Elex Michaelson on the state of the Governor's Race

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Speaker 1: And we continue at one oh five in the afternoon on the John Phillips Show, Mister Randy Wiggs in Culver City.

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Speaker 2: John, I flew back into Los Angeles on Saturday, opened up my phone this morning and found not one, not two, not three, but four different burglary stories involving the San Fernando Valley that made it to the crime blotder.

00:00:28
Speaker 1: Home, Sweet Home.

00:00:31
Speaker 2: What the hell did I come back for?

00:00:34
Speaker 1: Well, apparently not much, because the thieves have it. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is jellphone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. Well. The Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, ran on the platform of cleaning up La streets with homeless encampments, not just on skid Row, but in the San Fernando Valley, West Side and all points in between. She knew there was an emergency that needed to be taken care of. That's when she came up with Project Inside Safe. It's program that is the quintessential program of the Bass administration. It costs a fortune, but she said it was necessary to take bums off the streets and put them in motels because then and only then would the city be clean again, Randy, how does that working out.

00:01:31
Speaker 2: For Well, we know from a new report from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority that forty percent of the people inside inside Safe are back outside on the streets, and to which Karen Bass will say, you have it, sixty percent is still in the motels. So that's a win.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: That's one way of looking at it.

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Speaker 2: So you got two things going on, Karen Vass continuing to advocate for her program that has not a great track record of success and is costing the city so much money. At the same time, you have other shelters in the city of Los Angeles that we put up years and years and years ago because of policies from this Jackass.

00:02:15
Speaker 3: I received things on both ends that.

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Speaker 2: Originally neighborhoods like Los Felis bought into thinking that, yes, okay, you say, if we put up this homeless shelter in Los Felis near Griffith Park, we will have a place for the homeless and they won't be on the encampments, and we won't have as much crime, and we won't have as much drug use. And well, guess what, Johnny, the homeless shelter in Los Felis is full of drug use and crime and gang activity. You don't say for more on a Bridge Home shelter in Los Felis. Here is Matthew Seedorf and Fox eleven, Good evening.

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Speaker 4: I'm season here sooner only on Fox eleven tonight. A shelter are meant to help the homeless, now accused of making things worse. Neighbors and Los Felis say, crime and drug activity are rising and they want answers. Myself is Matthew Seedorf Tonight Live and listener, see.

00:03:12
Speaker 1: This is what happens. Every time they want to build one of these, The people in the neighborhood go crazy. They get called nimbies, they get blamed for the lack of progress, They get told that they're racist and classist and snotty and everything else, and they get browbeaten into accepting it. They put one of these things in the neighborhood, it wrecks the neighborhood, and now you have no recourse.

00:03:41
Speaker 2: If these were shelters like the Union Rescue Mission or the Salvation Army where you had to drug screen to be getting in, it'd be one thing. But because these are housing first shelters, you are just taking the people that were doing drugs outside and letting them do the drugs inside and during the day they're still outside doing the drugsters.

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Speaker 4: Box of is Matthew Sedorf Tonight, Live and Loss, Feel Us with more for us Matthew.

00:04:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Susan Miss Shelter opened about six years ago, and a lot of residents in the area were actually pushing for it to hopefully help the homeless, but now some have regrets.

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Speaker 2: This was Eric Carcetti's and this was his signature program, the Bridge Home Shelter, where We're going to put one of these up in every single district and the neighborhoods say yes, we will promise to clean up all the encampments in front of the homeless shelter, and that did not happen.

00:04:39
Speaker 3: I give them the full face.

00:04:41
Speaker 1: Just something to remember here. When a politician talks about equity, they don't mean lifting people up who are struggling. They mean dragging all of us down to where the poverty is. It's part of the reason that they go after cities like Huntington Beach so aggressively, because you we can't have a dump like Los Angeles and a beautiful city like Huntington Beach in the same state and not have mutiny. Why is it that Huntington Beach gets to be so nice. Look at all the encampments in Los Angeles. Look at all the traffic problems in Los Angeles. Look at all the crime problems in Los Angeles. We certainly can't fix that, So let's turn Huntington Beach into a hell hole.

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Speaker 5: Two homeless shelter meant to help now accused of being a hub for crimes, the retail center for for a lot of bad, bad actors who are drug dealers, sex traffickers, neighbors.

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Speaker 2: This is exactly who we're putting in the homeless shelters.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: Wait, I thought they were homeless because of the high cost of housing.

