Gather around, folks, It's time for election winners and losers. Yes, we know who the chief winner is, Donald Trump. We know who the chief loser is, Kamala Harris. But I want to go through just kind of mentally, the other folks in the whole cast of characters of the twenty twenty four election, statewide, maybe even locally, and talk through who are the big winners, who are the big losers.
So let's go through it. We'll start at the national level. Maybe as we.
Go on through the show, we'll get some local people for the losers segment especially, So.
Let's start with big winners.
I mean, obviously Donald Trump, but I don't want to dwell too much on the obvious of Donald Trump. I want to kind of look at other folks in the cast of characters. I think one big winner coming out of this.
Is JD. Vance.
Vance turned out to be after kind of a bit of a stumble at the gate, Democrats were able to make some hay out of Vance's old comments Vance had made about you know, childless cat ladies and blah blah blah, and that got about a week's worth of a news cycle.
But I feel like.
The campaign really shifted when Vance really started going on the offensive, and Vance was on every Sunday morning show. He was the lead communicator for the Trump campaign. Out of all the Trump surrogates, he was certainly first and foremost right front and center, and I think the vice presidential debate wound up being incredibly consequential to the course of the campaign. The contrast between him and Walls. Walls looked incompetent. Vance absolutely beat the brakes off of him.
And I think that the picture that people had been trying to paint of Vance he's some sort of wild eyed lunatic who's you know, hates women or something, that picture was really shown to be silly, and he was actually so relatively civil to Walls while completely dismantling him, that actually, I think it really changed people's attitudes. I think he comes out of this looking smelling like a rose. And I think Trump comes out of the you know, the debate about whom should Trump have picked for his
vice president? You know, when he picked Mike Pence, that was clearly a we need to shore up the in twenty sixteen, we needed to shore up the more traditional Republican coalition. We needed someone who the establishment was comfortable with because Trump was obviously so opposed to the Republican establishment, so different from the Republican establishment, they needed someone to represent that. Camp and Pence would sort of picture perfect
for that. The debate about whom Trump should pick as vice president, you know, there were a lot of different options. There were some people like Marco Rubio was kind of on the table as a possible pick, and you know, some people were floating Doug Northam, the governor of North Dakota,
or Christy Nome. And apparently the argument for Vance was coming from Eric and Don Junior, who we're trying to make the pitch that no, no, no, no, no, we should double down on trump Ism, we should double down on we don't you are the establishment of the party at this point. We don't need to play kate that wing anymore. Let's get someone who will carry on the legacy of trump Ism, put an intellectual context to it. Let's get someone like that. Let's go for Broke, let's swing for
the fences. At that time, you know, they were looking at an incredibly weakened Joe Biden, and they were like, well, why make a pick based on politically trying to you know, there are two factors you can weigh when you're picking a vice president. You factor in either will this person help me win the election or will this person help me govern? And there's a lot of thought that, you know, Bill Clinton picked Al Gore more.
For the will he helped me win.
He was another Southern senator to you know, take away Republican votes.
George W.
Bush meanwhile picked Dick Cheney, who was clearly a help me govern person. Like he had picked Cheney to help him select his vice president. Was so impressed by him then he was like, well, why don't I just pick you like you're You're clearly more competent than any of these people. So I think Vance comes out of this looking like clearly the successor to Trump. Well, you know, you'll need to We'll need to wait and see how Vance performs as vice president over the next four years.
