2022 California Primaries by Faction & Tortilla

 

[cold open]

Gustavo Arellano

If we say, okay, this is a repudiation by the California electorate angry about crime…Well then why did a progressive prosecutor win in Alameda county?

Robert Pease (co-host) 

That’s Gustavo Arellano: the prolific, versatile and irrepressible L.A. Times columnist. He’s going to give us his take on the recent California primaries and look ahead to the general elections.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

He’ll also tell us about convincing his father to get a Covid shot. Gustavo calls his dad a macho hillbilly.

Gustavo Arellano

If you wanna hug your mother, my grandma, who hopefully is gonna turn a hundred years old this year. If you wanna hug her again, you gotta get this vaccine. 

Robert Pease (co-host) 

Then, by way of analogy, Gustavo will tell us what California’s political factions might be…as tortillas

Gustavo Arellano

The progressives: they’re corn tortillas, made with nixtamalized masa. It’s trendy. It’s really, really good, but it’s also very expensive and it’s not accessible to the population at large.

Robert Pease (co-host) 

I’m Robert Pease and this is The Purple Principle, a podcast about the perils of polarization with our second episode on the nation-sized, ethnically diverse yet pretty homogeneously blue state of California, politically speaking. But does one party government ever produce great policy? 

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

And I’m Barbara Bogaev. Rob’s brought me on to help him make sense of my much beloved but very challenged adopted state. And as always this election season, there’s so much rhetoric, so many political ads, yet so few solutions to our big California issues like inequality, homelessness, and affordability.  

Robert Pease (co-host) 

Last episode, Dan Schnur of USC quipped that California does in fact have a two party system. It’s just that both parties happen to be democratic. Gustavo Arellano has a different take.

[Enter interview]

 

Gustavo Arellano

Dan Schnur is really great. That’s a funny line. Of course, he’s completely wrong. Although he is not wrong in diagnosing where the democratic party is at this point. ‘Cuz there is, as seems now more pronounced than ever before, a fight for the future of the Democrats. Is it gonna be more the moderate centrist way, say of the Gray Davis types? Is it gonna be a little bit more of a progressive champion like Gavin Newsome has been advocating for throughout his term? Or is it going to go even more to the left, which would be the Democrats who elected Bernie Sanders during the democratic primary in 2020? And that’s something that ever since I became a columnist for the Los Angeles Times in the fall of 2020 that has interested me. 

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

And let’s turn it to this primary election. Everything that you’re talking about there because legacy media like the New York Times and others were summing up the California primary as a message to Democrats and also to the rest of the nation on voters’ concerns about crime. And I wondered with such low turnout, even for a California midterm primary, was there really any message from this election? And, and if so, what is it? 

Gustavo Arellano

Well, look, as, as a member of the mainstream media myself, I know far too often we like easy narratives that a reporter could just parachute into, be able to write off about 1500 words, talk to a couple people here and there and then go back and ta-da, I made a grand pronouncement. And especially California has always vexed and entranced the rest of the country. So this idea that “California is super blue, but, oh my gosh, look, they just recalled the super blue prosecutor or elected official, to be specific a district attorney. That surely must say something about the rest of California, right?”

Look, I’m not gonna lie and say numbers are not up. They are up in some categories. but the numbers of crime are nowhere near the numbers of the eighties and nineties. But the other reason why the mainstream media and so many other folks care so much is because this crime is now affecting communities that quote, “were never supposed to have this crime.” So when we had out of control crime in the eighties and nineties, when it was hitting communities of color, specifically black and brown communities in south LA and east Los Angeles, no one else cared except to demonize those people. 

But now that they’re happening a little bit on the west side of Los Angeles in luxury boutiques in San Francisco, “Oh my God, California’s going to hell in a way that it’s never never gone to hell before.” Give me a freaking break.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laugh> Right. It is about that high profile, white community crime, but you’re bringing up the issue of race in the primary, which is interesting. Did black male voters turn their back on Karen Bass, a black woman, a Democrat running for mayor here in LA and make a big showing for Caruso as the pollsters predicted?