00:05:46
Speaker 5: Drug dealers, sex traffickers, neighbors capturing You know what this is.

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Speaker 2: This is a jail without any locks, because a lot of these people are the people that should be in jail, but we want put them there.

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Speaker 5: Drug dealers, sex traffickers, neighbors capturing images of copper wire and bike thefts while photos from inside.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so get this. You have a homeless shelter that we are spending money on not only to build it, but to operate, is run by the city. The people who we take off the encampments to live in this homeless shelter during the day are going out into the streets and stealing copper wire and bringing it back to the homeless shelter.

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Speaker 5: Unreal Well, photos from inside the Bridge Home shelter appear to show drug use and possible gang symbols. The location across from Griffith Park and the La River, an area already plagued by encampments and illegal drugs a place.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we know that this didn't take away the encampments. In fact, there's more encampments than there have been, including one where somebody who has profiled on CEDAR support on a Monday died of an old r notes on a Wednesday.

00:07:03
Speaker 1: The fact that our local officials aren't hiding an embarrassment is beyond my ability to comprehend.

00:07:10
Speaker 2: Well, this is Council District four. This is Nitia who thinks she's about ready to get a promotion.

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Speaker 5: A place neighbors say shelter residents go to often. Do you drug and alcohol talking these facilities?

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Speaker 3: No, they do not.

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Speaker 2: He's the best of both worlds, he says, he can go here again, allowing people to do drugs and a homeless shelter does not work.

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Speaker 1: No, but this cuts against everything they talk about following the science. Everything that public health officials and departments say is give them more drug paraphernalia, give them needles, give them tinfoil, give them whatever it is that they need to get high, because that's the compassionate thing to do. And what we're doing is we're making the problem worse and we're killing people.

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Speaker 2: Francisco, notably, which is now per capita, the second worst city in the country for overdose deaths, only second to Baltimore. I think LA is fourth or fifth. I think at this point, according to Tom Wolf, thirty percent of the overdose deaths happen inside the SROs and the tenderloin. They're happening indoors. Bringing them inside and allowing them to do their drugs is only killing them faster. Is that the plan?

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Speaker 1: And the funny thing is is it shouldn't shock anyone. If you're giving them all the goodies and you're giving them the space to do it in and you're telling the cops to look the other way, why wouldn't they be doing all the drugs they want to do in there?

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Speaker 3: No, they do not.

00:08:47
Speaker 2: He's the best of both worlds.

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Speaker 5: He says, he can go here, get three squares, get a shower, and can check in at night and then leave and go do his thing on the river and sit in the shelter far as.

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Speaker 2: And this is another thing that we know, especially from place like La and San Francisco. When ABC seven a couple of years ago did a census, they were just asking people on the streets if they would accept housing. Do you know how many of them that had a tent said, oh, I already have a shelter.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's very common. Sure they like having access to a shower. Sure they like having access to electric outlets so they can charge their phones and those sorts of things. But all of the fun is in the encampments. That's where all the drugs are. That's where all their buddies are, that's where the animals are, that's where the stolen stuff is. That's where they want to be because the problem isn't a housing issue. The problem is they're all on drugs, and that's what druggies like to do. If you remember about a year ago in West LA, you had that situation where somebody who was in a brand new homeless housing shelter walked outside to go under the four h five freeway to start a fire, and we still have an rested that person and go.

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Speaker 6: Do a thing on the river and sit in the shelter for as long as they can. I mean, the drugs are brought to them on account of your service by gang members.

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Speaker 2: Are they doing delivery?

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Speaker 1: Now? Wow, it's like having the good seats at Dodger Stadium.

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Speaker 2: Do you tip the gang member if they bring the drugs to you?

00:10:20
Speaker 1: I think they bring you one of those little electronic devices and it gives you the option of twenty twenty two or twenty five percent.

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Speaker 2: What do you think? It says that there is zero screening of who goes in and out of this city run homeless shelter.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think that that's part of the design of these programs because some of the criticism of the homeless shelters is that no one will go there because they won't let you do drugs, or they won't let you cause disturbances, or they won't let you bring your animals in or fill in the blank. And if you are a homeless shelter that wants to fill your place up because I guess that results in more money. Then you have to allow all the chaos because that's what they want. They want the chaos.

00:11:06
Speaker 5: The Low's philice Bridge Home opened six years ago with one hundred beds designed as a path to housing.

