On this episode of The Truth with Lisa Boothe, Lisa sits down with Joel Pollak, senior editor-at-large of The California Post, to discuss the biggest political and cultural battles shaping California and the nation.
Joel breaks down the state of California politics, Governor Gavin Newsom’s national ambitions, the ongoing debates over crime, homelessness, immigration, and affordability, and whether voters are beginning to push back against progressive policies. He also shares insights into the 2026 election landscape, the future of the Republican Party in California, and what the Golden State’s political direction means for the rest of America.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
We'll we get to the heart of the issues that
matter to you. Today we're talking California. It's the world's
fourth largest economy. Yet it's now been a week since
the election and we still don't know who will advance
to the general election. Now, remember California, they had the
two top vote getters regardless of political party, are the
ones who advance.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But we still don't know who will be advancing in.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The gubernatorial race, the mayoral race for Los Angeles, and
or a lot of the other elections throughout the state.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So why does it take so long? Why is California
so incompetent.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We're gonna ask Joel Pollock, he is the opinion editor
at the California Post, to break down what is happening
behind the scenes, what is happening with the delays, and
what he expects for the state of California.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Stay tuned well, Joel, it's great to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I know you're a busy guy right now trying to
cover what's going on in California. If you can just
I guess run down where things stand.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Obviously this is Monday.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
The podcast is going to be out on Tuesday, so
things could change in the interim, But as of right now,
where do things stand from your perspective?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Right now, it looks like Spencer Pratt is likely not
going to qualify for the mayor or ale runoff in LA.
That could change, and there may even be lawsuits that
try to change it. I do think it's likely that
he will fail to qualify after it looked for the
first few days like he had enough of a cushion
(01:37):
to withstand whatever new votes were going to come in
for Nythia Rahman. Nathia Rahmen is basically unknown in LA,
which is one of the other reasons people are shocked
that she did so well, and you have to look
at her turnout operation and the fact that she had
access to a lot of people involved in homeless services.
(01:59):
That is raising brows because the new theory is that
she or her campaign registered almost people to vote and
then turned it in their ballots for them. I mean,
we don't have proof of that yet, but that is
a plausible theory as to how she got so many votes,
especially from central LA. She might have also done well
on university campuses because she had votes coming in from
(02:19):
UCLA around the Westwood area. She has votes coming in
from downtown in LA, which includes usc so it could
be that. But she had a terrible debate, She had
no real presence. I don't think her fundraising was any good.
So people have just dumbfounded that she won. And my
theory on it was may not one, but it might
(02:40):
have placed second. My theory on it before the election,
because she was showing up in some poles as second place.
My theory on it was that Ratt basically punctured the
balloon of Karen and Bass. That people weren't so aware
of how bad she was. They were dimly aware of it.
They knew about the Palisades fire, but it happened on
the edge of the city, so it didn't really affect
most people. And then Pratt made Karen Bass the problem,
(03:03):
and I think people tuned into the race at that point.
But what the counter argument was was that this is
a maga guy. You can't vote for him. He hangs
out with Republicans, he's a registered Republican. Okay, Trump didn't
endorse him, but you know he's the kind of person
Trump wants in charge of LA. And so the Ramin
(03:23):
vote was almost a ricochet off Ratt because he was
the guy driving the opposition, and in the last few
weeks he raised the most money and totally out raised
Aaron Bass, and so he was creating all this excitement.
But I think people in LA and Southern California, all
over California really have a visceral reaction against anything Trump.
(03:45):
It's not rational. Part of it is just party identification.
