Looking at Los Angeles today, it is easy to forget that as recently as the 1990s, the city enjoyed comparatively sane politics. Voters then elected Republicans both to the governor’s mansion and as mayor of Los Angeles. Although both of those Republicans were considered moderate or even liberal, they were a far sight from the sort of leftist Democrats in place at all levels of state and local politics today. This, even as the city was still coping with the sting of the destructive and mindless LA riots. 

With two Republican presidents in living memory, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, having hailed from the southland, it was not considered a thought crime to be on the political right. Indeed, Orange County was then famous as a conservative bastion, sending such stalwarts to Congress as Bob Dornan. In 1994, California voters approved Propositon187, which prohibited the use of most state services by illegal immigrants, and in 1996 Proposition 209 disallowed state and local governments to use race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin as criteria for public employment, contracting, or education. 

Still, it did not take a lot of political insight to see that California was trending left at a clip and in ways that foreshadowed something much more ominous. If the way the courts gleefully overrode the will of the people wasn’t enough to make that clear, one needed only to spend some time near a college campus, be familiar with what those students were learning about their country, and know a bit about actuarial tables. 

Today, with large swaths of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods reduced to rubble and ashes—burnt offerings to the gods of one-party rule, waste, corruption, eco madness, DEI, and LGTBQ+ advocacy über alles—many naturally wonder whether Californians have finally had enough of the ideological incontinence that has brought them so low. 

Those who want to see change point to the 2024 election results for encouragement. There is no question that it was a huge victory for President Trump and the MAGA coalition he built—which, importantly, includes many former Democrats. As President Trump took office on Jan. 20, a CNN poll showed that only 33 percent of Americans expressed support for the Democratic Party, the lowest number recorded since the poll’s inception in 1992. But will that disenchantment with Democrats translate in California? Will voters here decide they are finally ready to do something different with their votes?

As Trump reminded us in his inaugural address, his own incredible political comeback story cautions against pronouncing anything impossible. Still, it is always wise to take stock of reality and practical obstacles. 

Yes, there are signs of life for politically sober people in California, even amid the destruction. After all, there are more Trump voters in California than in any other state. And although both houses of the California legislature have Democratic supermajorities, both also saw Republican gains in 2024. Trump himself improved his share of the vote by nearly 5 percent over 2020 and by more than 7 percent over 2016. Moreover, in 2024 he flipped 10 counties from blue to red in the presidential race. 

Still, Kamala Harris’s share of the totals was an incredible 58.5 percent. California’s native daughter, like her colleagues in the state, is on the very far left of the political spectrum. But this is a feature, not a bug, of California politics. To distinguish oneself from the crowd in a one-party state, one must be this way. Governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass naturally share Harris’s radical view of the world—prioritizing DEI, the coddling of criminals, the enabling of homeless drug addicts, and other feel-good ephemera. What outsiders often miss is that this much-touted leftism, even when sincerely felt, does double duty as the fancy wrapper for the real work. This is the way Democratic politicians package programs designed, mainly, to benefit their benefactors and secure the fealty of voters now bound to them, like serfs, by interest. 

Yes, these Democratic incompetents who watched Los Angeles burn neglected the basics of governing—things like filling reservoirs and making sure fire hydrants were functional. But that criticism only holds if you consider governing their real job. They don’t. It remains to be seen whether they prioritized their leftism so hard that they planned their own political funerals by making that plain. While the anger at these politicians is palpable, it may not be enough to convince voters who are caught in their game.

Something conservatives and Republicans tend to forget when expressing bewilderment at California’s Democratic voters is that people overwhelmingly tend to vote for the party it is in their interest to support. California Democrats have not maintained and grown in power in the state by neglecting the interests of their voters; they are simply very effective at picking which interests to support.

Although the long-standing “high-low coalition” against the middle may finally be breaking up in our national elections, California’s version is different from that of the rest of the country. Here, as in most places, the wealthy are aligned with the poor and so-called “disenfranchised” in ways that are meant to keep the upstart middle class from getting any crazy notions about governing themselves. 

But California’s left-wing politicians also had the good sense to set things up so that enough of that middle class was also beholden to their largesse. To give just one big example, consider California’s notoriously generous CalPERS (California Public Employee’s Retirement System) payouts. In an era where pensions in the private
sector are increasingly rare, CalPERS benefits (while they last) are a boon to millions of middle-class Californians. 

As one can imagine, this makes government employment for at least one family member very attractive and, in turn, fuels the demand for and creation of ever more government jobs—whether legitimate or, as in most cases, concocted. In this context, programs like DEI begin to make a lot more sense—not just as social justice programs meant to appeal to the far left of the party, but as “gimmes” to middle-class college graduates with otherwise dubious degrees and credentials. 

As California moves to rebuild in the wake of these fires, one can be sure the vultures surrounding that effort will be moving in ways that benefit the wealthiest benefactors of California Democrats first, secures the fealty of middle-class government workers and contractors next, and keeps the otherwise desperate poor at bay—all while mouthing the feel-good pieties of the left. 

If there is any hope of stopping them, Californians need not just flip that narrative but also to appeal directly to the interests of middle-class Californians. The Faustian bargain Democrats offered California’s middle class, up till now, made proposals from Republicans seem unappealing. But when it all goes up in smoke, as it has with these fires, there is an opportunity to impress the mind, console the heart, and whet the appetite for self-government.

—Julie Ponzi