California Update: Open Season on the Governor’s Open Mic

>> Jonathan Movroydis: It's Thursday, March 27, 2025, and you are listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world. I'm Jonathan Movroydis, sitting in Bill Whalen's chair this week, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism.

 

So that he can answer questions and provide commentary about California policy and politics in which he is well-versed. Bill Whalen, in addition to being a Washington Post columnist, writes weekly for Hoover's California on youn Mind web channel. Waylon is joined today by Leo Hainian, Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, professor of Economics and the Director of the Edinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research at the University of California, Los Angeles.

 

Ohanian also writes weekly about the policy environment the Golden State for California on youn Mind hello gentlemen. How are you guys doing today?

>> Bill Whalen: Good. It's opening day for baseball in America. All is good.

>> Lee Ohanian: That covers over a lot of problems, Bill. Certainly in your world.

>> Bill Whalen: Exactly.

 

 

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Well, great, gentlemen. Let's talk about the latest developments in policy and politics in the Golden State. This past month, Governor Newsom, who is a prominent topic of conversation on this podcast, has himself ventured out into the podcasting world with, quote, this is Gavin Newsom. That's his podcast name.

 

Newsom says the purpose of the podcast is to talk to voices to whom he disagrees with and those who he looks up to. Among his guests have been Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA and former White House counselor Steve Bannon. Those have been on the right. On the left, it's been Ezra Klein and former vice presidential candidate and current Minnesota governor Tim Waltz.

 

An LA Times columnist has called the podcast, quote, cringe. The New Yorker has called it an embarrassing and a new strategy of disavowal among progressive politicians that is destined to fail. Newsom himself took a hit from the left for pandering to the right and for allegedly breaking with Democrats on trans rights, specifically the right of biological males who have transitioned to participate in women's sports.

 

This allegedly took place during his interview with Charlie Kirk. Bill, you've devoted recent columns to Newsom's podcast for California on your Mind. Your take a this is a clever way for Newsom to get attention, B it's an example of bad journalism because Newsom isn't likely to use his authority to ban biological males from participating in women's sports and C he has shifted the focus back on a presidential run instead of governing.

 

Bill for the for all the fallout of the podcast on the left, is this a smart Play for Governor Newsom.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, let's don't forget D, which is. I've written twice about this now, so I probably need to find something new to write about in California. But it's a little slow in Sacramento right now because we're about to get into budget season in earnest, which we'll talk about later on this podcast.

 

But it's this podcast that stands out. So, yes, on the one hand, Leah, Jonathan, the governor has done something that we didn't think was possible in this day and age. He has managed to create unison between the left and the right in terms of pretty much universal painting of his podcast.

 

And you touched on it in your introduction. You know, probably the most devastating criticism comes from publications like the New Yorker, which is an important publication to Gavin Newsom, or Slate, which is, you know, an online place where conservative, where liberals go to drink water and gather their thoughts.

 

They have both noted that he just seems to be kind of going through the motions in these interviews. In other words, you guys can appreciate this, being in the interview business yourself. It's one thing to sit behind a microphone and talk to somebody and just kind of nod your head and not really engage them in the conversation, and that's what he's doing.

 

He's not really engaging with Bannon and Kirk and Michael Savage or Tim Waltz. He's just kind of nodding, going along with them, sometimes agreeing with them, just kind of doing the podcast for the sake of it. Now you ask the question, is this good polit politics? The answer is yes, it's very good politics.

 

It's extremely good politics in this regard. The podcast might get mocked, it might get criticized, it might get ridiculed, even, but we're talking about it. Reporters are writing about it, and people are watching and listening to it, it's getting clicks. And so Gavin Newsom's kind of laughing all the way to the bank, and he's kind of doing what a governor, a 2028 hopeful has to do at this point.

 

It's called the battle of the great mention. Before you actually run, before you've admitted you're gonna run, you want the media to be talking about you as a hopeful, get mentioned. And so this is his way for getting mentioned. So kudos to the governor for, you know, finding a way to get mentioned.

 

The criticism which we can get into, Lee and Jonathan, is, is this really governing? And that's the main problem I have here. Every minute he spends doing podcasting is one less minute he's paying attention to California and there's some very serious issues that he needs to stand up and address at this moment.

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: I find the decision for him to do this podcast, I mean, personally, I find it somewhat tone deaf given the enormous problems that the state is facing and just so soon after the LA fires. And it really at some level brings to, brings to the fore of what many criticisms of the Governor have been over his tenure.

 

He's now in his seventh year, perhaps three years ago. Two, three years ago, the, the Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, representing a very progressive city, wrote an editorial that the governor should get back to his day job and should really focus on the problems within California. So I found that at least the timing of this podcast somewhat surprising.

 

And Jonathan, you mentioned some of the, you know, some of the media, some of the media headlines. What I found particularly surprising was the LA Times called it cringe and the New York Times remarked, what on earth is, is Newsom doing? And you know, from a political perspect, I don't really see it.

 

Having Tim Waltz on certainly doesn't gain him any traction. And I almost see it more as him kind of stepping his toe more into the space of media and perhaps not so much politics within his, within his future. When I look at the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, it's not pretty clear.

 

The Republican Party has transformed itself from the party of Reagan and the party of free trade and the party of being relatively pro immigration. I mean, if we remember back to the 1980s, all the way back then, Bush Senior and Reagan had a debate about immigration and both of them were talking about pathways to citizenship.

 

That was 45 years ago. So the Democratic Party is now in that process of possible transformation. It could go the way of, of aoc. If it does, I don't think Newsom will be the guy. It could go the way of more moderation, which is certainly what Democrats say in polls.

