Six of the top candidates in the California gubernatorial race participated in a forum on Fresno State on Wednesday, speaking directly to the people of the Central Valley on agriculture and affordability issues.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the forum was mostly peaceful between the candidates, Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco took the opportunity to rail against the Democratic party and the supermajority rule the left has enjoyed in California for the last decade.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Driving the news: The Maddy Institute and Western Growers, along with dozens of other agricultural organizations, hosted the candidate forum, inviting candidates who are polling at least 3% in the race. Fresno County Supervisor Buddy Mendes and former Assembly Minority Leader Kristen Olsen moderated the forum.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hilton, Bianco, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Rep. Katie Porter (D\u2013Irvine) and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa all attended.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D\u2013Castro Valley) and billionaire activist Tom Steyer were also invited but declined to attend. That led Mendes to quip near the end of the forum, \u201cThank you all of our candidates for their thoughtfulness and also the fact that two chicken hearts didn\u2019t bother coming here, so we\u2019re glad you guys came.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Partisan politics: While the forum was intended to focus on agriculture and affordability, much of the 90-minute debate was spent talking about partisan politics, with Bianco and Hilton routinely blasting Democratic rule while the four Democrats on stage called for both sides of the aisle to work together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hilton kicked things off by calling on the Democrats to apologize to the Central Valley for the water crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every single Democrat on this stage today should start with an apology, an apology for what their party has done to this area and this industry, stealing your water, piling on the regulations \u2013 1,000% increase in the last decade or so \u2013 cutting the pay of agricultural workers,\u201d Hilton said. \u201cOn and on, the assault on this industry has to stop, and they should start by apologizing for what they did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Villaraigosa drew some quiet laughs by telling Hilton that he will never become governor because of partisan politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can make this partisan. But let me be clear \u2013 if you want to make it partisan \u2013 you\u2019re never going to get elected,\u201d Villaraigosa told Hilton. \u201cBecause at the end of the day it is a blue state.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDidn\u2019t you just see there revealed the arrogance of one-party rule? \u2018It\u2019s a blue state. We\u2019re going to be in power forever. You\u2019re just stuck with this.\u2019 How outrageous, what contempt for the voters of this state,\u201d Hilton said. \u201cWe have had enough. You\u2019ve had enough. I\u2019ve seen all over the state, this state demands change, and this is the year we\u2019re gonna get it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mahan responded to that disagreement by saying the binary partisan simplification is exactly what is wrong with American politics today.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bianco called out Democrats for the \u201cgreen scam\u201d that has left California in an energy crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI love being the first Republican in this race, because it made all the rest of the Democrats have to act like Republicans \u2013 like they wanted to help you with the issues that we have,\u201d Bianco said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Deregulation and affordability: Porter made a surprising move, saying she is taking a page out of Hilton\u2019s book and will propose no state income tax for people who make less than $100,000, an idea that Hilton has been campaigning on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the discussion turned to gas prices, with Mahan calling to suspend the gas tax and Bianco saying the state needs to completely eliminate it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Porter said she wants to speed up permitting for green energy and put solar panels everywhere, while Hilton and Bianco pushed for oil independence. Villaraigosa said he would stop California Air Resources Board regulations that drive up prices. Becerra said he wants to freeze property insurance and utility payments until the state can fully investigate why those costs keep rising.\u00a0Mahan called for comprehensive CEQA reform in order to speed up housing construction. <\/p>\n
All of the candidates agreed that California is overregulated. <\/p>\n
Water and the Delta: Olsen and Mendes asked the candidates for their thoughts on a number of water issues, including the impact of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which has implemented intense regulations intended to prevent groundwater overdraft and subsidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou elect me as your governor so we can do away with it,\u201d Bianco said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Democrats lauded the intent behind SGMA but said the law needs to be implemented better.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSGMA\u2019s not some big conspiracy,\u201d Mahan said. \u201cI think it\u2019s overly complicated and bureaucratic, but we do need to protect groundwater resources and not continue to have subsidence. We\u2019ve seen that there are long-term risks to what we\u2019ve been doing, and the only answer is alternative expansions of supply and improvements in conveyance.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Porter called water a collective resource saying the state needs to have rules in order to have a shared resource. She called the implementation of SGMA \u201cdeeply, deeply problematic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In an earlier answer, Porter also seemed to mix up groundwater and surface water, saying, \u201cWhen we use surface water over time, we see subsidence. That\u2019s a problem, and it\u2019s real. There are places in this state that are losing a foot a year to subsidence. There are also a lot of places where they\u2019ve been pumping surface water with no problems at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Villaraigosa said he supports SGMA but added that it is too complicated, calling on the state to bring farmers in to help craft the rules.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Becerra, calling out Bianco, said he is not sure how people who want to get rid of rules that manage groundwater believe that the state can do the right thing without guidance. Becerra said that if he is governor, the state will get new water infrastructure and commitments on how the state will sustain its groundwater.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When asked about the management of the Delta, Hilton wants to axe recent biological assessments that have restricted water. He also wants to dredge the delta and finish Sites Reservoir and the Folsom South Canal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State of emergency: The audience did not seem to take to Becerra as much as the other candidates, giving him very few moments where he shined or offered up substantive policy solutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the former Health and Human Services Secretary left his mark with his repeated mentions of how he plans to declare a state of emergency to tackle numerous issues. He also called back to how he declared a state of emergency when he was part of the Biden administration as part of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Becerra said he would declare a state of emergency to boost housing production early in the forum, bringing it up several times over the course of his answers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bianco took advantage of that, saying late in the forum that he would also declare a state of emergency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not rocket science,\u201d Bianco said. \u201c[Becerra has] already told you how easy it\u2019s going to be \u2013 a state of emergency. There is going to be a state of emergency, and it\u2019s going to be to eliminate all of this regulation. Not to have a committee, not to come together and say how can we make the regulations better \u2013 it\u2019s remove the regulations that are only California specific, that are destroying your industry in California that no other place in the country has to abide by. That is why California is failing. Regulations are easy to remove because they were not put in place by lawmakers. We can remove them with strokes of pens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six of the top candidates in the California gubernatorial race participated in a forum on Fresno State on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113,7999],"class_list":{"0":"post-249075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news","11":"tag-highlight"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249075","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=249075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}