Tonights Gubernatorial Debate has been Cancelled

00:00:00
Speaker 1: And very Happy Tuesday to you at twelve oh six in the West each the John Phillip Show, mister Randy Weggs in Culver City.

00:00:07
Speaker 2: Well John.

00:00:08
Speaker 3: After a lot of whining and kicking and screaming about so many candidates not being invited to the Big Debate tonight, the Big Debate got canceled.

00:00:18
Speaker 2: No, that's right.

00:00:22
Speaker 1: The University of Southern California was supposed to host an ubernatorial debate tonight with ABC seven and Univision. However, they were going to leave out all the minority candidates. Yeah, how was that going to go on UNIVISIONE when none of the candidates who were on the stage spoke Spanish.

00:00:43
Speaker 2: You know what USC was trying to do.

00:00:46
Speaker 1: They were trying to give the white Democrats the Bush push?

00:00:51
Speaker 2: Remember that, what was the Bush push?

00:00:55
Speaker 1: The Bush push was when Reggie Bush, who was then a running back for the University of Southern California, probably the best one they've had since OJ Simpson, and they were playing the Notre Dame fighting Irish and it was a year when USC was on fire. I think Matt Lioner was the quarterback and he needed to get into the end zone for USC. To win the game, and they gave him the ball and then a bunch of them got behind him and just shoved him as hard as they could, and then he made his way into the end zone and you're not supposed to be able to do that, but they counted it. It was a touchdown sc one and I think they went on to win the national championship that year. But they called it the Bush Push, And it seems like that's what the Democratic Party and that's what the University of Southern California and ABC seven and Univision were trying to do. They don't want the minority candidates on stage because they don't want to split the vote and allow to republic Pulicans to end up on the November ballot, so they decided to give the white Dems the Bush Push.

00:02:07
Speaker 3: Now, what was being complained about was how it was very confusing as the eligibility rules for this debate, because you could say, well, you only want the high polling candidates there. And as much as he's probably the most common sense person on that side, Matt Mayheon was not high polling.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: No, no, he wasn't. And think about this, Think about this, when you look at the public polling. What the public polling essentially tells you is a couple of things. One is the candidates, particularly the Democratic candidates, are all bunched up together and there's no front runner.

00:02:47
Speaker 2: If you go back and.

00:02:48
Speaker 1: You look at the latest Public Policy Institute of California poll, they found Steve Hilton in first place at fourteen percent, Katie Porter in second place at thirteen percent, Chad Bianco in third with twelve percent, then Eric Swalwell at eleven, Styre at ten, Via Gosa, Bissa and ye all at five percent. Now here's what's interesting. In that poll, the margin of era was three point nine percent, let's call it four percent, So that means there could be an eight point swing in any of those numbers, and that would be within the results of the poll.

00:03:29
Speaker 2: What you end up.

00:03:30
Speaker 1: With is Yee, Vira, Gosa and bisera polling within the margin of air of the top performing Democrat in this poll, that being Katie Porter. How do you tell them to get out when they're statistically tied with the best performing democrat. How do you say it's not your turn, get out and go endorse Katie Porter or Eric Swalwell or Tom stutt I don't see how you say that, especially when you look at all the other metrics, because these aren't gadflies. These are professional politicians and they're doing all of the things that you would do if you were running for office. They've been elected to high office before. Many of them are statewide constitutional office holders. Antoniol Via Ragoso was the mayor of Los Angeles. They've demonstrated the ability to raise large sums of money. They have a list of endorsements that goes on longer than a receiped CVS.

00:04:40
Speaker 2: What more do you want?

00:04:42
Speaker 1: They're doing the same things as Tom Steyer and Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell. Why should they take the knee? But that's what the Democratic Party wants them to do because they do not want two Republicans on that November ballot. And right now, according to internal polling from the Democratic Party, that's exactly what would happen. And USC goes, well, there's not enough room on stage for everyone.

00:05:14
Speaker 2: How many podiums did they need? Well, think about it.