 

You know, we've all seen recent polls indicating the Democratic Party has favorability under, under 30%. And, and right now you see politicians that are among the most popular Democrats. And of course, that's a relative statement. People such Jasmine Crockett, who is in the House from Texas and they're gaining traction.

 

But that traction seems to be based on almost performative politics, well staged video events that are played on TikTok. So I just, so when I look at Newsom and his podcast, I see him looking at, I see him looking at what could be a springboard into into his next career.

 

And what I come back to is the state just has just enormous problems, and he is in his seventh year of being governor. And really all of his major goals, housing, homelessness more broadly, improving the lives for Californians in Middlingham households. Now, that just hasn't happened yet.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, so Lee raises a great point here in that we have been constantly on this podcast and other places assuming Gavin Newsom was to run for president.

 

But what if the end game for him is not the presidency and here's something he may have very cleverly stumbled onto, or maybe he already understands this. His side of the aisle in terms of media is struggling right now. MSNBC is in a free fall. CNN has suffered post election.

 

Legacy Media, New York Times, Washington Post, those others have all struggled. And for liberals, Democrats, this raises a question of where do you go now for information? Do you go onto social media, do you go to X and look for it, what about the podcasting medium and Newsom, who studies media?

 

We know he's obsessed with Fox News. I got an email from his OPER morning blasting Fox News about a half dozen Fox myths. He spends way too much time studying Fox News, in my opinion. Newsom understands that Donald Trump harnessed nonconventional media in this last election, really ran circles around Kamala Harris with it.

 

The left is not similarly organized. So maybe Lee and Jonathan, that's part of what this podcast is. It's kind of a foothold into this world of new media. And maybe when he leaves office, there will be more podcast, if not Gavin Newsom podcast maybe his wife takes up a podcast.

 

Maybe other people take up kind of, you know, maybe becomes like essentially a Barry Weiss kind of figure, if you will, on the left in terms of media, if you will. But you know, the one thing which Lee mentioned, which I think is very important here, is that, you know, Gavin Newsom, in my opinion as a politician, suffers from what I might call restless leg syndrome.

 

And that he is just kind of, kind of constantly kind of looking at the next thing and the next move to make. And the parallel would be back in the late 2000, in the late first decade of this century, the late 2000s, when he was in his second term as mayor of San Francisco, having been reelected in 2007.

 

Come 2008, the legs started getting restless and he started figuring what to do next. He decided to run for governor in 2009, it didn't last very long. Jerry Brown had a hold on that race that Newsom just couldn't chip into and he did the smart thing and got out quickly before people really knew he was running.

 

And that kind of kept him viable. He then becomes lieutenant governor, and that's how he stays in the race. But he's in a similar situation. Now Leon Jonathan and that because of term limits, he cannot run in 2026. I had fun in my California on your mind column talking about, well, How about his wife running for the job and then he could kind of take over from her.

 

But he's in the same position he was in a second term mayor, as to what to do next. And still along comes the podcasting, so, yeah, the problem with the podcast, though, one reason why it does get criticized is that it just really doesn't have kind of an identifiable brand other than, my gosh, he's sitting down with Steve Bannon.

 

My gosh, he's sitting down with, with, you know, people he doesn't agree with. Wow, isn't this interesting, because the podcasts are not confrontational, shall we say. They're not evocative, if you will, which a good podcast tends to be. And he's really not changing that. And that maybe is our segue into talking about the governor and women's sports, he does a podcast and he suggests that he is maybe rethinking his position on biological men playing women's sports, a transgender sports issue.

 

Although he really isn't. Because if you watch the podcast, you read the transcript, you look at his words carefully. He just tells Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA that he understands the fairness of argument of it. Now, there's a world of difference between my saying I understand the fairness of something and my actually making a policy move to change said unfairness.

 

There are two measures sitting right now in the legislature that are going to get hearings next week. One is a bill that would completely reverse California policy, would ban transgender athletes, period, from biological boys playing them in sports. The other one's more nuanced. It would allow. It would allow it in other sports, but ban it from high school.

 

The governor's office has no positions, as I understand, on this matter. They will of course, take the historical duck that governors do, which is we don't comment on pending legislation. But my point is, if he really were serious about this, if he really were changing, if he really were triangulating in the classic Bill Clinton way, he would have either gotten involved in legislation, he would have signaled that he was for one of the two bills, he would have said he was open to the idea of initiative and let the public vote on it, something like that.

 

Rather than just kind of saying, I understand the fairness and letting the media run with it and suggesting there's daylight here so along the lines, the Jonathan Gertrude Stein in Oakland, there's not really a lot of there there when it comes to these podcasts.

>> Lee Ohanian: Well, Bill, the, what perhaps now I have not read a bit about them.

 

I haven't brought myself to, to actually listen to them, but of what I've read what I find most surprising is his, is his interview with Bannon and when Bannon Talked about the 2020 election being stolen and so forth. Now that vision is 100% anathema within democratic Party and not just among the Democratic Party, I suspect among virtually all independents and some Republicans.

 

 

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Lee Ohanian: And Newsom didn't push back at all. He didn't challenge that, I think he said something like, well, I appreciate your energy for this and you compare that to Newsom's debate with DeSantis. I don't know, that's not even two years ago. And that was very confrontational to the point of knew some sighting statistics about California taxes and people leaving California for Florida, Florida to California that other people, Don't necessarily try to cite or find.

 

So I'm just wondering whether after a long career in politics, he was mayor. What in San Francisco, what was that, did he begin in 2002 as mayor?

>> Bill Whalen: He came in in late 3 and then left office when he was elected lieutenant governor. So he left in January of 2011.