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Speaker 2: How'd that work out?

00:11:17
Speaker 1: Exactly as expected? Out here is like campgrounds?

00:11:21
Speaker 5: But one resident hiding their identity says they have.

00:11:24
Speaker 1: A lot of mice here. Oh boy, that's no good.

00:11:29
Speaker 2: Well, if you're wondering why Los Angeles is experiencing the largest outbreak of typhus that we have seen in generations, part of it could be traced back to encampments and shelters.

00:11:42
Speaker 1: Like running around freely?

00:11:44
Speaker 5: Do you feel close.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: To get this is a city run drug den. How did we not get sued right and left? Oh? We do. We currently are.

00:11:54
Speaker 5: Close to getting into permanent housing and getting out.

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Speaker 2: I don't feel close to getting per housing. What does that even mean? What does permanent housing mean? Does that mean that we're going to subsidize somebody's drug habit for the rest of their short life.

00:12:10
Speaker 1: But give them a ranch style home with a white picket fence to do it in? Because I just started here or recent, how.

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Speaker 2: Is any of this how is any of this better than when we just put all these people in prison.

00:12:26
Speaker 1: That worked so much better than what's going on right now. And they complained about the prisons being full, and they complained about people who are mentally ill being abused in the prisons. It's never going to be perfect. There's always a trade off. You either have them in the prisons, and you have a lot of people in prison, and sometimes they're going to be abused because gang members sitting in the cell with them don't want to hear the voices at three am. So you're gonna have to put up with a certain amount of chaos inside the prisons, or you're going to have to put up with the chaos outside the prisons, on the streets, in your neighborhoods, where you live, where you worship, or you go to school, where you go to work. And for whatever reason, we have decided that allowing all of this chaos to go on around us is the compassionate choice, because I just started here.

00:13:21
Speaker 5: A recent audit of LA's Homeless Services Authority raises questions about transparency and how billions are being spent, but still according to the city's own numbers, this shelter is doing better than most, with about eighteen percent moving into permanent housing.

00:13:38
Speaker 1: Eighteen percent, and they're doing better than the competition.

00:13:43
Speaker 5: The times seem like a noble experiment and we wanted to get the people out of the river, and we now know that it's not working. Neighbors now demanding change, calling for real accountability.

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Speaker 2: Well, you had a chance in twenty twenty four to get some accountability by not re electing Nethea.

00:14:01
Speaker 1: And you had a chance with Rick Caruso over caring Bass.

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Speaker 6: And that means not just sitting around all day getting stoned, to running all night and going out and stealing from the stealing from the businesses.

00:14:14
Speaker 5: Neighbors calling for more mental health and possible drug treatment reporting lifetime Matthew Sedo or Fox Revenues.

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Speaker 4: Who's responsible for that shelter?

00:14:25
Speaker 5: Yes, we reached it's the city Shelter. We reached out to a council woman Atia Rahmin's office and they're working on getting us a statement. We also reached out to marry Our Bass's office and so far time we haven't heard back.

00:14:35
Speaker 4: But there's some kind of organization that handles the people there.

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Speaker 2: And yes, who's being paid to let all of the gang members and to deliver drugs to the homeless in the shelter.

00:14:45
Speaker 1: Of course it's a city owned facility.

00:14:48
Speaker 4: Registers them or what have you.

00:14:51
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's operated and by the city by LASA. And you know it's again the success rate here is eighteen percent, and if you're looking at that chart, actually higher than the success.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: Rateed there you go, that is so pathetic. Could you imagine operating a school where eighty three percent of your students drop out and fail and then you go, well, we're doing better than the competition.

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Speaker 2: When you see how some of these shelters that are run in the Bay Area where you cannot bring in drugs, not just transfers to permanent housing. You have people who can get a job and who can get their own apartment, but we don't want that. We want these people to be wards of the state for as long as possible because then we can get more money to fund their habit.