I have enormous confidence he's going to be at very least a more able vice president than Kamala Harris was, So I I'm really looking forward to that. I think he will be a much more the undisputed leader with much more of the party's confidence over the next four years than Kamala Harris was coming into this election. Consequently, maybe the biggest losers just the flip side of this, the biggest loser on the Democrat side, and there were a lot of losers. Maybe the biggest loser of them
all though, might be Tim Walls. There are maybe some bigger losers. I mean, I think one of the big arguments, the overwhelming case for why did Harris lose, I mean, failure has a thousand fathers. Probably the overwhelming reason why Harris lost is because Biden was a terrible president and had a very unpopular president. His administration was not very good, and she basically had nowhere to go with it if she had to be continuity with Biden because she's his
vice president. But at the same time, she wanted to be new, different from him because he was so unpopular. But she can't throw him under the bus completely. But so I think she was in an impossible position. So Biden's maybe overriding the biggest loser. But the person who proved himself to be a total waste of space was Tim Walls. Walls had like a good first week and then from that point on was a train wreck. He's
just weird. He's just a very strange guy with strange mannerisms and a strange affect, who was constantly lying about himself in odd, bizarre, self serving fashions, like, oh, saying that he was a football coach, he was kind of an assistant coach because he was just teaching at this high school, and then you know, proved himself to not really know anything about football in various comments like a AOC like they had some kind of oh, we need democrats,
we need to appeal to young men voters. So they had Tim Wall's play Madden the NFL football game online over the Internet against Alexandria Okazio Cortes. Of all people, I guess she was the most masculine man they could find. Maybe they think, okay, well AOC's pretty, so young men will want to watch her, and then we'll have her with Tim Walls and oh build up his his man bona fides, which if that was actually their thinking, well that's kind of sexist towards AOC, that she was just
there as eye candy. Anyway, so he's playing against AOC and afterwards he tweets about it and says, AOC runs a mean pick six. It's like a pick six is a football term. But it's not like a play that you run. A pick six means an interception that the defense returns for a touchdown six points. Pick interception six, it's not a play that you run. So he clearly had for someone who was quote a football coach, had
seemingly less familiarity with football lingo than I do. I've never played a snap of organized tackle football, and I didn't play football in high school or anything.
But I don't know.
I've watched football my whole life. I know enough about football to know that you don't say, run.
A pick six. Okay, that's a that's not a thing.
So beyond that, I mean, Plus his bizarre thing about whether he whether he actually carried weapons of war and was using it in combat when he never saw combat, lying about what rank he had, all these weird little things, and just his general affect was so strange. He was a total nothing burger, a total He totally contributed zilch
to the Harris campaign. And the contrast between him versus say, Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, who is a very good speaker, I think the governor of the single most important of all the swing states, I think the contrast between him and Shapiro was so great, and what I think a lot of people don't have to be a brilliant psychoanalyst. Shapiro is just clearly more competent than Harris is. I think he's smarter than she is. He's more accomplished
than she is. He's better at speaking than she is. I think he's quicker on his feet than she is. And what was the thought process for her picking Walls? I think, again, maybe this is uncharitable of me, but I don't think you need a brilliant psycho analysis here. Walls is much Walls is less impressive than Harris's. I think she picked someone who wouldn't out shiner. I think if she wound up picking Shapiro, a lot of people would be looking at that ticket and saying, why the
heck isn't Shapiro at the top of this ticket. He seems more impressive than she is. By almost any measure, he's more impressive than she is. Tim Walls was such a nothing burger that, in fact, it looks like the Minnesota State their lower House, like their version of the State House of Representatives, is flipping Republican. This election or may very well flip Republican sixty eight. It might be
sixty eight Republican seats to sixty six Democrat seats. Now, Democrats might lose control role of one of the state houses in Minnesota in the year when their governor is running for vice president. Minnesota went for Harris, but by a much smaller margin than it did in twenty twenty, and Tim Walls has.
No future, no future in national Democrat politics.
I don't think I don't think anyone was impressed by that guy. I don't think anyone's thinking, oh, man, this this is you know, if you know, tough break that we lost this election.
But you know what.
