Gov. Newsom vs. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Redistricting Gamble

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So many wonderful, really convincing arguments coming forward in favor
of Gavin Newsom's redistricting plan. The problem that the Democrats
are facing with redistricting, that this is the fundamental problem
that they're going to have. They have to try to

(00:23):
have their cake and eat it too. The whole point
of redistricting mid stream throwing out our normal process established
under the state constitution for redistricting with a non politician

(00:45):
board doing the redistricting. Now, I think that board is
already pretty partisan, but let's set that aside for now.
The whole point of this exercise is blatant partisanship. It's
saying that we're going to take principle, some sort of
principle about how redistricting is supposed to happen, Allegedly, how

(01:08):
that redistricting should not involve gerrymandering, that it should not
involve naked political posturing. We are taking that principle and saying, no,
we're not going to uphold that principle when the going
gets tough. This is a thing conservatives struggle with all

(01:32):
the time. Well, should we stoop to be as low
as the Democrats and aggressively work the system the way
they do or should we stand by the principle of
the thing. And for years Democrats took advantage of Republicans
that way. Democrats would cheat by changing the rules in
the Senate about filibustering judges, and Republicans would stand there

(01:56):
with their thumb up, their rear ends and just accept
it when Democrats got to filibuster Republican nominees, and then
the shoe gets on the other foot and Republicans were
not allowed to filibuster Democrat nominees for judges. Democrats constantly
aggressively try to change the rules, and Republicans stand there

(02:18):
talking about some kind of conservative, longstanding principle of good governance. Well,
you can't have it both ways. You can't say that
you actually believe in fair redistricting or that you believe
in non partisan, non openly political redistricting and then abandon

(02:45):
that principle when the going gets tough, when you're in
a tougher political climate where your opponent is trying to
abandon the principle, what do you want to do? Do
you want to play hardball politics or do you want
to stand by principle. Democrats have clearly decided they're going
to play hardball politics. Damn the principle, full speed ahead.

(03:11):
If Texas is gonna aggressively redistrict in such a way
that Republicans are going to pick up five seats in
the House of Representatives, Democrats have decided, well, then we're
going to do the same thing in California. That's the
whole reason we're doing this discussion is because we've said
we understand the principle and we are ignoring it. We
are abandoning it. And I think Democrats thought that Californians

(03:42):
hate Republicans so much, hate Trump so much, whom they
are able to paint as being tied to this Texas thing.
And yeah, I think Trump has very much supported this
effort by Texas to do this aggressive partisan redistricting. I
think Newsome and the Democrats in the legislature banked on

(04:04):
the idea that Californians hated Trump enough that they would
be fine with this, and I think they have overplayed
their hand. The problem is that California. The loudest, clearest

(04:29):
voices in Sacramento are very different from I think what
is actually on the ground reality in California. I think
California is a center left state and I think Sacramento
and the Capitol Building specifically is a hard left environment.

(04:53):
Let's not forget it was only a month or two
ago that Newsome and a bunch of legislators were being
excoriated the hard left only in the Capitol Building for
daring to cut health care for illegal aliens, something that
most Californians were totally okay with. You really kind of

(05:13):
have to think about California voters in three groups. There
are Republicans about forty percent of us. There are hardcore Democrats,
but there's a good twenty to thirty percent of Californians

(05:33):
who are just moderate Democrats. They're not super hardcore or
as ideological as the kinds of people who really run
the roost in Sacramento, who drive the agenda in the
state Capitol Building. And so when Gavin Newsom got up

(05:57):
there and launched this whole thing, I think he was
too much influenced by hardcore liberals. Hardcore liberals who are
looking at the maps and they're far more interested in

(06:17):
the twenty twenty six election than anything else that they
want Democrats to tikeenty twenty twenty six, they see Republicans
picking up five seats just in Texas alone as a
real threat to that. They're so focused on fighting Donald
Trump that they don't care about anything else. Because that's
what the hardcore left is thinking about right now. That's

(06:39):
what is moving them, driving them, motivating them right now.
The problem is that's not how moderate Democrats in California
are thinking. I think moderate Democrats in California the existing system.

