Will CA voters elect outsiders or seasoned politicians

from Jim NewtonCalMatters

This comment was originally posted by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

A few years ago, in one of our many conversations about the biography I wrote about him, Gov. Jerry Brown told me that he never put much stock in political experience—until he had some.

The man who was governor of California twice – from 1975 to 1983 and again from 2011 to 2019 – was fresh and unconventional in the first iteration and experienced and effective in the second. Everyone has their place.

The current election cycle in California and Los Angeles is a reminder of this, as the races for governor and mayor of Los Angeles highlight the tension between having a fresh political perspective and being a seasoned government leader.

C race for governorTom Steyer and Steve Hilton represent one version, while Xavier Becerra leads the field of current and former elected officials who represent the other.

Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund investor, and Hilton, the Fox political commentator, both come from outside government and base their case for themselves around the need for someone new, someone untainted by the messy business of political compromise or running a giant bureaucracy.

Like Hilton says about himself: “For real change to happen in government, you need the ability to think differently, the courage to challenge the groupthink in power, and the conviction to follow through.”

For Hilton, and especially for Steyer, the problem with outsider qualifications is the assumption that making money translates into political leadership. Who says?

Governments do not make a profit. They cannot turn away customers. And they are required to provide services that the private sector cannot or will not undertake. Spotting promising investments is a great way to turn a small fortune into a big one, but it’s no way to run a government.

And in all this there is arrogance. The rich man candidate assumes that governing isn’t really that hard and that wealth is enough evidence of prowess to warrant voter support. This is no more true than thinking that great players make great coaches or that the strongest man on an oil rig should run Chevron.

Voters see it. California’s political landscape is littered with candidates from rich people who thought they could convince voters that their skills were what the state needed in Sacramento or Washington. Name Michael Huffington, Bill Simon, Meg Whitman, or Al Cecchi.

That doesn’t mean Becerra — who has served in Congress, as California’s attorney general and as secretary of Health and Human Services — or any of the other veteran candidates will easily walk away with a top spot in next week’s primary. But there’s something to be said for having experience and an appreciation for governance when you want to run a government.

In Los Angeles, the divide between those who appreciate government and those who don’t is even starker as the city considers who will be its next mayor. Mayor Karen Bass, typically the seasoned political leader, faces two significant challengers of opposite types.

Old Guard vs. New

City Council member Nithya Raman represents a conventional opponent. Raman, as a council member, saw an opportunity to move up. That surprised City Hall, given its previous support for Bass, but the idea of ​​a council member running for mayor is hardly new. Eric Garcetti was a council member before becoming mayor, as was Antonio Villaraigosa.

Raman’s candidacy rested on an assumption about the Los Angeles electorate — that its steady drift to the left in recent decades would leave Bass with only the old guard, and that Raman will appeal to the younger crowdworking-class voters, employers and critics of the police. Hers is not a challenge based on a different approach to City Hall; he is challenging the incumbent by offering new ideas and appealing to new constituencies rather than rejecting what it takes to serve.

Spencer Pratt is a horse of a different color. Pratt has no government experience or any discernible knowledge of how it works. Asked recently about homelessness by ABC’s Josh Haskell, Pratt insisted those who live on the streets “are not homeless. They are drug addicts. . . . They choose to be on the street because they want to do drugs.”

Pressed on what he would do with these people, Pratt first said the city had enough room for them all, then insisted he could build a “facility” where they could receive treatment. Such a facility, he added, could be built in three days.

He based that estimate on conversations he said he had with “all the CEOs of these companies. I said, ‘How long is this going to take?’ I met with FEMA and HUD…”

And where will this facility go? “On federal, beautiful, federally owned land,” he said, adding that he “can’t give you the exact address” until he’s elected mayor.

This is nonsense, of course. It is typical of Pratt’s dogged determination to insist that he is the right candidate for mayor because he knows the least about the job.

Beneath Pratt’s muddled ideas lies a contradiction built into his view of City Hall. He considers City Hall extremely powerful, so powerful that the right mayor, in his estimation, could have prevented the damage caused by the Palisades fire. So he likes to blame Bass for setting his house on fire.

But the same Pratt also suggests that anyone can run City Hall. Otherwise, what could qualify anyone whose own website describes it as a “media entrepreneur, outspoken advocate and rising political leader” who rose to “international prominence as the architect of modern reality television,” as the right man to run the nation’s second-largest city?

Experience is not everything in management. Look no further than Donald Trump, whose first term in office prepared him for his second. But that experience mostly allows him to be more effective as a despised president. His previous move as president rationalized his attacks on immigrants, the militarization of American cities, and his aimless war on Iran. Being good at executing bad ideas is hardly a plus.

Character, integrity and vision matter, as does the lack thereof.

But it’s also worth remembering this: Jerry Brown was a better governor the second time around.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.