Gustavo Arellano

That’s the other thing that has been interesting, and it is a trend since 2020, and I’ve written about it a lot from the Latino perspective. Because early on, just talking to my cousins, talking to my friends, I’m like, if we wanna call Donald Trump the most racist president ever, and I’d put him up there, all these pollsters and all these pundits are going to have to deal with this very inconvenient reality. He’s not going to lose as many votes as you think he might. And he’s actually going to resonate with Latinos and especially Latino men. 

So basically where my parents are from in Mexico, they transplanted their villages to Southern California, specifically to Anaheim. My family was already mountain people, basically Mexican hillbillies. So you had that conservatism, that independent streak. We didn’t like the Republican party in Southern California or in California forever because there are a bunch of racists, xenophobes campaigning against illegal immigration, which so happens to be a lot of my cousins and a lot of my aunts and uncles and all that. But at the same time we didn’t like the excesses of progressivism, wokism if you will, of the democratic party.

So I thought to myself, I need to think of a name, of a term. And so I finally coined it “rancho libertarianism.” So I throw it out there and it starts like making waves with people saying like, “This is ridiculous. This is preposterous.” On the other hand though, you started getting people saying, “That’s exactly what I am. I’m a Rancho libertarian.” So flash forward to the 2020 election and I covered that. Trump who’s supposedly the most anti-Latino president ever, not only did he not lose the 25% of the Latinos who voted for him, he gained to a number as high as Mitt Romney.

Now, did more black men vote for Caruso as opposed to Karen Bass? I don’t have the stats on that yet. I’m sure they won’t come out for a while, but that might be something that is going to be in effect for sure. The problem with the left, especially, or specifically with the Democrats, is that they still do assume that all minority voters should vote for them because Republicans are evil and racist and whatnot. But that’s such a simplistic thing that they then get surprised when minority voters say, “Nah, I’m gonna vote my way. And you as Democrats need to give me something more than tell me Republicans are racist.” That just does not work anymore.

Robert Pease (co-host)

We had a guest on our Texas series, Dr. Sharon Navarro of UT San Antonio who tracks Latino political identity. And her description of latino swing voters, who may register democrat, republican or indie is that they are persuadable. Is that your experience in Southern California: that there are many Latinos who lean independent and are persuadable?

Gustavo Arellano

It’s very interesting because it’s bifurcated. The younger population to me seems to be more politically engaged. They’ve been radicalized by George Floyd, black lives matter, a lot of the issues with LGBT folks, immigration, or whatnot. Those are the people that the Bernie Sanders campaign leaned on to have such an incredible victory in 2020 and especially in the smaller towns. 

But when you grow up hearing forever, “Oh, the Democrats. Only the Democrats can save you. The Republicans are evil.” And the Democrats aren’t saving you. At a certain point, you’re gonna be like, “You know what? If the Republican party is supposedly so evil, but my life is not as good as the Democrats said it’s gonna be, I’ll take my chance with Trump. I’ll take my chance with Republicans.” 

And I’m like, all right, good luck with that.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

That intergenerational divide is very real. And I wanna ask you about a different intergenerational divide because you wrote a great column about how you convinced your father to get the COVID vaccine. So let me ask you what were his objections, first? Just so we get the context for this. And what lesson do you think that experience holds for how to talk across a political or ideological divide? 

Gustavo Arellano

My dad is straight from the rancho. Hillbilly macho at it’s complete extremes. He came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy. So, don’t you ever tell him that illegal immigrants are ruining this country. He’s retired now. He was a truck driver for 30 some years, became an American citizen through the Reagan amnesty of ’86.

But because you have sort of that conservative background, the rural background also talks to a lot of people. And if you know that type of working class Mexican, we love to talk conspiracies. I remember my dad would say, “Well, you know why Trump hates Mexicans, right? Because he tried to build something in Baja, California and the Mexican government screwed him over.”