(07:03):
They like having a non partisan or allegedly non partisan
that they like the idea of this a non partisan
entity doing our redistricting. They like that. They don't like
the idea of Democrats just aggressively redrawing all the lines.

(07:24):
And frankly, it's all the old Schwarzenegger voters. Everyone who
voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger back in the day. That kind
of person doesn't like this, and the polling is starting
to indicate it. The polling is starting to indicate that,
as many as it might be, sixty four percent of
Californians don't want this. So obviously, not one Republican in

(07:48):
the state wants this, and then on top of that,
a bunch of moderate Democrats don't. So now Democrats have
put themselves in this impossible position. They need to get
this thing passed by a majority of the voters this November.

(08:11):
This thing, this redistricting effort, which is obviously abandoning principle
in favor of hardball partisanship. That's the whole reason for it.
There's no other reason for this other than abandoning principle
for the sake of hardball partisanship. But they now realize, well, geez,

(08:37):
a lot of California voters don't like this hardball partisanship.
So now they have to be coy about it. They
have to hide the ball, and they somehow have to
start blathering and pretending like any aspect of what they're
doing is any different from what Texas is doing. I'm

(09:04):
now starting to see the State Assembly state lawmakers giving
interviews saying, well, you know, what we're doing is so
much different from what Texas is doing because the people
have a chance to have a say in this. Well, okay,
the people have a chance to say no in November.
People don't have any voice in this up to now.

(09:25):
Oh you can send in comments after the maps have
already been drawn and proposed. Oh yeah, that's so much better.
The comments aren't going to do a dang thing. The
process is not more participatory than Texas's process was. I

(09:48):
don't think a single one of you listening is going
to have your voice really heard about this about how
the maps should actually be drawn. And so there's nothing
really substantively different about what California is trying to do

(10:09):
relative to what Texas is doing. I've heard state lawmakers
trying to make the argument that, well, Texas is just
purely aggressively doing this with partisanship. We're still trying to
keep communities of interest together. No, you're not. If you
just wanted to keep communities of interest together, you wouldn't
need to redraw the maps. The existing maps, by your view,

(10:35):
keep communities of interest together. Actually, I don't know that
the community the existing maps necessarily do. I mean, like
my district. As I've mentioned many times, I live in
the twentieth California Congressional district, which is Vince Fong's district.
Vince Fong lives in Bakersfield. I live in Clovis. Why
am I part of his district? Why is my district
shaped like a bizarre number three that encompasses Clovis, Lamore

(11:02):
and then environs around Bakersfield, especially south of Bakersfield. It
doesn't make sense. The map doesn't make any sense. It's
not a natural community of interest anyway. The new maps
are going to be even less of a natural communities
of interest because they have to redraw them in order
to get rid of a couple of Republican members of

(11:22):
the House. So they're they're now trying that they have
to now sort of pretend like this is some kind
of still standing on principle. They're trying to pretend like well,

(11:48):
and the real thing they're having to do is they're
having to hide the ball. They're having to be coy.
They are refusing to say who drew these maps. This
is a real ticking point. Nobody wants to say who
drew these maps. They keep saying, well, the legislature drew them,

(12:08):
but then Republican members of the legislatures say, well, I
didn't draw Did you draw them? Individual Democrat lawmakers, well no,
I didn't, like, like actually draw them. So who did Well,
the leadership in the legislature, okay, you, mister speaker, well
I didn't physically draw them, So who did? Who did?
Who drew them? They can't say who drew them because

(12:31):
we all know who did it was Democrat political operatives.
It was probably Democrat hack Democrat political operatives consultants who
have expertise in redistrict thing and drawing district lines. And
there are people who do that kind of work, and
some of them are aggressive Republicans and some of them

(12:54):
are aggressive Democrats. And I'm sure that they had communications
between folks the California Democratic Party, in the Democratic National
Committee and blah blah blah blah blah to specifically draw
these maps in a way that was most advantageous for
Democrats now, but they can't say that now. See, this

(13:15):
is the weird thing. I think they anticipated that Californians
would be just totally gung ho hunky dory with an
aggressive redistricting, and then that Politico poll came out and
it really popped their balloon. All of a sudden, They're realized, oh, well, oh,
we kind of have to hide the ball, and that

