Can Republicans dream the impossible dream?
I try not to write about California politics. Not just because I (1) am not from there, (2) don’t currently live there, and (3) feel no desire to ever go there, unless some wealthy benefactors feel like loaning out their deluxe condo for a week this summer (in which case please contact me discreetly). Until then, the Chicagoland region has more than enough gorgeous beachfront vistas and scenic hiking spots to satisfy me.
No, the real reason I largely ignore California politics is that, as a conservative or a Republican or a fan of interesting politics, there’s little point in caring. Even my own home state, Illinois, elected Bruce Rauner as recently as 2014; California descended into a one-sidedly Democratic morass so long ago — permanently after the Schwarzenegger era — that it is now simply boring.
Many of us on the right have walled it off from our collective consciousness, behind some invisible geographical zombie quarantine line that also holds back Oregon and Washington. It is as lost to the forces of progressive madness as Minas Ithil ever was to the forces of Mordor. Only when one of California’s new class of Ringwraiths occasionally issues forth with a wail and joins presidential politics — as did Kamala Harris, and as Gavin Newsom likely will — do some of us have reason to think about what goes on behind the black gates of the Golden State.
But what if I told you there was the slimmest chance the Republicans could retake the California governor’s mansion this year and in the most comedically improbable way conceivable? I don’t want to get your hopes up, but there is at least a small reason to dream the impossible dream.
You see, California (in its malevolent and infinite wisdom) shifted in 2012 to a “top two” primary format, in which all candidates compete against one another in a first round, and then the two highest finishers face off in November. And it just so happens that, currently, the top two candidates in the polling are Republican political commentator Steve Hilton and . . . Republican Chad Bianco, sheriff of Riverside County. The primary is in June, and, in theory, we could be headed for a GOP vs. GOP race in November.
Why? Not because California has gotten any redder in the age of Trump — Hilton has 16 percent of the vote and Bianco 14 percent — but because eight other Democrats are splitting the much larger Democratic vote among themselves. The Democratic candidates are a rogue’s gallery; some of California’s least likable politicians — Katie Porter, Eric Swalwell, Tom Steyer, Xavier Becerra, the list goes on — and the most delightful thing of all is they’re all behaving like crabs in a bucket, reaching up only to desperately pull others down.
The self-destructive lack of coordination among Democrats — each of whom knows that he or she can beat a Republican in a one-on-one matchup — reached peak absurdity yesterday, when the University of Southern California canceled the only scheduled debate in the jungle primary. Why? Because of “criticism over lack of diversity.” Yes, it’s a story that could only come out of California politics: With room onstage for only the six highest-polling candidates, only white people would be given a platform to speak. (Two Republicans, four Democrats, and zero Latinos — perish the thought.)
That means the candidate field might simply remain frozen — with nobody being given the chance of a breakout media moment or meltdown. And that would serve my purposes grandly indeed. But I don’t want to get my readers’ hopes up. I’ll admit that I was even reluctant to write this piece, because on some animal level, I’m superstitious — and I don’t want to jinx it.