For decades, Republicans across the country looked to California for conservative stars and ideas even as the GOP lost its way in the state. Not anymore.
For decades, Republicans across the country looked to California for conservative stars and ideas even as the GOP lost its way in the state. Not anymore.
Today, we talk about how how Kevin McCarthy’s tortuous path to become Speaker of the House was yet another loud death rattle for the California GOP. Read the full transcript here.
Host: Gustavo Arellano
Guests: L.A. Times politics columnist Mark Z. Barabak
More reading:
Column: Kevin McCarthy ‘won’ the House speakership. Now the country will pay the price
Today’s GOP could snub even Reagan
Gustavo Arellano: Nixon, Reagan, tax cuts, anti-immigration policies.
For decades, the Republican Party looked for leadership and ideas and inspiration from California.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air. I said to my friend, I said, what party is he? My friend said, he's a Republican. I said, then I am a Republican.
Gustavo: But the Golden State's GOP glory days ended decades ago.
Gustavo Arellano: And the consequences of that waning legacy is something Bakersfield Congressmember Kevin McCarthy encountered as he sought one of the most powerful positions in Congress and failed again and again to get it until he finally eked through.
AP Clip: It took four long days and 15 rounds of balloting for Kevin McCarthy to hear these words. Well, after midnight Saturday: The honorable Kevin McCarthy of the state of California, having received a majority of the votes cast. Is duly elected speaker of the House of Representatives.
Gustavo Arellano: I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to “The Times, Essential News from the L.A. Times.”
It’s Wednesday, January 18th, 2023.
Today: How Kevin McCarthy's tortuous path to become speaker of the House is yet another loud death rattle for the California GOP.
Gustavo Arellano: Mark Z. Barabak is a political columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He focuses on California and the West, and he's the only person at our paper who speaks faster than me. Mark, welcome to The Times.
Mark Z. Barabak: Hey, Colonel. Good to be back.
Gustavo Arellano: So earlier this month, Kevin McCarthy accomplished his longtime goal of being speaker of the House, but it took him 15 rounds of voting and all sorts of behind-the-scenes negotiation. There weren't many other front-runners who were obvious at least. So why was the whole thing such a mess?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, quite simply it was math. I mean, you know, once upon a time Kevin McCarthy was talking rather fantastically about, you know, a 60-seat margin, which was never in the cards for the simple reason that there weren't that many competitive seats, even under the best of circumstances. But it was not unreasonable to expect a 20-, a 30-seat Republican majority. Well, that didn't manifest. He couldn't afford to lose more than four votes, an exceedingly thin, paper thin, wafer thin — choose your thinness metaphor — uh, majority, and very, very few votes to spare. So with a margin that close, everyone is a decider. Everyone is a deal breaker. Everyone could jack him up to get whatever they wanted. And, you know, that's another thing that Kevin McCarthy showed. It was a remarkable capacity for a) self-abasement and b) for capitulation. I mean, he's seen as someone who is, uh, exceedingly ambitious and highly transactional, which is saying something in a chamber that is all about ambition and is lubricated by transaction. But you know, Kevin McCarthy made a lot of deals to get to where he got. He sold out his speakership; I call him sort of a speaker in name only because he made so many concessions, it's hard to see how he's going to be able to, uh, function. And that's not going to be good for the country. It's going to be hard to see the House do a lot of things they need to do.
Gustavo Arellano: And it's really interesting because McCarthy has always come from the right wing of the California GOP. But this time it was the far right wing of his own party that messed with him. So why did McCarthy court them to begin with?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, you know, it depends on how far you want to go back.
Mark Z. Barabak: Kevin McCarthy has always been about politically advancing and what it takes to get ahead, and in Sacramento that meant fighting back the right wing of his party, aligning himself with the relatively moderate Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Kevin McCarthy: Arnold says everything's fantastic, right?