(13:37):
they have clearly decided that this level of opacity of
non transparency is preferable to actually telling the truth. That's
the takeaway we have to get we have to derive
from this. They have decided that hiding the ball, not

(13:59):
saying drew the maps pretending somehow like communities of interest
are being preserved, rather than yeah, we're trying to redraw
the maps to take votes away from Republicans. We're trying
to take house seats away from Republicans. That's the point
of this. That's the problem. Is they're trying to have

(14:22):
their cake and eat it too, and I think it's
making them look ridiculous because of I mean, fundamentally, you
can't have both. You can either argue that you believe
in fair districting, that you think jerrymandering is a problem,
a problem for democracy, or you can say, hey, we

(14:47):
got to stop Trump. We're going to react to what
Texas is doing and we're going to do the same thing.
But you don't get to be both. You don't get
to be like heroes of principle at the same time
engaging in aggressive partisan hardball to combat what Donald Trump

(15:08):
is doing. It doesn't work that, I mean, I guess
we will see. We will see if it's going to
work that way. We will see if in this election
Democrats can get away with that. So be ready, California,
be ready for a whole bunch of campaign ads. You

(15:32):
thought twenty twenty five, you wouldn't be hearing campaign ads
o contrere monfrere. But we're going to have this special
election this November, and it's going to be a battle
royale over this topic, over this concept of what what

(15:54):
does what do Californians want? What did the bulk of
Californians want? Are the bulk of Calorans the majority of Californians.
Are they just more interested in stopping Donald Trump at
any cost? Are they Newsomites or are they Schwarzenegertes that
they actually kind of like some sort of neutral process

(16:17):
for redistricting or allegedly neutral when we return, what happens
if this comes down to a popularity contest between a
current governor and a former governor. Gavin Newsom versus Ahnold
next on The John Girardi Show. This is one of

(16:39):
the big questions for the upcoming November redistricting special election.
The special election about whether or not Democrats can get
away with redrawing all the district lines in order to
help Democrats pick up a certain number of House seats
and thereby offset Texas's effort to redistrict it's congressional seats

(17:01):
mid stream in the middle, you know, in between censuses.
I wonder if this is going to become a popularity
contest between two figures who are very engaged in this,
Gavin Newsom and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Of all people, who is

(17:22):
more popular, who is more fondly remembered? Gavin Newsom or
Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now Schwarzenegger has the benefit of age and time.
He hasn't been governor for he left office like fourteen
years ago, fourteen and a half years ago. So whatever hard,

(17:46):
sharp elbowed partisan critiques the individual California voter might have
about Arnold, the sharpness of those critiques has obviously dulled
over time. Furthermore, I think one thing that really plays
to Arnold's advantage, not anything that necessarily endears him to me,

(18:07):
is that he's taken a very decidedly leftward turn over
the last ten years, and maybe not left word turn,
but very much not a fan of Donald Trump. I
think I shouldn't say that Schwarzenegger took a left word turn.
Schwartzenegger was always a pretty darn liberal Republican, and it

(18:33):
should come as no surprise that he was not a
fan of Donald Trump. But he was a very vocal
critic of Donald Trump for years and years and years
and years and years, and I think it gives him
credibility that here he is saying, yeah, I hate Donald
Trump as much as anybody, but we shouldn't screw around

(18:56):
with our elections system. Now. Schwarzenegger has had his scandals.
He had his scandal where he was, you know, his
marriage with Maria Shriver blew up after it was revealed
that he had a love child with the maid who

(19:17):
looks astonishingly like him. Like it just the son he
had with the Mexican maid looks like just imagine in
your mind's eye, Arnold Schwarzenegger, but Mexican. That's pretty much
exactly what his son looks like. Don't really need a
paternity test to figure that one out. So Schwarzenegger kind

(19:38):
of took a bit of a pr hit from that,
but has kind of come out of that. I don't
think he's got that kind of negative attention anymore. And
I think in general, I don't know that Gavin Newsom
is more popular than him. Newsom's approval numbers prior to
this whole redistrict thing thing getting restarted, we're somewhere in

(20:00):
we're pretty darn Low somewhere around forty four percent his
California approval numbers, And as I've said many times before,
Newsom has not had a super successful governorship. The wildfires
in Los Angeles are still that the fact that so
many of those homes not even close to getting the