00:05:18
Speaker 1: You have the two Republicans, you have all the white Democrats, that's Porter, Swollwell and Styre. And given the fact that it's USC, they probably had to make room for Lori Laughlan's kids, maybe Felicity Huffman too. Are you telling me that you can't put four more podiums on that stage?

00:05:45
Speaker 3: Well, I will say, for a televised debate, if you have that many people on it once, you're not going to get to many questions at all. No, But if they're all bunched up together, what else are you supposed to do?

00:06:02
Speaker 2: That's the problem. If Kamala was in.

00:06:05
Speaker 1: The race, she would be way ahead of everyone and this wouldn't be an issue. Inexplicably, but that would be the case. I will had had Alex Paedia gotten in the race, he would have been way ahead of everyone else.

00:06:21
Speaker 2: But the two people that.

00:06:23
Speaker 1: Everyone expected to get in the race decided to take a pass. And now you have a bunch of people that most voters don't like, or they don't know, or they don't know.

00:06:34
Speaker 2: That's fair too.

00:06:35
Speaker 3: I don't know if anyone has a negative opinion of Betty Ye. They just have never heard of her.

00:06:40
Speaker 1: No, And because Gavin Newsom doesn't care, we have an absentee landlord governor. He's not even here half the time. Democratic voters have no direction in terms of which direction to go.

00:06:53
Speaker 2: In Well, it's worse than that.

00:06:55
Speaker 3: Gavin Newsom has been so provocative that he's actually sucking up all the oxygen where you think a lame duck governor wouldn't be getting this much coverage because of all this stuff he does on social media, because of the traveling around the country and the book tour and the podcast.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: He's getting all the coverage.

00:07:13
Speaker 3: And nobody's even aware that there is a governor's race.

00:07:18
Speaker 1: No, so what happens. Everyone finds their tribe. So you have all the environmentalists they go with Tom Steyer, all the bipolar women they go with Katie Porter.

00:07:29
Speaker 2: Winter Winter chicken dinner.

00:07:32
Speaker 1: All the Bay Area people they go to Eric Swolwell. The Mexicans they go to Vierragosa and Biserra. The Blacks they go to Thurman, The Asians they go to e.

00:07:43
Speaker 2: Well.

00:07:43
Speaker 1: You end up splitting up the pie then, and that's what they're left with.

00:07:51
Speaker 2: And if you're the.

00:07:51
Speaker 1: Republicans, what you want and what you need And I know he disagrees with us. Steve Hilton, by the way, is going to join us at twelve thirty five. And maybe we'll have this fight, maybe we won't.

00:08:02
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:08:03
Speaker 1: But what Republicans should do is they need to split their vote as close to fifty to fifty as humanly possible. If Republicans can split their vote fifty to fifty between Hilton and Bianco, that is the only chance they have at getting someone in that office. I don't think that either Republican could beat any of those Democrats in a statewide head to head race.

00:08:30
Speaker 2: I don't see that happening.

00:08:33
Speaker 1: The one that they'd probably have the best shot against is Katie Porter, because she's so personally offensive. You can s R here, but she still has a D next to her name, and that's probably good enough. You don't need to win by twenty points. You need to win by one vote, and she would start out with such an advantage just in terms of voter registration that it would be a huge upset if she were lose.

00:09:01
Speaker 2: So that's not likely. Plus any day those cooking videos are going to go viral.

00:09:06
Speaker 3: Sorry for the noise, I'm cutting carrots.

00:09:09
Speaker 2: If she loses, she should end up on the Food Network. Replace the Barefoot Contessa with her.

00:09:17
Speaker 1: Hey, at some point you're going to have to replace her. But it is panic mode right now at the California Democratic Party headquarters, because they now look at this race and they see the likely scenario as two Republicans on the November ballot. They themselves put that out to day. Whether they believe it or not, I don't know, but they're concerned enough to put that on social media.

00:09:45
Speaker 3: I mean it might be a tactic that hey, we need to start putting this out there as a wake up call pay attention to this race. And a great opportunity for people to pay attention to the race would have been a debate. But now that debate just got canceled.

00:09:59
Speaker 1: But here's the other problem. The three white Dems that they're trying to clear the way for are deeply flawed, deeply flawed. What do you think the odds are that there are additional videos that exist of Katie Porter telling an aid to f off.

