The Daily Signal - Paradise Lost: How Progressive Policies Destroyed California

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Author and California resident Steve Hilton discusses his new book, "Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America's Worst-Run State." Hilton details California's dramatic decline from a beacon of American opportunity to a state plagued by homelessness, crime, and an exodus of residents. Hilton, known for his appearances on Fox News, delves into the policies that have led to high taxes and urban decay in California, as well as the potential presidential ambitions of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Drawing from his personal experience raising a family and running a business in California since 2012, Hilton identifies the ideological "pathologies" that have led to the state's downfall—from extreme environmentalism to union control and misguided compassion policies. Hilton offers a vision for California's revival through his policy organization Golden Together. He provides a stark warning about the consequences of one-party rule and offers practical solutions for turning America's Golden State around. 00:00 Introduction 01:08 California's Decline: Hilton's Personal Experience 01:46 The California Dream: Past and Present 03:29 Policy Failures and Solutions 05:34 Signs of Political Change in California 07:45 Economic and Cultural Metrics: California at the Bottom 09:07 Ideological Pathologies and Political Dynamics 18:23 The Exodus: Why People and Businesses Are Leaving 25:33 Conclusion: A Call for New Leadership The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: https://secured.dailysignal.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Welcome to The Daily Signal, weekend edition. I'm your host, Rob Blewey. Today we're taking a deeper dive and going beyond the headlines to discuss the issues and events that deserve more attention. At The Daily Signal, the news never stops. Each day, we strive to bring you analysis and perspectives you won't find elsewhere. That's why we started this weekend show and why we're grateful that you're joining us today. Our conversation is coming up next. Black Friday is here at IKEA and the clock is taking on savings at here. You won't want to miss. Join IKEA family for free today and unlock deals on everything from holiday must-havs to cozy at-home essentials, all the little and big things you need to make this season shine. But don't wait. Like leftovers at midnight, our Black Friday offers won't last.

Shop now at IKEA.ca.ca. Black Friday. Ikea. Bring home to life. Steve Hilton joins us at The Daily Signal today. He is the author of a new book. book Calafalier. Steve, you're recognizable from your Fox News appearances and the good work that you've been doing. Thanks for writing this book. I'm excited to talk to you about it.

It's wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. It's a story everyone needs to understand, like how it is that California ended up in the terrible situation it's in today because it's a message for the whole country. Don't let it happen to you. Well, it's particularly a message for the whole country because your governor clearly wants to and aspires to be the president of this country based on some of his recent moves. So I want to get into that. But I wanted to start by just saying that, you know, when I was in college, I spent about four months in California. My college had a program where from upstate New York originally, where we could travel. And I'm so excited to be in California because throughout my entire childhood,

I just, you know, thought about California as the frontier and this place where everything started. You know, this was exciting times. And now I feel like people have a completely different view of California, people are fleeing the state, and you document all of this in the book. What was it that led you to put this all on paper for others to understand what's really happening? Well, I've been in California now. We moved there in 2012. So raised my family there, started a business there. I taught at Stanford. You know, in many ways, I've lived the California dream. And just like you, I was inspired by California even before we moved there as a family. I'm an American citizen now.

I'm a proud American, but also a proud Californian. And I was in love with the idea of California, what it represented. To me, it was the representation of everything that's best about America. In fact, there's a line in the book right at the beginning, which is, to me, just captures why this is so important, and we mustn't let California fail, which is California means to America, what America means to the world. So all those things that we think of as being the great American virtues, I think California should, at its best, represent the best of them. But of course, that's not how it is today.

And we're not known for the positive things that inspired people around the world and you and me and many others. We're famous for, you know, the apocalyptic scenes of these wildfires we just saw in Los Angeles that were so much worse than they need have been because of bad policies. and incompetence. We're known for the dystopian scenes of urban chaos and crime and decay and the thousands and thousands of homeless people wandering around like zombies and and and the crime and the retail theft and you know you're going into wool greens and everything's locked up. You know, that's what we've, we're now giving America. That's what we're now exporting instead of what we used to do, which is dreams and inspiration. And the reason that I wanted to write the book is, and actually it's not just the book, but my policy work as well, for those who don't know, before moving here in 2012, I was senior advisor in the UK government, Prime Minister David Cameron, particularly led our work on domestic policy reform. I've been an entrepreneur and worked in various fields more recently in the media, but in terms of politics, I'm a policy guy. And so two years ago, I set up an organization called Golden Together.