(20:22):
permit to start thinking about rebuilding them is an ongoing
horrific scandal. Here we are, you know, seven months later
that I think a lot of people in southern California
are still really ticked off about. And this just on
top of so many other ways in which California is

(20:45):
just not doing well. Him having to reverse his own
policies on a lot of environmental stuff because of upcoming
massive spikes in gas prices, all kinds of things. If it,
if this special election comes down to a popularity contest
between Arnold and Gavin Newsom, I gotta say I like

(21:07):
Arnold's chances because, as I said, you kind of have
three groups of voters in California. You have Republicans, you
have Democrat You have Republicans, you have hardcore Democrats, and
then you have moderate Democrats. Schwarzenegger was able to be
governor by winning those moderate Democrat votes. And I think

(21:35):
he perfectly. And it's those moderate Democrat votes that are
the same kind of votes that adopted the constitutional amendments
in California that led to the Independent Citizens Redistrict and Commission,
which Newsom is trying to do away with for the
purposes of the twenty twenty sixth race. I think that

(21:56):
Schwarzenegger might have a better handle on and that coalition
than Gavin Newsom does, so I think Newsom is not
going to like if this race becomes a popularity contest
between him and Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't think that ends
well for Gavin Newsom. When we return what this election
is going to do for Gavin Newsom's political future. That's

(22:18):
next on the John Girardi Show. I'm often fascinated with
Gavin Newsom's sort of political future. I've written about it
for National Review, and I've been a real Newsome pessimist
when it comes to his chances of even getting the
Democrat nomination, let alone becoming president in twenty twenty eight.

(22:42):
I think I am more pessimistic about Newsom's chances than
a lot of other observers are. I think other observers
are maybe a bit more impressed by him, think that
he's a more formidable foe than I do. And maybe
it's just having lived in California and having a more
sort of nitty gritty day to day knowledge and understanding

(23:03):
of California politics and news and things like that I am.
I just feel like Newsome has such a laundry list of,
as I sort of characterize it, non partisan failures that
I don't see how he can survive the Democrat primary process.

(23:24):
At some point, he's gonna be on a debate stage,
and someone else on the stage is going to be
ambitious enough and smart enough to skewer him with his
own record, the way that Tulsea Gabbard did to Kamala
Harris in the It was in the twenty twenty cycle,
but in one of the debates in twenty nineteen, someone's

(23:44):
gonna do it. Someone's gonna say, you claimed you were
going to take on homelessness. For eight years, you did nothing,
Homelessness got worse. You spend tens of billions of dollars
on it that we couldn't even account for, let alone,
not to mention that they didn't even work. California has
high poverty races. This problem. This problem. Wildfires were a
big problem early in your governorship. You had six and

(24:05):
a half years to do something about it. Then you
had the worst wildfires in history in January twenty twenty five. Like,
you can just go on and on and on for
things that aren't really partisan coded. Nobody likes homelessness, nobody
likes wildfires, nobody likes high gas prices, nobody likes that
the high speed rail still isn't operative. Newsome oversaw all

(24:28):
of that. It's not partisan coded stuff. It's not like
it's not or when he did so a lot of
his failures. It's not like things that Democrats love but
Republicans criticize. It's just bad stuff that nobody likes. On
top of that, he has a lot of things that
he flip flopped on. A bunch of environmental policies that

(24:53):
he was backing and supporting, and then flip flopped on
when the going got tough when gas prices were getting
too high, flip flopping on medical coverage for illegal aliens.
He introduced it, realized how wildly too expensive it is,
then shamefully had to roll it back. So I've thought

(25:15):
he's just not as impressive a Democrat contender as other
people do. I think he's got the name recognition edge
right now. I think people have talked about him as
a presidential contender for so long that and he's obviously
so desirous of that crown that I think a lot
of Democrats in other parts of the country have sort

(25:35):
of duped themselves into thinking that he's this super formidable guy.
I don't know that he is, but I do think
there are some opportunities for him to raise his profile.
And I've sort of I had thought this initially with
some of his legal challenges to Trump over over some

