How to Keep the MAGA Red Hats Out of Governor’s Mansion

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SOMETHING SNAPPED:  I had to get a drink. I couldn’t wait for dinner. No time for the usual calming episode of Law & Order. I got the ice. I got the glass. I poured.

My dog got worried.

I had once again spent hours of my life I’ll never get back watching seven über-overachieving triple-A personality disorders trying to convince Californians that they should be governor of the fourth-largest economy on Planet Earth. One woman. Two Latinos. One Brit. Two Republicans. Five Dems. One bald and bearded. Another with a cowboy mustache. One billionaire. One mayor. One ex-mayor. Two who’d never been elected to anything. One who had never even run.

They hectored, pontificated, dodged, and deflected. They denied, accused, interrupted, jabbed, insulted, rolled eyes, smirked, and sneered.

A few perceptive observations did manage to escape.

But it wasn’t really a debate. More like extreme speed dating by people who really don’t like each other standing in a mosh pit.

It was the third California gubernatorial debate I had to sit through.

Third time’s the charm?

Three strikes and you’re out?

The cock crowed three times?

Don’t cry for me, California. Cry for yourselves.

Earlier that day, we were struggling to put together the Independent’s gubernatorial endorsement, but just about the only thing we could decide on was this: Not only does absolute power corrupt absolutely, but in Trump’s world, the opposite is also true. Absolute corruption empowers absolutely. And any candidate who curries Trump’s favor is not the governor for California. Cruelty solely for the sake of cruelty is not who we are. Any candidate who thinks otherwise, we oppose.

Those would be two of the seven candidates on the stage: former Fox talking head Steve Hilton, whose candidacy Trump has endorsed. It would also be Chad Bianco, the tough-talking sheriff of Riverside County who seized 650,000 ballots, citing concerns about voter fraud that he heard about from some right-wing conspiracy nut. A higher court judge later told him he was violating the law. In all his years, Bianco had never evinced any concern about voter fraud before. The whole seizure thing was a stunt to win Trump’s endorsement. Anyone who wanted — or who got — Trump’s endorsement has no soul left to sell.

Next.

To effectively cast one’s ballot against the MAGA candidates, you also have to vote for someone. Figuring that out has been a challenge — especially since early this week, 250,000 ballots were mailed to every registered voter in Santa Barbara County. Despite days of research and discussion, we failed to reach a conclusion. That’s why we decided to postpone publishing a gubernatorial endorsement.

Our office manager, Tanya Guiliacci, has been fielding calls from readers wondering where our endorsement went. It turns out almost everyone is as confused as we are. And who could blame them? The ballot they received had 61 names of candidates running for governor. Really?

Only the seven who ended up at the four debates had scored high enough in the polls and had raised enough campaign money to qualify for television. If anyone thinks any of the 54 other candidates are better qualified, go ahead and vote for them…. But think first!

At the Independent, we have settled on two candidates we think are the best qualified: Tom Steyer the billionaire climate change crusader and Xavier Becerra, former congressmember, former attorney general and former secretary of Health and Human Services. But which one we decide on is the conundrum.

We had doubts about both. Neither passed the Goldilocks test. My thinking was for voters to pick the one with highest polling numbers when they cast their ballots. Even though others agreed Steyer and Becerra were the two most viable candidates, they said making voters choose one of two was a cheap way out. Either way, it’s not pretty.

Sometimes, you have to play the cards you’re dealt. Sometimes it’s hard to know where the joker is.

There are serious differences between Becerra and Steyer that matter. We needed more time to sort it out. So, next week, we’ll be letting you know what we think — however muddled.

The big thing to understand is this: California votes in what is known as an open primary election. That means the top two vote-getters in the June primary — regardless of party affiliation — will face each other in the November run-off. This opens the door to a more-than-theoretical possibility that Bianco and Hilton — the two MAGA candidates — might come in first and second.

It’s a simple math thing. The two Republicans who qualified for the debates could split their red base in half, each getting a significant percentage of the votes. But the five Democrats on the stage could end up slicing the pie into tiny wedges. And California could end up — as wild as it may seem — with a MAGA red run-off.

Probably not. But given the stakes involved, including Bianco and Hilton’s slavish support for all things Trump, do you want to bet the farm on “probably not”?

California hasn’t always been an open primary state. In fact, it’s a fairly recent arrival to the fold. What happened? As usual, all roads run though Santa Barbara. Actually, the road started right here in Santa Barbara.

Back in 2009, California, like the rest of the country, was engulfed by a massive recession, triggered by massive real estate fraud perpetrated by a finance industry then gorging itself on the criminally risky loans it knew the borrowers could never hope to repay. When the whole thing blew up, the entire world tilted on its axis. The state government in Sacramento was underwater.

Hollywood superstar Arnold Schwarzenegger was then governor, the last Republican to hold the post. At the time, a two-thirds majority of the legislature was needed to pass a budget. For that to happen, Republican defectors would be needed to side with the Democratic majority. The impasse dragged on for seven months. At issue was how to solve a $41 billion deficit — back then, real money. Government operated on IOUs. It was seriously feared that the state might declare bankruptcy if a budget were not approved. The Republican who held the decisive last vote needed to tip the scale was the state senator from Santa Maria named Abel Maldonado.

Young, brash, and ambitious, Maldonado sported a grin as wide as a Cadillac grille. He wore fancy cowboy boots and hung out with Arnold Schwarzenegger, smoking big cigars in the governor’s cigar tent.

At the time, Maldonado was a total unicorn — a Latino Republican, a big-shot agribusiness owner, and a genuine political moderate. He was willing to vote for the budget, he said, but only for a price. California, he insisted, had to adopt the open primary system. Take it or leave it. They had no choice. They took it.

Maldonado harbored hopes, he said, that the open primaries might break the partisan stranglehold political parties wielded over the election process. Obviously, it didn’t work out that way. But it was a nice try. Arnold appointed Maldonado California’s lieutenant governor when a vacancy came up. When he ran for reelection at the end of the term, he lost to a slick-haired guy from the Bay Area named Gavin Newsom.

The rest, as they say, is history.

In 2015, Maldonado, having then bounced around the fringes of political obscurity, issued a statement condemning the racist rhetoric of a loud-mouthed New York real estate charlatan named Donald J. Trump who had just announced he was running for president. In his announcement, Trump infamously described Mexican immigrants as “drug mules and rapists.” Maldonado begged to differ. “Not only have you lost our respect and our buying power, but you have lost our vote. We will never support you, your candidacy, or your enterprises,” he objected. “Without the Hispanic vote, you will not be the Republican nominee, much less the president of our great nation.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

By 2017, Maldonado had switched sides and was trying to land a position with the Trump White House as Secretary of Agriculture. That didn’t work out either.

Is there a moral to this story? Who we elect matters. Elections have consequences.

So, vote. In the meantime, we’re still trying to figure out who we’re going to endorse. See you next week