Californians have spoken and they\u2019ve chosen four more years of incompetent leadership in Sacramento. <\/p>\n
If these tentative results hold, our next governor will be either Democrat Xavier Becerra or Republican Steve Hilton and our next lieutenant governor will be either Republican Gloria Romero or Democrat Fiona Ma. Either way, voters have guaranteed at least four more years of living in a rudderless state with leadership that will throw things at walls with no prior thought of whether they will stick.<\/p>\n
What does a candidate have to do to prove to us that they should not be in charge?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Xavier Becerra has botched every job he has ever been given, mismanaging thousands of migrant children while Secretary of Health and Human Services. He shielded abusive cops from public accountability and threatened journalists for doing their jobs well while he was attorney general of California.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has also given us a peek into his approach to policymaking, and it\u2019s not a pretty sight. He plans to drive out the home insurance market by \u201cfreezing\u201d premiums \u2013 he wouldn\u2019t have that authority but that is the sort of plan that his mind finds worthwhile.<\/p>\n
In a gubernatorial debate in April, the moderator straightforwardly asked him why insurance carriers wouldn\u2019t just continue to leave the state in the face of such an action. Becerra chose to make like an ostrich, \u201cThe fact that we have 40 million people in this state, and we pay our insurance premiums, and they don\u2019t want to lose that business.\u201d <\/p>\n
The moderator replied that \u201cthey already stopped writing policies\u201d but as I said in my column about the debate, \u201cthere is no amount of basic reasoning that would dissuade Becerra from chasing policies that will harm Californians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adding insult to injury, when I spoke to him about how many Democratic policies have hurt Californians, Becerra had the nerve to tell me that Democrats have actually done a great job overall in running the state.<\/p>\n
Any one of these points should have disqualified Becerra in the eyes of voters, but instead, we\u2019ve chosen to perpetuate the status quo.<\/p>\n
Oh, but what if fate plays a cruel joke on us and voters somehow elect Steve Hilton? <\/p>\n
If it talks like Trump, and if it walks like Trump, and if it smells like Trump, then it\u2019s corrupt like Trump. If you know anyone who voted for Steve Hilton, make sure that you talk to them about how to avoid sending their life savings to scam callers in third world countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hilton is staunchly in favor of deporting all illegal immigrants, with or without criminal records, telling me during our interview<\/a>, \u201cI do think that we\u2019ve got to be clear that if you\u2019re here illegally, that illegal means illegal. And again, going back to the democracy point, this is what America voted for in 2024. The president couldn\u2019t have been clearer.\u201d<\/p>\n This was an interesting position for Hilton given that he had been on British television during the Syrian refugee crisis talking about<\/a> how the U.S. should be taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East because of our role in creating the crisis. <\/p>\n I asked Hilton why the U.S. role in overthrowing governments and destabilizing and sanctioning governments in Latin America shouldn\u2019t create the same duty for taking in immigrants from the south.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI need to think about that \u2026 I mean, I don\u2019t know the history as well. But I mean, wasn\u2019t that a long time ago? And that actually the responsibility for the economic hardship, for the conditions of crime and gangs and so on that are driving people to seek a better life in America. I mean, would you really put them at the feet of the U.S. today?\u201d<\/p>\n American intervention in Latin America has been ongoing for centuries so his same logic should apply. Hilton\u2019s questionable judgment is perhaps best demonstrated by his choice of running mate, who is currently leading the lieutenant governor race<\/p>\n Democrat-turned-Republican Gloria Romero is a highly partisan individual who can rightly be described as hypocritical \u2013 during our interview, a day before Trump started the war in Iran, she condemned war and told me a sob story about attending a soldier\u2019s funeral but 26 hours later she turned right around and has been praising the war in Iran, stating on Twitter\/X, \u201cI voted for this!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n