If you’re ever inside the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn cemetery in Glendale and hear laughter ringing through the hallways, it’s probably me visiting the tomb of Culbert Olson.

Olson is perhaps the most anomalous figure in California political history. During our long era of Republican dominance (1896-1958), he was the only Democrat to serve as governor. And he was an unapologetic atheist in our god-crazy country, refusing to say “So help me God” while taking the oath of office in 1939. After an ineffective four-year term and re-election defeat at the hands of Earl Warren, he went on to run United Secularists of America.

In this century, Olson is an unknown, forgotten by all but the kookiest connoisseurs of Californiana, like your columnist, who cracks up every time he encounters our late, great god-denying governor in that cathedral-like mausoleum, just steps from a stained-glass reproduction of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper. This state is a bottomless lavabo bowl of contradictions.

Culbert Olson is almost never quoted, much less invoked, by powerful Californians today.

Which is what made Gov. Gavin Newsom’s June 25 State of the State speech shocking for those few of us who know Olson’s story.

Newsom started his speech by invoking Olson’s January 2, 1939 inaugural address—a document that not even I had read previously—and its opening call for California to stand up “in the face of ‘the destruction of democracy.’” Back then, with Europe sliding into war, Olson said:

As we witness destruction of democracy elsewhere in the world, accompanied by denial of civil liberties and inhuman persecutions, under the rule of despots and dictators, so extreme as to shock the moral sense of mankind, it seems appropriate that we Californians, on this occasion, should announce to the world that despotism shall not take root in our State; that the preservation of our American civil liberties and democratic institutions shall be the first duty and firm determination of our government.

Confronted by economic and social crisis, are we going to move forward toward the destiny of true democracy, or slide backward toward the abyss of regimented dictatorship?

Though he only directly quoted one Olson line, Newsom noted that in 2024 we face the same choice. Newsom continued:

The California way of life is under attack. For conservatives and delusional California bashers, their success depends on our failure. They want to impeach the very things that have made us successful, as a tactic to turn America toward a darker future.

Then Newsom pivoted to a more familiar speech, including blasts at Republicans, and long lists of progressive policies.

What Newsom didn’t mention—or, more likely, didn’t know—is that Culbert Olson is a very good model of how not to behave when democracy is under attack. Newsom isn’t an Olson clone. He is Catholic, for starters. But he has enough in common with Olson—each was the most progressive governor of his respective era—that he might reflect on this particular predecessor’s failures.

Olson won the governorship because he had the good fortune to run against the corrupt incumbent Frank Merriam. But his luck ran out there.

In retrospect, Olson appears cursed, almost as if a higher power were punishing him. Four days after Olson gave that inaugural speech, he collapsed, from a heart ailment. Three months later, his wife Kate Olson died at 56. She remains the only California First Lady to die in office.

Olson not only had a massive agenda (including public pensions, universal healthcare, and government takeover of the utilities), he was unusually strident in pursuing it. Like Newsom, he had a taste for public feuds. Where Newsom targets Fox News, Olson battled William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper empire. Newsom has usually been wise enough to make enemies of non-Californian politicians (like red state governors). But Olson got into local fights that frustrated his agenda, battling Republican and conservative Democratic legislators, and the Catholic archbishops in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Olson, like Newsom, was criticized for pursuing too much. That 1939 inaugural speech resembles a Newsom speech in stating way too many progressive ambitions to accomplish. Olson’s many legislative enemies in both parties blocked almost all of his broad agenda. Newsom, instead, often finds his grand ambitions foiled by mismanagement and a complicated and restrictive state governing system.

Newsom, like Olson, has made warnings about democratic decline a major talking point. What should be sobering for him is Olson’s utter failure to protect liberties and democratic practice.

Notably, when World War II came, the governor failed to defend civil liberties—most obviously, with the incarceration of Californians of Japanese heritage.

Olson knew this was wrong and warned against it publicly. He wrote his confidant President Roosevelt, asking him to defend Japanese Americans as loyal citizens, and lobbied General John DeWitt against forced relocation and incarceration. But when DeWitt imposed the policy, Olson, as governor, stopped fighting and embraced it.

Similarly, Newsom, after years of pursuing pro-immigrant policies, has recently bowed to the political winds and President Biden’s rights-violating restrictions on immigration and asylum seekers, which mirror Trump’s policies.

Olson’s rhetoric about democracy did very little—and ultimately may have caused harm when he didn’t back it up with action. We are learning this lesson again now. When elected officials claim they are defending democracy—as Newsom and Democrats do most loudly—they make democracy look like just another talking point or political issue. When elected officials issue warnings, they spread not hope but fear, and fear is an ally of authoritarians and dictators.