00:15:54
Speaker 1: We just have to accept the fact that for many of these people, not all of them, but for many of these people, they are never going to be productive members of society. It's just not going to happen. If you have scrambled your brains on feentanyl. We do not have the ability to unscramble them. It just is what it is, and whatever state you happen to be in is the way it's going to be. And right now, we're allowing these people to live on the streets, and we can provide them all of the services that you'd like. We can provide them with very expensive rehab, we can provide them with very expensive housing. You're not going to fix the fundamental problem. These people belong in institutions or they belong in prison, one of the two. At some point, through technology and AI, we're going to figure out how to unscramble their brains and maybe they will be able to be productive members of society. But at this point we're not there. We get so let's stop pretending like we are, because by pretending that we are there, we are allowing our neighborhoods to be taken over by the zombies. And it's going on all over the state. You don't see this in Florida. You don't see this in Texas. You don't see this in Utah. You don't see this in other states besides the Pacific Coast. It's US, It's Oregon, it's Seattle, and I hear they even have problems and Anchorage. By the way, I don't know why it all came to the Pacific Coast in the first place. I don't know why we're stupid enough to put up with it. But it doesn't have to be like this.

00:17:53
Speaker 2: Well, I think Anchorage is excuse is there's just nothing to do in Alaska.

00:17:57
Speaker 1: But do meth, I guess, but do that someplace warmer. Maybe the meth warms you up. Eight hundred two two two five two two two telephone number. What eight hundred two to two two five two to two two. Let's go to jacket Esquindido.

00:18:15
Speaker 7: Jack, Hello, John, great show. Listen. What's happening around California with this hospice business is that people are hooking up with NGO lawyers and doctors having themselves declared on hospice virtually impossible to evict if they have something like a seat pat machine in their property that they don't have to pay their utility bills and you're stuck with them, and it really sucks. It's just you're you're wearing a homeless shelter, whether you want to or not.

00:18:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, this state comes down on landlords every opportunity they have. They did it during COVID, they did it during the Ice trades, They do it on any day that ends at a Y. And then they wonder why people don't want to do business here. They wonder why people are moving out of state. They wonder why landlords in particular just throw their hands up in the air with frustration and say, that's it. I'm moving on. If you want to increase the amount of housing units that are available in California, you're going to have to work with landlords, whether you like it or not. And if you make life miserable for them, don't be surprised when they don't want to do business with you. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. He's the host if the story is which heres weeknights from nine to eleven Pacific on CNN, You can follow him on exit Elex Underscore Michaelson, Alex Michaelson.

00:19:59
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thanks Sean, good to be with you.

00:20:03
Speaker 1: Well, thanks so much for stopping by. So oh boy, does this gubernatorial election have more moves than the temptations.

00:20:15
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:20:15
Speaker 8: Indeed, the big headline of the day, of course, Betty Yee dropping out, and the other headline is a new poll that just came out in the last hour and a half or so showcasing from the Democratic Party that the two Republicans remain in the lead, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, and so the party trying to push people out. That seem to work, at least when it comes to Betty Ye today. Will other people drop out?

00:20:44
Speaker 1: We'll see the problem with getting someone like Betty Ye or Ian Calderon to drop out. Is Ian Calderon was at zero percent? Betty Ye? Is it one percent? Possibly two percent? If you're going to really impact this race, you need someone to drop out who has some degree of support, not maybe enough to be competitive as to making it to the top two finish in November, but someone who has substantial support, maybe five percent, like a Matt Mayhan or an Antonio via Regosa. We had Antonio via Rigosa on this program a couple of weeks ago. He's not going anywhere. It doesn't matter how much pressure of the Democratic Party puts on him. He is not dropping out of the race. This is the last hurrah for him, and Matt Mayhan has recently been ringing the cash register with a lot of big dollar donations coming his way from those Silicon Valley titans. I don't see him dropping out either.

00:21:51
Speaker 8: And the Party really has no leverage over either one of them, as you mentioned, you know, via Ragosa. This is his last race, so there's not like a Whetner that they can send to him. And Matt Mayhead frankly became famous and popular by running against the Democratic Party with Prop thirty six. You know, he's called out Gavin Newsom, He's called out a lot of the way that the Democratic Party does business. So I'm not sure what they're going to do or what leverage or perks that they could offer him to convince him to get out. You know, it's all about money, you know. Somebody like Betty E was clearly running out of donor money, which she acknowledged in her briefing today, and that's part of the reason that she got out.

00:22:32
Speaker 3: You know, if Mayhem has the money, then why would he why would he drop?

00:22:35
Speaker 8: The other thing that this race has shown, certainly the Swalwell News which some of them were anticipating that there would be a negative story about Swalwell coming out.

00:22:44
Speaker 3: They didn't know the extent of it.

00:22:45
Speaker 8: They didn't know for sure that he would himself drop out, but it shows that, look, the idea of just sort of hanging around and being there might be a good thing. You look at the polling surge for Javier Bessera, kind of out of nowhere said to the other campaigns, well, look there's still twenty percent undecided.