which is a non-partisan policy-based organization to, because really I felt frustrated at just complaining all the time about everything that's wrong in California and pretty much everything is wrong in terms of policy, everything that government touches. And so this book actually not only chronicles how we got here and what those lessons are for other states to avoid, but also how we turn things around. Part two of the book is called Califuture, and that's a prescription, an antidote, if you like, to the failures that the book outlines. And so for me, it's really about trying to make things better, as well as complaining about why things are so bad right now. Well, Steve, I can tell you, as a news organization that focus us on policy,

first and foremost at the Daily Signal, I appreciate that. I appreciate that you're not just complaining and outlining the litany of problems. And trust me, you could probably write an entire book just on the problems, but you're proposing solutions. And you set up an organization to help do that. Let's go through some of them. But before I get there, I want to pick up on one piece of what you said, because so many of these policies come out of Sacramento or the various cities. And it seems that voters in California for years, if not decades, have returned the same type of politicians to those places. At what point, are you hopeful that people are starting to realize that maybe the people that they're putting in positions to make those, those policies are doing the wrong thing for California. Yeah, I think it's already happening, honestly. I think that you saw some movement in the right direction in November with the elections. You saw 10 counties in California flip from blue to red, including major counties like Fresno in the Central Valley, the fifth biggest city in California. Huntington Beach is a really

interesting story. One of the best-known cities in California, Surf City, USA. A friend of mine, just over four years ago, Tony Strickland, put together, it was a count. It was a count. that was run 6'1 by Democrats. And he put together a team of candidates, and they campaigned on a very going to straightforward common sense conservative platform. They didn't water it down. It was very, you know, they were known as the MAGA people. And they won control of the council, 4-3 in 2022.

And they immediately set about implementing practical, common sense, conservative policies on homelessness and crime and what's going on in the public libraries. and they put on the ballot and passed an initiative on voter ID, etc. Just now in November, they ran seven candidates. They called themselves the magnificent seven. They won. Clean sweep. 7.0.

So that is a place where you've gone from 6.1 Democrat control to 70 in the space of four years. And there are the sign. The fact that Proposition 36 was passed overwhelmingly in November by 70%. That was the ballot initiative to reverse. the worst effects of Prop 47 that became notorious. Carmelah Harris pushed that through, which legalized crime effectively under $950 theft today, et cetera. So there are signs that things are moving.

There was a poll this week showing that 48% of Californians would consider voting for a Republican governor. So I'm not saying it's easy, but there is movement. And I think what we need to do now is bring it all together with a really positive and inspiring plan for change. So people can say, yeah, actually, if we vote differently, we'll get a different outcome. Steve, I think it's probably going to take people like you with the entrepreneurial

background and your experience, obviously seeing policies and how they affect people on a global scale, not just locally to bring that perspective. You talked about some of those metrics, both economic and cultural metrics, where California is at the bottom, if not the bottom. And so whether that be unemployment or poverty or homelessness, how did things get so bad to begin with? Well, it's worth just stopping for a moment and just really absorbing how bad it is, because it's pretty much every measure that matters.

California's not just doing badly. It's doing worse of any state, like literally bottom or bottom of the list. If it's a list you want to be the top of and top if it's a list that you want to be the bottom of. I mean, the highest rate of poverty, the highest taxes, which is kind of an amazing achievement to have those both at the same time in a way. The highest cost for every essential, for housing, electricity, gas, water. The lowest home ownership in America.

The most hostile, the worst business climate, 10 years in a row. The lowest income growth. As you mentioned, the highest unemployment. Now, actually, they've done a little bit better on unemployment. We were the highest last year. Now we're the second highest. So, you know, they've made some progress.

But it really is disastrous to be failing on so many fronts. And it makes you wonder, well, what is going? on in that? But if you just objectively took a state and said, they're the worst on all these things, what's going on there? And that's what I tried to explain in the book, because it's not enough just to say, oh, it's Democrats. Yes, it's Democrats, but it's a particular flavor, which is the Democrats, they've been infected with this ideology. And that's what I, the far left ideology, because they've had no real political competition for many years. It's one-party rule. They have a supermajority in the legislature, which, by the way, is a, a,

illegitimate supermajority because it's achieved through gerrymandering. And actually, one other point to the optimism, on the add to the optimism side of the ledger, is that California already was a much more Republican state than people think. If you look at the average share of the vote for Republicans since the last time a Republican won statewide, in all statewide elections, it's 41.7%, which is, you know, it's not a majority, but it's closer than people, I think, would assume. But Republicans don't have 40% representation in the state legislature. They don't have 35 or 30 or 35.