And we can go into the reasons why Republicans and
Trump in particular get that reaction, but the fact is
that once you can identify somebody with Trump, they're basically
toxic toy five percent of Angelino's Nobody expected Pratt to
win the general election, although he could have maybe if
(04:07):
something had happened. I wrote an article about the kind
of aggressive tactics he'd need to adopt. He could go
over the heads of the union leaders and talk to
union members and that kind of thing. But people wanted
him in that general election to raise issues that were
not going to be raised. Because Pratt is different from
Nathie Raman. Ramen is a socialist. Ramen is not different
(04:28):
from Karen Bass. Karen Bass went to Cuba dozens of
times basically as a communist. She's immoderate by temperament, but
not by ideology. She's far, far left. When Ramen got
into the race, I was a little perplexed because I said,
there's no room to the left of Karen Bass. She
just happens to know how to get along with people
(04:49):
better than some of these people of black masks who
throw molotov cocktails at police officers. But ideologically she's not
different from them. I mean, she's not going to encourage violince,
but she'll go to Mcarthury Park and block ice from
arresting illegal aliens. I mean, she's not different. So where's
the room to the left. So there's no ideological daylight
(05:10):
between the two of them. And Ramin's argument is just
going to be Karen Bath didn't do a good enough
job or an aggressive enough job of redistributing wealth. That's
basically the argument. And Ramen is not as hostile a
person as zoron Nandanni. She doesn't seem to target individual communities,
but she's an elite socialist. She went to Harvard and MIT,
(05:31):
and she comes to LA and runs homeless services and
has this ivory tower view of socialism, which is that
people like her will be planning the redistribution when it happens,
no idea how wealth has created, no idea how to
solve problems, how to lead people. You could see that
on a debate stage.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
She was no good.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
She is going to be in the runoff and she
could win, she could also lose, but we're not going
to see big changes in LA either way. So Pratt
would have represented at least the prospects of change and
a refreshing reminder that we don't have to accept the
status quote of in LA.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
If we want to, we can change.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
It doesn't have to be a Republican likes Pratt, but
he would have been remind and also would.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Have helped Steve Hillton if he ends up advancing in
the goodnatorial race, because Los Angeles is sort of the
center of gravity in California politics with almost ten million residents.
So you know, Pratt on the mayoral ticket would have
driven up the numbers for Republicans and theoretically helped Steve
(06:34):
Hilton in a state wide election.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah you know what though, I mean, it's the same
story statewide. There's the best Republican will always lose to
the worst Democrat in California, and the only thing that
could change that is that Jivie Bicara is tied to
this corruption scandal in Sacramento, and he says that he
has done This is not a revelation to you, but
but idiocy has never been a bar to higher office
(06:58):
in this country. Yeah, so, you know he's not that smart,
but his campaign did smart things. I mean, he became
the front runner because he was chosen by consultants and
by Gavin Newsom and by the media. They needed somebody.
(07:19):
But when he started out, you're right, he was no good.
He can't run anything. He was terrible in the Biden administration.
He was a terrible attorney general in California. People forget
that he presided over the explosion of crime. I mean,
that crime wave that happened across California happened under Javier Vissera.
It wasn't under you know these other it's under him.
He is, he is incompetent, but he was chosen. Once
(07:42):
he was the front runner in the gubernatorial race. He
then did some smart things. He appealed to Latinos, which
is obviously the right constituency for him. He would be
the first Latino governor. But also he went to the
Central Valley. Nobody goes to the Central Valley because it's
rural and it's sparse. In a primary contest where you're
try and you get the most ballots, there aren't as
(08:02):
many ballots out there. It's vast, it's Republican. Why would
you go there. The reason you go there, and the
reason it was brilliant for him to go there is
that when you're out there, the only one there, so
you dominate the media market. And it's not just like
one town. I mean, if you're in Fresno, people up
and down the valley are reading about you and hearing
about you, and you also have the opportunity to feature
(08:25):
in a variety of high profile events. You're going to
be on the front page of the paper. You're the
number one thing happening in town that day. So if
you know what you're doing, it's a great way to campaign.
And so he did that, and very few other candidates
were doing that. I mean, I think Steve Hilton showed
up in Fresno one day or whatever. But basically the
others largely confine themselves to cities, and you know, southern
(08:47):
California like where dense population areas are and that's great.
