it. When we return. Dan Walters writing about the sort of odd, sort of conservative leaning dynamics of the twenty twenty four race in California. That's next on the John Growardy Show.

Dan Walters, who is a longtime columnist for The Sacramento b and now runs calmatters dot org, definitely one of the most insightful people when it comes to California political issues.

He's got a good piece on the twenty forty four election results where he's noting that there were some real cracks and Democrat power that were revealed in this election title the piece in deep blue California, voters don't always march to dem drums, so one of the things he points out is that there's some real Republican resilience in

a lot of the congressional races in California. He writes, as of Wednesday afternoon, the five Republican congressional I guess that must have been last Wednesday afternoon, the five Republican congressional members who had been targeted by Democrats in hopes of recapturing the House were all running ahead of their Democratic challengers, albeit by very thin margins, with many votes still to be counted. Although I think Mike Garcia from California has just conceded, but I think all the others

are winning. Democratic strategists chose the districts because they had tended to vote for the party's presidential candidates or had Democratic voter registration pluralities. The dissonance was especially obvious in the San Juaquin Valley districts of Republicans John Duarte and David Valadeo, both of which have Democratic voter margins of well over ten percentage points. Nevertheless, both were narrowly leading their challengers Wednesday, and as of today, there looks like

both of them are going to pull it out. In another San Juan Valley district, Democratic Representative Josh Harder is locked in a very tight duel with Kevin Lincoln, the Republican mayor of Stockton, despite having an eleven point advantage in Democratic voter registration. Moreover, Republican Scott baw is leading in the duel for an Orange County congressional seat that Democrat Katie Porter gave up to run for the Senate.

That's the reason why Katie Porter ran for the Senate, because she realized that might be easier than holding on to her own house seat. Katie Porter is another one of these people that my wife cannot stand her. Oh

my gosh, she hates Katie Porter. The kind of girl boss attitude she gives off, like the she made a big deal by some like session of Congress like Trump that Trump was speaking at or something, and she was reading a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a f. They are all these like self help books that have been published that have the F wort in their title, and it's all appealing to millennials. I could do like a whole segment about this embarrassing millennial thing

that millennials love cursing. I don't know if you notice this. Millennials love cursing, and they love cursing because they think it makes them edgy or something, and it's just embarrassing it. It's this incredibly sophomoric thing. There are all kinds of examples. I could do a whole second of this anyway, he also well, getting back to Dan Walter's piece, ballot measures

and local elections reflect conservative leanings. He continues. Tickets splitting was also evident in down ballot issues, particularly voting for

and against ballet measures with ideological profiles. While about sixty percent of California voters were opting for Democrats Kamala Harris and Adam Schiff, more than seventy percent backed Proposition thirty six, a measure that increases penalties other for some crimes that the state's Democratic leadership, including Governor Gavin Newsom, opposed, to punctuate the hardening mood on crime even more, two big city district attorneys who identified with the left leaning criminal

justice reform movement, George Gascon in Los Angeles and Alameda County's Pamela Price, lost their positions, Gascon to challenger Nathan Hockman and Price to a recall. Likewise, Proposition five, a measure to lower the voting requirement from many local bond issues from two thirds to fifty five percent, backed by Democratic legislators and their allies and public worker unions, was failing on Wednesday, with well over fifty percent of voters opposed.

Two other ballot measures reflecting leftist center ideology were also failing or defeated. Proposition thirty two, which would raise the state's minimum wage to eighteen dollars an hour, end Proposition thirty three, which would make it easier for local governments to impose rent control, was called early Wednesday morning. So I think Walters is correct here that California is not

quite as lockstep liberal as we make it out. Now, if you give people generic Republican vote running against generic Democrat, yeah, generic Republican will lose. Donald Trump will lose to Kamala Harris, you know, as Steve Garvey will lose to Adam Schiff. But I still think there's an avenue here. I think there's an avenue for an intelligent Republican governor who really hammers home Prop thirty six crime issues and then can lean into like homelessness and stuff like that, depending on

the Democrat he runs against. I think he could make real hay with it, because I think a lot of these Democrats didn't want to be too vocal opposing or supporting Prop thirty six. And I think if you get the right Republican and he gets some funding behind him, I think there's a genuine opening for Republicans in twenty twenty six if they really wrap themselves in these issues.

And this is the way that. Again, I'm not saying there's a Republicans sweep the governorship and the Assembly and the Senate in twenty twenty six and a new glorious dawn. A second, you know, Reagan resurrection happens in California or something. Even though Ron Reagan was super liberal when he was governor of California, I think much more liberal than people realize. Nonetheless, I'm not saying overnight a whole transformation happens in California.