Mark Z. Barabak: And then he goes to Congress as sort of a recruiter in chief for the Republican Party, you know, party strategist, very heavily involved in recruiting, embraced the tea party movement and some of the folks on the far-right fringe of the party.
Kevin McCarthy: I'm a conservative. I believe in the idea of freedom and liberty. I come through the grassroots.
Mark Z. Barabak: And then embraced the QAnon-embracing Trump wing of the party.
Kevin McCarthy: I will work with anybody who wants to move America forward, secure our border and put this government back open.
Mark Z. Barabak: But yes, uh, once upon a time, Kevin McCarthy was a moderate, then he became a conservative, and then he became a do whatever it takes, you know, crawl on hands and knees to, uh, put himself back in the good graces of former President Trump after, uh, having the temerity to actually call him out for, uh, inciting the riot.
Kevin McCarthy: He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.
Mark Z. Barabak: So part of Kevin McCarthy's problem has been his shape shifting. He's, he's whatever it takes to get ahead, and for that reason, as I said, a lot of folks didn't trust him.
Gustavo Arellano: And so what kind of deals did McCarthy make? What exactly did he give away?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, he made some significant concessions. Um, there's a very important committee that sort of is the gatekeeper, if you will, to what gets to the House floor. The House is very different than the Senate. The Senate is very free flowing. Members can talk. We're all familiar with the filibuster, where a member can talk at length. The House is very different. The House is governed by a very strict set of rules in terms of what can come up for a vote, who can talk, what can be offered as an amendment. And there's a very important gatekeeping committee that decides a lot of those parameters for debate: what's going to be taken up on the floor, what amendment's going to be offered. And one thing that Kevin McCarthy gave up was several seats on that very, very important committee to some very far-right members of the quote, quote, Freedom Caucus. He gave that up. But I think the most significant concession he made was a rule allowing any member, it would have to be a member of the Republican conference, stand up at any point and in effect call for a vote of confidence or no confidence in Kevin McCarthy. You know, that went away under Nancy Pelosi. It took half of her caucus to bring that up. So again, one member at any time can bring up a a motion to vacate the chair, to eliminate Kevin McCarthy as speaker. So he's going to be on a razor's edge for however long he has that job. And you know, one nick: he's gone.
Gustavo Arellano: OK, so a Republican from California, nevertheless, is speaker of the House. So happy times are here again for the California GOP?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, isn't that the Democratic, uh, theme song? I don't know, uh, ”happy times,” maybe, uh, “relatively happy times,” maybe “less sad times”? The bottom line is the Republican Party in California is effectively a small — and I use the term relatively speaking — regional party. There are areas of great strength for the Republican Party. Most of them happen to be sparsely populated. Most of them are rural. The Republicans are not a viable statewide party in California, and they have not elected anyone to statewide office since 2006. They are on the losing side of a supermajority, a Democratic supermajority, in Sacramento. This last election just showed they had a very strong, uh, attractive in a lot of ways candidate, Lanhee Chen, running for state controller. Impeccable credentials, non-ideological. The guy got waxed. Why? Because the R as in Republican is a scarlet letter in California these days.
Gustavo Arellano: And this political irrelevance for them in California is such a trip for people like you and I because we remember when the state's GOP meant something to the country and actually had power in California. So for the younger listeners out there, can you tell us about the greatest hits history of the California GOP and its national influence?
Mark Z. Barabak: Sure. For the great bulk of California's history, we have been a Republican-leaning state. Bill Nolan, Earl Warren, of course, Presidents Nixon and Reagan all came from California. Pete Wilson, a very formidable politician, ran for president, wasn't successful. But California for a very long time was a Republican state. I am old enough to have covered George H.W. Bush. George H.W. Bush won California. So within our lifetime, right? California was a red state when it came to presidential politics. Pete Wilson, who I mentioned, was elected governor, very formidable, reelected governor. Um, and then I'm going to anticipate the next question. I'll let you ask it, but you know, how did we get from there to today’s sorry state? But go ahead, don't let me step on you,
Gustavo Arellano: Ha, ha, but also it is not just in the, um, politicians they elected, but movements: the tax revolt of the 1970s, that was a big thing that spread across the United States. Then of course, what a lot of people say was the downfall was anti-immigration measures. So in your opinion, you kind of foreshadowed it, but what led to the GOP's decline in California?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, I, I, I think Prop. 187, which was a ballot measure that Pete Wilson championed in his 1994 reelection campaign against Kathleen Brown, sought to deny public services to people who are in the country without documentation.