You might get like the minor mentioned somewhere or like
meet you shake a few hands. But Javier and Bisara
dominated the media market in centertive state, and that was
the key to make sure people knew he was the
front runner. It's not like Democrats liked him or had
any knowledge of him. They just waited for the media
to tell them who the leader.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Was and they voted for the leader. That's basically what happened.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Got to take quick breaks, stay with us.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
For Ninthia Rahman, you were talking about what she did
with the homeless populations, with the ballot harvesting. Is anything
that she did or is thought to have done, illegal
or is it all legal in the state of California.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We have to give everyone the presumption of instance, right,
And so I think that probably what she did, if
she was harvesting ballots or her campaign was harvesting ballots,
probably it was legal. But we don't know, and I
would be interested to see how they did it. I
think what needs to happen is we need to understand
what happened. And I think but they're not going to
(09:50):
talk about it while the votes are being counted, right,
They're not going to have this desire to spill the
beans about how they collected votes, especially if she's in
the general election, right, why would she tell you how
she gets votes?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
She's not going to.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I do think that the federal government can step in
and try to create a picture of how it happened,
which I think they're going to do to the extent
that they can. But you know, Gavin Newsome, Gaven news
signed this law like a few days before, like during
the voting actually when voting had already started, saying that
federal officials can't seed voting materials, they can't be given
(10:24):
in the voting roles unless there's an ordered investigation. It's
the most ridiculous law. It's probably unconstitutional, but you know
they're trying to cover it up. They don't want to
cooperate with the feds. California is a third world country
with you know, the fourth largest economy in the world.
That's basically how.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's run well.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And also you know they continue counting ballots a week
after the election.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I think they just have to be postmark for election
day and everyone.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Right, And how does that work? I mean, how hard
is it think about this? It would be illegal for
someone to put fake postmarks on ballots, right, but how
hard would it be? And the postal union is Democrats
Postal Workers Union, so you know, you know, a rubber
stamp falls off a truck. I mean, how does it
How hard would it have been to fake things? You know,
we just don't know. But it's a terrible, terrible way
(11:16):
to run an election because there's so many obvious vulnerabilities.
The rule should be the ballots have to arrive by
election day. Then at least you know what's in the box.
We don't even know how many ballots were cast, you know,
like these people saying eighty three percent of the voter's county,
they don't know what percentage of the voters county because
we don't know how many people voted because the ballots
are still being accepted. I mean, as you and I
are speaking, it's Monday, June eighth. They haven't ntil tomorrow
(11:38):
to collect the ballots. There could be there could be
one hundred thousand ballots to show up tomorrow, like we
don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Well, in my understanding is mail and ballots are sent
to every registered voter.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, that would be my understanding as well, except I'm
a registered voter in California.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And I didn't get one.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Now I'm I'm displaced by the fire and I have
forwarding address right now, but that shouldn't have stopped it.
I mean, I should have received a mail in ballot.
I did not receive a mail in ballot, so I
went and voted in person in California. I'm back and
forth between LA and DC. But I actually tried to
(12:18):
look up what happened to my mail in ballot. There's
a feature on the LA County website where you can
track your ballot, and it said there was something wrong
with my ballot. I don't know if that means they
struck it off the role when I voted, which they're
supposed to do, or if somebody tried to vote for me.
I have no idea. I actually sent them an email
asking them to clarify what the heck was going on,
because I think it would be very interesting if somebody
(12:42):
try to vote for me.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, and then you know, you've got a state of
something like thirty nine million people. I don't know how
many registered voters there are in the state, but that's
a lot of ballots being mailed at out a lot
of hands that it's touching. And obviously with mail in
balloting there's just the easier for Sandigans to happen. Then
obviously if you're just going and voting in person, and
(13:05):
California doesn't really have a lot of strict enforcement laws
like you do in Florida and some of these other states.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, no, it's really it's I could go on and on,
but yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Bad, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And then looking down ballot, So if Steve Hilton advances,
even if he does not win, which you know, obviously,
the likelihood is probably you know, tough, tough climb for him. However,
you could look at New York in twenty twenty two
with the good neutroil race there and just by nature
of le zeld In doing as well as he did
at the top of the ticket, Republicans were able to
(13:38):
turn four House seats in the state of New York.
California is a little different since they do the top
two vote getters to continue on after the I guess primary,
if you want to call it into the general election,
what do you foresee potentially in on the congressional level.