Purity, progressivism, and strong faith (or Olson’s strong lack of faith) are not nearly as convincing as affection and hope. Political rhetoric that taps our fears doesn’t encourage democracy nearly as much as the hard work of building solidarity and compromise with our political opponents.

And nothing is healthier for democracy than ensuring that everyday people have the power to make decisions for themselves. In other words, keeping our democracy is not up to our governors, but to the people.

Heaven help us.

The post Why Is Gavin Newsom Invoking a Failed World War Two-Era Governor? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In our era of one-party rule by complacent Democrats, California might benefit from a coherent and compelling political opposition.

Instead, we keep getting John Cox.

You probably don’t recognize Cox’s name. This goes to the heart of the problem.

Cox, a businessman and former congressional and Republican presidential candidate from Illinois who moved to the San Diego area more than a decade ago, has been the most prominent opponent of ruling Democrats during their 14 years and counting of total political control in the Capitol.

Cox spent millions of dollars running twice against Gov. Gavin Newsom—losing to the governor in 2018’s regularly scheduled election and again in the 2021 recall. Over the past dozen years, Cox has also proposed provocative and attention-grabbing ballot measures, including initiatives to increase the size of the legislature, limit gas taxes, and force elected officials to wear the names of their top donors on their clothing.

None of Cox’s initiatives passed. And he made no lasting impact on political debate, much less the actual governance of this state.

He recently wrote a book that, mostly unintentionally, demonstrates why.

The Newsom Nightmare: The California Catastrophe and How to Reform Our Broken System, published late last year, pulls back the curtain to offer some insider takes on California politics. Cox details, for example, how talk show host Larry Elder’s entry into the 2021 recall race, with the support of the politically toxic Donald Trump, hurt any chance of a Newsom recall passing by allowing the governor “to make Elder, along with the former president, the face of the recall and shift the debate from Newsom’s failures.”

Cox recounts scandals over regulating the utility PG&E, which the state bailed out even after it killed people in fires and a gas explosion. And he offers vignettes of California small businesspeople and mid-level officials frustrated by the overregulation and official secrecy of a state that is great at many things—but not governance.

But like so much of the political conversation in our state, Cox’s book doesn’t add up to very much. Cox offers no future-focused opposition narrative that would pressure Democrats to improve their performance or create public demand to cast them out of office.

Maddeningly, Cox clearly understands the perils of an absent opposition. “Having a single-party supermajority govern every branch of government throws the checks and balances crucial to representative democracy off kilter. It renders democracy impotent,” he writes.

And he correctly points out structural problems in the governing system that give power to rich and powerful people and interest groups. He shows how California legislative districts are so big—by far the most populous of any in the U.S.—that every lawmaker must raise millions to run for office. He details a “pay to play” campaign finance system that allows businesses, unions, and rich people with state contracts to give money to the very same lawmakers who make financial decisions. And he recounts how the outsized power of donors prevents Californians from turning their grand ambitions and good intentions for better education, health care, and housing into reality.

“The key to solving these problems,” he writes, “is to fashion solutions that reflect good practice and policy, forged by intelligent and well-thought-out tradeoffs, that have the effect of helping the vast majority of our people rather than favoring a narrow interest or group.”

But you’ll read in vain for a detailed Cox proposal full of well-thought-out tradeoffs or compromises on major issues. And that’s not the only contradiction in the book. Cox rightly bemoans the politics of personal attacks—personality and cultural wars distract us from deeper problems. Yet he still chose The Newsom Nightmare as his title.

The bigger problem is that Cox can’t elucidate what a California opposition could stand for. His book is all over the place—there’s Ronald Reagan nostalgia, blasts at local bureaucracy, contradictory calls both for tougher regulation and lighter regulation of business, and a bunch of word salad about immigration that might only make sense to frequent Fox News viewers.

There’s also a confusing ending about the national peril of what Cox calls “Californication,” which seems to be about many things but does not have anything to do with an old David Duchovny series about sex in our state.

Cox does draw some blood when he writes about the abusive tactics of trial lawyers and the distorting power of the state’s public employee unions, which saddle government budgets with unsustainable pensions. But he never offers a clear solution to the tricky question of how to take away benefits that are legally guaranteed.

He also takes a few swipes at his own party but doesn’t explain how someone might bring Republicans back to relevance in California.

Cox’s failures of coherence wouldn’t be worth mentioning, except that there is another gubernatorial election scheduled for 2026. And already, a half-dozen Democratic politicians—all with long experience in politics and little record of governing success—appear to be running for the office.