(25:56):
of the immigration stuff and the National Guard stuff in California,
which turn now to be kind of a fizzle of
an argument. Eventually, after some of the rioting in Los
Angeles calm down, Trump withdrew the National Guard and that
whole issue kind of became moot. But I sort of thought, look,
Newsome has a year and a half to make himself

(26:17):
the standard bearer for the resistance movement, for the anti
Trump resistant resistance movement. He has to get into and
win some kind of big time fight with Donald Trump.
That's what he's got to do. And I think this
redistricting effort. This might be it. This is his last

(26:40):
I mean, this might be his last big chance if
he can get redistricting done and he can neutralize the
five additional seats that Republicans are going to pick up
in Texas with five additional seats that Democrats pick up
in California, and it's the decisive thing that delivers Democrats
the House of Representatives in the twenty twenty sixth election. Well,

(27:06):
I gotta say that's a thing that would put him
head and shoulders above everybody else, above all the other
Liliputians out there, Uh Pete Boodhajid, who won't be able
to have anything on that. Josh Shapiro if he runs
for president, or John Fetterman if he runs for president,
or Amy Klobashar or all the other twenty twenty has beens,

(27:30):
They won't be able to say anything that way. AOC
will be sort of her kind of Nietzche, sort of
in her little spot. No one will have anything else
to say to Newsom. Newsom, I think we'll be able
to credibly say it was my decisive my action, along

(27:51):
with the hard work of so many other great Democrat
volunteers and great candidates all up and down the country
that we were supporting. It was my redistricting of California,
my pushed redistrict California that delivered Democrats the House in
twenty twenty six. I'm the clear leader of the Democrats.
Vote for me on the flip side. This is the thing,

(28:20):
this is the big gamble. It reminds me, frankly of
Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar had this one very decisive point
in his political life that was going to make or
break his whole career. Caesar was running for the office
of Pontifex Maximus. So this was the chief priesthood of Rome,

(28:46):
the most important religious role in Rome at that time.
The Pontiffects Maximus was elected by a vote of one
of the popular assemblies in the city of Rome, and
it was a really prestigious thing. If you were Pontifex Maximus,
you got this really prestigious house, and you got this

(29:06):
really prestigious position. It was a lifetime appointment. You would
have it until you die. You could still serve as
a general, you could still get elected consul, still get
elected to general. It set you up for you were
going to become a consul. You're going to be a
big time figure in Rome, in Roman politics, one of
the absolute guaranteed cream of the crop Roman elite. The

(29:30):
problem was Julius Caesar was massively in debt. He had
been receiving loan after loan after loan from Crassus, who
would later become one of the three members of the
first Triumvirate along with Caesar and Pompey. If Caesar lost
that election, it would severely dent to his future political

(29:52):
prospects and it would lead to his complete financial ruin.
And so when he went to I believe it's at
the campus marches, which this place in Rome where some
of this voting would take place. I think it was
on the campus marchies. He said to his mom, I

(30:12):
either will come back as the Pontifex Maximus or I
will not come back at all. That's Gavin Newsom's moment
right now. If he loses this special election this November,
a special election, that's entirely his initiative, entirely his doing.

(30:36):
He was the one pushing it. It wasn't other Democrats,
and he was the decisive man to push for this,
to call for this. He's trying to fundraise off of
this in other parts of the country for his presidential campaign.
People have noticed all these fundraising emails have gone out
to places other than California. If Newsom doesn't succeed here,

(31:06):
what does that do for him? I think he's already
pretty weak. And if he fails with this redistricting bid,
what does he do on the debate stage in twenty
twenty seven, In late twenty twenty seven, the Democrats start
having their primary debates? What does he do well? I tried.

(31:32):
I tried really hard, got a bunch of Democrats all
over the country to donate to me. I worked really
hard to redistrict and I couldn't beat you know, seventy
whatever years old, eighty whatever years old Arnold Schwarzenegger in
a special elect a low turnout special election in a
state that has a sixty to forty Democrat to Republican edge.