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah. Okay, so that's going to be. He's going to have over 23 years in politics, right? He is, in my opinion, he is somewhat thin skinned, I think he sees the political cards may not be really in his favor. When polls about Democratic leadership are done, he's not coming out on top.

 

The Hill aggregated a number of polls about favorability of politicians back in December after the election but now that is about three or four years, three or four months old. I don't know how they did that aggregation, but Newsom's favorability ratings were in the twenties. These are national polls, Public Policy Institute of California does, I don't know, two or three polls a year about California, including in those polls our visions are approval ratings for the governor.

 

Democrats within California overwhelmingly approve of Newsom, but among independents, his approval rating is I believe was about 43% and then I don't have to tell you what Republican views about Newsom are, they're not that quantitative important since only about one out of four voters in California is Republican.

 

So I'm just, I, I just wonder if he is thinking about his next great thing which I, which I think for him maybe in the media space he has a gift for that. I hope he's not doing that because he is being paid to be governor and there's an awful lot that the state needs and there's an awful lot that he has campaigned on that has that in which he is not.

 

He has not moved the needle or perhaps the needle has gone in the wrong way.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Yep, he does like the sound of his own voice.

>> Bill Whalen: This is his second podcast. He has another one that he does with the football player Marshawn lynch where they're supposed to be talking about things other than politics, but invariably they get sucked into politics.

 

And then years ago he did a television show, the Gavin Newsom show on Current tv. You might remember Current TV. It was his failed venture to kind of create a alternate to Fox on the left. I think Al Jazeera is behind the funding, Al Gore I believe was involved in at some point.

 

And so Newsom had a TV show that lasted I think about a year or so. It was kind of dreadful when he got down to it. But you know, Lee, you mentioned the Bannon podcast. The one that caught my eye was really the Waltz podcast where before he had sat down with the Minnesota governor, former vice presidential candidate.

 

He had an earlier podcast, had talked about how Ham handed the clumsy the Harris campaign was in responding to the one Trump ad that nailed it on the issue of gender reassignment surgery in California prisons. And Newsom went off on that for a couple minutes and said they got creamed on this issue.

 

They didn't respond to it, and it wasn't even an 8020 issue. It was a 90,10 issue, blah, blah, blah. He went on. So here he has Tim Waltz on his show, and he doesn't push him at all, saying, you know, what were you people thinking? Where was your response?

 

Why didn't you fight? He didn't really kind of get into the whole narrative of was the campaign flawed or Kamala Harris flawed. Now, you can say he's being a loyal Democrat and the wounds are still too fresh and it's heat. But I think he's also being very political here and that he wants to kind of dance around Kamala Harris and not really start a fight with her, which ultimately would involve making donors upset donors.

 

He may need one day for presidency or media things as we're talking about here. So it's just, it's a little too clever, if you will. Lee, instead of kind of having these earnest conversations, I think Newsom thinks basically he's being Bill Maher on hbo. In fact, I believe he's doing Mars Show on Friday night of this week where he's gonna be like Daniel the Lion's Den and sit down with him, sit with these ferocious figures to the right and kind of make sense with them, but it just doesn't work.

 

And, you know, part of the problem here, guys, is it's Newsom himself. But then it's also the approach here. And again, the end result, it's just a product that doesn't make the left to the right happy. But, hey, he's laughing all the way to the bank with it, isn't he?

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, he's Bill Maher without the criticism of Bill Maher. And that was an interesting choice about Waltz. You could have imagined him trying to get on AOC, or you could have imagined him trying to get on someone from the other side, a much more moderate Democrats such as Andy Beshar.

 

 

>> Bill Whalen: But two things here, Lee, number one, these are potential rivals.

>> Lee Ohanian: Exactly.

>> Bill Whalen: So I wanna give a form to somebody who might be a rival to me, do I wanna take the risk at AOC or Governor Beshear or Governor Shapiro from Pennsylvania might look like A better alternative to me.

 

So I'm sorry, Tim Waltz, your cannon fodder in this regard. You're easy Pickens, if you will. And this is kind of the challenge moving forward if he wants to continue with this podcast. It's all fine if he wants to bring on a provocateur like a Steve Bannon, I'll be impressed when he brings on someone like Victor Davis Hansen, who is a real Bonafede heavyweight intellectually, who knows his California very well and could just go toe to toe with gabinism quite ferociously.

 

So if he brings on someone like VDH I will be impressed.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, exactly, regarding someone like Bashar or AOC, and what that also highlights is that really effective podcasts have a clear vision, a clear goal. You know what the podcast stands for. You know what you're going to get with Gavin.

 

It might be X, it might be Y, it might be Z, it might be a little of all three. And that is not a recipe for successful podcasts, in my opinion.

>> Bill Whalen: Out of curiosity, guys, have either of you watched Meghan Markle's new show on Netflix? Because my column, I mentioned that this is kind of a parallel to Markle in that whatever she does, she tends to get criticized for it.

 

And Newsom's kind of getting criticized as well. But Markle gets views on Netflix. I think Netflix is negotiating with her and her husband for a new contractor, if you will. So here is somebody who again, is, you know, getting critically, you know, punched around. But like Newsom, she is laughing all the way to the bank.

 

But I have a hard time seeing you two guys sitting back on a Friday night and watching Meghan Markle offering hostess tips from Montecito.

>> Lee Ohanian: I've missed it so far, Jonathan.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Yeah, I haven't had a chance, but I was gonna say that Governor Newsom could invite either Leo Haney and or Bill Leyland on this podcast.

 

That might make for good conversation.

>> Bill Whalen: I'd rather see Leo Henning go on Meghan Markle Show.