In terms of I know they're still trying to figure
out which candidates.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
It's a blood bath.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
It's ye, it's a total I mean, it's everything you
thought was going to happen is going to happen. Five
they'll lose at least, you know, four or five seats
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
It's.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's there was one district where Democrats were shut out
in Orange County, but it doesn't matter because they forced
two incumbent Republicans to run against each other in one district,
So you know, Democrats won't take that seat, but Republicans
will still lose one of those seats that the two
guys came from, and then it might have been a
man and a woman. I just used guys in a
(14:29):
sort of general sense. But then then there was a
seat Kevin Bie, Kevin Kylie, who went independent to try
to keep his seat. You know, he did very well,
but he's probably going to lose his seat because it
looks like even though initially he had a Republican opponent,
now with more ballots coming in, he's going to have
a Democrat opponent, and Democrat will women. It's you know,
it'll be close, but there's so many No, it won't
(14:51):
be close, actually, because they're they're like, it's like a
sixty to forty district and Kylie almost has no hope
of winning. So it's it's it's a blood bath, and
they did what they set out to do. And the
only consolation is that because Newsom pressed so hard and
he wasn't satisfied with California counterbalancing the Texas redistricting, he
encouraged Democrats to do it in Virginia and everywhere else.
(15:13):
The Virginia thing spooked Republicans and so even states that
one kind of jerry mander decided, you know, we're going
to do this now because you guys are going this
Virginia thing is ridiculous. So Virginia was overturned. So Democrats
turned a six y five district into a ten one district.
Ten one state of courts overturned it. It went back
to six fives. But in the interim, all the Republican
states that had any Democratic districts got rid of them,
(15:34):
and so net Democrats are probably going to lose twelve seats.
That's before the vote. I mean, the vote could be
different if Democrats swamped the polls, and it looks like
they might and they could still win the House anyway, But.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You know, it's it's a mess.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And I think it doesn't have anything to do with
what Trump is doing or not doing. I mean, Trump
thus far has probably had the most successful eighteen months
of any president in living memory, because everything he's done
has worked. The one exception is the tariffs, which were
reversed by the courts. But you know, I don't know
to what extent you can say that worked or didn't.
I mean, the purpose of the tariffs was to encourage
(16:12):
American and companies to move back, and I think they
are so I think it achieved its purpose. And you know,
I just think that the economy is humming along. The
jobs reports keep coming in, outstanding jobs reports. We've destroyed
Iran's military, we destroyed the Maduro presidency in Venezuela. Like
(16:33):
foreign policies going astonishingly well, like everything is fantastic, Inflation
is under control. I mean, it's not great.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's not how That's the challenge is that if you
look at the polls, they're not seeing the economy as
a success.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And so that's the child like even I.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Don't think it has to do with Trump.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
I think the reason people people have been pessimistic for
a while, and I think it has to do with AI.
I think people are very concerned that AI means the
end of their job, and they're seeing that fear everywhere.
They don't know what to do about it. Also, there
are some linked during effects of high interest rates that
hang over from the Biden era because they haven't been
(17:14):
able to lower the rates yet. So the lingering effect
is that housing is still too expensive for most people,
so people are pessimistic about it.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
But it's even in a recent Harvard Harris poll, voters
thought that Biden was more successful in the economy. And
that was Harvard Harris, which is, you know, tends to
be pretty pro Republican and pro Trump.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So that's you know, you know, I mean, the.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
First will never know. I mean, it's funny. It's funny
because like when the economy was great in Trump's first term,
people gave Obama the credit. It's like, you know, it's
a lot of it has to do with how things
are reported. But Trump is economically, Trump is kicking. But
I mean, the tax cuts that are coming in. The
economic growth rate is high. The Obama people never got
(17:59):
growth this high, except I think once they had a
four point two percent. It was kind of a fluke,
but you know, the Trump economy is humming along. Yeah,
you're right. People don't know it necessarily, but you know,
the jobs reports are incredible. Unemployment's only four point three percent.
You know, it's just an incredible economy. It's very resilient.
It's surviving in the war, very very much intact, even
(18:22):
with higher gas prices. You know, Trump could do this
war because he made us energy independent. We wouldn't have
been able to do it under Biden. And it was
absolutely necessary, I think, to keep nuclear weapons out of
the hands of our enemies. And so, you know, I
think it's a very successful presidency. But we'll see what happens.
The level of hatred is it's huge.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
It's driving a lot of that California result.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Well, appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
That was Joe Pollock, opinion editor at the California Post.