If if something happens down the road, like this guy needs to be, you know, part of a next Democrat administration. You know, maybe we you know, gear him up to be the head of this or that. No, no, no, no one. As a result of this race, there's nobody looking at Tim Walls and saying, this is the man that we need to line up for future positions of national Democrat leadership importance. This is the guy who should
run for president in twenty twenty eight. No, absolutely, no, absolutely, nobody has come out of this election thinking that, and you know, it's hard to think that any presidential election came down to the vice presidential picks. But I do think, you know, as much as failure has a thousand fathers, I think success has a thousand fathers as well. Very often,
I think the Vance versus walls divide. How much of an asset Vance became to the Trump campaign over time, how much of a liability Walls became to the Harris campaign over time. And I think it was smart of Trump to sort of limit the bleeding and not try to have another debate with Harris. You know, he had his one debate with Harris and he was like, all right,
I'm done, I'm not doing this anymore. And that gave the vice presidential eight I think a lot more weight and a lot more importance because that was the last debate we were gonna see between you know, these two tickets, and Vance just thumped them. So again, there were bigger,
overriding reasons for the Trump victory. I think huge events like Trump's survival of the assassination attempt, these sort of big media moments Trump was able to spin out, like going to McDonald's and working at a McDonald's uh wearing going around driving a garbage truck after Joe Biden does this gratuitous, horrific knifing of the Harris campaign by saying, oh, Trump's the only garbage I see. You're all of Trump's supporters, and Trump capitalizes on it immediately. They immediately find a
garbage truck. They immediately paint a big Trump logo on the side of it. Trump puts on a garbage garbage worker vest and drives it around on a tarmac. And these big signal media moments that Trump had in the
context of a very unsuccessful Biden administration. That's maybe the overriding thing that Trump had, these signal, tent pole significant campaign moments that I think really impressed people and made people like him, And it was in the context of a terrible Democrat administration that Harris couldn't separate herself from.
That's the overriding thing.
All Right, when we return, we're gonna have more winners, more losers, local winners, local losers, national winners, national losers.
That's next on the John Girardi Show.
Who's a big winner from the twenty twenty four presidential election.
Here's a winner you might not expect. I think.
Gavin Newsom is a little bit of a winner today. I think this is my I hope this happened. There's no evidence that it did. I feel like they should.
Have done this, the two of them.
You gotta believe that Newsom hates Kamala Harris, or at the very least that there is obvious sort of envy there Newsom and Harris. I've often said this, Newsom and Harris are basically the same person. They took basically the same route to national Democrat prominence. Harris and Newsome were both proteges of Willie Brown. Willie Brown both appointed both of them to their first sort of jobs in politics.
Brown was a backer of Kamala Harris as she became a higher up in the San Francisco Diezo and then ran for DA in San Francisco. Willy Brown appointed Newsom to his first county supervisor post in the city slash County of San Francisco. He was a backer of Newsom throughout his political career, and the donor circle around Willy Brown is what really propelled those two to prominence, and they are the most It's Harris and Newsome are the most significant branches on the Willy Brown political tree.
So they're identical. I think.
I think they are very very similar people, very similar. I think they are similarly unimpressive people who have been propped up by San Francisco Democrat donor money. How do you win a statewide election in California. You win as a Democrat. Here's how you win. You win a statewide election as a Democrat in California by getting the most money during the primary so that you can run television
ads in Los Angeles. If you get that money and you win the advertising battle in LA, you win, You win the Democrat primary, and then you steamroll over whatever Republican you're facing. That's how you become a statewide elected official in the state of California. If money is so important to it because of the Los Angeles media market and how expensive those ad bys are, and by virtue
of knowing Willie Brown and their circle of donors. That's what Kamala Harris had, That's what Gavin Newsom had, and that's what's propelled both of them to success.
Harris gets appointed Vice president.
Why because those San Francisco Democrat donors who are the reason why Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House for so long and the Democrat leader in Congress.
Why she was there spokesperson?
She was the connection between the Democrat Party as a political entity and the donors. She was the one going to these parties in people's in the backyards of mansions with all these people. She was the connection to the donor class. And that donor class liked Kamala Harris. They wanted her. Why did Biden pick her his vice president? He had no reason to pick her. He never worked with her. She called him a racist to his face.
Basically during the twenty twenty primary debate cycle. He picked her because the donors wanted her, and Newsom probably in twenty twenty, was like, boy, he could have picked me. Newsom when it became clear that Biden was dropping out, I was like, well, really, we couldn't have had a contested primary, and maybe I could have, you know, jumped into a contested primary.