>> Lee Ohanian: I'm not sure I'd have any interesting contact for Megan. I would need to brush up on Town and country and a home and garden and God knows what else.

>> Bill Whalen: I could see one of those beekeeping costumes out there in the hive with her.

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, that's me.

>> Bill Whalen: That's you.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Gentlemen, let's talk about California's budget situation. Los Angeles is facing a $1 billion budget hole. San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose have a combined budget hold of about the same amount. Further, according to state health officials, There is a 2.8 billion medical shortfall on top of an emergency $3.4 billion loan just keeping the afloat, which will make a messy budget negotiation season in June.

 

Bill, you brought up Clintonian triangulation, but with the state sponsored healthcare program for undocumented immigrants already 50% over budget and growing, Newsom and lawmakers are under pressure to scale back coverage. He's also unlikely to get bailed out by Washington. So how does the governor navigate out of this policy headache?

 

Can he adopt some Clintonian tactics?

>> Bill Whalen: Well, if you want to be cynical and go back to the podcast and say that Gavin Newsom is in the business of kind of essentially, if not reinventing himself, reorienting himself for 2028, here is an opportunity to do so. Because now you're dealing with the issue of fiscal responsibility, but also the issue of illegal immigration and benefits and public services.

 

And if he really wanted to strike a blow for himself, he really wanted to get noticed in red state America, he would take away some benefits for legals. Tapping into. I just have a hard time seeing this happen for a lot of reasons. Now, Lee can address this maybe better than I can, but I imagine there are fiscal tricks they can do in terms of tapping into reserves.

 

But they tapped into reserves in last year's budget as well. They're not going to raise taxes. They're probably going to borrow money to, you know, from Peter to pay Paul and so forth. They'll find a way around it. But this just gets back to our idea that, you know, look, when he does a podcast sitting in Marin county in his house, that is every day he does that.

 

He's doing, you know, every time he does that, that's an hour podcasting that he's not being the governor. There's time before the podcast, we have to research a podcast where he could be studying up these problems. This issue is not going away. It's going to come to a head very soon when sit down and negotiate the budget Earnest come June.

 

So I don't know, Lee. I just, you know, I don't see him striking a triangulating blow here in terms of dealing with public services. And he's gotta find his way yet again around this fiscal mess which he is partly responsible for because it wasn't that long ago that we were washing the record surplus, correct?

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: $97 billion surplus, I believe in 21 or 22. And then the budget team made a critical mistake. So much revenue was coming into the state at that time and an awful lot of it was capital gains, that the budget forecast projected out extremely high revenue numbers for the following years.

 

And then it turns out that those numbers were unrealistic. I think a lot of people understood that revenue came in much lower than what those very optimistic scenarios had. So then Sacramento had to scramble to come up with a budget that would be balanced. And every governor, every state legislature uses gimmicks in difficult budget years.

 

And last year was no, was no exception. And reserves were used to close the budget of 2425. But when Newsom came up with his January proposal, what that indicated is that state spending in this fiscal year 24, 25 is much higher than anticipated. And Bill, to one reason is the medical expenditures.

 

So you know, we're looking at a potential deficit for about 15 billion in the current fiscal year. One issue, one reason why we're having a deficit or projected deficit for 2425 is that one of the so called gimmicks in last year's June budget was efficiency savings. That would be I think two and a half to three billion dollars.

 

And it looks like those just aren't being realized. The university system seemed to have been able to enact what they were asked to do, but the Legislative Analyst office is not seeing numbers that are suggesting other areas are getting efficiency gains. So this puts much more pressure on a budget that was already pressured and it's not going to be.

 

They're gonna have to deal with some very hard questions when it comes to June and the negotiation is done. And the state simply is not in position to be this. Well, let me put this way, the state really needs to prioritize what is important for its constituents. And they need to ask themselves very critically if in a 300 plus billion dollar budget, if we can't get 1% efficiency savings, something is very, very deeply wrong.

 

 

>> Bill Whalen: I'm glad Lee, Jonathan, you mentioned what's going on in the cities right now, Los Angeles in particular. Mayor Karen Bass, the embattled Mayor Karabass was in Sacramento this week looking for money for her city. And that's what mayors do. They go up the ladder looking for money.

 

The governor of California is no different. He goes up the ladder. He looks to Washington for money as well. But Jonathan, you referenced it, he's not gonna find a lot of love, a lot of help in Washington. In fact, speaking of the podcast, a real interesting guest for him might be Kevin Kiley who is something of a newsome tormentor on X.

 

But Kylie has a bill in Congress now that would ban the states from using federal and state Medicaid funds to provide services for illegal immigrants. So it'd be a fascinating debate if you took it in the big picture. I go back 30 years in California government. In the 1990s, the controversy was providing services in the form of prenatal services in particular for illegal immigrants.

 

It was the humane thing to do. We advertise as much trying to get people to come out of the shadows, to come get care for their children. Conservatives hated it, but we thought it was humane thing to do. Gray Davis gets recalled in the early 2000s. One of the issues that takes him down in the recall is Newsom reversing course on a bill that granted driver's license to illegal immigrants in California.

 

He had vetoed it before the recall election. Then amidst the recall election, trying to get Hispanic votes, he signs it. And then on a Friday, with very little fanfare, just kind of the worst of pandering and it pays a price for it. But now we fast forward to 2025 and we're in this issue now about what benefits and how many people are coming on the payroll and things like that.

 

It'll be a great debate to have both in terms of what services you provide, but also what the role of government is vis a vis people who are not citizens of this country. So, again, that's the kind of podcast I'd like to hear. But you know, Lee, at the end of the day, the governor has this going for him.