It's 20% because of gerrymandering. So that has that, but that supermajority has enabled the Democrats to push through really extreme legislation. And then you've had governors who just don't stand up to it, particularly Gavin Newsom. Jerry Brown, the former Democrat governor, occasionally would stand up to the left. Not this one, not Gavin Newsom. And so it's just been a one-way street, left, left, left. And what I unpack in the book, Calafalia, the components of the ideology, because it's, it's so interesting where you dig into it.

You've got things like the narcissism that constantly pushes them to want to pat themselves on the black. They're constantly talking about leading. We're leading on climate, leading on gender equality, leading on race and all these things. You know what I mean? They love the idea that they're in the vanguard of progressive change, but they don't care about the practical outcomes. It's so narcissistic.

There's cronyism that is pervasive, the role of the unions, the government unions in particular, that fund the politicians and they get the outcomes that they want. In particular, of course, luxury pensions and healthcare that have contributed to the fiscal crisis that we have, but also policy outcomes that are really damaging. and so on. We go through all of these. There's an interesting one, a term I use called compassionism, which is different to actual compassion.

And you see this reflected in the policy on homelessness. It's not compassionate to allow people to live on the streets suffering from addiction and mental health problems, as 80 plus percent of unsheltered homeless people do. And yet that is considered, the people in charge think it's compassionate to do that. They feel we can't tell people what to do. We can't require any kind of treatment, sobriety, job training, whatever it is.

And so there's a law that they passed called Housing First in 2016 that makes it illegal to put conditions on any kind of homeless service. So on and on, there are nine of these set these different ideologies. I call them pathologies and I lay them out in califalia. I think people need to pay attention because this is what's coming to you. If you look at what's going on in the Democratic Party right now, all the energy seems to be on the left, Bernie Sanders, AOC, they're getting all the attention, they're getting the crowds. Maybe that's where they're headed for the midterms and beyond. Well, we know that's the agenda we have in California. The AOC, Bernie agenda, that's what we're living under, and the results were a total disaster. Again, we're talking to Steve Hilton. The book is here. It's Califalier. Steve not only documents the problems, which he just did so articulately. but also offers solutions, and he has an organization Golden Together,

which really aspires to give Americans that passion for the California dream, which I once had and Steve clearly had. Steve, you brought up Gavin Newsom in that answer. Gavin Newsom, it seems pretty clear to me that he's positioning himself for a national run in 2008, starting this podcast, and even having conversations with some notable conservatives, much to my surprise. But also at the time, you mentioned the fact that Alexandria,

Alcazio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have this enthusiasm. So what is in Gavin Newsom's future? I mean, and particularly as he finishes out his term as governor. Well, he clearly is running for president in 2028. I think it's been about that for a long time, frankly. But the thing is that he's not just any other candidate. He's the actual governor of an actual state. And so these moves that he's making into.

terms of positioning, they don't have to just be words. And in fact, if they are just words and there's no action to follow up, I think that people can see that this is a person who just talks and doesn't deliver. And I don't think that is the kind of reputation that you want going into a presidential election contest. And so it's all very well for him to say, as he did to Charlie Kirk, that he finds it deeply unfair for biological men to compete in girls' sports. That's the law in California. It has been for, to be fair to him, he wasn't, he's even preceded him. It was a law that was signed by Jerry Brown.

But you now have two bills in the state legislature from Republicans to change the law, to bring it into line with what Gavin Newsom says he believes. And yet this week, when asked if he would support those bills, He pretended he hadn't even seen them. There's a vote next week in the legislature. Is he going to express an opinion? Is he still going to say he hasn't seen them, even though they're coming up for discussion in the legislature?

