CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2018, OR THEREAFTER
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 2018, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CALIFORNIA’S ECONOMIC SUCCESS EXPLAINS LOW GOP VOTE”
When
all the votes have finally been counted, the total tally for the two major
Republican candidates in this month’s California
primary election run for governor likely will come to just over 35 percent of
the total.
That’s
the lowest percentage for the GOP in a seriously contested primary in modern
history, and there’s a reason for it: Despite constant Republican rhetoric
about this state’s decline and despite the echoes of President Trump in the
vows of GOP candidates John Cox and Travis Allen to “Make California Great
Again,” things are actually going pretty well here – at least for the vast
majority of Californians.
Generally,
when the economy is successful, challenges to the party in power can flop.
So
it will almost certainly be a defeat this fall for Cox, a former Illinois
businessman and peripatetic 12-time losing candidate there who beat out
Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa and Orange County Assemblyman Allen for the right
to run against Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom this November.
With
Republican voter registration now barely 25 percent of the total and actually
third behind Democrats (45 percent) and those with no party preference (almost
26 percent), Cox will have a difficult task.
No
California candidate has ever faced such a party-registration deficit and it
isn’t because the GOP hasn’t tried hard. Over the last 25 years, the party
spent millions of dollars on voter registration efforts aimed at whites,
Latinos, Asian-Americans and African-Americans, with little or no success.
One
result is the low percentage of votes for the party’s major springtime
candidates for governor.
This
performance led to Democratic primary winner Newsom, the former San Francisco
mayor, instantly becoming a big favorite to win the November election and
succeed Jerry Brown as governor.
The reasons for it
include California’s economic performance, which belies Trump’s labeling this a
“failed state.” Simply put, reality is the opposite.
Yes,
as Newsom said in a springtime interview, this is both America’s richest state
and its poorest. But the election results demonstrate the poor have no faith
Republicans will solve their problems, while the well-off are satisfied with
the party that’s at least partly enabled them to achieve that status.
California
is doing well by almost every measure. The latest ranking by the often-cited
Wallethub website of the best and worst state economies in the nation – out
early this month – placed California in fourth place, contrary to GOP rhetoric
that routinely calls this a rotten place to do business.
California
had the fifth-most start-up businesses in America over the last year. It tied
Massachusetts for the most independent inventor patents per capita. It ranked
among the lowest in unemployment. That was just one ranking system.
Perhaps
the most important ranking for California came when it surpassed the United
Kingdom and France for the first time ever to become the world’s fifth-largest
economy (behind only the overall U.S., China, Japan and Germany) with a gross
domestic product of more than $2.7 trillion, an increase of $127 billion over
just the last year.
The
rise in gross domestic product put California’s pace of growth far ahead of
low-tax states like Texas and Florida, which style themselves as the wave of
the future and California’s chief rivals. Economic and job growth has far
outstripped the nation as a whole, accounting for the lion’s share of national
growth.
It’s
hard to see how Trump, who says his decimating of federal regulations has
created economic growth, can try to make the same claim about California, which
is fighting most of his changes.
This
all trickles down, as the conservative economist Arthur Laffer (a former
Californian) might say. It even trickles into the voting booth.
Essentially,
the party registration figures and the flight of onetime Republican voters into
both the no-preference and Democratic columns are the result of Democratic
successes with the state economy.
Cox
will surely keep arguing that things are terrible. As a challenger of the
status quo, he needs to do that. But barring a sudden collapse that could be
blamed on Democrats, he’s unlikely to have much more success in the fall than
his party did this spring.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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