Hope for California Republicans

Last week’s stock market crash offered hope for Republicans looking to make a comeback in California in 2022. When times are good, people don’t want to make a change. When the going gets tough, the tough want to elect somebody else.

Many reasons were given for the Republican loss of the September 14 recall to Gov. Gavin Newsom: A hangover from Donald Trump. Latinos still are mad at Republicans for Proposition 187 from 1994 — 27 years ago. Republicans want to end the school mask mandates and kill children. Democrats are doing a great job everywhere.

But if you read the Official Voter Information Guide mailed to all voters by Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, the reason was right in there. In Newsom’s signed rebuttal to the recall backers’ call to oust him, he wrote, oddly in the third person: “[H]e passed his $100 billion California Comeback Plan — the largest economic recovery package in state history. Under the plan, two in three Californian families are receiving at least $600 in direct relief, and 200,000 small businesses will benefit from our relief programs.”

If you give voters $600 each, most of them are going to vote for you.

Another $500 was given to families with at least one child. It’s “for the children”!

But things can change. In the 2003 recall, Gov. Gray Davis, instead of enjoying a $38 billion surplus like Newsom, suffered a $40 billion deficit. That was after Davis increased spending 15 percent two years in a row.

Another good example happened right here in Orange County. In 1994, Treasurer-Tax Collector Bob Citron, a Democrat, was riding high on 8.5% annual investment returns for the Orange County Treasury Investment Pool, nearly double the state’s 4.7%. He was re-elected that June for the seventh straight time, garnering 61 percent of the vote against John Moorlach, a local accountant who had warned the investments were too risky.

That fall, the Federal Reserve Board increased interest rates and crashed the Investment Pool. In December, Orange County declared bankruptcy, losing $1.7 billion. Citron resigned and the Board of Supervisors appointed Moorlach as his replacement. Moorlach served in that office, then as supervisor and state senator, until the recent financial giddiness blinded voters to the unfolding economic realities.

I certainly am not predicting what the Fed will do. Don’t take investment advice from a political columnist.

But last week’s Evergrande crash in China shows, if nothing else, its economy now affects ours directly. In 1994 or 2003, China’s economy was not large enough for a recession there to affect ours much. Now it is.

The Wall Street Journal reported on September 21, “China’s economic model has run out of road, and the process of putting it on a new track is likely to bring more Evergrande-like mistakes.”

And U.S. inflation now is reaching 1970s levels. The 1970s inflation ended when Fed Chairman Paul Volcker increased interest rates to 13%. That sparked a really bad recession that in 1980 brought Ronald Reagan into the White House and the first Republican control of the United States Senate in three decades.

The message to California Republicans should be: Get prepared. The GOP actually does have some good planks: Reforming an education system that slights Latino and Black children. Cutting taxes and regulations to improve the country’s worst business climate and most expensive housing market. Fixing an electricity grid that sparks wildfires.

It took Ronald Reagan three tries to reach the White House, losing in 1968 and 1976. By 1980, the times were right. He was ready. So was the Republican Party. So was the country.

Longtime Register editorial writer John Seiler blogs at johnseiler.substack.com