{"id":159083,"date":"2026-02-01T12:20:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T12:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/159083\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T12:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T12:20:13","slug":"ian-calderon-offers-generation-shift-as-california-governor-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/159083\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian Calderon offers generation shift as California governor | Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The first millennial elected to the California State Legislature, the 40-year-old Calderon is a little bit older now. But he argues that if elected governor, he could bring a fresh perspective and new ideas to Sacramento.<\/p>\n

The former Los Angeles-area representative comes from a political family. His father also served in the legislature, and his stepmother now holds his former seat.<\/p>\n

Calderon spent four two-year terms from 2012 to 2020 in the Assembly, including a four-year stint as Democratic majority leader. He\u2019s now on the campaign trail statewide, promising to rise above the epidemic of political partisanship and focus on making California government accountable to its people.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019ll take a decidedly different approach than his predecessor, Gov. Gavin Newsom, with respect to President Donald Trump. Newsom has made himself one of the Democrats\u2019 leading antagonists of the president<\/a>, but Calderon promotes a self-sufficient view of California \u2014 one in which it\u2019s less reliant on the federal government.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve talked about being the first millennial to serve in the position that you did. Why does that matter now [if] you become governor, and how do you address the problems that are sort of unique to our generation? I grew up with emerging tech … my experiences are just different. We have a leadership that is very focused on flash and ego, and what I think to me the new generation of leadership represents is, how do we make it about actually doing the job \u2014 not how much attention I can get, not about how I can elevate my own future aspirations in political office and use one election to the next to just continue to go on and on and on?<\/p>\n

The differentiating thing between me and anybody else in this race and whoever else might get in this race: When I was at the height of my power, I gave it up and I left to go and be with my wife and kids, raise my kids, because I didn\u2019t want to lose out on missing moments that I was never going to get back.<\/p>\n

Nobody gives up power freely like that. Nobody does, but I did because it wasn\u2019t about having power. It was about doing what I could do as the first millennial in the Legislature.<\/p>\n

\"Ian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon: \u201cMy focus is on California, and I\u2019m going to work with anybody who wants to work with me to make sure that gets done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Craig Lee\/The Examiner<\/p>\n

How do you make life easier for small business owners and small businesses? First, there\u2019s just the ever-increasing cost \u2014 the cost of living, the cost of doing business increases three to five percent every year. So first, you got to get the state out of the way.<\/p>\n

What most people don\u2019t realize is that when you pass all these new regulations, it doesn\u2019t supplant the existing regulations on the books. It just sits on top of it. So that doesn\u2019t mean that now I\u2019ve just got to comply with this. Now you got to comply with this new regulation [and] every other regulation that sits underneath it \u2014 and a lot of times you\u2019re seeing contradictions.<\/p>\n

How do you address, for the individual, that rising cost of living that you\u2019re pointing out? How do you contain prices in California and create an economy that works for everybody? These are challenges that have been created over decades, and so I think the worst thing to do is to get into office and then start shooting from the hip without really understanding the lay of the land, where all the money is, where those investments are going, what is working and what is not working.<\/p>\n

A lot of our challenges can be solved by just knowing that there\u2019s accountability and actually understanding where the money is and where the money is going, and then finding new ways to reinvest money that\u2019s no longer going to places where we\u2019re getting that expected [return on investment] and just repurposing it.<\/p>\n

And then focusing on child care, things like child care. I have four kids. I had all my kids in child care, and we were paying more in our child-care costs a month than we were in our rent. And so you can have affordable child care where, say, you cap it at $500 a month for 95% of the families and kids 0-5 [years old] in this state and repurpose, say, $4 billion of existing general-fund dollars, and that covers the whole program, using state lands to build more facilities so there\u2019s more capacity and good pay.<\/p>\n

During your experience in the Legislature, were there things that stuck out to you as expenditures that we\u2019re not getting that return on investment that taxpayers expect? There are tax credits that are 35 years [old] on the books. I mean, how do we know who is auditing and verifying that that return on investment still exists and that there\u2019s a need for it? Are these tax credits going to industries or businesses that don\u2019t need the tax credits?<\/p>\n

I mean, I think that people are just overburdened with taxes and fees in general.<\/p>\n

Candidates, to varying degrees, have positioned themselves as outward opponents of Donald Trump, or are trying to not focus on that so much as \u201ccontrol what California can control.\u201d Where do you put yourself on that spectrum? In recent polling, when you ask voters if they want a continuation of Newsom and his policies and approach or do you want to change, they say we want to change. And so it isn\u2019t so much about the next governor needing to be the one positioned as the anti-Trump force in the country. No, it\u2019s about voters\u2019 expectation that we\u2019re the priority, this state is a priority.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n \"Entire
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Contemporary artist Jeffrey Gibson’s 433-foot mural “This Burning World” spans Mission Street between 4th and 5th streets<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n \"SF
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted in 50 years for my kids to be going to All-Star games and Super Bowls and Olympics in San Francisco,\u2019 Noah Wintroub said<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n \"Word
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Now shuttered, the once-bustling retail hub now stands as a monument to aspirations and generations<\/p>\n

Part of making them a priority is making sure that they feel protected and that they are protected \u2014 and when you have federal immigration enforcement or Border Patrol in our state, that they\u2019re abiding by our laws and that there are consequences if they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

But we still need a lot from the federal government. It isn\u2019t about me and my ego and my attention to just have an adversarial relationship with Washington, D.C., and the president of the United States. If he wants to fight \u2014 my focus is on California and I\u2019m going to work with anybody who wants to work with me to make sure that gets done. And I will be there to be a fighter at the times of need where we have to draw that line in the sand, but my focus is on actual Californians and solving our challenges and solving our problems.<\/p>\n