Pete Wilson: It will be very difficult for someone who is in the country illegally to find work. It will be difficult for them to present themselves as eligible for services.
Mark Z. Barabak: Pete Wilson was really big, pushing the federal government to pay for a lot of costs associated with illegal immigration in California.
Pete Wilson: Our lawsuit seeks reimbursement for California taxpayers for the costs that they must bear when in fact the federal government has failed to secure the border.
Mark Z. Barabak: The state was facing a whopping, enormous deficit at the time. Pete Wilson made that a really big cause, pushing Washington as it was under the Clinton administration. Um, and then we got Prop. 187. That led to a huge backlash, an enormous backlash. I mean, there was a cliche that both of us are familiar with about the sleeping giant, right? We kept hearing about how many years about the Latino being the sleeping giant. All this discussion of the sleeping giant, and a former political advisor to Pete Wilson rather aptly put it to me one time, said, you know, the sleeping giant woke up and kicked us in the, uh, rear end.
Mark Z. Barabak: And that's what happened. I mean, it's a shortened version, but what happened with Prop. 187, it energized a whole generation of Latino leaders. I got a lot of Latino voters seeing that politics matters. It energized them, it was very immediate, and it got them out, it got them voting. Concurrent to that, we saw a trend where the national party became more conservative, particularly on social issues, which never played particularly well in California: issues like abortion, issues like immigration, issues like same-sex marriage. The Republican Party nationally was increasingly seen out of step with what I'll call the live-and-let-live ethos of California. And then lastly, elections have become nationalized to a tremendous extent. Tip O'Neill, may he rest in peace, “all politics is local.” All politics have now have become national. And so again, you saw a California Republican Party being associated increasingly with a national party that reflected its white Southern conservative base. And the Republican Party in California increasingly grew out of step with California on the social issues that are so very important to so many voters.
Gustavo Arellano: More after the break.
Gustavo Arellano: So Mark, it's Interesting because California Republicans, when they influenced national politics, for the most part they were on the moderate part of the conservative spectrum. It’s when they went hard right that the party began to collapse in California. So how did that loss of state power diminish California’s influence on the national conservative movement?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, increasingly you had a party, as I suggested, it was taken over by, Southern, more socially conservative leaders. I mean, as California's sort of lost power on the national level, although it should be said, Ronald Reagan as president was a different Ronald Reagan. People forget this: Ronald Reagan signed what was at the time the most permissive abortion bill in American history. Ronald Reagan signed then the largest tax increase in history. I did a column some years back calling him Ronald, Ronald RINO, uh, the old “Republican in name only” because, you know, the Ronald Reagan who was governor would never, ever, ever have made it in today's Republican Party. So he moved right as the national party moved right, which makes sense. He fit California as a California governor. If he was going to be elected president in a party that was increasingly moving right, he had to make that move, right, which he did.
Gustavo Arellano: Speaking of movie stars, there was another big incident that happened in our lifetimes with Republicans in California involving one. And that was in the early 2000s, when Republican activists helped to recall Gov. Gray Davis, and then replaced him with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a circus! Oh, my gosh. You covered it. I was barely starting my career. But when Arnold won, a lot of people then said hey, here’s the future of the Republican Party, and California again is going to lead the way.
