Contributor: California needs to think outside the blue box

Maybe Gov. Gavin Newsom was channeling his internal Republican when he hosted conservative commentator Charlie Kirk for an 81-minute interview on the debut of his new podcast final week. Certainly, a lot of what Newsom talked about was instantly cheered by the very partisans who normally detest him.

However polls inform us that nothing Newsom stated was notably controversial with many Individuals, and undoubtedly many Californians. Nonetheless, his feedback, notably on transgender athletes taking part in ladies’s sports activities, brought on a big stir with some California Democrats. In actual fact, the state’s Legislative LGBTQ Caucus responded that it was “profoundly sickened and annoyed” by Newsom’s musings on the subject.

That California Democrats could also be out of contact with many citizens in their very own state shouldn’t be a shock. It’s a direct results of the shortage of political competitors they’ve confronted within the Golden State because the final Republican left statewide workplace almost 15 years in the past.

However the implications for California of a one-party monopoly are greater than political. One-party rule leads to an absence of progressive coverage pondering; little to no accountability for state spending or coverage outcomes and an absence of true debate on crucial points.

This isn’t an issue restricted to Democrats in Sacramento. One-party rule, no matter the place it occurs and who’s in cost, generates these challenges. It’s simply
pervasive in California, the place Democrats’ full stranglehold on our statewide management construction has been in place for a very long time.

Think about, for instance, Newsom’s response to the devastating wildfires that hit Southern California in January. The two laws he suspended by govt motion to ease rebuilding of misplaced properties and properties — the California Environmental High quality Act, higher generally known as CEQA, and the California Coastal Act — are in determined want of fundamental reform. And this wasn’t the primary time Newsom unilaterally waived such legal guidelines. In 2019, he took comparable steps to droop CEQA to speed up fireplace prevention efforts within the wake of lethal wildfires in Northern California.

The governor did the correct factor in these instances. However that’s irrelevant. Sadly, there was little urge for food amongst Democrats in Sacramento to move the basic reforms to each CEQA and the Coastal Act that may obviate the necessity to droop the legal guidelines when tragedy strikes and make it simpler to construct extra housing and transfer forward on the sorts of improvement that may bolster financial progress within the state.

So, too, has one-party governance hindered oversight and accountability for state spending and profit packages. One well-publicized instance: The continuing saga of huge fraud within the state’s unemployment insurance coverage system administered by the Employment Growth Division.

The employment division’s failures have been predictable however, sadly, unaddressed by Sacramento’s one-party management. The issues prolong again so far as 2013, when beneficiaries skilled delayed payments and the company noticed an uptick in id theft and unhealthy claims, all through 2020-21, when it made greater than $20 billion in fraudulent payouts. Regardless of efforts by the small Republican contingent within the state Legislature to solid mild on these failings, the company remained immune from true accountability till the pandemic-era catastrophe struck. And even with nationwide consideration on its failings, as of the tip of 2024, the Employment Growth Division was nonetheless having difficulty stopping fraud and delivering benefits to those that want them.

Lastly, Californians are conscious of the real-world challenges created by the state’s largely unconstrained shift towards soft-on-crime justice insurance policies. Progressive district attorneys in main counties and one state lawyer basic after one other — together with the present Democrat who occupies the workplace, Rob Bonta — repeatedly made the argument that leeway and forbearance have been wanted in lieu of efforts to aggressively implement the regulation. A majority of the state’s voters made this even simpler by passing a poll measure in 2014, Proposition 47, that downgraded sure drug and theft crimes to misdemeanors.

On this occasion at the least, we now have seen the ability of public accountability and the pushback towards single-party orthodoxy: Within the November elections, voters resoundingly handed a poll measure that overturned Proposition 47 and reinstated and even strengthened the penalties for a similar crimes. And just lately, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, progressive district attorneys have been dispatched for average prosecutors who got here to energy promising extra regulation and order.

Newsom known as out his personal occasion for falling out of contact with the typical Californian in his podcast. However what’s wanted for change is the state’s voters deciding to ship a special political end result on the poll field. The inexperienced shoots of this motion have been seen within the soft-on-crime backlash and in post-wildfire efforts to convey accountability to the Los Angeles mayor’s workplace after years of Democratic management within the metropolis seem to have contributed to an absence of far-sighted catastrophe preparedness.

Californians could stay progressive of their politics however ought to look to elect at the least some officers who aren’t in lockstep with the ruling occasion and can maintain others in energy accountable. Change would require actual debate and a better illustration of divergent views in Sacramento and all through the state. Getting there’s finally in voters’ palms in elections to return.

Lanhee J. Chen is an American public coverage fellow on the Hoover Establishment. He was a Republican candidate for California state controller in 2022.