(31:54):
I couldn't do it. I don't know how he can
survive that. The stakes of this for Gavin Newsom are
really high. I don't know how he can run for president. Well,
he can run, but it's gonna be the crowning failure

(32:19):
on top of a laundry list of other failures, and
again another non partisan doesn't matter what way you look
at it failure, nobody can look at it. If he
tries to do this special election and fails, and Arnold
Schwarzenegger beats him to preserve the existing redistricting process in

(32:41):
California can't do its partisan jerrymanderd redistricting, and Democrats can't
pick up five seats in California and Republicans either hold, serve,
or who knows, maybe even pick up a few seats.
What if Adam Gray loses a seat. If that happens,

(33:04):
it's the No matter what angle you look at it,
it looks bad. For Newsom's Liberals look at it, it looks terrible.
Republicans look at it, it's laughably terrible. And it becomes
the crowning jewel, the most recent crowning jewel, on top
of a whole eight years of office full of failures,

(33:27):
and he's running out of time. He's running out of time.
Remember he's done at the end of twenty twenty six,
started twenty twenty seven, He's done as governor, so he'll
then have sorry. I think at one point did I
say the debate would take place in twenty twenty nine

(33:48):
to take place in twenty twenty seven. So Newsom's gonna
leave office in January of twenty twenty seven, and then
he'll just be John Q citizen from January twenty twenty
seven until whenever the Democrat primary debates start, presumably, I
don't know, maybe late in twenty twenty seven, November December.

(34:11):
He doesn't have any more chances. He's not gonna have
another nationwide attention grabbing opportunity like this. It has to happen,
it has to work for him. If it doesn't work,
his presidential ambitions are over. When we return. A personal
note on the Minnesota Vikings dude cheerleaders next on the

(34:34):
John Girardi Show. A lot of people have been talking
about these new male cheerleaders for the Minnesota Vikings. I
have a bit of personal experience with this. Now I've
heard some people say, what's the big deal with the
Minnesota Vikings having male cheerleaders. That's not a big deal.
College football teams have had male cheerleaders for forever. No

(34:57):
one comments on them, eh, not like this. They haven't.
So I was visiting Minnesota last week or the week
before last and on Saturday, I guess it was the
Saturday before last, I went with one of my son

(35:21):
and my daughter. I took them with a couple of
cousins to the Minnesota Vikings preseason game that they had
against the Houston Texans. So we're in the Vikings stadium
at the US Bank Stadium, the new indoor stadium in Minnesota,
and I saw the dude cheerleaders in person. Now, for

(35:44):
those of you who have not seen them, you're gonna
see more of them over the course of the football season.
Let me guarantee that if you get a Minnesota Vikings game,
these are basically there are guys wearing kind of some
kind of sequin top and shorts, not dressed too provocatively,
but boy do they dance provocatively. They're doing all the

(36:07):
same highly sexualized dances that the girl cheerleaders are doing.
So it's not you know, the raw ra guys like
Texas A and M like hey, go team go the way.
It's not you know, guye cheerleaders holding you know, the
girl cheerleader up on the up above their heads on

(36:28):
their hands and throwing them in the air and then
going h gold steak, yeah, yeah, yeah, No, it's not that.
It's like they're it's so creepy, like it reminds me
of like, I don't know, weird ancient Near East practices
of like having court eunix or something like. Clearly, the

(36:49):
only kind of males they would recruit for this are
guys who are very flamboyant homosexuals. I mean that, let's
call it what it is. That's what this is. They
don't have male cheerleaders just ma I mean, yes, they
are males, they're not they don't They're not like trans cheerleaders.

(37:10):
They are guys. They're dressed as guys. They're just different
slightly differently from the girls. They're not wearing skirts, they're
wearing T shirt and shorts or sort of a top
in shorts. But it's like, yes, we are going to
have our girl cheerleaders and our flamboyantly gay male cheerleaders,

(37:32):
because this is not no heterosexual male is going to
do this. It's clearly just a spot for flamboyantly gay
male cheerleaders. And I don't know what the motivation is here.
I don't know if the motivation is we're trying to
avoid a sex based discrimination lawsuit, Like why are cheerleaders
only female? Why are you discriminating Minnesota vikings and you're

(37:54):
hiring practices on the basis of sex for something that
you know? Why can't men brand around like this? It's bad.
By the way, highly sexualized female cheerleaders are also bad,
just in case you're thinking, you know, I want hot
cheerleaders as a strike back against woke. They're both bad.

(38:14):
That'll do it, John Garadi Show, See you next time
on Power Talk