00:10:17
Speaker 3: Can you put odds at over one hundred percent?

00:10:20
Speaker 2: You're out of my shop.

00:10:22
Speaker 1: You're gonna talk to have to talk to the boys in Las Vegas about that one. But she's one bad video away from going to two percent. Eric Swalwell has no judgment at all. He slept with a spy. What do you think the odds are He's dabbled with the staffers too, And what do you think the odds are that we're going to find out about it before the election? Democratic strategists have tweeted something to that effect out before people in the know, people on the fringes, people who work are working for candidates who are currently in the race, They fully anticipate that happening, and depending on who it is and what the details are, it could be catastrophic for him. And then you have Tom Steyer, who is a billionaire who is overtly trying to buy the office.

00:11:25
Speaker 2: We're in a big ass crisis.

00:11:28
Speaker 1: And if you're just a partisan and you don't care, I guess that's okay. But that rubs people the wrong way. No one wants to feel like the office is just for sale and the highest bidder gets it well.

00:11:41
Speaker 3: And who exactly is the electorate here? You have an election where people might be voting on taxing billionaires and then they're going to put a billionaire in the highest office in the state.

00:11:52
Speaker 2: It doesn't make sense.

00:11:55
Speaker 1: So if you have those three deeply flawed candidates who are doing the best right now now, none of them are the front runner, none of them are running away with it, and the filing deadline, by the way, has come and gone, which means there's going to be no White Knight coming to save the Democratic Party.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: It's not like George Clooney or.

00:12:17
Speaker 1: Someone like that is going to announce their candidacy at the last minute and everyone's going to go vote for him. You're on the ballot today or you're not getting on because the filing deadline is coming gone. The Democratic Party convention where they do endorsements that is come and gone. They're not going to have another one. So what would end up happening is the also rans. The people who aren't pulling in the top three slots, they're going.

00:12:48
Speaker 2: To get a second look.

00:12:51
Speaker 1: Because if the three people who are pulling the best all implode, then Antonio is going to get a second look, but Sarah's going to get a second look. Tony Thurman's going to get a second look, and Betty Yee's going to get a second look. But if you drop out before that happens, you're not going to be one of the candidates that gets a second look. And you could pull the pin on the grenade before you give yourself a chance to win.

00:13:21
Speaker 2: And this has happened before.

00:13:23
Speaker 1: By the way, if you go back to nineteen ninety eight, this was an election that happened after the Republicans controlled the governor's office for sixteen straight years. I know that's hard to believe, but it actually happened eight years of George Duke Magin, eight years of Pete Wilson. Pete Wilson was a popular governor leaving office and the Democrats. Back then we had closed primaries, so only Democrats could vote in the Democratic primary. And you had three candidates who were running. You had Al Checkie, a billionaire. You had Jane Harmon who was rich Er Stell for husband. Sydney Harmon did Harmon stereos and she was the congresswoman from the South Bay. And then you had Gray Davis, who was the lieutenant governor. And in that election you had two wealthy candidates go nuclear on one another, Checkie and Harmon. They attacked each other viciously on the television, on the radio, in your mailbox every single day. And Gray Davis at that time was given zero chance at winning the election. But what did he do. He just hung around. He just stayed in the race and did his thing. And those two disqualified one another by going to war with each other, and Grey Davis ended up being last man standing and he won the election. He was one of these statewide constitutional officeholders that.

00:15:14
Speaker 2: People kind of knew but didn't really know.

00:15:19
Speaker 1: But he had run for office before he understood politics, and he was able to win. And a lot of these people who they're trying to kick off the stage have many of those same qualities, and they're thinking to themselves, why should I get out?

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Why should I get out now?

00:15:39
Speaker 1: In particular for these people, And if it ends up with two Republicans on the November ballot, I'll be as happy as a clam. I don't have a problem with that the way I see it. If you want things to get better in California, as a Republican or a Democrat, what you need is you need one of the people who seems to care about fixing the state in that office.