So when COVID starts coming up, of course, he’s like, “Nah, that’s not real, whatever.” But since we come from a macho family, in macho families, the father will always listen to the oldest son. And that’s who I am. So, I’d have to come in and he’s already stubborn to begin with, but he would listen to me for the most part. Then, I’d hear from my sources, a.k.a my siblings, that my dad is violating what he’s supposed to do. That was all of our 2020. Then the vaccines happen, same thing. “Oh, I don’t wanna take the vaccine. It has a chip in it. It’s gotta kill me. I don’t need the vaccine because I have a positive outlook on life. My blood is–”

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Wow. He really was entrenched.

Gustavo Arellano 

<laugh> Entrenched and then some. And I would have these arguments and finally, one day, my sister, by a miracle is able to make an appointment for him. So one Friday she tells my dad, okay, we made an appointment for you. You’re getting the vaccine. And I think my dad was so shocked that he’s like, okay. So I show up to his house  Saturday morning saying I’m not gonna do it.  And so I finally told him, look, if you love your family, you’re going to do it. If you wanna hug your mother, my grandma, who’s not who hopefully is gonna turn a hundred years old this this year. If you wanna hug her again, you gotta get this vaccine. If you wanna hug your next of kin—

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Gustavo, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with this. This is you’re advising us to use emotional blackmail <laugh>

Gustavo Arellano

But I am not. This is reason. This is absolute reason. If you wanna, if you want to hug your nephew again, this is what you need to do. My dad is very stubborn. My dad is very macho, but my dad is not stupid. So he finally got the vaccine and it’s interesting because I went to my editor, Hector Becerra, at the Times and said, like hey, maybe I should write about this. He’s like, ah, you know, family’s kind of hard and it’s kind of navel gazing, but I’m like, I think there’s a lesson to be had in this. So I wrote the article, it went viral. I got emails from hundreds of people. Latinos especially said, my parents were just like your dad. And then we translated into Spanish. And because of that, he was able to get the vaccine. So I think when it comes to bridging those political divides, it really is love. And I know how corny and cliche and treacly, it sounds, but it’s like, you gotta talk to them. You have to have more than anything conversations. And you have to wear them down by talking to them by acknowledging their views and saying, but wait, this is what you need to do. 

[Exit interview]

[Midroll break]

Robert Pease (co-host) 

We’re talking to Gustavo Arellano, and Barbara, what Gustavo said there is not so much cliched as on target. That’s according to a multiple experts we’ve had on the show discussing how to convince friends and family to get vaccinated. For example, Dr. Lee McIntyre of Boston University, author of How To Talk to A Science Denier.  

[lookback audio to Dr. Lee McIntyre]

Dr. Lee McIntyre

Treat people like human beings and they will trust you and they will listen to you. And, by the way, I think that if we’re ever going to get over the political divide in this country, we’re going to do it the same way. It’s going to have to be grassroots conversations, face-to-face; that’s the only thing that’s actually going to work.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Yeah, I really believe that. You gotta dig down deep for compassion and no matter what keep the conversation going. 

Robert Pease (co-host) 

And you kept the conversation going with Gustavo …

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laughs> Yeah. Well. It was inevitable. He hosts something called Gustavo’s Great Tournament of Tortilla’s for KCRW, an NPR station in Santa Monica…so I just had to ask… 

Robert Pease (co-host) 

And that took things in a surprising but edifying direction.

[enter interview]

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Well Gustavo, I think, I think communicating across party lines and ideology might be your superpower, but you have a different one that I really feel I must address, which is being a tortilla tournament, judge <laugh> and a general expert on all things tortilla. And you’ve applied it in your blog by characterizing different personalities, like gubernatorial candidates as different tortilla brands. So we were hoping you could do that for the various California political factions.