See if people wanted.
Me, how comes she gets picked to be vice president? I don't, And of course Joe Biden must hate Harris. Harris was a useless vice president. She was forced on him by the donors. She was nothing but a liability for him his whole time in office, and ultimately the donors shoved him out in favor of her. He's mad about it. Biden still probably think Biden probably thinks right now he would have beaten Donald Trump. He's probably so
ticked off right now. I like to imagine that Joe Biden and Gavin Newsom watched the election results together, how to party and watch the election results together, and we're popping champagne after Fox News called Wisconsin for Trump and put him over.
Why. Well, first, Biden's happy because Harris lost. He can't stand her.
He gets to to have these recriminations against the Obamas and the Pelosis and the George Clooneyes of the world and say, see, you idiots, you forced me out. You put this moron in my place, and she got her butt kicked. I'm the only one who's ever beaten Donald Trump. And now Newsom is popping champagne because the seas are parting. Gavin Newsom gets to run in twenty twenty eight. He doesn't have to wait around for Kamala Harris. If Kamala Harris won, well, he couldn't run in twenty twenty eight.
He'd have to sit around cooling his heels for another four years at least do something to convene. And she wouldn't have picked him to be her vice presdent. Well, she didn't pick him to be her vice president.
She picked Tim Walls, So.
He would have had to wait around at least until twenty twenty eight. Beyond twenty twenty eight, he would have had to wait until twenty thirty two. Gavin Newsom now becomes virtue of this election. Democrats will almost certainly not have a majority in the House. They certainly do not have the majority in the Senate anymore. They don't have the White House. Guess who's the most prominent elected Democrat in the United States of America. Now, guess who's left Well,
the governor of the biggest state in the Union. Gavin Newsom, guys, is pretty much de facto the leading Democrat in the entire United States of America right now, with the most donors and the most donor dollars in his back pocket. He is now lined up to run in twenty twenty eight, and he doesn't have to run against Trump.
Trump will be term limited out. He thinks he can take jd Vance. I can tell you that much.
So of all people, bizarrely enough, a big winner from last night is one Gavin Newsom because the seas have parted. Get ready for the Newsom twenty twenty eight campaign. And by the way, if you thought Newsom's senioritis, I've been joking about this. Nobody has cared less about being a governor for his second term than Gavin Newsom has. Gavin Newsom is going to be so bored for the rest of his term the next two years. Oh my gosh, he is not going to give an absolute crap about anything.
When we return more winners and losers in the presidential election, we might shift to some local winners and losers. Next on the John Girardy Show, let's shift to some local winners and losers from the twenty twenty four presidential elections. The twenty twenty four elections that saw we had elections for every member of the California State Assembly, every half of the members of the California State Senate.
We had local races, et cetera.
So let's go to a big local winner, which is school bonds for terribly run school districts. And really I'm just talking about presdent unified. I will say, so, as as we stand here, Clovis President Unified School Bond, Measure H.
Passed easily.
You needed fifty five percent of the vote to pass the Measure H school bond, which again, let's remember what is a school bond.
A bond is a loan.
To a governmental entity. The governmental entity then pays back the loan over the course of thirty or forty years, and they pay it back with interest. Where do they get the money to pay back the loan. They get it from you, from the taxpayers in the form of property taxes, which you have to pay even if you don't own your home, if you don't own your apartment and you're renting, the cost of property taxes gets passed on to you through rent, so.
Measure That's why I've always sort of hated.
The bond mechanism as a means of funding anything. It's the Measure H bond for President Unified specifically is five hundred million dollars that with interest will President Unified taxpayers will really have to pay about a billion dollars, not five hundred million. It'll be a billion dollars with interest. Here's Measure H that they couldn't even hadn't even fully decided what stuff they wanted to build with the Measure
H funding before. They hadn't even decided on it. By the time that people's ballots got to them for early voting, they hadn't decided on all the things they wanted to build with it. President Unified does not have its permanent superintendent yet, they have an interim superintendent, So they're making all these decisions about what their priorities are for funding, what they're going to fund, what they're gonna build without
having their full time superintendent. What if a new superintendent comes in is like, well, why did we decide to spend all this on this school in this school when we should have spent it on this and this and this. Well, sorry, we're locked in so proposition to the statewide bond measure. It passes easy. Measure H, it passes easy and basically everyone in California is duped by this idiotic mechanism of funding.