There is, as of yet, no clear opponent to these insider Democrats. And there is no one offering a clear prescription for how to change California’s structure so that people in our progressive state finally get the progressive solutions they’ve been promised—higher wages, high-quality healthcare, stronger schools, and affordable housing.

Perhaps someone will step forward to provide real opposition and offer a compelling vision for how to fix the state’s broken governing system and deliver more and better services.

Or perhaps Californians who want a change will be stuck with someone like John Cox, again.

The post California Democrats Need Real Opposition appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The attempted recall of Gov. Gavin Newsom has many geographic roots. Its original proponent was a sheriff’s deputy from Yolo County. The recall petition drew signatures from significant percentages of the population in our smaller, North State counties. And East Coast conservative media and right-wing Republicans from other parts of the country have given it attention and money.

But a recall is about replacing one governor with another. And, for the second gubernatorial recall in a row, it is the frustrations of San Diego County, and its ambitious politicians, that are driving the process.

Back in 2003, the frustrated and ambitious San Diegan behind the recall of Gov. Gray Davis was Congressman Darrell Issa. An ordinary gubernatorial election didn’t hold much hope for a conservative Republican like Issa, but the recall election—with a huge field of replacement candidates—seemed to provide an opening. So, Issa, a car alarm magnate, provided the money to qualify the recall for the ballot, and formed a campaign team, only to abandon his candidacy.

This time, two ambitious men from San Diego lead in early polls of who would replace Newsom if the recall succeeds.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer has long eyed the governorship but seemed to be too moderate to beat a more conservative Republican in a primary election. Faulconer embraced the opportunity of a wide-open recall race, and began campaigning before all the signatures were submitted this spring. Faulconer’s candidacy has given the recall, which had been backed by little-known pro-Trump activists, a bit of legitimacy; he is clearly the candidate that Newsom’s team fears most.

The other San Diegan, businessman John Cox, lost badly to Newsom in the regular 2018 gubernatorial election. But Cox, who has spent years searching for a way into political office, saw the recall as a second chance. He has now thrown his fortune behind the recall and his candidacy, broadcasting ads statewide that show him with a bear, to symbolize the “beastly” changes he will bring to the state.

Why is San Diego the home of recall leaders? Part of the answer lies in the state’s political change. While San Diego—which voted Republican in 19 of 25 20th-century presidential races—has become more Democratic, it’s still not as blue as the state as a whole. The city and county still elect Republicans like Faulconer, who is popular enough with San Diego Democrats to convince himself he might win statewide.

Another political answer to the question lies in San Diego’s little-known status as a hotbed of direct democracy. For much of California’s history, San Diego has been the easiest place to gather signatures on petitions for recalls and ballot initiatives. In some initiative campaigns, San Diego produced signatures at twice the per-voter rate of other counties.

But I suspect that San Diego’s affinity for the recall goes beyond politics. San Diego is a big place, the country’s eighth most populous city, but its cachet and influence don’t match its ambitions—because America’s Finest City, as it bills itself, has the bad luck to be located in California.

San Diego would be the largest metropolis in 43 states, but in California, it’s an after-thought, only the fourth most populous metro region, smaller than even the Inland Empire. Its news, its sports teams, and its leaders don’t get the same level of statewide attention that San Francisco’s and Los Angeles’s do.

San Diego is also a different sort of place than its big brothers up the coast. L.A. and the Bay Area are global mega-regions, proudly out of step with the rest of the United States. San Diego, by contrast, is the most unabashedly American of California cities. It’s a place full of military installations and veterans, who fly their flags and host our state’s largest Fourth of July show. Its location on an international border also reinforces its American identity.

San Diegans, many of whom have dedicated their careers to defending the nation, often see the rest of California as going too far beyond American law and tradition. So, it’s not hard to see why the recall, a reactionary tool, might appeal as a way of pulling California back to reality.

But that doesn’t mean the recall will succeed in installing a San Diegan, much less slowing down change. Back in 2003, the San Diego-funded recall was ultimately won by a foreign-born movie star from Los Angeles.

It doesn’t help the prospects of Cox or Falconer that the last California governor from San Diego, Pete Wilson, who ran as a moderate, has curdled into a full-throated supporter of Donald Trump. Late in life, Wilson, whose statue was briefly taken down in San Diego last fall, defends his anti-immigration politics with the fervor of a man who wants to go down in history as California’s answer to George Wallace.

This year, San Diego’s attempts to take out Gavin Newsom have succeeded in producing another recall election, which is no small feat. But since the election became a certainty, Gov. Newsom has grown more energized and popular.

In today’s California, San Diego has enough horsepower to demand the state reconsider who should be governor—but not enough to take the reins itself.

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