Appreciate him for coming on the show to break this down.
Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You've ben listened throughout the week.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Also want to thank John Cassio, my producer, for putting
the show together.
Welcome to the Truth with Lisa Booth.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
We'll we get to the heart of the issues that
matter to you. Today we're talking California. It's the world's
fourth largest economy. Yet it's now been a week since
the election and we still don't know who will advance
to the general election. Now, remember California, they had the
two top vote getters regardless of political party, are the
ones who advance.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But we still don't know who will be advancing in.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
The gubernatorial race, the mayoral race for Los Angeles, and
or a lot of the other elections throughout the state.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So why does it take so long? Why is California
so incompetent.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
We're gonna ask Joel Pollock, he is the opinion editor
at the California Post, to break down what is happening
behind the scenes, what is happening with the delays, and
what he expects for the state of California.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Stay tuned well, Joel, it's great to have you on.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
I know you're a busy guy right now trying to
cover what's going on in California. If you can just
I guess run down where things stand.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Obviously this is Monday.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
The podcast is going to be out on Tuesday, so
things could change in the interim, But as of right now,
where do things stand from your perspective?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Right now, it looks like Spencer Pratt is likely not
going to qualify for the mayor or ale runoff in LA.
That could change, and there may even be lawsuits that
try to change it. I do think it's likely that
he will fail to qualify after it looked for the
first few days like he had enough of a cushion
(01:37):
to withstand whatever new votes were going to come in
for Nythia Rahman. Nathia Rahmen is basically unknown in LA,
which is one of the other reasons people are shocked
that she did so well, and you have to look
at her turnout operation and the fact that she had
access to a lot of people involved in homeless services.
(01:59):
That is raising brows because the new theory is that
she or her campaign registered almost people to vote and
then turned it in their ballots for them. I mean,
we don't have proof of that yet, but that is
a plausible theory as to how she got so many votes,
especially from central LA. She might have also done well
on university campuses because she had votes coming in from
(02:19):
UCLA around the Westwood area. She has votes coming in
from downtown in LA, which includes usc so it could
be that. But she had a terrible debate, She had
no real presence. I don't think her fundraising was any good.
So people have just dumbfounded that she won. And my
theory on it was may not one, but it might
(02:40):
have placed second. My theory on it before the election,
because she was showing up in some poles as second place.
My theory on it was that Ratt basically punctured the
balloon of Karen and Bass. That people weren't so aware
of how bad she was. They were dimly aware of it.
They knew about the Palisades fire, but it happened on
the edge of the city, so it didn't really affect
most people. And then Pratt made Karen Bass the problem,
(03:03):
and I think people tuned into the race at that point.
But what the counter argument was was that this is
a maga guy. You can't vote for him. He hangs
out with Republicans, he's a registered Republican. Okay, Trump didn't
endorse him, but you know he's the kind of person
Trump wants in charge of LA. And so the Ramin
(03:23):
vote was almost a ricochet off Ratt because he was
the guy driving the opposition, and in the last few
weeks he raised the most money and totally out raised
Aaron Bass, and so he was creating all this excitement.
But I think people in LA and Southern California, all
over California really have a visceral reaction against anything Trump.
(03:45):
It's not rational. Part of it is just party identification.