00:23:03
Speaker 3: We're not that far off.

00:23:04
Speaker 8: You know, get us to the debate stage and let's see what happens, and there's going to be you know, four televised debates in the next you know, three or four weeks.

00:23:14
Speaker 1: It seems like the storyline that's just beneath the surface in this election is that the Democratic Party does not want either one of their front runners. They don't want Katie Porter and they don't want Tom Steyer, and they need an alternative. And until he lit his campaign on fire, Eric Swaalwell was going to be that guy. But after he lit everything on fire, they need to go out and find someone else. And it seems like Javier Basera is hoping that individual will be him, But it doesn't matter how much campaigning they do, how much money they spend. It doesn't seem like the Democratic Party is worming up to Porter or Styer at all.

00:23:57
Speaker 8: It seems like they both have ceilings, which is why the rest of these campaigns, you know continue. Uh, there's a there is a you know, a certain number of people that just will not support Katie Porter or Tom Steyer. And for whatever reason, we know that Katie Porter was not the most popular person within the Democratic Party, that Nancy Pelosi and her did not get along well when she ran for Senate, surely had one out of all of her congressional colleagues endorser. She's kind of pointed to that as actually as a positive, that she doesn't always play nice with others, that she's willing to challenge the establishment and get things done. But that in terms of Tom Steyer, you know, he has been accused by a lot of people of sort of trying to buy elections. He hasn't ever won anything before, so he has, you know, never worked with all of these people in the capacity of being an elected official. And at a time when you know, billionaires are seen as a negative, you know, that has rubbed some people the wrong way. But it's also interesting John that he's basically running his entire campaign as the billionaire who's against billionaires, who wants to tax billionaires, who wants to take on seems to be working. You know, he just picked up the endorsement of the Bernie Sanders crowd, the r Revolution, people who are most against billionaires, they're now backing the billionaire in the race. And so and he got the California Teachers Association, really powerful group. So Steyer, you know, is is running a very unusual campaign, but right now probably probably would be the favorite, but who knows.

00:25:42
Speaker 1: Let's go back to Biserah for a second. You have interviewed Nancy Pelosi on a number of occasions, and I think that in terms of there being party bosses that still exist in the world, she is as close to the party boss for the Democratic Party it gets, particularly here in California. We know that she has an extremely low opinion of Javier Bessera. It was written about in one of those books about the twenty twenty election where she was furious with Joe Biden for not coming to her when he named Javier Bessera to be Secretary of the Health and Human Services. She doesn't regard him as being trustworthy, she doesn't regard him as being bright. They've had run ends apparently in the past where he has burned her, and there is no love loss between the two. Do you think the Democratic Party could coalesce around a candidate that Nancy Pelosi despises?

00:26:40
Speaker 7: Maybe?

00:26:41
Speaker 8: I mean, they seem a lot of them seem to be back in him now. I mean the question is how active is Pelosi going to be privately or how active is she going to be publicly? I mean, she has chosen not to endorse anybody. It was interesting because all of her people, her most trusted aids, like Adam Schiff, Zoe Lofger and others all back Derek Swallow, but Nancy Pelosi did not. She chose not to get involved in this race. And you wonder, John, where else would she go.

00:27:10
Speaker 3: She's not going to back Katie Porter.

00:27:12
Speaker 8: That's just not going to have, you know, could Matt Mahan, who's kind of running against the party and seems to be attacking Newsome, who she's very close with, does not seem to be a landing spot for her.

00:27:23
Speaker 3: So where's she going to go?

00:27:24
Speaker 8: Antonio Vierragosa, who right now doesn't look, you know, like he's close in the polls. Is she going to go with Stier? I mean, where does where does Nancy Pelosi go? Where does the party go? That's why this race is so close, because it's not clear where to go. You know, I agree with you that that Throughout this race, it seems like there has been a significant percentage of Democrats who don't like Donald Trump, who don't want to vote for a Republican but don't want to vote for Tom Styr and Katie Porter and are looking for somewhere to go. It's a reason why Swalwell had the support that he did, but the support was so soft. They weren't necessarily huge Eric Swalwell fans. They were just looking to go with somebody who was against Donald Trump. And it's why swallow support collapsed within sixteen minutes. His own best friends all abandoned him within fifteen to twenty minutes of that story coming out. And now the question is where is that going to go? But the bigger question John is in almost every poll undecided is still at like twenty percent undecided. Is winning the race for California governor? Right now that's a big crop of people that are looking for a home, and that could swing the whole thing.