I am so sick of these bonds. I was the local razor campaigner against school bond measures, and people.
Say, well, it's the only way we can fund the schools.
No, it's the only way California lets you. But they have other sources of funding as well. So I'm just tired of this nonsense saying, oh that we need to tax people a billion dollars to get five hundred million dollars worth of benefit, that we need to tax some eight hundred million dollars to get four hundred million dollars worth of benefit. I'm so sick of it for these schools that cost. I mean, Clovis Unified was really pitching voting for MEASUREE because oh, we need to finish close
South High School. How did the cost of closed South High School double over the course of construction? How does that make sense? Why do we then have to fit the bill for this project that clearly got wildly out of hand? And I understand that the cost of stuff increased over the course of time via COVID kurktailor project. Why is it that Clovis Unified is a one entity that doesn't have to tighten its belt. I got to
tighten my belt when groceries go up, et cetera. I who don't even send my kids to close unified schools, but living clothes unified, so I have to pay for it. So congratulations to the school districts whose bond measures passed, the bond measure movement having a dumb state bond measure because the teachers' unions were upset that Gavin Newsomen didn't have as much funding for schools as they wanted, so they had Prop two on the books, and of course
Prop two has a matching fund thing. Hey, if your local school district raises bond funding itself, we'll match. And that's, by the way, the reason why every local school district
had a bond measure was because of Prop two. The reason why every local school district had a bond measure was because the prop to the If Prop two passed, that money would be on the table and school districts could get it if they raised local bond funding themselves, even though all these school districts had done this exact same thing just four years ago. And I don't know when this is gonna stop, because here's a news flash
for you. All the teachers' unions insisted on Prop two because they thought Gavin Newsom didn't put enough money for schools in the state budget. The reason why he didn't put enough for them is because we are running budget deficits year after year after year in California, and that's that picture is not going to get better. We had a ton of people and a ton of money move out of California during COVID. A bunch of rich people with fifteen billion dollars of annual revenue in capital gains
taxes are out of this state. We're going to run deficits for the foreseeable future. Twenty twenty two was the aberration because we got this big influx of federal COVID money. We had a surplus in twenty twenty two, but we're running deficits in twenty twenty three. We're running a deficit in twenty twenty four. We're never gonna have enough money to satisfy the teachers' unions for schools. So are we going to do a ballot initiative every year every two
years to fund schools? As every year we're not going to have as much money as these people want. I don't know where this gravy train is going to stop. Because these local school districts are so hungry for money from the state that they'll run a bond measure. They will always your local school district will always have a bond measure proposal to match a state bond proposal for education funding. So I don't know where this is going
to stop. We're just going to keep having close unified measure as we're going to keep having presdent unified measure HS.
I see no reason why they would stop. People just keep voting.