And we can go into the reasons why Republicans and
Trump in particular get that reaction, but the fact is
that once you can identify somebody with Trump, they're basically
toxic toy five percent of Angelino's Nobody expected Pratt to
win the general election, although he could have maybe if
(04:07):
something had happened. I wrote an article about the kind
of aggressive tactics he'd need to adopt. He could go
over the heads of the union leaders and talk to
union members and that kind of thing. But people wanted
him in that general election to raise issues that were
not going to be raised. Because Pratt is different from
Nathie Raman. Ramen is a socialist. Ramen is not different
(04:28):
from Karen Bass. Karen Bass went to Cuba dozens of
times basically as a communist. She's immoderate by temperament, but
not by ideology. She's far, far left. When Ramen got
into the race, I was a little perplexed because I said,
there's no room to the left of Karen Bass. She
just happens to know how to get along with people
(04:49):
better than some of these people of black masks who
throw molotov cocktails at police officers. But ideologically she's not
different from them. I mean, she's not going to encourage violince,
but she'll go to Mcarthury Park and block ice from
arresting illegal aliens. I mean, she's not different. So where's
the room to the left. So there's no ideological daylight
(05:10):
between the two of them. And Ramin's argument is just
going to be Karen Bath didn't do a good enough
job or an aggressive enough job of redistributing wealth. That's
basically the argument. And Ramen is not as hostile a
person as zoron Nandanni. She doesn't seem to target individual communities,
but she's an elite socialist. She went to Harvard and MIT,
(05:31):
and she comes to LA and runs homeless services and
has this ivory tower view of socialism, which is that
people like her will be planning the redistribution when it happens,
no idea how wealth has created, no idea how to
solve problems, how to lead people. You could see that
on a debate stage.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
She was no good.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
She is going to be in the runoff and she
could win, she could also lose, but we're not going
to see big changes in LA either way. So Pratt
would have represented at least the prospects of change and
a refreshing reminder that we don't have to accept the
status quote of in LA.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
If we want to, we can change.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
It doesn't have to be a Republican likes Pratt, but
he would have been remind and also would.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Have helped Steve Hillton if he ends up advancing in
the goodnatorial race, because Los Angeles is sort of the
center of gravity in California politics with almost ten million residents.
So you know, Pratt on the mayoral ticket would have
driven up the numbers for Republicans and theoretically helped Steve
(06:34):
Hilton in a state wide election.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah you know what though, I mean, it's the same
story statewide. There's the best Republican will always lose to
the worst Democrat in California, and the only thing that
could change that is that Jivie Bicara is tied to
this corruption scandal in Sacramento, and he says that he
has done This is not a revelation to you, but
but idiocy has never been a bar to higher office
(06:58):
in this country. Yeah, so, you know he's not that smart,
but his campaign did smart things. I mean, he became
the front runner because he was chosen by consultants and
by Gavin Newsom and by the media. They needed somebody.
(07:19):
But when he started out, you're right, he was no good.
He can't run anything. He was terrible in the Biden administration.
He was a terrible attorney general in California. People forget
that he presided over the explosion of crime. I mean,
that crime wave that happened across California happened under Javier Vissera.
It wasn't under you know these other it's under him.
He is, he is incompetent, but he was chosen. Once
(07:42):
he was the front runner in the gubernatorial race. He
then did some smart things. He appealed to Latinos, which
is obviously the right constituency for him. He would be
the first Latino governor. But also he went to the
Central Valley. Nobody goes to the Central Valley because it's
rural and it's sparse. In a primary contest where you're
try and you get the most ballots, there aren't as
(08:02):
many ballots out there. It's vast, it's Republican. Why would
you go there. The reason you go there, and the
reason it was brilliant for him to go there is
that when you're out there, the only one there, so
you dominate the media market. And it's not just like
one town. I mean, if you're in Fresno, people up
and down the valley are reading about you and hearing
about you, and you also have the opportunity to feature
(08:25):
in a variety of high profile events. You're going to
be on the front page of the paper. You're the
number one thing happening in town that day. So if
you know what you're doing, it's a great way to campaign.
And so he did that, and very few other candidates
were doing that. I mean, I think Steve Hilton showed
up in Fresno one day or whatever. But basically the
others largely confine themselves to cities, and you know, southern
(08:47):
California like where dense population areas are and that's great.
You might get like the minor mentioned somewhere or like
meet you shake a few hands. But Javier and Bisara
dominated the media market in centertive state, and that was
the key to make sure people knew he was the
front runner. It's not like Democrats liked him or had
any knowledge of him. They just waited for the media
to tell them who the leader.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Was and they voted for the leader. That's basically what happened.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Got to take quick breaks, stay with us.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
For Ninthia Rahman, you were talking about what she did
with the homeless populations, with the ballot harvesting. Is anything
that she did or is thought to have done, illegal
or is it all legal in the state of California.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
We have to give everyone the presumption of instance, right,
And so I think that probably what she did, if
she was harvesting ballots or her campaign was harvesting ballots,
probably it was legal. But we don't know, and I
would be interested to see how they did it. I
think what needs to happen is we need to understand
what happened. And I think but they're not going to
(09:50):
talk about it while the votes are being counted, right,
They're not going to have this desire to spill the
beans about how they collected votes, especially if she's in
the general election, right, why would she tell you how
she gets votes?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
She's not going to.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
I do think that the federal government can step in
and try to create a picture of how it happened,
which I think they're going to do to the extent
that they can. But you know, Gavin Newsome, Gaven news
signed this law like a few days before, like during
the voting actually when voting had already started, saying that
federal officials can't seed voting materials, they can't be given
(10:24):
in the voting roles unless there's an ordered investigation. It's
the most ridiculous law. It's probably unconstitutional, but you know
they're trying to cover it up. They don't want to
cooperate with the feds. California is a third world country
with you know, the fourth largest economy in the world.