Gustavo Arellano 

Oh my God.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Yeah. What kind of tortilla…

Gustavo Arellano

This might be the greatest line of questioning in history. Okay.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laughs> So the progressives on the left maybe, or Trumpers, or centrist Republicans, no party preference?

Gustavo Arellano 

Well, obviously the, the, the progressives, they’re corn tortillas made with nixtamalized, uh, maza. Republicans, of course, are Mission tortillas, bland, Tasteless, you know, secretly evil because the company that makes Mission tortillas is called Gruma. Gruma, being they created a process of dehydrated, corn masa called Maseca. And, in the 1990s, they were able to get a lot of access in Mexico through the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration. The New York Times did an amazing article about it. That’s what the Republican party’s trying to do with its tortillas. 

The Democratic establishment, what would they be? They would have to be probably let’s call ’em Romero’s tortillas. So Romero’s tortillas, it’s this brand in Southern California that’s been around since the 1960s, still family, owned good tortillas. You know, they’re not the best tortillas, but they’re good tortillas, but you could, the interesting thing with them, you could find them anywhere. You could find them at small little grocery stores. You could even find them at Walmart.

And then one more just cause now you got me rolling on this. Um, it—

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laughs> Didn’t take much.

Gustavo Arellano

<laughs> Oh no, no. Uh, and then the, I guess the Green Party would have to be, oh geez. Tortilla wraps. You know, they could be good, but come on, you gotta sell yourself more than just being tortilla wraps. Sorry, Green Party!

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laughs> They don’t even count as a tortilla. A tortilla wrap.

Gustavo Arellano 

<laugh> you said it, not me.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laugh>

Robert Pease (co-host) 

Well, speaking of tortillas that were hard to sell, um, we, we were wondering if you followed the New Way, effort back in 2018, that Schwartzenegger endorsed former assembly woman, Kristin Olson, who were gonna interview and ask about, were you surprised at how quickly that seemed to fizzle?

Gustavo Arellano 

Well, no, because Schwarzenegger is not popular. My wife, interestingly enough, she puts it best. Like everyone loves Schwarzenegger as an actor. I mean, he was a mega megastar, just humongous. Schwarzenegger comes swaggering and you know, he’s liberal on some things, but obviously gets the Republican party. And now, you know, I have to think back on my Schwarzenegger era, he’s trying to do all these things by, you know, dictating stuff, you know, owning the Dems or whatever, but he underestimated the Democratic party establishment.

So at the end he wasn’t really able to do anything. And by the end, no one liked him. The Republicans don’t claim him anymore. The Democrats of course were never gonna claim him. So him trying to chart a third way, it went nowhere and sad the sad thing is, if anyone could have done it, it could have been Schwarzenegger, but that swagger early on, ruined it for him, ruined it. He could have been the great peacemaker between the Democrats and the Republicans, but he chose to be about himself more than anyone far too late. I don’t think that’s him anymore. But when he had the power, that’s who he was, 

Robert Pease (co-host) 

Let’s look at that as a more ideological rather than a personality basis, because California did have this tradition of having moderate Republicans. And to Dan Schnur’s point, it’s now mainly democratic factions in control, is that why new waved fizzled? Because moderate republicans have become Democrats?

Gustavo Arellano

I think, huh? That’s a good question. The, no, the moderate Republicans turned into independents or frankly just don’t really do anything anymore cuz they feel alienated. But it also depends on what our idea of moderation is. I mean, look at Orange County, California, the place where Reagan said all the good Republicans go to die. We never voted for Trump. There was headlines across the country in 2016, when we voted for Hillary. And then in 2018, we sent an all democratic, you know, how do you say it? An all Democrat constituency, or rather all democratic Congresspeople to Washington DC, the first time that had ever happened. 