For them, and they clear the fifty five percent threshold or they come damn close. So the big winner is the bond system, the scam system measured Proposition two for schools, pasted Proposition four for and environmental bond, So ten billion dollars for vague environmental projects in California. Because why well, similar to how the teachers unions complained that there wasn't enough funding for schools in the state budget, again a budget that was running a huge deficit, the environmental groups
all complained that, hey, there wasn't enough. You you reduced spending on environmental projects of dubious value by about ten billion dollars. Gavenusom, So let's have a ten billion dollar loan to the state to pay for these projects that we like. That ah, the taxpayers will have to pay twenty billion dollars to pay this up. But what do we care, It's not our money. So the bond system is a big winner locally and statewide. Let's talk about
some local winners and losers. David Valadeo is a winner. Uh, David Valadeo is a bizarre political machine. I don't understand it. It seems to sort of stump certainly nationwide and statewide observers. David Valadeo was put into this district so that he would lose, all right, the way that redistricting happened in twenty twenty and starting with the twenty twenty two cycle, basically what our quote non partisan redistricting commission did, which
is hyperpartisan in favor of Democrats. They jerry manndered one district to be the Republican district. The district that it was Kevin McCarthy's district, now it's Vince Fong's district. So they wanted one super safe Republican district. Let's pack all the Republicans into one district. So let's draw this bizarre district that looks like the number three. So the spine of the three goes along the Sierra Nevada mountains and
then it has three little points jutting out. One goes to Clovis, the most conservative area of the Fresno immediate Fresno area. The other goes to lamore A Naval base military more conservative, and then the third sort of jutting out point goes to the most conservative parts of Kern County. So it's a plus thirty five advantage Republican district. The idea was have all the Republicans in one district, all the other districts be competitive so that Democrats can win.
So David Valadeo's district he got like the worst part of King's County for Republicans. He's got parts of Tilarry County, King's County. It's a district designed for him to lose. Democrats have, like I believe, a plus four plus five voter registration advantage, and David Valadeo just keeps freaking winning and completely kicked Rudy Salas's butt. All the Democrats nationally who dumped tons and tons and tons of money into television ads against Valadeo for Rudy Salas a complete waste
of money. In fact, they even realized this. National Democrats pulled a bunch of money out of Rudy Salas in a few weeks before the campaign and dumped it into other races in southern California. So David Valadeo is a winner. It's really just a remarkable political achievement what he's been able to do to just keep winning elections. He had the one loss to t J. Cox, and he got right back into it and started winning again. So you know,
kudos to David Valadeo. When we return, I'll have sort of the last winners and losers of local elections, and I'm going to focus on the David Tangipa.
Versus George Rodanovitch race that is next on the John Girardi Show.
We're doing winners and losers statewide, nationwide local addition, and I want to end the race with a quick winter loser segment. This was the race for Jim Patterson's Assembly see and first of all, I'll give my first winner as Jim Patterson himself. I've admired Jim Patterson so much ever since I started my career in Fresno, and you know, obviously I grew up here though also and knew of Jim as mayor of Fresno, and I've always respected him,
always admired him. A true pro lifer. There are not a lot of Republican politicians out there who I could say really believe in the pro life cause and care about it. For Jim, it's very personal to him. His children are adopted and that's the reason why he has children and grandchildren.
He's spoken about that.
At great length at a number of venues, and I've so admired him, so admired his work on behalf of the cause of adoption in the state legislature and concluded twelve years of incredible service to his district as a state assembly member. I think if our state legislator had, if our state legislature had, you know, eighty Jim Pattersons in the Assembly and forty Jim Pattersons in the state Senate,
we'd have a much better state. So Jim's term limited out, you can serve twelve years in the California State Legislature, served all twelve years in his Assembly district. You know, I really admire him and congratulate him on twelve incredible years. A congratulations to David, Togepa, who looks like he's on the road to victory. And I don't mean this to be like a mean beat down towards George Rodanovitch. I will say though his campaign turned pretty negative against David Togepa,
pretty darn negative. And you know, I producing these political ads. I don't know if Radanovitch himself knew some of the nastiness that was, you know, being used. They do some attack ad that comes out on the day on David Tongapa, his father died earlier this year. They send it an ad out on his dad's birthday with the one bad picture they could find of David where he's it was his Facebook live video he did after his dad's passing
where he was talking about it. Where it's the one video of Tongapa not looking like a movie star, you know, where he's you know, he's been crying his dad had passed away.
He's not not looking his best.
They use that picture in an attack ad against David, and I wonder if that turned the tide against Radanovic.
I think it.
You know, I really respect Radanovich for his service in Congress in the past, but to have lost now in his case a state Senate race and a state Assembly race, it's not great, not great. So a big Congress cotulations to David Togapa for a real awesome win. That'll do it for John di'lardi show. See you next time on Power Talk