 

He still has an overwhelming Democratic legislature in. In Sacramento. He doesn't have to have Republicans buy into any votes, if you will. So I suspect they will find some way to come to the finish line before July 1st. I'd be just very surprised to have seen beyond the fiscal deadline.

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, yeah, Bill, I agree with you. They will. Given that he's turned out and his time's almost up, I would love it if he went to the legislature, which is roughly 75% D on both sides, comfortable, super maturity, and simply said, look, you figure out a way to make this country.

 

You figure out a way to stop sending. Stop sending me a thousand bills a year that are about issues that hardly anyone cares about. I promised Californians I would make housing more affordable. I promised them I would deal with homelessness. I promised them I would deal with the cost of living.

 

I want to start seeing legislation that if it needs to peel back regulations, let's do that. I wanna see legislation that will help us achieve what California's really need. I don't think we're going to see that, but I suspect politically that might allow him to make a lot more hay than some of the other things he's doing.

 

Because there's nothing partisan about efficiency in government. There's nothing partisan about being able to create more housing or to deal with homelessness or to deal with the cost of living. But if he wants to find a way to distinguish himself in a. In a pool of candidates in the Democratic Party that really have no policy ideas.

 

I mean, AOC has no policy ideas, legitimate policy ideas. Jasmine Crockett does not. Cory Booker does not. Then that would be the way for him to do that. I doubt he'll do that, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

>> Bill Whalen: I wish I could sing this. I'd love to sing the Impossible Dream from Mandala Mancha at this point.

 

 

>> Bill Whalen: It's not gonna happen. But I'm glad you mentioned homelessness, because I think Lee and Jonathan, this is just a huge issue hanging over Newsom's head in this regard. Since the podcast I've been getting phone calls from reporters back east who just want a 30,000 foot look at Newsom.

 

They're starting to write about him for the first time, really studying him. And it's interesting in a couple regards. They don't know much about how he rose to power. So you have to kind of walk them through the dynamics of San Francisco and the Gettys and Willie Brown and that sort of thing.

 

But then they don't know much about his governorship. So they usually ask me point blank, what one or two policies should I look at, or Gavin Newsome, what kind of worth studying? And Lee and Jonathan, what I point them to is homelessness, plain and simple, which I think Lee wrote about recently for California on your mind.

 

 

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Yeah, Lee, you wrote a column that explains that despite tens of billions of dollars spent, the status has close to 200,000 homeless under its domain, growing by one-fourth under Governor Newsom's watch. Why has the state failed to make headway despite tens of billions of dollars spent and various initiatives in Sacramento and at the city level, initiatives implemented to address this challenge?

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Well, we all, as voters, we all should be really worried about this and on many dimensions. One reason being that the money is not being used effectively. In fact, the money is not being adequately tracked. Since the governor took office in 2009, 37 billion has been spent on homelessness.

 

And during that time, the number of homelessness, the number of homeless which are counted on a single night in typically in late January, early February. So that gives rise to a lot of possible concerns about how accurate these counts are. And I'll touch base on that in a second.

 

Homelessness on the governor's watch has increased from about 151,000 when he took office to about 187,000 now. So we need to be asking ourselves how can we spend $37 billion on the homeless over, over a period of about five years and have homelessness rise 25%? It just seems.

 

Yeah, I mean, how do you get your hands or how do you get your arms around, around statistics like that? And you know what, what the column discusses is there's been three separate studies of within the state, one by the state auditor, some by the Legislative Analyst office, another federal study, and they're all quite scathing.

 

You know, I'll just, what the, the, what they note is that there's simply, it appears, it appears that just standard accounting practices, standard information reporting practices are not being followed because an awful lot of this money, no one, no, no one knows where it's going so not, not very little is known about which programs are effective, which programs are dysfunctional, and, and, and not effective.

 

When you think about this from the standpoint of a taxpayer, that's an awful lot of money. And when you think about this from the standpoint of just human waste, it is. It was just soul crushing. And when I mentioned that the, that the number of homeless reported are from a single count on one evening in late January, early February, the lao, the Legislative Analyst Office, has, has suggested that the number of homeless may be much higher than that.

 

They found potentially 337,000 people homeless in 2023. And the homeless number based on that single night count in 24 was higher than 23. So we may be, we may have 330, 350,000 people in the state homeless. And that is simply an intractable problem. And then, Jonathan, just to put that in context, if that 37 billion that has been spent between since 2019, if that had been spent on the number of homeless in 2019, that 150,000 homeless, that would be about $245,000 per homeless person.

 

So there's no way to describe this other than it's just a massive public policy failure. There's no way to dress that up. And moreover, Sacramento doesn't really seem to know where to start with this.

>> Bill Whalen: And that's the key Lee, Newsom understands the problem here and he understands our perception.

 

We know this because getting back to the podcast, yet again, his podcast with us, a Klein, he says the following, and I quote, I mean, if I have another press conference about how much money we're spending on homelessness, they're going to take my head off. And then Newsom added, they want to see encampments off the damn street.

 

That's what they're measuring by. Okay, he's right, the public wants results, are tied on money being spent. But this is the California problem in a nutshell, Lee, it's just that money being thrown to the problem. I did a little digging, Lee, into Inside Safe Los Angeles. This is Karen Bass's Maribas's signature homeless measure.

 

She ran hard on homelessness when she ran for the job in 2022. Yes, she is in trouble for reelection because of her performance about the fires. But this issue is also going to come back to haunt her if she doesn't show progress on it. You mentioned the dollar figure how much is spent per person homelessness in California.

