Californians have spoken and they’ve chosen four more years of incompetent leadership in Sacramento.
If these tentative results hold, our next governor will be either Democrat Xavier Becerra or Republican Steve Hilton and our next lieutenant governor will be either Republican Gloria Romero or Democrat Fiona Ma. Either way, voters have guaranteed at least four more years of living in a rudderless state with leadership that will throw things at walls with no prior thought of whether they will stick.
What does a candidate have to do to prove to us that they should not be in charge?
Xavier Becerra has botched every job he has ever been given, mismanaging thousands of migrant children while Secretary of Health and Human Services. He shielded abusive cops from public accountability and threatened journalists for doing their jobs well while he was attorney general of California.
He has also given us a peek into his approach to policymaking, and it’s not a pretty sight. He plans to drive out the home insurance market by “freezing” premiums – he wouldn’t have that authority but that is the sort of plan that his mind finds worthwhile.
In a gubernatorial debate in April, the moderator straightforwardly asked him why insurance carriers wouldn’t just continue to leave the state in the face of such an action. Becerra chose to make like an ostrich, “The fact that we have 40 million people in this state, and we pay our insurance premiums, and they don’t want to lose that business.”
The moderator replied that “they already stopped writing policies” but as I said in my column about the debate, “there is no amount of basic reasoning that would dissuade Becerra from chasing policies that will harm Californians.”
Adding insult to injury, when I spoke to him about how many Democratic policies have hurt Californians, Becerra had the nerve to tell me that Democrats have actually done a great job overall in running the state.
Any one of these points should have disqualified Becerra in the eyes of voters, but instead, we’ve chosen to perpetuate the status quo.
Oh, but what if fate plays a cruel joke on us and voters somehow elect Steve Hilton?
If it talks like Trump, and if it walks like Trump, and if it smells like Trump, then it’s corrupt like Trump. If you know anyone who voted for Steve Hilton, make sure that you talk to them about how to avoid sending their life savings to scam callers in third world countries.
Hilton is staunchly in favor of deporting all illegal immigrants, with or without criminal records, telling me during our interview, “I do think that we’ve got to be clear that if you’re here illegally, that illegal means illegal. And again, going back to the democracy point, this is what America voted for in 2024. The president couldn’t have been clearer.”
This was an interesting position for Hilton given that he had been on British television during the Syrian refugee crisis talking about how the U.S. should be taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East because of our role in creating the crisis.
I asked Hilton why the U.S. role in overthrowing governments and destabilizing and sanctioning governments in Latin America shouldn’t create the same duty for taking in immigrants from the south.
“I need to think about that … I mean, I don’t know the history as well. But I mean, wasn’t that a long time ago? And that actually the responsibility for the economic hardship, for the conditions of crime and gangs and so on that are driving people to seek a better life in America. I mean, would you really put them at the feet of the U.S. today?”
American intervention in Latin America has been ongoing for centuries so his same logic should apply. Hilton’s questionable judgment is perhaps best demonstrated by his choice of running mate, who is currently leading the lieutenant governor race
Democrat-turned-Republican Gloria Romero is a highly partisan individual who can rightly be described as hypocritical – during our interview, a day before Trump started the war in Iran, she condemned war and told me a sob story about attending a soldier’s funeral but 26 hours later she turned right around and has been praising the war in Iran, stating on Twitter/X, “I voted for this!”
During our interview, she also revealed to me that she’s a conspiracy theorist, expressing her vaccine skepticism and specifically when I asked about the vaccine connection to autism she replied, “I mean, we have seen dramatic rises of autism in our children, in schools,” she said. “And there are questions. Like, follow the science. There’s questions to the links. What’s there?”
The existence of such an extensive and conclusive body of evidence demonstrating vaccine safety and efficacy means that she’s unable to accept obvious facts, again, a disqualifying trait for public office. As I argued in the column, her compromised reasoning abilities mean that she should be nowhere near public office but as of this writing, she’s in the lead – Californians seem to hold their candidates to no standard whatsoever.
Voters have California State Treasurer Fiona Ma neck and neck with Romero. Ma has been in government for decades yet seemed unable to offer almost any concrete plans for the position when I interviewed her, instead just reciting her past actions in different offices. The state also settled a sexual harassment lawsuit against her for $350,000.
To round out her qualifications, she has substantial connections to Pegasus, a controversial Chinese school – including speaking at the school’s campus in China, allegedly promising to find job opportunities for their students, and receiving campaign contributions from the school’s owner. Investigations found that the school set up a fraudulent system with the Val Verde Unified School District to improperly grant high school diplomas to Chinese students. I asked Ma if she was compensated in any way to help facilitate this program with VVUSD but she denied all wrongdoing.
California was presented with an awful slate of candidates but we had options that were not so clearly and thoroughly inadequate.
Voters could have chosen candidates like Matt Mahan for governor and Josh Fryday for Lt. Governor – imperfect, but at least they presented practical ideas without so much baggage. Even if it’s naive, I’ll take firm solace in the fact that Californians have continued to improve their lives in spite of those at the helm in Sacramento.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.