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, it has to be said: Arnold Schwarzenegger's election was under a very, very fluky set of circumstances. He ran in a recall election that let him bypass the Republican primary. I'm convinced Arnold Schwarzenegger never could have won a Republican primary. He bypassed that, and there were a lot of Republicans — I, I covered that recall — there were a lot of Republicans who cast their lot with him. It was just the idea about having someone with an R behind their name in that office. There were a lot of Republicans who held their nose voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger because they did not agree with him on a lot of issues. But he was a Republican. And it should be noted by the end of his term, he was very unpopular. But particularly unpopular with his fellow Republicans. So, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger offered an interesting period in our recent political history, but again, elected under very, very unusual circumstances.
Gustavo Arellano: After Arnold, the Republicans were lost in California again. But then it was interesting because they latched onto a scapegoat: Gavin Newsom. They were after him even before he became governor. How did Republicans use him to try and become relevant again in California?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, there is no, uh, greater trigger for Republicans, for conservatives than San Francisco. Gavin Newsom was a San Francisco Democrat. So you know, by the time Gavin Newsom ran, we had had, uh, eight years of Jerry Brown. I mean, Republicans put up Meg Whitman who spent a boatload of money trying to beat Jerry Brown. That didn't work. You know, we have a whole history of rich people thinking they could buy their way into the governorship or a Senate seat. Never works, they still try. But you know, Gavin Newsom had a big fat target on his back, but he won in a landslide, just again underscoring the irrelevance of Republicans in California.
Gustavo Arellano: And the Republican who ran against Newsom in 2018 was John Cox. Who was he, and what he was saying during his campaign in terms of bringing back the GOP back to the days they actually mattered in California?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, he ran as a textbook conservative Republican, which is part of the problem. Again, the classic California Republican who was successful I think is very much in the model of Pete Wilson, which is to say a fiscal conservative, hard line on law and order, and socially moderate and environmentally conscious, which is where a lot of Californians, even a lot of California Democrats … I mean people, people outside California think of us as, you know, we're all these liberals floating around in our hot tubs or, you know, running along the beach in Malibu. California in the main has a very broad fiscal conservative streak, right? We don't like to pay a lot of taxes. People have a very hard line on law and order. In fact, some years back I did a column that L.A. County had sent the highest percentage of folks on death row of anywhere in America. So again, Pete Wilson, say what you will about him, was very much in the model of a successful California Republican. And he was really after Arnold Schwarzenegger, who again ran under these very unusual circumstances, really the last Republican to try to win the office of governor running on that successful platform. Everyone else who's run since then could very well be running in — and probably should be — in a place like Arkansas or Alabama, where they'd have more luck than they have in California.
Gustavo Arellano: Yeah, Newsom seemed impossible to take down. It seemed like he could be governor until term limits took him out of office. But then came the pandemic, and Republicans thought they had another chance to go after him on that subject, so they tried to recall him in 2021. They were all excited, they were like “this is finally the way to take down Gavin, to get the California GOP back in power,” but what ended up happening, Mark?
Mark Z. Barabak: Uh, three words: a huge blunder.
AP NEWS: The effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom has enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. An election is likely to be held in the fall with two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? And who should replace him?
Mark Z. Barabak: Republicans thought they'd have a shot at taking Gavin Newsom out. They were all spun up about the pandemic, about pandemic restrictions, and so they went after him thinking he was vulnerable.
Larry Elder: There's no front where I can think of where this man has done a good job. Not on schools, not on homelessness, not on the way he shut down this state.
Mark Z. Barabak: Interestingly, they had a candidate who, on paper, was a Republican with some promise.
Kevin Faulconer: I'm Kevin Faulconer. I'm running for governor of the great state of California because it's time for a California comeback.