What I am saying is that you're starting to see some cracks in the liberal monopoly of control over California, that there are some issues where finally California voters are starting to have had enough, and that it provides some kind of a window for an intelligent, well funded Republican candidate to make some real gains when we return. How the left was completely inept at trying to get certain demographics that are slipping out of their fingers, young men

and minorities. Next, on the John Girardi Show, there's an interesting story in the Spectator about basically the ways in which the Harris campaign really wildly overspent. Written by Stephen Miller at The Spectator. The title of the pieces Kamala Harris ran the Fire Festival of campaigns. Now, for those who don't know what the fire Festival is, this was an event that was to happen about when was this.

This was about twelve ten or twelve years ago. It was called the Fire Festival Fyr and it was supposed to happen in some Caribbean island and it was really heavily promoted by certain rappers, and the promoter of the event was basically engaged in a massive fraud scheme. People showed up for this event and there was no logistics

for it. It was supposed to be like travel out to this island, stay at this you know, fancy resort, fancy food, and the food was like box lunches, and the accommodation luxury accommodations were like un refugee tents, and there were like no performance. It was this disastrous thing and the

guy who promoted it was prosecuted. It became kind of this famous thing on the Internet for millennials to sort of joke about well, Kamala Harris ran the that of campaigns is the thesis, and so Steven Miller writes for

The Spectator. As the finger pointing begins and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than a billion dollars in war chest funds and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly four hundred and eighty eight million dollars. That's not a doctor evil typo. Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars but actually

ended up twenty million dollars in debt. Where did the money all go to celebrities mostly and elaborate sets and stages. As it turns out, not all of those celebrity quote activists appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her

or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. That's a thing I love when someone's just like an actor celebrity and they describe themselves as my name is so and so, I'm an activist and this and that like always on their t would approached they write that they're an activist. It's like, no, you're just a rich person. You're just trying to feel better about yourself. Your job is to pretend to be other people in front of a camera, like to chill out. You're You're not that

important anyway. So apparently what was happening is that a bunch of celebrities who appeared with Kamala Harris and who especially musical acts who performed concerts at Kamala Harris rallies, the Harris campaign had to spend a gazillion dollars to get those acts to come or or to get those people just to appear. So, as reported in the Washington Examiner, let's see here, here's here's the uh, here's the centerpiece.

There were seven swing state concerts what the Harris campaign through that involved high priced performers Katie Perry, Lady Gaga, John Bon, Jovie, Ricky Martin, and Moore, who seemingly ended up costing the Harris campaign more than twenty million dollars on event production alone, and reportedly even more on paying the celebrities to appear. Even Oprah Winfrey charged the campaign a million dollars to show up. That's amazing that Oprah

did that. Oprah, here's Oprah Winfrey like showing up on stage somewhere to support Kamala Harris and he's like, I'll come, but you gotta pay me a million dollars. What kind of an endorsement is that? Heck, I'll endorse Kamala Harris for a million bucks. I'd like to think I wouldn't sell my soul that cheap. All right, all right, now, I'm not gonna I'm not going to show up at a Kamala Harris camp pay event for a million bucks. But still, the idea that Oprah only showed up for

a million bucks. Doesn't Oprah have enough money? You'd think if Oprah genuinely believed in this, that she'd have enough civic mindedness to say, yeah, of course I'll I'll just come. I endorse you for president. I'm gonna show up. You don't have to pay me anything to show I'm Oprah Winfrey. I have more money than God. Why does Oprah need a million dollars to show up at a Kamala Harris event.

That's unbelievable. The campaign went so far into debt that the campaign was reportedly forced to scrap Canadian nineties indie pop singer Alanis Morrissett to save money. The pop concert campaign strategy is said to have been the brainchild of former Obama advisors on the campaign. Now, let me read again that list of that list of performers, because I think this sort of shows how the Harris campaign had no idea how to reach out to all these demographics

of people who went hard Trump. Let me read you that list again and stop me if you think any of these performers would be appealing to a twenty year old man as far as like a concert he wants to go to. Concert wise, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, John bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, I guess if you're a gay twenty year old man, maybe an Alanis Morissett, whom they had to scrap. I'm sorry, what demographic is that lineup

appealing to other than John bon Jovi? Were they only trying to put on musical acts beloved by gay men? Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Alanis Morris set. Actually I don't know how the gays feel about Alanis Morisset. Definitely Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Ricky Martin, who exactly is this appealing to. There was apparent there had been the rumor they were gonna have Beyonce, but then she

didn't actually perform. She just spoke, which is like having Beyonce speak at a rally rather than sing at a rally. It seems kind of like a waste of Beyonce's talents here. I don't think anyone promoted Beyonce as for her political acumen. They promote her because she's a good singer and dancer.

So so what what were these people thinking? I think they've gotten Democrats have gotten to this point where their campaigns are run by millennials who were probably former Obama who were like young staffers on the Obama campaign, and they have no idea how to reach out to gen Z mails, whom they lost to big time. Trump, on the other hand, message to gen z mails extremely well.

Picked all of these podcasts to go on that had gazillions of people listening to it, where he didn't really have to spend a dime like Trump goes on Joe Rogan sits down for a three hour interview, And did you notice after the Trump had his interview with Joe Rogan, which like sixty million people or something watched on YouTube.