That's basically how.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's run well.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
And also you know they continue counting ballots a week
after the election.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I think they just have to be postmark for election
day and everyone.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Right, And how does that work? I mean, how hard
is it think about this? It would be illegal for
someone to put fake postmarks on ballots, right, but how
hard would it be? And the postal union is Democrats
Postal Workers Union, so you know, you know, a rubber
stamp falls off a truck. I mean, how does it
How hard would it have been to fake things? You know,
we just don't know. But it's a terrible, terrible way
(11:16):
to run an election because there's so many obvious vulnerabilities.
The rule should be the ballots have to arrive by
election day. Then at least you know what's in the box.
We don't even know how many ballots were cast, you know,
like these people saying eighty three percent of the voter's county,
they don't know what percentage of the voters county because
we don't know how many people voted because the ballots
are still being accepted. I mean, as you and I
are speaking, it's Monday, June eighth. They haven't ntil tomorrow
(11:38):
to collect the ballots. There could be there could be
one hundred thousand ballots to show up tomorrow, like we
don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Well, in my understanding is mail and ballots are sent
to every registered voter.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yeah, that would be my understanding as well, except I'm
a registered voter in California.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
And I didn't get one.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Now I'm I'm displaced by the fire and I have
forwarding address right now, but that shouldn't have stopped it.
I mean, I should have received a mail in ballot.
I did not receive a mail in ballot, so I
went and voted in person in California. I'm back and
forth between LA and DC. But I actually tried to
(12:18):
look up what happened to my mail in ballot. There's
a feature on the LA County website where you can
track your ballot, and it said there was something wrong
with my ballot. I don't know if that means they
struck it off the role when I voted, which they're
supposed to do, or if somebody tried to vote for me.
I have no idea. I actually sent them an email
asking them to clarify what the heck was going on,
because I think it would be very interesting if somebody
(12:42):
try to vote for me.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Well, and then you know, you've got a state of
something like thirty nine million people. I don't know how
many registered voters there are in the state, but that's
a lot of ballots being mailed at out a lot
of hands that it's touching. And obviously with mail in
balloting there's just the easier for Sandigans to happen. Then
obviously if you're just going and voting in person, and
(13:05):
California doesn't really have a lot of strict enforcement laws
like you do in Florida and some of these other states.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, no, it's really it's I could go on and on,
but yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Bad, you know.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And then looking down ballot, So if Steve Hilton advances,
even if he does not win, which you know, obviously,
the likelihood is probably you know, tough, tough climb for him. However,
you could look at New York in twenty twenty two
with the good neutroil race there and just by nature
of le zeld In doing as well as he did
at the top of the ticket, Republicans were able to
(13:38):
turn four House seats in the state of New York.
California is a little different since they do the top
two vote getters to continue on after the I guess primary,
if you want to call it into the general election,
what do you foresee potentially in on the congressional level.