00:16:08
Speaker 2: And right now there's only four of them.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: It's both Republicans Bianco and Hilton, and on the Democratic side you have Mayhan and via Regosa. They are the only ones talking about state issues. Everyone else is talking about Donald Trump. Everyone else is talking about federal issues Washington, d C. Because they don't understand what's going on in the state, and if you don't understand it, you shouldn't be put in charge. So right now, if Republicans can figure out how to split their vote fifty to fifty for Bianco and Hilton, you might be sitting in the catbird seed. That might be the play right now. So don't trash one another, don't go so nuclear on one another. Understand that your only shot is sticking together. That's the only way it's gonna work. And if you're the Democrats, I don't know what you do right now. I really don't, because your opportunity at fixing this was about six months ago, and for whatever reason, they chose not to.

00:17:27
Speaker 2: And now they're paying for it.

00:17:31
Speaker 1: One of the things that happens in a one party state is when your working assumption is that you're gonna win everything and it doesn't matter if you work for it or not. Every once in a while you get stun and this can be one of those elections where they get stun. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number one eight hundred two to two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com.

00:18:06
Speaker 2: And Randy.

00:18:07
Speaker 1: If you missed last week's interview with Spencer Pratt, candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, and you want to find out what you missed out on, that's easy to do.

00:18:15
Speaker 3: All you gotta do is search for the John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcast. Everybody listening right now should do that. Search for the John Phillips Show on Apple or iHeart or Spotify, hit subscribe, hit follow, it's different on the different apps. Download all the episodes to your phone, even if you have no intention of ever listening to them, you might just want them in case you're in a dead zone where you have nothing else to listen to, when you're getting no internet service. They're downloaded, they're ready to go, and you can enjoy yourself.

00:18:46
Speaker 1: Eight hundred two two two five two two two is 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 is the founder of Golden Together and host of the Steve Hilton sho He's also a candidate for governor here in the state of California, one that's been polling in first place quite consistently in recent surveys. You can get him online at Golden toogether dot com and follow him on X at Steve Hilton X.

00:19:14
Speaker 4: Steve Hilton, Welcome, Welcome to you, John. I really really am very excited to be with you because I get to.

00:19:24
Speaker 5: Talk about California and now we solve our problems, which we were going to be doing tonight at a debate at USC, and it's been canceled, and so what a fiasco.

00:19:35
Speaker 4: This is where we've come to in California today. Unbelievable.

00:19:38
Speaker 2: What do you make of.

00:19:39
Speaker 1: The decision by the University of Southern California because apparently, I guess there was a disagreement between USC and their news partners ABC seven and Univision as to who would be invited and who would be excluded, and then at the last minute they decided they couldn't come to an answer that everyone could agree on, and so they just canceled the entire time.

00:20:01
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is actually all about the corrupt Democrat machine that's been running our state into the ground for all these years, and it's totally on display, and it is not a pretty site. Here's what actually happened. You had a bunch of lpds, as I call them, low polling Democrats who were cut off from being included in the debate because they neither had the poll numbers nor the fundraising numbers to make the cuts, and so, led by Javier Basera, they started whining last week and started to try and get themselves included. Of course, because they're Democrats, they played the race card, claiming that it was the people of color, as they put it, who were excluded from the debate, nothing to do with race. They were excluded because they're not doing well enough in the race, not because of race. Nevertheless, they kept going with their protests. They were joined on Monday yesterday. Now you had the whole Democrat machine weighing in. You had all the usual suspects from the California State Legislature of the Democrat factions and pressure groups, the Latino Caucus, the Black Caucus, the LGBTQ Caucus, the Native American, the women, all of the different groups. They wrote a letter complaining that their colleagues had been left off, and instead of standing up to them, USC just completely caved and the whole thing is preposterous. There's one thing also that I think we need to point out, which is that they were in very weak ground because they actually rigged their own rules after the original set of criteria were published in order to get Matt Mayhan into the debate. That is a fair criticism because they invented this whole new category of fundraising criteria purely to get Matt Mayhan in there, and I don't think that was fair. Rule. I have no time for the whining from the LPDS about why they're excluded, but I do think it's a fair criticism that Matt Mayhan, who's also an LPD, he's not going in right, he's on two three four percent in the polls, but he's got a ton of money from big tech, all in a rush, and so they tried to squeeze him in. I don't think that was right.