Do you notice after Trump had that interview with Joe Rogan, they were like, no stories about it, Like he didn't say anything that was like able to be blasted by the press, meaning that the interview probably went really well. And then Vance went on afterwards and Rogan offered to Kamala Harris, Hey, you want to come on anytime, and Harris is like, no, you have to come to me, and it can only be one hour now, you're a normal three hour show. And so Rogan was like, no,

I'm not getting up to go to you. You come to me. Trump came to me like because why Because Harris is obviously wildly insecure, because clearly she would fall apart in a three hour interview, and she wanted it on her turf where her staffers could control the situation. She didn't want to go into the belly of the beast of Joe Rogan, even though Joe Rogan is a super liberal guy. Joe Rogan used to loved Barack Obama was a Bernie Sanders supporter. Like this idea that Joe

Rogan is some right wing nut job or something is ridiculous. No, he if there's anyone who actually has an open mind left in America, it's probably Joe Rogan. And guess what, tons of young men listen to them, to Joe Rogan and all these other podcasts that Trump was appearing on. Who did Harris go to? She went to one podcast that's chiefly listened to by young women, the demographic that

she already has locked up. And this is I think the problem Democrats are facing here is that they have this sort of cadra of non Bernie, older donors, older donors who like Hillary, they like Obama, they like Biden, they don't like Bernie. That's their donor class. And then millennials who are so pc that they remember one time Joe Rogan said something that they thought was cancelable, and therefore they're like, well, you shouldn't go on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Well he was canceled. All these millennials who've been sort of steeped in the culture of cancelation and of people being off limits because they did a bad thing, they said one thing that they deemed to be racist one time, Like there was some podcast ten years ago where Joe Rogan said the end, we're not that he was calling anyone the N word, but he was saying it out loud for some stupid reason, and that was deemed, Oh,

we have to absolutely eliminate Rogan forever. And so these millennial staffers probably for hair, so I don't know they should go. And he's sort of a radical, whereas Trump realizes, hey, this guy's got the most popular podcast in America. He's open to talking to me. I can sit down with him for three hours, really lay out what I want to do, have him ask questions, and I'm not afraid of that. Yeah, do it. So I think what you've

got is liberals are now so insular. There's so much within their own that they don't want to go out of their comfort zone because they're just convinced everyone else is racist and sexist and bigoted and homophobic. Like there. They cannot fathom the idea that people don't agree with

them on transgenderism. And I've seen this on cable news clips where like you'll have some panel on MSNBC where someone will say, hey, like Democrats need to realize what they're saying, you know about you know, having biological male prisoners in a women's jail. That's completely insane. To most people, and then panelists will object, I will not sit here and listen to anti trans bigotry. It's like, well, that's

why you're losing. If you're not even gonna listen, you're just gonna call anyone who disagrees with you a bigot. That's why you're gonna lose. That's why. And it's almost gotten to the point of people like the suggestion that I'm not wrong, everyone else is wrong. Well, that only goes so far in a process where you need a majority of people to vote for you. So I think

Democrats have some big problems. And I was just dying laughing looking again at this is again the lineup of people that Kamala Harris thought we're gonna their concerts were going to save the day. Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, John bon Jovi, Ricky Martin, Alanis Morris, set Oprah Winfrey. Yeah, definitely, that's definitely reaching young men. Can't imagine also, why African American males didn't vote for her with that sterling line.

What African American male has ever voluntarily turned a play to CD to listen to Kady Perry, Lady Gaga, John bon Jovi or Ricky Martin, an African American male, swung towards Trump by like I don't know, it was like twenty percent or something. Shocking how that strategy didn't pan out for Kamala Harris when we return how marriage impacted voting next on the John Gerardy Show. There are a lot of ways to cut and slice and splice the

election results. I thought one of the most interesting, though, demographic breakdowns was looking at how married men married women voted, and then also how unmarried men and unmarried women voted. So for men, unmarried men voted for Trump forty nine to forty seven. Married men voted overwhelmingly for Trump sixty to thirty eight. Married women voted slightly for Trump fifty one to forty eight, about the same as unmarried men, and unmarried women voted for Harris overwhelmingly fifty nine to

thirty eight. So basically, you have unmarried women and married men are the opposites of each other. Married women and unmarried men are fairly similar, pretty much the same, slightly favoring Trump, but being married changes your vote considerably. Going from an unmarried man to a married man increased your likelihood of supporting Trump by eleven percent. From an unmarried woman to a married woman increased your likelihood of supporting

Trump by like thirteen percent. Marriage changes your priorities. It's a huge significant shift in your life and your lifestyle, and that reflects itself in voting which Democrats we're basically just trying to deny that was true. That don't you can vote for Kamala Harris. Your husband doesn't need to know, No, ridiculous. Married women actually voted more Republican this time than they did in twenty twenty, So that whole outreach by the

Democrats was a failure. That'll do it, John Jarlady Show, See you next time on Power Talk.