Mark Z. Barabak: In San Diego’s former Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Republicans had a pretty strong, at least the strongest candidate they could have fielded in a lot of years. You know, here's a guy who could have potentially given Gavin Newsom a run for his money in ’22. Certainly a better run for his money than, than he did. He was relatively moderate, he had a strong record of support, he'd done very well among Latino voters in San Diego. But he ran in the recall, he lost, that's the last we heard of him. I mean, Republicans basically blew it. They took a shot at him in an ill-considered, ill-fated recall attempt. It was a huge waste of money, it was a huge waste of time and it cost of Republicans what could have been, possibly, not a great shot at beating Gavin Newsom in 2022, but a much better shot than they had.
Gustavo Arellano: More after the break.
Gustavo Arellano: So, Mark, do you ever see another Schwarzenegger or Reagan in the future for California Republicans? Someone that the entire state will vote for, embrace hell, even another Pete Wilson, the moderate version?
Mark Z. Barabak: You never say never. You don't know. I, I don't think Democrats are necessarily going to hold power in perpetuity. But it's going to take a big sea change. It's going to take a few more years, I don't know, maybe decades. I don't think I'll take that long, but a few more years of wandering in the wilderness until Republicans — at least Republican voters — will finally get tired of losing and do what parties do. You know, we saw that, for example, on the national level with Bill Clinton in ’92. The Democrats had lost a number of times, so they nominated a guy who was a quote, different kind of Democrat. That's what happens: When parties get tired of losing by running candidates over and over again who are too extreme for the main bulk of voters, hen they're willing to make compromises to win. We saw that with Schwarzenegger. If Republicans lose enough times, we'll see it with someone else.
Gustavo Arellano: OK, back to where we started: Kevin McCarthy, the new speaker of the House, perhaps the weakest speaker of the House in American history. How much of his struggles to get that position is a repudiation of the California GOP way?
Mark Z. Barabak: Well, I think it's more a repudiation of Kevin McCarthy and what he was seen as standing for, or not standing for. And I also think it goes back again to the numbers. He could only afford to lose a handful of votes. Everyone was a potential kingmaker. He has shown a huge capacity for being willing to bend, for being pliable. And so he got played, ’cause he could be, and people were in a position to do so.
Gustavo Arellano: So what warnings then can Republicans nationwide take from California Republicans from their fate as they all head into the 2024 presidential election?
Mark Z. Barabak: That compromise is not a dirty word. That purity is a road to irrelevance. Politics is about compromise, and politics is about taking what you can get, and politics is about working toward solutions and taking what you can get today and coming back to get more tomorrow. And we have a structural problem in our country in that most members of Congress, their greatest fear is losing a primary. So their incentive is to appeal to the most ardent, ideological members of their party. And they're not rewarded for compromising and until, unless that changes, the lesson for Republicans is that, you know, if they keep pursuing this extreme agenda or this agenda that does not appeal to the great broad, middle, the great majority of Americans, then they face, eventually the kind of irrelevancy that the California Republicans are facing. Now I have to say, I think Republicans would do themselves a whole lot of good if they didn't focus on things like investigating Hunter Biden's laptop or impeaching members of the Biden administration, and addressing things that voters cared about, which were inflation, the economy, jobs, crime.
Mark Z. Barabak: But the lessons, if they're going to avoid what happened to California Republicans, it's you need to be more accommodating, you need to reach toward the middle. Not abandon your principles, but not drive yourself over a cliff in your quest for ideological purity and being able to own the left and own the libs, quote, unquote.
Gustavo Arellano: Mark, thank you so much for this conversation.
Mark Z. Barabak: My pleasure as always, thanks for having me.
Gustavo Arellano: And that's it for this episode of “The Times: Essential News From the L.A. Times.”
Kinsee Morlan, David Toledo and yours truly were the jefas on this episode. It was edited by Heba Elorbany, and Mark Nieto mixed and mastered it. Our show is produced by Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown.
Our editorial assistants are Robert Reyes and Nicolas Perez. Our fellow is Helen Li. Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera, Shani Hilton and Heba Elorbany, and our theme music is by Andrew Eapan.
I'm Gustavo Arellano. We'll be back Friday with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.