In terms of I know they're still trying to figure
out which candidates.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
It's a blood bath.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
It's ye, it's a total I mean, it's everything you
thought was going to happen is going to happen. Five
they'll lose at least, you know, four or five seats
or whatever.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
It's.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
It's there was one district where Democrats were shut out
in Orange County, but it doesn't matter because they forced
two incumbent Republicans to run against each other in one district,
So you know, Democrats won't take that seat, but Republicans
will still lose one of those seats that the two
guys came from, and then it might have been a
man and a woman. I just used guys in a
(14:29):
sort of general sense. But then then there was a
seat Kevin Bie, Kevin Kylie, who went independent to try
to keep his seat. You know, he did very well,
but he's probably going to lose his seat because it
looks like even though initially he had a Republican opponent,
now with more ballots coming in, he's going to have
a Democrat opponent, and Democrat will women. It's you know,
it'll be close, but there's so many No, it won't
(14:51):
be close, actually, because they're they're like, it's like a
sixty to forty district and Kylie almost has no hope
of winning. So it's it's it's a blood bath, and
they did what they set out to do. And the
only consolation is that because Newsom pressed so hard and
he wasn't satisfied with California counterbalancing the Texas redistricting, he
encouraged Democrats to do it in Virginia and everywhere else.
(15:13):
The Virginia thing spooked Republicans and so even states that
one kind of jerry mander decided, you know, we're going
to do this now because you guys are going this
Virginia thing is ridiculous. So Virginia was overturned. So Democrats
turned a six y five district into a ten one district.
Ten one state of courts overturned it. It went back
to six fives. But in the interim, all the Republican
states that had any Democratic districts got rid of them,
(15:34):
and so net Democrats are probably going to lose twelve seats.
That's before the vote. I mean, the vote could be
different if Democrats swamped the polls, and it looks like
they might and they could still win the House anyway, But.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
You know, it's it's a mess.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
And I think it doesn't have anything to do with
what Trump is doing or not doing. I mean, Trump
thus far has probably had the most successful eighteen months
of any president in living memory, because everything he's done
has worked. The one exception is the tariffs, which were
reversed by the courts. But you know, I don't know
to what extent you can say that worked or didn't.
I mean, the purpose of the tariffs was to encourage
(16:12):
American and companies to move back, and I think they
are so I think it achieved its purpose. And you know,
I just think that the economy is humming along. The
jobs reports keep coming in, outstanding jobs reports. We've destroyed
Iran's military, we destroyed the Maduro presidency in Venezuela. Like
(16:33):
foreign policies going astonishingly well, like everything is fantastic, Inflation
is under control. I mean, it's not great.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
That's not how That's the challenge is that if you
look at the polls, they're not seeing the economy as
a success.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
And so that's the child like even I.
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Don't think it has to do with Trump.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
I think the reason people people have been pessimistic for
a while, and I think it has to do with AI.
I think people are very concerned that AI means the
end of their job, and they're seeing that fear everywhere.
They don't know what to do about it. Also, there
are some linked during effects of high interest rates that
hang over from the Biden era because they haven't been
(17:14):
able to lower the rates yet. So the lingering effect
is that housing is still too expensive for most people,
so people are pessimistic about it.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
But it's even in a recent Harvard Harris poll, voters
thought that Biden was more successful in the economy. And
that was Harvard Harris, which is, you know, tends to
be pretty pro Republican and pro Trump.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
So that's you know, you know, I mean, the.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
First will never know. I mean, it's funny. It's funny
because like when the economy was great in Trump's first term,
people gave Obama the credit. It's like, you know, it's
a lot of it has to do with how things
are reported. But Trump is economically, Trump is kicking. But
I mean, the tax cuts that are coming in. The
economic growth rate is high. The Obama people never got
(17:59):
growth this high, except I think once they had a
four point two percent. It was kind of a fluke,
but you know, the Trump economy is humming along. Yeah,
you're right. People don't know it necessarily, but you know,
the jobs reports are incredible. Unemployment's only four point three percent.
You know, it's just an incredible economy. It's very resilient.
It's surviving in the war, very very much intact, even
(18:22):
with higher gas prices. You know, Trump could do this
war because he made us energy independent. We wouldn't have
been able to do it under Biden. And it was
absolutely necessary, I think, to keep nuclear weapons out of
the hands of our enemies. And so, you know, I
think it's a very successful presidency. But we'll see what happens.
The level of hatred is it's huge.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
It's driving a lot of that California result.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Well, appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
That was Joe Pollock, opinion editor at the California Post.
Appreciate him for coming on the show to break this down.
Appreciate you guys at home for listening every Tuesday and Thursday.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
You've ben listened throughout the week.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Also want to thank John Cassio, my producer, for putting
the show together.
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Clay Travis
Buck Sexton
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