00:22:09
Speaker 1: Let me make the case for the LPDS here for a second, because you look at the top three polling Democrats in this race, Katie Porter, Ye, Eric Swollwell, and Tom Steyer. All of those candidates are deeply flawed, deeply, deeply, deeply flawed. We know that Katie porter who cannot promise that there are no more videos that exist of her telling staffers to f off, and she is one video of telling the stafferd to f off from going from where she's at right now to two percent in the polls. We know that Tom Steyer is trying to buy the office and that has limited appeedal There are certain people who are such hyperpartisans they're willing to go with them because they think he can spend his own money and he can win the office. But that's it's not a majority of the people out there. I do not believe. I think that people fundamentally do not believe that is fair, and it's not a good look for him, and it's certainly not helpful at winning support. And then you have Eric Swalwell, who might have the worst judgment in this race, a guy who slept with a Chinese spy, and many of the tweets have been deleted, but there are big time Democratic consultants in this race who are not working for him obviously, who have tweeted that he is going to have additional sex scandals involving staffers that are going to come out before this election is over, and he is not going to be their standard bearer. Because you have those three candidates with all of those problems, they could all implode before election day. And if you're one of these low polling Democrats, you're looking at these people and you go, Okay, these are unstable lunatics. At some point they may take a second look at me. I'm not going to drop out of the race. I'm going to keep going.

00:24:04
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a good argument. You always you're always very thoughtful about this stuff. It's a very good argument. I understand that. I guess my point is that's all well and good. But they set some rules and you know that that's that was decided, and now they're complaining after the fact they shouldn't have caved. I think that's the problem. I think that the issue is for the Democrat maybe the maybe the right way through this, I think is for the Democrats to have their own debate, because when you've got you know, and and the choice here is so clear between you know, four more years or eight more years of one party ruled by the Democrats and a change, you know. I mean my experience of all these Democrats on the stages, they're all the same. I've now done a bunch of done, a bunch of demo debates with them, including some that will televised, others that were not. There's no difference really between them in terms of what they say. I mean, they're slight variations, but basically they're all the same as each other, are all the same as what we've got now where we need a real choice, we need change in California. I take the point, I mean, but look, they're just not going anywhere. They're not impressive. They're not impressing anybody but Sarah and Betty Yee and Tony Thurmon. The don't heard of any of these people. Via ra Gosa has the best name recognition, I would argue, I guess after all those years, you know, being mayor of la And I like Antonio, actually, I really do. And actually, to be fair to him, he's on some issues, for example, on gas and oil and gas. He's definitely the least insane of the Democrats. So I don't know, but the whole appearance of this is just a shambles. Just to cancel a debate with less than twenty four hours before it's supposed to happen, it's just ridiculous.

00:25:49
Speaker 1: How much of the problem do you think a lot of these people are having and you said that they're anonymous and they're having a hard time breaking through and becoming well known. How much of that do you think is avansfault? Because Gavin is trying to take up as much oxygen in the room as humanly possible to sell his book, to promote himself as a presidential candidate, to go on the national shows, the national podcast, travel around other states, other countries, trying to make himself look like the leader of the opposition. And if you are a candidate for governor in the Democratic Party, I don't know how you break through when you have your incumbent governor who doesn't even seem to care, by the way, as to who replaces him. But what he's trying to do is accumulate all the attention humanly possible at your expense.

00:26:41
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. I think that's a great point. And I would add, and now that totally narcissistic self regarding self promoting Democrat career politician to the problem for them, And that's Kamala Harris, who's also in the same book because she decided not to run for governor. If she'd have run for governor of California. She as all the polling shows she would have completely cleared the field. Now she'd have been a disaster, And actually I think that I could have beaten her because we want change and she's an absolute symbol of the Democrat corruption and misrule. However, the fact that she chose to put her who thinks she's going to be their presidential candidate, let alone president, No one except her, No one wants her, that one's interested in her stupid book. But that's what she put that first a narcissism because she wants to be president just like Gavin does. So I think it's the two of them together, Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom. I think that's a very very astute observation. They are the ones who have caused this problem for the California Democrats, and we're left with a bunch of complete non entities and career politicians that nobody wants. It's an amazing situation, given.