It will be a really interesting moment. And so, and, you know, other examples, you know, when he talks about how ridiculous it is to use the term Latinx, it's just fine to say that. But then when you have a record of using it and then pretend you don't, and it's still, all pervasive in the language of your own government, you know, I think that all these issues, you've got to actually walk the talk. And so that's, I think, the key thing. If Gavin Yuson wants to reposition himself as being, is rejecting the far left, okay, it's a good, it's a move in the right direction. But it means nothing if it doesn't actually change the policies or try to

change the policies operating in California. You nailed it. I mean, that's, it's, it's, spot on. And I think it was the same problem that another California politician, Kamala Harris, had in her run for president. She had taken all of these far left positions throughout her, the entirety of her career. And then when she was in that national spotlight and realized how on popular they were, she tried to rebrand herself. And I don't think that the American people were fooled. Obviously, they weren't. They put Donald Trump back in the White House. But, you know, there's new reporting out this week that suggests that she was shocked on election night that she lost. I mean, so it just goes to show even how much they live in their bubble.

and don't have exposure maybe to others who have a different point of view or perspective. 100%. And I think the thing that they both have in common, and I would add Biden to the list, actually, is a point I made throughout his presidency, is that they're machine politicians. They're politicians of calculation, not conviction. There's no clear belief system that animates them or drives them. So they go with the flow. And they say whatever is politically expedient at the time. That's why you have the ludicrous spectacle of Carmelah Harris saying, not even saying herself, actually. That was the most shameful about it. Just with, you know, just practically overnight having her press aides go out there and say, oh, she doesn't believe all these things that she argued for so passionately, not that long ago, whether that's the Green New Deal or banning fracking and Medicare for all, all those positions, just gone, deleted, without any kind of explanation.

and only someone who really believes nothing could possibly behave like that and I'm afraid that's what you're seeing with Gavin Newsom it reminds me of a very you know a lot very long time ago when I was working in politics back in the UK I'm not saying it was a successful ad but it we remember

putting together an ad about the changes made by Tony Blair and the new Labour party as he called it and the analogy we used was a tree without roots. A tree without roots cannot withstand the slightest pressure. It's blown around and just falls over. And that was the argument we made that if you don't have convictions, if you don't really know what your beliefs are, you just get pushed around in any direction.

And that's why those kinds of politicians are the most dangerous. Yeah, absolutely. The political consultants are the ones calling the shots. Steve, let's talk about something else that you cover in Califalier. that is the exodus. We've seen individuals pick up and move to other states. We've seen now businesses relocate to other states that maybe embrace more of a free market approach, lower taxes, less regulation. This is to be devastating for California. I mean, not only are they losing this population, they're losing representatives in Congress. They will have fewer electoral votes. I mean, the consequences are quite significant for the nation at large. Do you see,

First of all, what is driving individuals to pick up and leave? And then secondly, is there a way to reverse this trend? Yeah, it's a really, really serious point. I mean, we lost representation in the Congress for the first time in our state's history. And the projection is that the next census period, it'll be another three. Electoral votes going with it as well. So that's the symbol of it. Of course, you look at the numbers, hundreds of thousands of people leaving all the time.

You have the ludic, like there's stories in the book, ludicrous examples like an Orange County, firefighter who wanted to keep his job but found life so intolerable and expensive where he was living, moved his family to Tennessee but kept his job. So he now commutes from Tennessee to Orange County to do his job. And that somehow makes sense. That's the insanity of what we've done. And it points to the number one reason people are leaving. To answer your question, all the data shows this is housing costs. It's the number one reason people are leaving. They just can't see themselves living the kind of life that they want, particularly if they want to raise a family, in California, it's just too expensive.

The median house price is a million dollars, a million dollars. It's insane. The rents are the highest in the country. It's all just completely unaffordable. And so that's the number one driver. Of course, that's all caused directly by Democrat policy, a combination of another one of the pathologies that I outlined in the book, climatism, which is the extreme environmentalism,

the pursuit of what they call their climate goals to the exclusion of any kind of practical common sense view of what they're achieving. They're not even achieving, they're not even working on their own terms. I mean, they're, you know, they're shutting down the oil and gas industry in California, just devastating communities, particularly in Kern County at the southern end of the Central Valley, but we're barely using less oil and gas, a little bit less. What we're actually doing is importing it. Halfway across the world, from Iraq, on giant super tankers, spewing out carbon emissions. So in the name of climate, they are increasing carbon emissions. And it's the climate extremism, climatism, as I call it, that's the main factor in driving

