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GELFAND'S WORLD - They held the first debate among the California governor candidates, and the loser was clearly KTLA. Why, you ask? Our local channel 5 has been touting the debate all week, announcing at the beginning that the event would go 90 minutes, and then took the debate off the air at the end of 60 minutes. Oh, you could search around among your other cable channels (I don’t do cable) or look for the remaining 30 minutes on YouTube, but I wonder how many people even bothered. As your scribe who found and watched the whole 90 minutes so you wouldn’t have to, I have a few observations about our modern style and a few more about what the debate may have accomplished for the participants.
The setup: Six identical lecterns for the two Republicans (Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco) who were more or less center-stage, and the four Democrats (Matt Mahan, Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, and Katie Porter) along the sides. The format was announced: Each candidate had 60 seconds to answer each question; sometimes another 30 seconds to respond to a followup question, and every once in a while, the moderators gave 15 second responses to specific attacks. The result was that half a dozen professional politicians spoke about as fast as humanly possible. If you were to look at a written transcript of what each said, you would probably find that it made sense, but delivered live, everything was a bit forced.
Described like this, it might sound like more of a ritual than a serious investigation, but it was, in my view, good enough. We at least got to see and hear the candidates, watch them deal with stress, and develop some understanding of how and what they think.
All in all, there was no major gaffe or mistake that would have disqualified any of the candidates from serious consideration. In hindsight, it came out that Xavier Becerra referred to the Iraq War when he meant to say the Iran War. That’s pretty much a big Ho Hum, isn’t it.
Let’s consider the Republicans first. I’ll begin with a little self-identification: anybody who has read this column for more than a week will know that I don’t like Donald Trump and don’t like what the Republican Party stands for, and it is fair enough that I mention this at the outset. For this reason, I went into this debate having little personal knowledge about the two candidates and either zero or very few experiences of seeing either of them on television. This has one virtue to it, in that I have exactly the same chance to get a first impression as any other naive viewer. (By “naive” I just mean not knowing anything about them.)
So let’s consider Republican candidate Steve Hilton. The first thing you notice about him is that he can’t talk American. By this I refer to his British accent. He speaks highly of becoming an American citizen, which turns out to have not occurred until 2021. His campaign pitch is simple and unadorned: Everything is the fault of the Democrats, Gavin Newsom is a terrible governor, and life is awful here. He doesn’t give many details about what he would do except to undo pretty much every regulatory aspect of California government that he can. The other thing about Hilton is that he is constantly referred to as a former Fox television personality. That makes him sound kind of dumb, actually.
But then, if you were to look up his biography (I used Wikipedia) you would find that he studied at Oxford University, specializing in philosophy, politics, and economics. He then had a career in British government, working with a prime minister and apparently doing important and useful things. He is also the author of a couple of books.
So – and here is the curious thing that says a lot about American politics – the Hilton campaign is avoiding selling the background that this is a British intellectual with an upper crust education. He can’t get rid of the accent, but he’s not mentioning the rest of it.
But in spite of that education and extensive experience, it was not obvious after the debate as to what he would actually do in California government. A lot of negative, undoing sorts of things is what it sounded like. When asked how he would deal with a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, he didn’t have much to say. I do have a thought in response. Back when we had a Republican governor and legislative bodies that had Democratic majorities (but not two-thirds majorities), the governor and the Republican legislative minority would hold the state budget to ransom. The governor would huddle with the four legislative leaders (two R’s and two D’s) and the five of them would fight through to a state budget. This is one reason that California residents prefer to have Democrats as governors and Democratic supermajorities in the legislature. This way, a budget which represents Democratic Party values gets passed.
And this, of course, is what the Republicans would like to prevent. Elect Hilton and let either chamber of the legislature fall to less than two-thirds Democrats, and we will be back to the old days. On the other hand, we would probably have balanced budgets or even run a slight surplus.
I go on about Hilton because he has a pretty good chance to make the cut and end up running against one of the Democrats. It’s not certain and certainly not obvious, but there is that reasonable probability, particularly if the Democrats end up dividing their votes more or less evenly among 3 or more candidates.
Then there is the other Republican, Sheriff Chad Bianco. My first thought about him is that this is a guy who can’t read, because he continues to refer to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party. This is a sure indication of someone who never learned phonics.
OK, so maybe I kid about the way the Republicans love to taunt and insult Democrats by making a slur out of the name of their party. Still, it is a taunt and it is a slur, and they should be called on it. Nobody did, including the moderators.
Bianco is best known outside his own county for leading a raid on 650,000 ballots from an earlier election. He claims that there was some defensible reason for concern about election fraud. He isn’t getting any support from state government on this, presumably because there is no evidence. The best interpretation is probably that he was trying to curry favor with Donald Trump. It obviously didn’t work, because Trump endorsed Hilton. Bianco’s most quote-worthy comment was an angry snippet in which he argued that there is too much complaining about racism among politicians, and that everything is not about race. You can get a summary of this and other debate issues in the article from the L.A. Times, which you can find here.
Of the two Republicans, Hilton seems the more serious, while Bianco comes across as extreme and pretty hard-right. Nevertheless, the Republican candidates offered the following approach when invited to explain how they would respond to intractable problems: Tell the Truth.
It’s an approach I would really like to see used by both parties. What is ironic about this comment when made by a Republican is the obvious retort, that Trump cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything at any time. There is definitely a logical break when you promise to tell the truth in one breath and speak well of Trump in the next.
