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Steve Lopez , a columnist for The Los Angeles Times , blamed the Republican Party for the state’s issues with affordable housing, homelessness, poverty, and other issues in a piece he published on Saturday.
Lopez acknowledged that his state is run almost entirely by Democrats but reasoned the GOP’s inability to get candidates elected and sent to Sacramento is ultimately why California has faltered in so many aspects under one-party rule.
The columnist noted former Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Regan once embodied the politics of the Golden State and that Arnold Schwarzenegger governed effectively as a Republican until 2011. Lopez opined that with the GOP’s rightward turn over the last several decades, voters have had no other choice but to keep the state comfortably blue – which had created problems. Lopez wrote:
You know what the problem is with California? Democrats—or so I’m told. If I write about broken sidewalks in Los Angeles, readers write to say it’s the fault of Democrats. Homelessness, crime on public transit, poverty — in every case, blame the Dems. Recently, I wrote about the owner of Langer’s Deli, who’s considering retirement because of problems in MacArthur Park. “Good, I hope he closes and flees the state,” a reader named Thomas wrote. “Your governor, your mayor and the Democrats have run your state into the ground.”
Former President Trump also loves bashing the Golden State. He is branding Vice President Kamala Harris as a home-grown radical, if not a Communist. He says she destroyed San Francisco as district attorney, destroyed the entire state as attorney general, and will turn the whole nation into a hellhole like California, as my colleague Mark Barabak recently noted.