 

Well, here's what I figured out, at least my crew math. I think I'm right here. Someone may want to check me on this. As of about a year ago, Los Angeles, Lee had spent about $67 million on Inside Safe, which is basically just getting people off the street.

 

What Gavin Newsom Advocates. $67 million spent, Lee and they got 255 people into permanent housing. That translates to $263,000 per person. Well, the bad news, Lee, is that there is a homeless population in Los Angeles of about 46,000 people, I believe. They'd have to spend 180 times more to cover population, about $12 billion and all, so there's obviously not the money for that.

 

And there's also the question then about people staying permanently off. So again, money is just not the answer. And so that's why Lee and John, I think one of the most interesting people in California right now, if not the most interesting in terms of elected office, it might be Daniel Lurie, the new mayor of San Francisco, who is coming to office.

 

He is the first mayor to do that job in about a century who does not have a political connection inside the city. He's not part of the system. He's not a former supervisor, he's not somebody's son or daughter from politics. He's not a political brand name. He ran as an outsider, he ran hard against the incumbent mayor of London Breed and what was all around the city.

 

And he has a program, Lee and Jonathan, called Breaking the Cycle in San Francisco. He's very cleverly approached it in this regard, he has laid out three different target areas. 100 day problems, six month solutions, and one year targets of solutions as well. And that to me seems kind of a smarter, more nuanced way to take this on.

 

Kind of break the homeless issue into various parts, you know, be it housing, be it drugs, be it, you know, police enforcement and so forth, and set these very specific timelines for addressing them.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, I appreciate that he's doing that and that he's taking a fresh look at it.

 

I'm, I'm not, I'm not optimistic it's going to work. One reason being that San Francisco's budget's under enormous pressure. Another is that San Francisco is spending in excess of a million dollars per unit of housing. So you just can't do very much of that. No one seems to be questioning those kinds of numbers.

 

And then another issue is the California policy about homelessness, in my opinion, is just missing the boat. And the boat is that to get permanent supportive housing, you don't need to be sober, you don't need to be receiving treatment. The state has really kind of eschewed the issue that what's underlying a lot of homelessness in California, you know, certainly almost all of the chronic homelessness, is that these are people with severe mental health issues, severe substance abuse issues.

 

And until you get them into cost effective treatment, you're never gonna win. So I like the fact that Larry is thinking about this a little bit outside the box, but he's going to need some help from the state as well.

>> Bill Whalen: What I like is these three leaders are working under very different clocks, if you will.

 

So for Newsom, the clock is obviously, you know, 2026, early 2027, end of his term in office. I've got to show progress on this issue. For Karen Bass, it's two clocks hanging over her. One is the same 2026 clock as Gavin Newsom because she's up for reelection next year.

 

But also Lee And Jonathan, the 2028 clock. And that the Olympics are coming to Los Angeles and the world's gonna be looking at the city. And boy, if skid row is still skid row, what an embarrassment to both Los Angeles, California, United States of America. But then thirdly, Daniel Lurie, okay, he doesn't have the 2026 clock, as do Newsom and Bass.

 

Does he have a 2028 clock? Yes, in terms of reelection, but he is operating under a different set of circumstances because San Francisco, we forget, has been a very volatile city politically now, going back several years. This is the same city that tossed several members off its Board of Education because they got into a silly issue over renaming schools during the pandemic.

 

This is the same city that tossed out its very liberal district attorney because they didn't like his dealing with issues like homelessness and petty crime. And a city just turned out its incumbent mayor. So Lurie has that kind of over his hanging over his head in terms of clock.

 

Just that the city is restless. So again, just curious to see how those various factors add to the pressure to get something done here. On an issue I'd add, by the way, Lee and Jonathan seems to be intractable because getting back to Gavin Newsom, why point this out as an issue to reporters?

 

Newsom, when he was mayor of San Francisco, said he would solve the problem in 10 years. He made that boast 21, almost 22 years ago now.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, and Bill, I think Bass is in over her head as LA mayor. You know, I think voters never really thought about the fact that she did not have substantial management experience.

 

She'd been the House of Representatives for an awful long time. She'd been in the Legislative assembly within the state. So she was involved with legislative creation and lawmaking. But being mayor of LA is a really huge CEO job. She has no CEO experience It's a very difficult CEO job.

 

Not everybody can be a CEO. And I suspect that it will be next to impossible for her to get reelected, given what's happened with the fires. And not just that, but, I mean, we know what's going to happen when the election comes around. It'll show her flying off to Ghana despite the fact that she promised not to take any international travel.

 

It'll show the empty reservoir. A lawsuit was filed, I believe, yesterday, that the DWP has been trying to hide data on which power lines were electrified and whether any electrified power lines contributed to the Palisades fire. So it's a mess. I don't think she's the person to be able to make progress on these issues.

 

So here's to hoping to look that Lurie will be much more effective in that regard. I think he does have more of a CEO type personality, but I think Angelenos are paying, paying the price of electing a person who I think Bass is. I think she's, I think she's sincere.

 

I think she really cares about the people of California, but she just wasn't the right person to be mayor.

>> Bill Whalen: Speaking of Lori Lee, he recently did an interview with Dan Baltz of the Washington Post, who's a Hoover Media Fellow as well, I should add and he said something in passing that might be a good future column for you in this regard.

 

Here's what he told Baltz, quote, doing business in the city, San Francisco, he's referencing, is often maddeningly complex and costly because of layers of state with local regulations. Lurie said it takes, quote, 61 different steps and about $21,000 to open a restaurant.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, yeah. No, that's the kind of common sense governance that the state has forgotten.

