STEVE HILTON: Gavin Newsom leaves an unexpected legacy in California
Everywhere I go in America, when I tell people I'm from California I get one of two reactions:
"You need to get out of there -- move to somewhere less crazy!"
Or: "Why do they keep voting for that (fill in your curse word of choice…)?"
Well, here's the good news: the answers to those two questions are now coming together in a beautiful and positive prospect: real political change in the Golden State.
My answer to the first question is typically: "Why should we leave? This is my home! I'm raising my family here; I started a business here. Yes, our terrible government has turned everything into a disaster right now, but I love California. It's not us who should leave, but the people who did this to our state! The Democrat politicians: they need to leave office."
Then combine that with how I'm now answering the second question, about why people still vote for the same old you-know-what: "Actually, they're starting to vote differently."
Look at the city of Huntington Beach in Orange County, the iconic 'Surf City USA.'
Just over four years ago, a friend of mine, long-time California Republican Tony Strickland (now a newly-elected State Senator), put together a slate of four energetic candidates to challenge Democrat dominance of the city council.
They pulled it off, taking control 4-3 in the midterm elections in 2022. They went on to implement common-sense conservative policies on crime, homelessness, and what's taught in schools. They even introduced and passed a local ballot initiative on voter ID.
Guess what? In last November's elections, they pulled off a stunning clean sweep. The "MAGAnificent Seven", as they called themselves, won every seat. Huntington Beach went from 6-1 Democrat control to 7-0 Republican.
There were other signs in 2024 that a political revolution may be brewing.
Nearly a fifth of California's counties (10 out of 58) flipped from blue to red in 2024 including Fresno, the state's fifth largest city.
Proposition 36 (which reversed some of the worst parts of former Vice President and California Attorney General Kamala Harris' disastrous pro-crime Prop 47 from a few years earlier) passed with over 70% support. Soros-backed DAs like George Gascon in L.A. were kicked out.
Ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage, impose rent control and raise taxes were defeated.
And of course, President Donald Trump did better in California than any Republican presidential candidate for decades.
Republican voter registration has also been increasing while Democrat registration has been falling.
And all of this was happening before the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, which showed so many people the terrible consequences of what I call the new DEI: Democrat Extremism and Incompetence.
It is Gov. Gavin Newsom who has presided over all this. He's the one that enabled years of far-left insanity that gave California the highest poverty rate in America, the most expensive housing, gas, electricity and water, the highest unemployment, lowest income growth and worst business climate.
The public schools are a disaster, homelessness continues to spiral out of control, the California Dream is out of reach and the fire hydrants are out of water.
On Newsom's watch, California has gone from being America's crown jewel to its worst-run state. No fair-minded person could come to any other conclusion.
It's all laid out in my new book Califailure, along with the accompanying Fox Nation special. You should read the book: it's a warning not to let this happen in your state. It shows exactly how the Democrats did it -- and how to stop it.
But the second part of my book is called Califuture. In it, I lay out a positive, practical plan for turning things around. Commonsense policies that will stop the insane government bloat and nanny state bossiness that is making life a misery for every small business and every family.
Of course, it will only happen if we actually end the Democrats' disastrous one-party rule and elect Republicans to statewide office, like we used to before government unions and far left activists got their stranglehold on power.
Thanks to the sheer scale of "Califailure," with zero sign of any concrete action from the Democrats to clean up the mess they made, Republicans, for the first time in two decades, really do have a shot at winning in 2026. A recent poll showed that 48% of Californians would vote for a Republican governor.
So, there you are: this could well be Gavin Newsom's greatest legacy: flipping California red!
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