And what’s interesting now the moderates are gonna come out, if you will, are going to be these Latinos, uh, you know, these Latino elected officials. They are not the fire breathers like Kevin McCarthy, like Devin Nunes, take someone like Mike Garcia from the Santa Clarita valley up in what would it be? Northeast Los Angeles, far more Republican area, far more, uh, conservative, far more of a suburbs. He’s definitely not a liberal at all, And he’s a Republican. 

So I think the Republican party they’re seeing that the, the chair of the Republican party in California right now is Jessica Millan Patterson. Don’t let the name fool you. She’s a Latina from I believe Monterey Park, which is gonna be a suburb east of east Los Angeles. She and some of these other people are going around and trying to figure out who’s gonna be those Latinos who are gonna carry us to get those Latinos who are independent. Now, not the Latinos who are conservative. They’re already voting Republican, but those independent minded, Latinos who maybe have been voting Democrat for years, if not decades, but are sick of the party might want now to go might wanna go Republican, but they need the perfect candidate to make them be able to do so and Schwarzenegger was that but larry elder was not gonna be that . 

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Yeah. Right. Well, speaking of independent minded, Latinos of a very different stripe though, LA sheriff, Alex Villanueva. We have to talk about him. And for, for those of our listeners who, who don’t know the whole story: he’s been plagued by scandals. He ran as a progressive and then in office, he just immediately showed anti reform colors by doing among other things, reinstating a deputy who had been fired over allegations of stalking and harassment and, more importantly, just refusing to acknowledge corruption in the force, in the form of these deputy gangs in LA. And now you just wrote a recent column that puts an exclamation point on far right extremism in the LAPD. So my question is, is this just an old LA story since the LAPD has always been the ultimate symbol of corruption or, is there a bigger message again about policing nationwide and partisanship?

Gustavo Arellano

Well, the LAPD nowadays is probably the best it’s ever been. And that’s saying something under a chief Michael Moore who really seems to care about these things. That’s not to say they’re perfect at all. No law enforcement agency is. And it’s interesting because the Sheriff’s department was its own nefarious force, but with Villanueva being elected in 2018, it was expected to be something completely different. 

And so what does Villanueva, who’s a Democrat by the way, start doing once he gets into office? He repudiates, he like turns his back against that coalition. And alternately says, deputy gangs don’t exist. Deputy gangs are overstated. I crushed deputy gangs. And for you to use the term, deputy gangs is racist. So he’s, you know, he’s just flip flopping all over the place, but increasingly going to the far right, or, you know, going to the right. 

But the issue that I was trying to get at is no matter where it went to, there is ex uh, right wing extremism in law enforcement. Now more than ever. Now, law enforcement has never exactly recruited from the liberal side of humanity, but now a lot of these sheriffs just give it a wink and a nudge, and don’t really seem to care about it. And Villanueva seems to be one of them. 

Robert Pease (co-host) 

Yeah well Gustavo, speaking of right-wing politics. We did want to get your insight onto this California-Texas rivalry, which we heard a lot about from Texas guests. There’s been a little bit of, I suppose, policy rivalry and competition for national press attention between, you know, Governors Abbott and Newsom. And there has been some poaching of some big name, California companies by Texas in recent years. So we wanted to play a clip from Dan Goodgame, who’s the editor of the Texas Monthly, you know, a fantastic publication and brand. And an interesting set of numbers that he used to describe that the reality in Texas is a lot more complicated than just a red map.

[Archival audio – lookback to Dan Goodgame]

Dan Goodgame

I’m gonna read a short series of numbers to you and let you guess what they represent. 29, 22, 16, 4, 2, and 1.

29 is 29 million is the population of Texas right now, 22 million is the number of people who are eligible to vote. 16 million is the number who actually register to vote. 4 million is the number who vote in primaries in Texas. 2 million is the number who vote in the Republican primary in Texas. 1 million is all it takes to win. So that’s 3.3% of the population is deciding who the statewide office holders are in Texas.

