Hope for California Republicans – Orange County Register

Last week’s stock market crash gave hope to Republicans looking to make a comeback in California in 2022. In good times, people don’t want to change anything. When the going gets tough, the tough will want to choose someone else.

Many reasons have been cited for the Republicans’ loss when Governor Gavin Newsom was recalled on Sept. 14: Donald Trump’s hangover. Latinos are still angry with Republicans for Proposition 187 from 1994 – 27 years ago. Republicans want to end the mask requirement for schools and kill children. The Democrats are doing an excellent job everywhere.

But if you read the official voter information guide sent out to all voters by Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber, that is precisely why. In Newsom’s signed rebuttal of the recall supporters’ call to oust him, he wrote, oddly enough, in the third person: “[H]He passed his US $ 100 billion comeback plan for California – the largest stimulus package in the state’s history. Under the plan, two out of three California families will receive at least $ 600 in direct aid, and 200,000 small businesses will benefit from our aid programs. “

If you give $ 600 each to voters, most will vote for you.

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

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

Another good example happened here in Orange County. In 1994, Democrat, treasurer and tax collector Bob Citron achieved an 8.5% annual return for the Orange County Treasury Investment Pool, nearly double the state’s 4.7%. He was re-elected for the seventh consecutive year in June and received 61 percent of the vote against John Moorlach, a local accountant who warned the investments were too risky.

That fall, the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates and crashed the investment pool. In December, Orange County filed for bankruptcy and lost $ 1.7 billion. Citron resigned and the board appointed Moorlach as his successor. Moorlach served in that office, then as overseer and state senator until the recent financial fraud blinded voters to evolving economic realities.

I’m certainly not predicting what the Fed will do. Do not take investment advice from a political columnist.

But last week’s Evergrande crash in China shows, not least, that its economy is now directly affecting ours. In 1994 or 2003, China’s economy was not big enough to suffer a recession on ours. It is now.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sept. 21, “China’s economic model has gone wrong, and the process of getting it on a new track is likely to create even more Evergrande-like flaws.”

And US inflation is now approaching 1970s levels. 1970s inflation ended when Fed chairman Paul Volcker raised interest rates to 13%. That sparked a really bad recession that brought Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980 and the first Republican control of the U.S. Senate in three decades.

The message to California Republicans should be: Prepare. The GOP actually has some good plans: Reforming an education system that despises Latinos and black children. Lowering taxes and regulations to improve the worst business climate in the country and the most expensive housing market. Repairing a power grid that started forest fires.

It took Ronald Reagan three tries to reach the White House and lost in 1968 and 1976. In 1980 the times were ripe. He was ready. Likewise the Republican Party. The country too.

Longtime registry editor John Seiler blogs at johnseiler.substack.com