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Kamala's California Problem
Reason ^ | 11.12.2024 | M. Nolan Gray

Posted on 11/12/2024 4:52:36 PM PST by nickcarraway

As skyrocketing costs and mass exoduses define the Golden State, Democrats face a crucial reckoning.

In the final days of the presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump never missed a chance to tie his opponent to California. It was a critique that required no elaboration—though true to form, Trump didn't shy away from providing an overheated one. At his Madison Square Garden rally in October, he proclaimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was a "radical-left lunatic" who "destroyed California."

Breathless rhetoric notwithstanding, it is a problem for national Democratic ambitions that California—the state most associated with the party's rule—is now synonymous with the top issue of the election: the rising cost of living.

For the first time in recent memory, housing costs emerged as a major presidential election issue. (Experts agree that it's the last major driver of inflation.) And while Harris promised to oversee the construction of 3 million homes over her term, that wasn't enough to shake the California stigma.

As of 2024, California has the most expensive housing of any continental U.S. state, with a median home price that is more than eight times the state median household income. (A healthy ratio is considered between three to five times the state median income. The ratio in Texas is four.) As a result, working- and middle-class Californians have virtually no path to homeownership.

Locked out of homeownership, half of California renters spend at least a third of their income—for many, up to 50 percent—on rent. And they're the lucky ones: Nearly 200,000 Californians and counting are homeless.

On some level, rank-and-file Democrats understand that the state is a problem. Ask a progressive in swing states like North Carolina or Wisconsin what she thinks about California, and she will likely try to change the topic of conversation. (Could you imagine a conservative having the same reluctance about Texas?)

Where millions of Americans—myself included—once knew California as a place where friends and family went off and claimed their slice of the dream, the Golden State is today better known as the source of embittered migrants making cash offers on homes.

Over the past 25 years, hundreds of thousands of people have voted with their feet and left the state. Sluggish population growth over the 2010s led California to lose a congressional seat after the 2020 reapportionment. (On net, red states picked up three seats in that election.) Amid declining immigration, the state has started losing population for the first time in history.

In 2022 alone, an estimated 102,000 Californians moved to Texas. They weren't fleeing the perfect weather or the high-paying jobs—by and large, they were pushed out by the cost of living.

Occasionally, California's progressive NIMBYs celebrate this unhappy exodus as a way of flipping other Mountain West states blue. Yet this year, Nevada voted for a Republican presidential candidate for the first time in 20 years. Even before the election, the polls acknowledged that Arizona was a lost cause for the Democrats.

It turns out that forcing people to abandon their home state in search of an affordable home doesn't exactly engender party loyalty. Indeed, it may be having the opposite effect: Surveys out of states like Texas suggest that new arrivals from California might actually be more conservative than the locals.

Of course, Kamala Harris isn't the reason California has a housing crisis. Democrats aren't even solely to blame—the zoning that has made it illegal to build housing in California has been backed by NIMBYs of the right and left, and it was Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan who signed the state's infamous environmental review act into law.

But the state has been under Democratic supermajority control since 2011. Outside of the unusual case of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican who backed Harris for president, they have effectively run the state since 1999. The undecided voter might be forgiven for wondering why this issue has only gotten worse under a quarter century of Democratic governance.

Immediately after the election, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom—who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions—called for a special session to address how California will respond to anticipated attacks on reproductive rights, immigrants, and the state's climate policies by the Trump administration. The proclamation makes no mention whatsoever of the cost-of-living issues that likely handed the election to Trump.

There is a small but growing cadre of pro-housing Democratic state legislators who have taken up the cause of cutting through the red tape and getting California building again. And they've had some successes: Since 2017, the state has legalized granny flats, abolished parking mandates, and streamlined permitting. But all too often, reform efforts have been stymied by members of their own party.

It's too late for Kamala Harris. But the next Democratic nominee for president had better hope those reformers are successful.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: bluestateexodus; california; economy; ecoterrorism; ecoterrorists; gavinnewsom; globalwarminghoax; greennewdeal; kamalaharris
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1 posted on 11/12/2024 4:52:36 PM PST by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

I am all for deporting all illegals to Kali then take the border wall north to Canada


2 posted on 11/12/2024 4:54:32 PM PST by blitz128
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To: nickcarraway

Now they are going to raise the price of gasoline with a $.68 tax. Way too many people in the state think that is a great idea.