OK, so what of the Democratic candidates?
Let’s remind ourselves that the game here is to coalesce around one or maybe two candidates so as to avoid the (largely mythological) danger that two Republicans will end up in the finals. The idea, as so many people have repeated, is that 5 or 6 Democrats dividing the vote up more or less randomly would allow for the two Republicans to divide up the remaining votes and finish one-two. Under California rules, the top two vote getters in the June primary go on to the November election. So you had 4 Democrats in the debate, any one of whom would be a shoo-in if running alone against any Republican. That’s just the mathematical result of the Democrats holding a two to one advantage in this state.
One more thing. Let’s list a few inconvenient truths up front before we take on the Democrats and what they said. First, California has a lot of residents and of those, there are a lot of them who make a lot of money. California being a desirable place, the demand for housing and the available money pushes up prices. There are other issues behind the lack of affordability, as the candidates tried to assure us, but if we had half the population, houses would be cheaper.
And then there is the issue of wildfires and how to prevent them. Let’s be blunt and admit that global warming is real and that sustained winds nearing 100 miles per hour combined with low humidity are going to result in dangerous fires.
So which candidate mentioned either of these points?
Not a one.
Four Democrats floundered over the problem of insurance companies pulling out of the California market due to increased losses and the nearly sure prospect of repeated rounds of fires in years to come. But let’s notice one thing: The moderators asked about the prospect of lower insurance rates along with the availability of insurance, but they did not admit to the realities first, before asking what is, in fact, a “gotcha” question. The candidates gave it their best. Becerra was probably the strongest at this, but that’s because his answer was essentially in the past tense – he would make the insurance companies pay up for the Palisades fire damages, considering that many losses have not been paid off as yet.
Mahan says that he would place a temporary moratorium on the gas tax. I see this as a bit of opportunism on his part, because he does not say how he would make up the lost revenue. Steyer and others made clear that the spike in gasoline prices is the result of Trump’s war on Iran, which is obvious but not prescriptive. Another gotcha question from the moderators, without a proper introduction.
Porter was asked about an incident in which she went off on one of her staff. The overall story is that she is temperamental. I wonder (and I don’t mean this facetiously) whether that has anything to do with how one runs a government. Diane Feinstein was famous for her remark, “I don’t get ulcers, I give them,” and it didn’t seem to hurt her at the polls.
Becerra is widely recognized as being a quality human being and a competent administrator. He also was an effective California Attorney General in the political fights he picked and the resulting lawsuits he filed. He made these arguments in the debate. But there is something a little overly quiet about his demeanor and in the way he answers questions. I don’t see that he gained a lot in this debate.
Tom Steyer has been promising the moon and the starts to California voters. How he would get utility rates down is a mystery to me, and how he would make housing more affordable (without putting new homeowners into bankruptcy as their equity evaporated) is another mystery. There is only so much that governors and presidents can do about economies.
But overall, Steyer held his own. The one point where he did a little hemming and hawing was in response to another gotcha question. He had previously said that he should be paying more taxes, which is a common remark among comfortable billionaires who use the services of accountants and attorneys to get all the legal tax breaks they can. So the moderator kept pushing him on how much more he should actually pay. This is not the sort of question that works well with any viewer who has a three digit IQ.
Overall, the Democratic candidates held their own, even though almost every question was phrased in that “gotcha” style. “How would you grade Gavin Newsom for his handling of homelessness?” I’d like to respond by asking the moderators how they view the political positions of the wealthy corporations that own the television stations. You know, gotcha back.
Here is what a colleague said in reaction to last night’s debate: “I would vote for any of the four Democrats against either Republican.” The response was inspired by how bad the Republican candidates were. Bianco actually managed to sound self-righteously offended by a question about his theft of 650,000 ballots as part of his Trumpian attack on the legitimacy of California elections. Of course the original question was itself a “gotcha,” since it asked him whether he would seize the ballots from the upcoming primary if he didn’t like the results. Bianco comes across as a sleaze, but he was right to contest the framing of this question. (He was not right to grab the ballots.)
The serious question is whether California Democrats will recognize the problem and coalesce around one or two candidates in advance of the primary election. And if they do, which candidates will they be? My guesses? I think Steyer held his own in the debate and continues to saturate the airwaves with his ads, so I suspect he will make the runoffs. Xavier Becerra has a lot of support, although it is not crazed and cultish, so he could end up as a long shot winner. On the other hand, Mahan gained in the debate just by showing up and having a pulse. His television ads have not been very convincing to me, considering that they mainly concentrate on what his dad did for a living. But in person, he answered the questions and repeatedly claimed a record of success in San Jose. I don’t think people react all that positively to the fact that somebody was once a mayor (think about Villaraigosa in statewide races) but he didn’t suffer any fatal gaffes either.
For some reason, I don’t think Katie Porter did all that well, even though she was strong on the substance when she answered specific questions. She was too defensive on whether she has a temper. She should have taken a lesson from Steyer (or, for that matter, Donald Trump) and just brazened it out. Take ownership for being a demanding and forceful leader who asks the right questions.
So my guess is that if it’s going to be a Republican against a Democrat, it’s likely to be Steve Hilton against either Steyer or Becerra. Hilton is a smart, educated guy who is pretending to be some sort of populist Trump-like figure. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that the California economy is the envy of the world. And he can’t seem to pronounce words American style.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