00:28:32
Speaker 1: You recently had Eric Swalwell's attorney on your program on CNN, where you sliced and diced him like a piece of chicken at Benny Haunted. It was really something to watch. You did an excellent job in that interview. Didn't go well for him, but under the circumstances, I don't know how it could have gone well for him. Over the weekend, I don't know if you saw it, but Bill Maher spent some time talking about Eric Swalwell, and Bill Maher said something that I thought was interesting, which is that he never liked Eric Swalwell. He had Swallwell Honest Program a number of times. Didn't trust the guy, didn't like the cut of his jib. There was just something off to him about the guy. Did you ever interview Eric Swalwell at any point in your career, and I'm curious to see if you felt the same way.

00:29:21
Speaker 3: I interview him many times.

00:29:23
Speaker 8: He gave the first TV sit down of his campaign for governor. To me on the story is we were launching relationship with Eric Swallwell. He was always nice to me, I'll just give some insight.

00:29:39
Speaker 3: I mean, he.

00:29:41
Speaker 8: And a lot of the women have discussed this and it wasn't just a women thing. He was very free in sort of handing out his cell phone and having direct contact. He would have direct contact over Twitter, too, which is not usual for most politicians. Usually you sort of operate through the staff. He was very casual in his communication, which in in a lot of ways was fun and interesting but also kind of felt like, wow, that's you know, most politicians don't speak that way. And he was very focused on the horse race aspects of a lot of this stuff, like a kind of a pundit.

00:30:15
Speaker 3: In addition to being a politician.

00:30:18
Speaker 8: He was always nice to me and I appreciated, you know, our interactions together. But he did operate in a different way than most politicians did.

00:30:31
Speaker 1: I wonder if he's going to be one of these guys that claims to be an alcoholic now that everything has fallen apart, because you go through so many of these accusations that have been thrown at him, and the one through line is that he was wasted in just about every single encounter. It seems as if extreme alcohol abuse was going on in his world for a very long time.

00:30:59
Speaker 8: That could be that also just might be true, John, I mean, it may he may have had a real problem with drinking. And I hope if that's true that he gets the help that he needs. It's hard to imagine where his political career goes next. And also you feel for him, you know, I mean, I don't know if I feel. I feel for his kids really most of all, and that they're going to have to deal with the after effects of this, which cannot be fun either, and that he's got a young family. But I think that, you know, focusing on doing right by them should probably be his main priority right now and dealing with what could be real legal challenges before worrying about a public career.

00:31:42
Speaker 1: Let's turn to the Republicans here for a second in the race, Steve Hilton, formerly of Fox News, Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, as someone who is a Republican voter in California. When I look at the poll that you just cited, which was a poll that was commissioned by the California Democratic Party that showed that if the election were held today, it would be both Republicans on the November ballot and the Democrats would be locked off that ballot. What I intend on doing with my vote is voting for whichever Republican candidate is polling second. If the election were today, that would be Chad Bianco. Even though I happen to personally prefer Steve Hilton to Chad Bianco, I would vote for Chad Bianco today because I want a Republican governor more than I wanted to be Steve Hilton. Specifically, I wonder how many people are out there in the state of California who are going to go into the voting booth with that philosophy.

00:32:44
Speaker 8: Well, I think it's fair to say that probably most voters in the state are not as educated on politics as you are, John, So I don't know how many of them are going as cynically as you are. But in terms of getting a Republican governor, your strategy is right in a lot of ways. You know, President Trump getting involved was potentially counter productive for there being a Republican governor. The best thing that could happen for the California Republican Party is that Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton split the vote at like eighteen nineteen twenty percent exactly and lock out the Democrats, and then you've got a Republican governor. It is very very difficult, not impossible, but very difficult. If either Bianco or Hilton ends up in a one on one matchup with a decrat in November, the Democrat would start with at least a fifteen to twenty point lead just because.

00:33:41
Speaker 3: Of party registration.

00:33:43
Speaker 8: And that has been impossible so far for a Republican to make that up in a statewide race for the last like two decades in California. It may happen, but it's been very, very difficult for that to happen. But you know what's guaranteed, one hundred percent, if you've got two Republicans, then you got a Republican governor. So your party should be doing everything possible to create the outcome that you just said.