Robert Pease (co-host)

Yeah. Again, that’s Dan Goodgame of the Texas Monthly. So we’re wondering if that surprises you, that such a small percentage of Texans have so much political leverage?

Gustavo Arellano

No, it doesn’t because that’s sadly American democracy. A very, very small number of voters control it, <laugh> for everyone else. And some places are gonna be more conservative, some places more liberal. And this is, and the Democratic Party knows, has known this for a while. And it’s interesting because we there’s been so much coverage of this, uh, you know, “Calexit”, if you will, to Texas, this exodus to Texas. And a lot of times people focus on the conservatives who move into Texas, but you talk to most Texans and they’re like, ‘no, we don’t want these Californians cuz they’re making everything more liberal.’

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Gustavo, where do open primaries fit into this, do California’s open primaries, do anything to shift entrenched partisanship?

Gustavo Arellano

Oh God, no, they make it worse. At least back in the day you could, you know, every party had to run against itself. And then in the general election, everyone had a shot. So you could have the Green Party candidate in there, the libertarian. And you’d have months to campaign. Months, you know, even a year, whatnot. Now it’s only the top two. And then it’s unfortunate because that solidifies in the mind of the electorate, that only the Republican and Democratic party have a legitimate shot of ever winning anything in California. So that’s where you then have the turf wars within the parties, to try to see who could out-conservative or out-left each other. 

Robert Pease (co-host)

Yeah. That’s interesting because the effort in many other states right now is for final five or final four open primaries, not final two. Perhaps they’ve learned a lesson from the California experience. But you mentioned the damage that might have done to bipartisanship. We had a recent interview with Leon Panetta who will also be in the series. And he looked back upon, you know, his tenure as a House member from California a few decades ago compared to his son’s situation today, representing a similar district.

[Archival audio – look ahead to Leon Panetta]

Leon Panetta (look ahead audio)

I’ve seen Washington work, where Republicans and Democrats were willing to work together on major issues. And I think the same thing was true for California. But in recent years, it’s become increasingly partisan, increasingly divided. Because of that division, a lot of the critical problems in California really are not being addressed in a bipartisan way. I mean, there are Democratic solutions, but they tend not to be built on a foundation that really includes all viewpoints. And I think we pay a price when that’s the case.

                                                                                                                      

Robert Pease (co-host)

So again, that’s Leon Panetta, who was White House Chief of Staff under Clinton, a Cabinet member under Obama, lifelong Democrat bemoaning the loss of bipartisanship. Do you think he’s right, that we just don’t get the best policy when we have one party government?

Gustavo Arellano

Yeah. Oh 1000%. And look, I’m a registered Democrat. Well, I lost a bet. So that’s why I’m a registered Democrat. I would consider my politics far more independent, but usually more on the left than anything, again, rancho libertarian. But when you have only one-party rule who knows that they have no danger of being checked by anything, by definition that is not democracy. And I know the Democrats have been always teetering on their supermajority. So all that teaches them, it doesn’t teach ’em bipartisanship at all. It teaches them, ‘Okay. We just gotta make sure that every Democrat falls in line.’ If you have a Democrat that does not fall in line, then they need to be pushed out and be replaced with somebody that’s more malleable…

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

You said you lost a bet? Did you mean that figuratively? <laugh>

Gustavo Arellano

No, it’s true. I never registered with any party until 2018. When I did a speech before the Laguna Woods Democrats, you know, the senior citizen city in Orange County, and I told them, I’m gonna make a bet. If a majority of Democrats win congressional races in Orange County, I’ll turn into a Democrat. Well lo’ and behold, what happened? All those congressional seats went Democrat. And so they had this big, huge thing, and I’m a proud Democrat now. But as I tell people, now I’m able to say that old Will Rogers line: ‘I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.’

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

<laughs>

Robert Pease (co-host)

<laughs>

Well Gustavo, our final question, we ask all of our guests to show a bit of purple and as a Democrat, that means you have to, uh, think of a member of the opposite party, the Republican party, uh, from current politics or recent memory that you wish were still around to try and help bridge the political divide.