00:27:51
Speaker 1: The fact that they've created this wake of destruction behind them as they have. It seems like so many of these Democratic candidates for going are unwilling to publicly criticize Gavin. There was just an interview with Ashley Zavala that was posted on social media involving Tom Steyer, where he was asked the question, point blank a through f how would you grade Gavin Newsom's performance? And his answer was I haven't paid attention, so I can't give him a grade.

00:28:22
Speaker 4: It's unbelieve. It's laughable. With every aspect of that is laughable. The first is like the fact that he has not is so little self awareness that he thinks that's a good answer, that that's a good dodge to a question. And what are you talking about. You're running for governor and you've paid so little attention to our state that you couldn't even make an assessment of the incumbents record. I mean, it's just ridiculous. The other one, of course, was Eric Swolwells, in a different interview, was asked, can you name a single thing that Gavin got wrong or could have done? But he couldn't think of a single thing, not one. These people are not serious and it's shows you, just as with the fuss over this debate, the Democrats just put their own interests first. They just this is what happens actually, after sixteen years of one party rule. They get very self absorbed. They're not really interested in They don't think they need to pay attention or even care about the views of the public. It's all about managing their internal coalition. Note they don't want to annoy Gavin Newsom because they think you might help them or endorse them or whatever it may be. I don't know. And they say these ridiculous things that make them seem just so out of touch. But they're so arrogant. They really do assume that they're going to be re elected and their power is going.

00:29:39
Speaker 1: To go on forever, assuming that they're going to continue to try to push these candidates out of the race. The carrot hasn't worked. How long do you think they're going to give it before the stick comes out and they start ruining these people's lives trying to push them out of the race, turn them into unemployable, unelectable pariahs.

00:30:00
Speaker 4: It's interesting because they've tried all that and they've really failed, and now they're on the ballot. So the truth is that even if these candidates drop out, they will still appear on the ballot even if they're not running. And so given that they're only getting to you know, one or two three percent. Anyway, maybe they'll get that in the actual election without even being in the race, and that causes a problem when it's a tight finish, and so I think they really are in a mess. I think the only thing that we need to be careful of for those of us who are desperate for change in California, and obviously the only real change is going to be a change of political control. At the moment. There's a lot of speculation and excitement actually in republic on the Republicans side. I see it all the time. Oh it's great. Look you've got Steve Hilton leading and Chad is second, and we're going to have two Republicans in the top two and so on. I just don't think that's a realistic scenario. I mean, I agree with you about Eric Swirlwel's vulnerabilities, but look at what's actually happening. He got the big union endorsement, the SEIU, He's getting all of the Pelos t crew endorsing him, Adam Schiff and so on. I have a feeling that Eric Swolwell is going to start consolidating the Democrat machine for all his weaknesses, and so he might start moving up. And then Tom Seyer, I mean, he's spent eighty million interest, as he said earlier, spent this huge amount of money, Well, what's another eighty or one hundred million to him nothing, and maybe that moves him up a couple of poles. So I think that the real risk for us is that if we continue to divide the vote, that I'm ahead, and that's great, but you know, it's still pretty evenly split. There's a real chance. I think the much more realistic chance than you get to Republicans in the top two is actually that you get two Democrats. And that's why I very strongly argue that it really is time for us to get behind one Republican. And I think that it's clear now, it's very consistent in the last couple of months that I'm leading, and so that would be my argument to Republicans, Let's get behind the leading candidate.

