Amidst the chaos, two clarifying moments stood out in the governor’s debate on May 6. The first was when Tom Steyer, the only billionaire on stage, said he would vote for the billionaire wealth tax initiative. There was no real discussion, it was just a yes-or-no question, but Republicans always oppose wealthy people paying their fair share, while the other Democrats have previously argued that a onetime tax on a small number of people doesn’t make sense, or that “We should charge billionaires in other ways,” as San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said, in the only comment that did get squeezed in.
The reason it was clarifying is three-fold: first, because wealth inequality is the driving force behind almost all of the state’s major problems except for climate change (housing and homelessness are two obvious examples), second, because it’s rarely talked about in forums like the debate, and third, because it really is difficult for one state alone to tackle the problem. The way in which the question was briefly raised (only because of a looming ballot initiative) and then quickly dropped is a telling reminder of how the deeper driving problems we face are not being grappled with.
The other clarifying moment came when pseudo “constitutional sheriff” Chad Bianco simply dismissed the homeless as “pawns in the homeless industrial complex,” adding, “This is not and has never been about homes. This is about drug and alcohol addiction. This is about mental illness and a combination of both,” a claim that flies wildly in the face of decades of data here in LA, statewide and across the country.
In the real world, it absolutely is about homes. Katie Porter may have been oversimplifying when she said, “the cause of homelessness is the cost of housing,” but not by much. California’s extreme homeless problem is a direct consequence of its lack of affordable housing, compounded by an inadequate safety net protecting those in danger of becoming homeless.
Steyer summarized things neatly: “What I would say is it’s absolutely critical to keep people from going on the street. That rental assistance is much cheaper and more humane than letting someone go on the street. That emergency interim housing to get people off the street into a single room with a key, with shared dining, laundry facilities where you can bring your dog is much more compassionate.”
The more polished MAGA Republican onstage, former Fox News personality Steve Hilton, ignored policy discussion entirely, instead blasting “sixteen years of one-party rule,” and saying “Chad’s plan is exactly right,” a puzzling claim given that Bianco didn’t even offer a plan, just massive misinformation.
In a CalMatters interview, Hilton called California’s “housing first” philosophy (getting people housed before dealing with any other problems) a “complete disaster,” but Finland, which pioneered the approach, has almost eliminated street homeless camps, even as homelessness continues climbing almost everywhere else in Europe.
This shows that the philosophy itself is sound, but implementing it fully in California’s much more unequal economy is clearly a major challenge. The fact that Bianco’s fantasy got floated in the debate, but that Finland’s working realworld model wasn’t even hinted at tells you everything you need to know about how the framing of the debate worked against having a truly realistic discussion.
The lack of realism was apparent in discussions of immigration as well, particularly since California’s economy is so dependent on undocumented immigrants and it has a statewide sanctuary law to protect them. That 2017 law (SB 54) is based on a model first set out in Special Order 40 in 1979 by rightwing LAPD chief Daryl Gates. Gates had no great love for undocumented immigrants, but he knew his officers needed their help in fighting crime, so he made sure everyone knew that LAPD was not la migra. Unfortunately, this history is so forgotten and ignored by the corporate media that it falls to Democratic candidates to remind people of the logic involved.
In this debate, that task fell to Xavier Bercerra. “Our sanctuary laws do not provide sanctuary to criminals,” he said. “What they do is they build trust between law enforcement officers and the community they serve. We don’t ask our police officers to check your tax returns or your immigration papers, because… we want you to report crime, serve as a witness, provide evidence.”
The fact that SB 54 is the law of the land seemed to escape Hilton’s notice, since it directly contradicted his “calm and peaceful,” “just-follow-the-law” narrative.
“We can’t just stand up here and decide which laws we like and which laws we don’t,” Hilton said. “If we don’t like the laws, we’ve got to change them. But the governor’s job is to enforce them. And as governor, I will do that peacefully and calmly and cooperatively with the federal immigration authorities.”
But SB-54 forbids Hilton’s fantasy calm and peaceful cooperation with ICE operations as the Trump administration has carried them out. In fact, as Steyer noted, “ICE is a criminal organization. They’re coming into our state. They’re terrorizing people. They’re racially profiling people, and they’re harming people and committing violence against them. I’m in favor of abolishing ICE,” he said. “We should be prosecuting ICE agents for racial profiling. It’s illegal in the state of California. We should be prosecuting them for violence against Californians.”
There was a great deal more that happened in the debate, but it was almost entirely constrained media narratives that worked against serious fact-based discussions of policies that actually might work. And it utterly excluded some of the most basic facts. The discussion of California’s insurance crisis, for example, made no mention of the fact that it was being driven by climate change, and that California’s geography, regional climate and past developmental practices have all combined to put it in a particularly precarious place.
As with combating the ills of income inequality, the insurance crisis isn’t something California can even conceivably solve on its own—it’s not just national, it’s a global problem, as Random Lengths first laid out in 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. While it’s true that California’s governor can’t solve global problems, they certainly can play a role in setting examples, forming alliances and influencing policies adopted by others. They have to deal with realities they can’t control, but they don’t have to accept them as fixed and immutable.
Nor do they have to accept the terms set by those who’ve caused the problem in the first place. Over the past few years, activists have increasingly pressured Democrats to stop taking money from the fossil fuel industry, and as RLN reported in the past, this has made a significant difference in how politicians vote on climate issues. Naturally, this wasn’t an issue that made in onstage in such a detached-from-reality debate. But it’s a crucial concern for voters who want to see California continue to lead on climate issues, and Bercerra is the only Democrat who’s taken fossil fuel money in this campaign—a maximum campaign contribution of $39,200 from Chevron.
When news of this broke, he doubled down, saying “they’re not the bad guy.” California Environmental Voters was quick to respond.
“Becerra is wrong. Big Oil is absolutely the bad guy,” executive director Matt Abularach-Macias said. “Big Oil knew their products would cause devastating impacts to our health, economic, and physical safety decades ago, and they decided to lie about it and continue their destructive, deadly business practices.”
This is precisely the kind of historically-informed big-picture view of the problems facing our state and where they come from that was so sorely missing in the governor’s debate. In years past, civic groups like the League of Women Voters sponsored campaigns and helped ensure that issues such as this were more fully and fairly presented. The past wasn’t always golden—not by a long shot. But this is one practice we sorely miss—even if most folks don’t even realize it.