up housing costs because they're just layering on all these environmental regulations, but also it's the California Environmental Quality Act, passed in 1970, signed in 1971 by Ronald Reagan, now being completely abused with endless lawsuits that hold up development. And then on top of with that, you've got the labor regulations, they change the building codes every year, you've got impact fees. I mean, that's the other part of it. There's two of the pathologies that go into that, socialism and bureaucratism. They charge, it's basically a tax on housing. And it used to be a few thousand dollars for a permit to build a house and do the environmental inspection or whatever it may be. Now, the typical impact fee, if we add them all together, for a single housing

unit in California, $150,000. $150,000. That's just straight on the price. That's just pure tax that the house builder pays to the combination of state and local government. In some places, it's much higher. That's the median. I mean, in San Francisco, they were charging combined impact fees of $300,000 per apartment, not for the whole building per unit. So it's insane. And then that contributes to the fact that we pay the highest taxes in the country. I don't believe those calculations about the highest tax, even include things like the housing tax. They don't even include that. And we're still having the highest taxes. They've doubled the budget of the state of California in the last 10 years after inflation, even as our population has

been falling. Everything's worse. Where's all the money going? Into the pockets of the government unions that fund the politicians and into the pockets of the cronies that are part of the homeless industrial complex. That's how you can have, what is it now, $38 billion spent on homelessness, the audit, the state auditor says, and the numbers just keep going up, we now have just over 10% of the US population, it's 11%, nearly 50% of America's unsheltered homeless population. So billions and billions have spent and the problem gets worse. It's just unbelievable how badly, that's why the subtitle of the book is reversing the ruin of America's worst run state.

I don't know how anyone, any fair-minded person could challenge that description. Steve, on the one hand, you know, I'm hopeful, I'm glad you brought up the climatism point. I'm hopeful that the policy is coming out of Washington, D.C. And the focus on domestic energy production will maybe alleviate some of the costs that Californians are facing. Obviously, you know, the state government there will have some say in it. But you're absolutely right about the housing challenge. As a husband and father myself, I mean, obviously this has implications for people starting families. And if they feel like they can't afford a home, you know, are they likely to have more kids?

And, you know, there's a whole series of... It's a huge, huge thing. Yeah, exactly. And they, they, they really, it feels to me like, even though you have some Democrats, to be fair, acknowledging this, it seems to me almost impossible for them to actually address it because of the structural factors within their party. The climate extremists, the activists, the, the dogmen, the ideology that they're rooted to. And also structurally, the unions, I'm just one last point I make the people are not familiar with.

In California, the main barrier to build it. Right now, you've got over one million housing units that have been approved by local governments and gone through zoning. They've gone through environmental compliance. They are actually in compliance with CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act, but they're blocked by litigation, by nuisance lawsuits. 70% of environmental lawsuits are filed to block housing. Most of those lawsuits are actually filed by unions to negotiate against developers what they call project labor agreements for union members only, union workers only,

what they call that skilled and trained, prevailing wage four times higher than the actual market wage. So it's a scam. And so this is, again, I mean, and the unions are. just part of, they fund the Democratic Party. So it seems to me, even the ones that acknowledge the problem are just incapable of actually solving it. For that we need new leadership. That means we got to elect Republicans in California. Steve, thank you for writing this book. I want to give you the last word. As you mentioned earlier, it's not just what's in the book, but you have set up

a policy organization to actually get things done. It's called Golden Together. How can people find out more about it or support the work that you're doing. Thank you. Well, you can go golden together.com. The part two of the book I should mention is called Cala Future. That's a lot of the work of Golden Together is reflected in that. Follow me on social media at Steve Hilton X and there'll be more news to come in the, in the weeks ahead on my plans for trying to turn around Cala failure and deliver a bright new positive Cala future. Well, we look forward to following your work. Let's be in time. and best wishes, it's critical that you do this. I think regardless of what your feelings might be about the current state of California, America as a country is better off if California is doing

better. And so I appreciate that forward-looking vision that you have to make those improvements. Steve Hilton, thanks for joining The Daily Signal. Thank you. Great to be with you. Thanks. We are going to leave it there for today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on new shows from The Daily Signal. Every weekday, catch Top News in 10 right here in this podcast feed. Tony Kinnett helps you keep up with the day's top headlines in just 10 minutes. And every weekday afternoon, catch Victor Davis Hanson's thoughtful analysis for The Daily Signal.

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