00:32:05
Speaker 1: Here's my pushback on that theory. The one union that hasn't weighed in yet is arguably the most powerful union in the state of California, at the California Teachers Association. And right now what you're seeing is you're seeing this coordinated effort. They won't acknowledge it because it's illegal. But there is a coordinated effort in big city school districts all over the state Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Vallejo, other places where the teachers are voting to authorize a strike and they are trying to force these districts to give them everything they want and more, even though if the districts do what they want, they will go insolvent, and the teachers are going in pedal to the medal. They don't seem to care about bankrupting these districts. They just want all the silver they can get. And my theory is that they are going to extract a promise from whichever candidate they endorse that if that person wins, all of these districts get a bail out from Sacramento so they get their raises and they can continue to operate. If you look at the Democratic side of the aisle, I think that Swalwell would make that deal with them. I think that Porter would make that deal with them. I think the non vie ragsa low polling Dems would make that deal with them. And I think that Swalwell is probably the least likely to cut that deal because right now, he sees himself as the most likely Democrat to advance to November, and he wouldn't want that news hanging around his neck, that promise to the teachers' union, because he could see himself getting elected and that would destroy his public image if he went around bailing out all of these disaster school districts as his first order of business. I think they're more likely to endorse someone other than Eric Swalwell, which would then split those union endorsements.

00:33:59
Speaker 4: I think that's right if they If that happens then and they so far have shown absolutely no ability to coordinate or coalesce, so that that would continue the pattern. If the two big ones SEIU and then the teachers went in different directions, then that the CTA, the other teachers' unions have endorsed elsewhere. But if those two real you know, you know, giant ones went separate directions, that would be the pattern that we've seen so far, and that's one of the reasons why they're in this mess. I have to be honest, though, John, I think you're giving Eric Swallow far too credit for being a serious, thoughtful candidate who actually cares about anything in the real world. Other than his own candidacy. I just can't believe he thinks like that. I truly don't. I just think he's he's all about himself. I mean, look at these you know, he's just constantly promoting himself for years, That's what it's been all about. And if you look at what he says, there's barely anything substantive on solving our problems. Is it's all Trump, trump, trump and political you know, rhetoric and superficial logans rather than any kind of thing. And there's no sign that he's done a single thing to think about how he would solve our problems. And I've seen him on these debates now and he's one of the things he constantly says, he thinks it's a nice little I don't know why he thinks this is good, but I suppose for a Democrat audience they lap it up. He says that my top three priorities for governor revenue, revenue, revenue, we need more revenue. Really, they've nearly doubled the budget in the last five years and they want more revenue. We've paid the highest taxes in the country for the worst results, but they just want more money. And so I don't know. I think that he's just I don't think that he's a serious person at all in the sense of thinking about the actual issues and developing solutions to them.

00:35:40
Speaker 1: Let me ask you one policy question. We have about sixty seconds before we have to go. We mentioned that the Democratic candidates have been hesitant to criticize Gavin Newsom. One piece of legislation that Gavin Newsom has signed would allow elderly inmates to be released from prison, regardless of what they were sentenced to by a judge and a jury. We have seen any number of very dangerous sex offenders get released or the parole boards have voted to release them from prison, one after another after another. It's not an anomaly. It's what's going on right now in the state of California. How big of a problem is that right now?

00:36:20
Speaker 4: It's a huge problem. I've discussed it with many people in law enforcement, including yesterday I had a very important meeting on it. And yes, it's the legislation. Remember when they say elderly, this is like, what is it, fifty to fifty five? Is they're not elderly. So it's outrageous to describe people as elderly in their fifties, and that's what we're talking about here, and you've got people, I mean, you look at sex offenders now in California, I'm afraid to say, you've got people in their twenties and thirties committing those crimes. So they're going to be out really early. Now. As governor, I can't single handedly, laterally unilaterally overturn the legislation, which of course I'd like to do. What you can do is reclassify these people and have them in a different category so they are not eligible for early parole. And the decision on that is made by the parole board appointed by the governor. And I've made it absolutely clear that I would immediately fire anyone on that parole board who signs up to this obscenity and replace them with common sense people who want to protect public safety and protect victims' rights to have people put away for these absolutely disgusting crimes. So, one way or another, this whole disgusting joke of a policy is going to end when I'm governor.

00:37:35
Speaker 1: Steve Hilton candidate for governor, you could get him online at Golden toogether dot com and follow him on exit Steve Hilton next Steve Hilton, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:37:43
Speaker 4: Thank you John. Great to be with you.