3 posted on 11/12/2024 4:55:33 PM PST by Parley Baer
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To: nickcarraway

Illegal immigration has had a major impact on high rents in CA.

If you increase demand without increasing supply even the average chimp can figure out what happens next.


4 posted on 11/12/2024 4:55:36 PM PST by cgbg (It is time to pull the Deep State out of the mass media--like ticks from a dog.)
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To: nickcarraway

“working- and middle-class Californians have virtually no path to homeownership.”

Oh, they have a path to home ownership as long as they don’t mind driving 90-100 miles to work every day. Check out the 91 at three o’clock in the morning.


5 posted on 11/12/2024 4:57:34 PM PST by Yogafist
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To: nickcarraway

What’s wrong with Skid Row and the Tenderloin ;)


6 posted on 11/12/2024 4:58:44 PM PST by Degaston
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To: Yogafist

Isn’t Gavin or Kamala going to give the Illegal Aliens around 100K of freebies to buy the homes? So as long as you are an Illegal Alien then California sounds promising.


7 posted on 11/12/2024 5:03:41 PM PST by Degaston
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To: nickcarraway

The solutions are simple. They do not want them.


8 posted on 11/12/2024 5:04:20 PM PST by lurk (u)
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To: cgbg
[Vice President Kamala Harris was a "radical-left lunatic" who "destroyed California."]


9 posted on 11/12/2024 5:07:17 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: nickcarraway

Kamala? Who dat?


10 posted on 11/12/2024 5:08:12 PM PST by RoosterRedux (Emerson paraphrased, "If you strike at the king, don't fail." They failed. )
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To: SaveFerris

Nicely played!


11 posted on 11/12/2024 5:20:11 PM PST by Empire_of_Liberty
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To: nickcarraway

Of course he tied her to Kamala, before the presidential election, no one, in any city, county or state other than those in California ever cast a ballot for her.


12 posted on 11/12/2024 5:20:57 PM PST by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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To: Empire_of_Liberty
Thank you - she's not even qualified for the French Fryer - worse than a pathetic joke




13 posted on 11/12/2024 5:27:22 PM PST by SaveFerris (Luke 17:28 ... as it was in the Days of Lot; They did Eat, They Drank, They Bought, They Sold ......)
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To: Yogafist

been like that for 30 years or more


14 posted on 11/12/2024 5:31:43 PM PST by al baby (I know sarcasm )
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To: nickcarraway

It’s zoning laws, permitting costs and delays, and a lot more like labor shortages and commodity prices. Ironically the cost of living itself raises the cost of housing. Gotta pay local wages to contractors who live in the region.

But you are hard pressed to tear down say four 75 year old 8 unit apartments and build one larger 120 unit building. They won’t allow it. People used to tear down 100 year old houses on 30x50 lots and build 3 stories edge to edge but they banned that practice too.


15 posted on 11/12/2024 5:31:51 PM PST by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: SaveFerris

God, that woman is REPULSIVE!!


16 posted on 11/12/2024 6:33:58 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom (“President Trump sells out Madison Square Garden -- Kamala sells out America”)
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To: nickcarraway

That’s supposed 3 million Ping New homes was nothing more than puffing.. Harris was just throwing wild ass numbers out there in theI hope that it would stick with the low information voter.


17 posted on 11/12/2024 6:35:28 PM PST by A_Former_Democrat (What does the Deep State have on Dims and RINOs? Demand release of all tax returns)
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To: blitz128

“I’m all for deporting all illegals to Kali then take the border wall north to Canada.”

Wait a minute; isn’t Free Republic based in California? :)


18 posted on 11/12/2024 6:44:24 PM PST by rey
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To: nickcarraway

She had all dem white dudes testicles locked up in Hillary lockbox and it was dem pesky white wimmens that caused her all this grief. ROTFL! Can’t trust those white eyes.


19 posted on 11/12/2024 6:47:23 PM PST by FlingWingFlyer (We're taking our country back! You RATS can keep your "Democrazy" and take it when you go.)
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To: blitz128

I’m all for deporting Kamala and revoking her citizenship.


20 posted on 11/12/2024 6:57:02 PM PST by Bullish (Socialism is a weed that blooms into communism, the tyranny that strangles liberty.)
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