But to be honest with you, and I think that this is where you\u2019re going to see a lot of states going, \u201cWe\u2019ve lost faith in the federal government because it\u2019s become so political that you can make threat after threat about getting rid of your federal funding and not sending it to the state for whatever asinine reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

I just think if we\u2019re the fourth-largest economy in the world, well, why don\u2019t we create investment programs that are in the state that give us enough money in return, so that we can end up equaling the amount of money we get from the federal government?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be under anybody\u2019s thumb, and I think nobody\u2019s going to care more about California than Californians.<\/p>\n

\"Ian<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ian Calderon speaks during the Gubernatorial Candidate Forum at UCSF Robertson Auditorium in San Francisco on Monday.<\/p>\n

Craig Lee\/The Examiner<\/p>\n

So we stand here in San Francisco. I\u2019m curious how you\u2019re taking your message to a statewide audience now, and what issues do you think stand out to you, from different parts of the state than what you represented? I\u2019ve been able to see this beautiful state when I was in the Legislature and traveling a lot of different communities, but one of the communities I\u2019ve been spending a lot of time in is the Central Valley.<\/p>\n

Central Valley is a place where they believe that they\u2019re the forgotten region, where they believe that, \u201cWe\u2019re just flyover country. You might come here while you\u2019re campaigning, campaigning, but once you\u2019re done, you never come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

We have communities that just literally want clean drinking water<\/a> and the infrastructure that will give us clean drinking water. There are laws on the books that passed when I was there that guarantee your right to clean and affordable drinking water. Yet there are communities all across the state that don\u2019t have that, not just in L.A. and the Bay Area, but also in the Central Valley, where a $6 million investment could completely renovate and provide infrastructure for clean, affordable drinking water to come out of the tap.<\/p>\n

When you come to the Bay Area, it\u2019s really understanding what the need is, where the investment is going, where it\u2019s not going, and evaluating. This is where we can make a substantial difference, working with community leaders to help us figure that out and not letting ourselves get bogged down \u2014 because we let ourselves get bogged down by bureaucracy and process. The state cannot continue to be the impediment that it has been.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a serious candidate because I\u2019ve been a part of Sacramento. I\u2019ve been able to see where the mechanisms of power lie. I know how decisions are made. I know what it takes to develop relationships, balance a budget, pass strong policies, but when I had an option to hold on to power, I didn\u2019t hold on to it.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve pledged to veto anything that crosses your desk that would raise gasoline prices, and I wonder how candidates like yourself can both promise to do that and address the concerns about climate change that Californians also have. It\u2019s not just about environmental justice, it\u2019s about economic justice. Why is it that every time there\u2019s an environmental priority, the burden is on the shoulders of Black and brown, poor communities because their gas prices go up, their utility prices go up, their cost of living goes up?<\/p>\n

So you can\u2019t have environmental justice without economic justice, and a lot of the times the people that are pushing these policies are the people that can afford those cost increases because they live in wealthy coastal California.<\/p>\n

When I was [in the legislature], it\u2019s like, \u201cOh, let\u2019s provide these rebates for Teslas\u201d \u2014\u00a0which, at the time was a Model S, it\u2019s $100,000. So we\u2019re going to subsidize now, from the state, rich people buying cars. And when I said, \u201cOK, well, if we really want electrification and we want true environmental justice,\u201d I authored this bill. \u201cWell, what about for the secondary market? What about for used hybrid and electric vehicles? Let\u2019s create a rebate program for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh no, we don\u2019t have enough money. No, no, no, we can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I just think it\u2019s a lot of bulls—. We care about the environment from the press-release perspective and standpoint. But again, we\u2019re not going to solve the global environmental crisis by ourselves here in California. We can be a leader, but part of being a leader is making sure that communities and people of color aren\u2019t being left out of that.<\/p>\n

Talk to me about bitcoin. I can\u2019t imagine bitcoin is on the top-10 priority list for the vast majority of people in California. It might not be in your top 10 platform priorities, but you\u2019ve mentioned it. So \u2026 why? Because my frustration with government \u2014 it was my frustration when I was there \u2014 it\u2019s like, \u201cWell, here\u2019s our solutions, and this is what we always pick from, OK?\u201d We can\u2019t think outside the box, we can\u2019t do anything new, we can\u2019t do anything different. These are the solutions that satisfy these interests and these sets of politics, and so that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to pick from.<\/p>\n

The reason why I like bitcoin is because it\u2019s like, it\u2019s something new. It\u2019s something different, and it\u2019s an industry that isn\u2019t going away. They\u2019re working on the Clarity Act right now at the federal level, which is going to only make it more of a daily existence in our lives.<\/p>\n

And so right now if you\u2019ve got an asset that\u2019s not going to go away, it\u2019s going to continue to go in price \u2014 there\u2019s no CEO of bitcoin, it\u2019s completely run on a blockchain which is run by a community of people together, not one person that can control the levers \u2014 well, why wouldn\u2019t we want to at least invest a little bit in what the potential upside of that is? Because so much of the problem is, \u201cWell, we need new revenue\u201d \u2014 and what do we always do? Well, then we increase taxes.<\/p>\n

What if we had some money that was actually tied to an asset that would grow up and grow our revenue over time so that we can lower the cost and reduce tax burdens and investment burdens on people in the state? And if bitcoin could be there, then why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first millennial elected to the California State Legislature, the 40-year-old Calderon is a little bit older now.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,943,35462],"class_list":{"0":"post-159083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-governor","12":"tag-ian-calderon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}