Gustavo Arellano

Oh, easy. The former mayor of Anaheim, Tom Tait. Republican, uh, came from a Republican dynasty in Orange County. Well, Tom Tait comes into office as a conservative Republican and says, no, we need to serve the residents of Anaheim, which now is a majority Latino working class town. And so he formed an unlikely, almost impossible in this day, alliance with the most progressive member of the council in Anaheim. 

And so for Tait to have been able to do this alliance with the most progressive, as progressive a Democrat as you could possibly imagine, that shows that bipartisanship is not only possible, but most often righteous!

[Archival audio of Tom Tait]

Gustavo Arellano

So Tom Tait is one of three politicians I’ve ever respected in my life and the only Republican I’ve ever respected in my life.

Robert Pease (co-host)

And who are the two Democrats?

Gustavo Arellano

<laughs> I’m not gonna say, ‘cause they’re still in office and I don’t want them to get a big head. 

<everyone laughs>

[Exit interview]

Robert Pease (co-host)

That was our special guest today, Gustavo Arellano, L.A. Times reporter and columnist offering up an interesting bit of purple there, citing former Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait. Tait again was a Republican who ran and governed on a kindness platform. Which we’re not seeing too much in today’s GOP, nationwide and in California. 

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

And Tait is such a great answer, and it’s why I appreciate Gustavo so much as a columnist. He’s always surprising me, and he doesn’t just confirm what I already know. And he manages to be funny while addressing real issues.

Robert Pease (co-host)

Absolutely, and there’s some very important points there about why the crime issue in California may currently be getting so much attention. 

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Yeah hint: it’s affecting upscale areas and white people.

Robert Pease (co-host)

And why some California Latinos, especially those of the ‘macho’ variety, are turning toward the GOP, as voters and as candidates. 

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

Gustavo coined a term for it years ago – he calls it ‘rancho libertarianism.’

Robert Pease (co-host)

So helpful in understanding that identity. Many thanks to Gustavo Arellano for joining us on this episode. But next up, for our California series finale, we’re looking back not a few years but a few decades, through the unique perspective of Leon Panetta. He was a longtime California Congressman and of course, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and Obama Cabinet Secretary.

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

We’ll also talk to political comedian Andrew Heaton…

[Look ahead audio to Andrew Heaton]

Andrew Heaton

I’m from Oklahoma, which means that I’m ethnically Republican. I speak country club cowboy hat as my default language…

Barbara Bogaev (co-host)

He’s the author of Los Angeles is Hideous: Poems on an Ugly City: 

Andrew Heaton

I think the zoning laws are real bad in California. And I think they actually are directly related to why Los Angeles is so horrible because there were all of these old, racist laws that were put in place that forced the city to grow out rather than grow up.

Robert Pease (co-host)

And from the former if possibly also future GOP moderate thought leader in California, Kristin Olsen. She was part of that notable, if not so successful, “New Way” effort to create a California GOP distinct from the national party: 

[Look ahead audio to Kristin Olsen]

Kristin Olsen

It started with yeah, a small group of us, maybe about five people initially, getting our heads around a table saying, what do we wanna be? Do we wanna be a Republican group that’s fixing the Republican party? Do we wanna be a group of Republicans, independents and Democrats that’s working on just fixing political structures and dialogue and public discourse? So we’ve had many, many meetings, trying to figure that out.

Robert Pease (co-host)

Definitely a wide range of experiences, perspectives and prescriptions within our California finale. We hope you’ll join us for that episode. Reach out with feedback, reviews and suggestions, and support us on Patreon or Apple Subscriptions, as we develop more state focused episodes and produce our series on Hispanic swing voters. Thanks for listening from the entire Purple Principle team. All music composed and created by Ryan Adair Rooney. The Purple Principle is a Fluent Knowledge production.