00:34:06
Speaker 1: Here's what's wild to me. And maybe it's just by social network and you see it differently. I don't know, but it seems like the Republicans I know are of the belief that it's a pipe dream to assume that two Republicans could make the November ballot. So stop talking about it. It's not going to happen. That is fantasy land. Let's get back to reality. The Democrats, I know, don't have any fingernails left because they're chewing them all off. They're so worried about that happening.

00:34:36
Speaker 8: Yes, but don't you think though, that Republicans would be better off doing what you just suggested, which is like actively trying to split the vote. Because I hear Republicans that say, no, we all got to get behind Hilton. He's the guy. They're also going to get locked out of the race. And the best thing that Republicans could do is for there to be two Republicans. That's kind of That's right, isn't that the whole ballgame?

00:35:00
Speaker 1: That's my assumption. I mean, if you want to win, play for the opportunity that gives you the best odds, And if there is a Republican and a Democrat on the November ballot, your odds are close to zero. If you play for the top two. I think Paul Mitchell at one point had it at twenty somewhere between twenty five percent and thirty percent. Well, okay, that's a much better chance of winning than zero. So go for that, right.

00:35:28
Speaker 8: And wouldn't that be a fascinating campaign. I mean, wouldn't it be amazing to watch if it ended up being Bianco and Hilton in the general election, to see what they do and how that would work. That would it would it would be the end of the top two.

00:35:45
Speaker 1: Oh, I think the top two is going the way of the Dodo regardless.

00:35:50
Speaker 8: Yeah, that would expedite it, and the Republican would almost certainly face a recall on day one as well. But it would be really interesting to watch that all unfold if it happens, just as a spectator of Polatics.

00:36:06
Speaker 1: Well, and if there are two Republicans at the top of the ticket in California for governor, then that probably means the Republicans have a much better shot of holding Dear Olysis seat, the Kevin Kylie seat, the Central Valley seat. It may impact the national scene.

00:36:25
Speaker 8: Right which is why, to your point, there are so many Democrats that don't have fingernails right now, which is why the Democratic Party is literally paying for its own polling to try to show these people, guys, you've got to get out because they're worried about it. I mean, I mean, you think Democrats were embarrassed after losing the Trump and sort of wondering, what did we do with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden? Would what would be the sort of after action report look like if in the most democratic state in the country, the headquarters of the resistance, the state that I need to the Democratic nominee, Gavin Newsom, the last Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and they can't even get a Democrat in the top two.

00:37:08
Speaker 1: Well, I think Gavin Newsom takes the l for that because he got them all worked up over Proposition fifty instead of the gubernatorial election. He certainly was under the impression that Alex Padilla was going to run and clear the field and didn't make enough phone calls to make sure that would happen, and then he went out on a book tour and sucked up all the oxygen in the room so that none of them had the opportunity to get their programs out there. I think this would be catastrophic for Gavin Newsom because I don't know of a politician down to dog catcher who doesn't want to pick their successor, and it almost has seemed that he just doesn't care who takes over his job as governor of California. And that was apparent, which means the Democratic voters have no queue.

00:37:58
Speaker 8: Well, it's interesting I saw that he endorsed Josh Friday for Lieutenant governor today, so he got involved in that race. Josh Friday is a member of his cabinet who works on some of.

00:38:08
Speaker 3: The community issues for him.

00:38:10
Speaker 2: But I don't if you saw.

00:38:12
Speaker 8: Mark Levovich put out a profile in The Atlantic this weekend of the California governor's race, and he interviewed Gavin Newsom about this topic, and Newsom said that he wasn't going to endorse in the governor's race unless there was a quote break the glass moment, which which leads you to believe that if it looks like in the final days of this race like there is going to be top two Republicans, that Gavin Newsom would get behind somebody and probably Alex Padilla and Nancy Pelosi, and they would say it's Style or it's Zara, or it's Mayhan or whoever it is, and that that.

00:38:50
Speaker 3: Could be it.

00:38:51
Speaker 1: Alex Michaelson, host of The Story Is, which heres week nines from nine to eleven on CNN. You can follow him on Exit Alex Underscore. Michaelson Alex Michaelson, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:39:03
Speaker 3: Thanks John, I appreciate it.

00:39:04
Speaker 1: We've got one more hour coming up on The John Phillips Show, Don't You Go Anywhere,