 

And again, these aren't partisan issues. They're just common sense issues, and that's what California continues to stumble upon. And yeah, Lurie is, you know, kudos to him for calling this out because I don't recall London Brie calling it out, much less doing anything about it.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, but 61 steps, Lee, I mean, come on.

 

It should. You need a city inspector to come in and check the wiring. And you need a health inspector to come in and make sure it's not a roach trap. What, what else do you need? Someone to check to make sure the meat's not tainted. It shouldn't take steps to open up a restaurant.

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: It's silly, a couple years ago, I wrote a piece for California Mind about a fellow who's trying to open an ice cream store and it essentially bankrupted him. I think he tried for a couple of years and he ran out of money. And Bill, what the big holdup was?

 

There was an ice cream store down the block that, that was putting up an impediment because in San Francisco, at least at that time, businesses within a certain distance could were asked their opinion about whether a new business should be opened. Turns out existing ice cream stores don't want any competition.

 

And the poor fellow was, he was bankrupted by this. So, yeah, it's,.

>> Bill Whalen: Now was that Mom and Pop ice cream stores, Lee, or are we talking big ice cream?

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, this was, this was just, I think these were two mom and Pop ice cream stores. And you know, so oftentimes, you know, before Doge, I used to say, you know, California really needs to have a taxpayer advocacy group, but not just in the state.

 

There needs to be one within San Francisco and LA and, and just more broadly because you look at these things and you're saying, how can there be 61 steps? Is it structurally safe? Does it comply with the ada? Are there health concerns? And if not, let's, let's, let's get it going.

 

But yeah, as you noted, that's three steps, not 61.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, it's interesting, you could put someone like an Elon Musk in charge of something like Doge within California. And I got a sneaky feeling you're going to find a lot of waste and overkill and various things, because where that effort would end up is where you're seeing the federal effort went up right now.

 

The news out of Washington day that Robert Kennedy wants to lay off 10,000 people at the federal health services, for example. There'd be a lot of, you know, cuts in the workforce in Sacramento and boy, would you hear screaming and shouting about that. But you don't need Doge in this regard because you have a state controller.

 

And the state controller's job is, in theory at least, I don't know what the current state controller does on a daily basis, but the job is to look at government, make sure government's done well. You're kind of the efficiency overseer. So a very smart, very ambitious state controller could basically go into, go to town on government and not tear stuff down.

 

They can't do it, they don't have constitutional power. They could sure point out a lot of problems, but herein lies the challenge. I think you're just kind of showing the emperor has no clothes if you do that. And you know, in a town run by one party, that's the last thing you want to do, expose the failings of said city.

 

 

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Well, Bill, you mentioned at the top of the podcast that today's the beginning of baseball season. We're also on the sports note, we're also in the middle of March badness. A little closer to home, the UCLA Women's Basketball is in the sweet 16 and well poised for their first national championship.

 

Juju Watkins, USC's basketball star, just suffered a season ending knee injury. So for USC's basketball program that might not pose well for them. Even closer to home, Andrew Luck, the newly minted general manager for the Stanford Cardinal football team, has fired its football coach, Troy Taylor, after it was investigated that he mistreated staffers.

 

And Luck is putting his own imprint on the program. Question, what are your thoughts on California sports at this time? Are we back on an upswing of the heydays of UCLA Basketball and the heydays of Stanford Sports and the heydays of USC Football in the early century?

>> Bill Whalen: I wanted to get to this for a couple reasons.

 

First of all, it shows how times change. How in California that Lee and I as old white guys would remember was all about UCLA Men's Basketball. I think Lee, what, 11 men's championships. We're talking John Wooden, Abdul Jabbar, Bill Walton, just legendary stuff, but within that UCLA program, the women's team doesn't have an NCAA title to claim.

 

And so it's kinda missing a little hole, missing there what's a really otherwise storied program. So part of me very sentimentally wants to see UCLA get a championship. My heart also breaks for juju Watkins tearing an ACL in the first round because she is arguably the most exciting, you know, women's player right now, college basketball.

 

So that's a shame, if you will, but just kind of reflects how the times have changed and how we talk about women's sports really becoming much more interesting, especially, in the age of Caitlin Clark and Women's basketball. And California embodies this with its two Los Angeles colleges, both top seeds in the tournament.

 

The Stanford situation is different in this regard. It's troubling in that it's not just that we don't have a football coach right now. Our athletic director is also stepping down. And that's because Stanford finds itself in a really awkward position vis a vis college athletics. It is a storied program.

 

It is. If you walk around the campus, you look at various tributes, if you go outside the baseball stadium, the tennis stadium, long list of just famous, famous athletes who have at some point come through Stanford and called Stanford home. But right now, the school struggles in football two straight, three and nine seasons.

 

It struggles in basketball, it's been years since it's made the NCAA tournament. And Stanford suffers in part because it is hard in this day and age to get pure student athletes into a school like Stanford when there's easy money to be had in nil, when it's easy to transfer otherware to get more noticed.

 

And so you see Stanford struggling with this, which leads to kind of an identity crisis into who to bring in and who not. But I don't know. Lee, Fingers cross, UCLA Women's Basketball. And I'm not sure what the future holds for Stanford Football if you don't do anything this fall leaf, you're not teaching, you wanna coach a few games?

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, we'll run the drop play a lot.

>> Bill Whalen: Three yards and a cloud of dust, right?

>> Lee Ohanian: Yes, right. Stanford is in trouble. And just, you know, more broadly in terms of college athletics, back in the day, track and field got much more attention than it does now.

 

USC, UCLA dual meets used to they would attract 10, 15, I think maybe 20,000 people. Now those kinda matches are natural thoughts.

>> Bill Whalen: You basically, were watching the Olympic trials.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, yeah, exactly, I was gonna say there were Olympians on both sides of that. So the non-revenue sports really have been pushed aside and Stanford is in a difficult position for football talent.

 

Notre Dame is as well, although they've been able, you know, they're a very academically demanding university, but they've been able to carve out a different space in the world of college football partially because of their reputation and very lucrative long term deal with NBC for telecasting for broadcasting Notre Dame games.

 

But yeah, Stanford, they're gonna have to revisit their thoughts about this because, you have a couple losing seasons and then you lose. Once you lose the student population coming to games, they're not nearly as exciting. They're not nearly as energized. So. And Stanford's in the process of finding a new athletic director, so I hope everything works out.

 

But there can be some challenges there.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah. So, Jonathan, you asked about where California fits in the scheme of things in college sports. I think that times have changed. 50 years ago, we would have talked very romantically about a Pac-8 conference becoming a Pac-10 becoming a Pac-12.

 

And glorious football played in the Los Angeles Coliseum and UCLA owning the hardcourt and basketball and so forth. Just a lot of glamour associated with West Coast sports. The heart and soul of College Sports day, in my opinion at least lies where it's in the Sun Belt. It's in the Southeast Conference, it's in the acc and though not technically in the big.

 

In the Sun Belt, the Big Ten as well. You just look at any poll of any major sport, basketball, football, baseball, if you will, it's these conferences that dominate. And the west coast just. Well, except the West Coast has a role. It's schools like UCLA and USC moving in the Big Ten or Stanford and Cal moving into the ACC.

 

It's just not west coast oriented in that regard. So kind of a shame in that regard because, you know, one thing I've learned about living in California for this long, it's just a wonderful place to play sports. I'm just. It's a delight to see friends of mine who have young kids and how because of the climate out here, they're exposed to so many more sports that kids in other parts of the country aren't.

 

 

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, I mean, it's a shame what happened to the Pac-12. I think the presidents and chancellors of those universities, you know, they were faced with some fiscal issues. SC and UCLA went off to I guess it's about the Big 18, relegating Stanford to the Atlantic Coast Conference.

 

So it's just. Yeah, for a lot of reasons I wish the PAC12 was. Was still together. In my opinion. I think they had. They chose two commissioners who probably weren't best suited for the job back to back and that wrecked the conference. UCLA had a huge athletics deficit, so they were cash strapped.

 

And SC is spending an awful lot of money on football. And it was what it was an equal share within the PAC12. So they weren't happy with that. I would like to think that it didn't have to happen all this way. Maybe we can say that about a lot of, a lot of divorces, but it certainly hasn't worked out well for Stanford and I think in some ways it hasn't worked out well for SC or UCLA when they're traveling back and forth to the Midwest for basketball, particularly for basketball, which has what, a 30, 30 game season now for regular season.

 

So yeah, it's tough on the kids anyway. Too bad, too bad we don't have the Pac 12 anymore. But that's the dollars and cents of college athletics.

>> Bill Whalen: So figures crossed, fingers crossed that Juju Watkins has a speedy recovery and she's back playing basketball soon. Fingers crossed, Lee, that UCLA women's basketball gets its first title.

 

And the a chances of getting a title is going to rest on the shoulders in large part of a woman named Lauren Betts, who is, by the way, a Stanford transfer. The USA women's team without juju Watk, its chances rest on the shoulders of a woman named Kiki Ifrin, who's by the way, a Stanford transfer.

 

Do you see a trend here? And fingers crossed at Stanford kind of figures what to do next in terms of football and its program because it's just, it's too, too storied of a tradition and just too great of a place to play sports not to be relevant in this day and age.

 

But boy, it's just, it's very painful to be watching this up close and just see how the school struggles with this right now.

>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, there's, I mean, women's tournament is really interesting now because you have SC without Watkins and they looked, they played extremely well without her after she went down with an injury.

 

You've got UCLA without a women's title. So there's a lot of interest in that. And then you have UConn with Paige Bueckers, a lot of people are pulling for that. So, yeah, so many different storylines and you know, if you're going to tear an ACL, better to do it in 2025 than back in 1985.

 

The technology has advanced so much, stem cells are now being used, I think, to aid in ligament healing. And if she does all the right things, I'm sure she'll have an excellent surgeon. She'll come back, hopefully, to what her performance was prior to the injury.

>> Bill Whalen: And by the way, when this podcast is done and I finish up some other Hoover related work I'm going to turn on my TV later today and watch Stanford play Virginia and baseball.

 

Nothing says college sports tradition like Stanford mucking around Charlottesville, Virginia.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: Well, thank you gentlemen. As always, this has been an interesting hour's timely analysis. See you in about a month.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay guys, take care.

>> Lee Ohanian: Sounds great, fellas.

>> Jonathan Movroydis: You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, the Hoover Institution podcast devoted governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world.

 

Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to this podcast where you might hear it. And if you don't mind, please spread the word. Get your friends to have a listen. The Hoover Institution has Facebook, Instagram and X feeds. Our X handle is @hooverinst. That's @hoover I-N-S-T. Bill Whalen is on X, his handle is @BillWhalenCA.

 

And Lee Ohanian is also on X, his handle is @Lee_Ohanian. Please visit the hoover website@hoover.org and sign up for the Hoover Daily Report, where you can access the latest scholarship and analysis from our fellows. Also check out California On Your Mind, where Bill Whalen and Leo Ohanian write every week.

 

Again, this is Jonathan Movroydis sitting in Bill Whalen's chair this week. He'll be back for another episode of Matters of Policy and Politics. Thank you for listening.

>> Presenter: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas, advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org.