Matt Klink, partner at California Strategies, joined "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss the state of California's governor race.
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00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now is Matt Klink, partner at California Strategies. Matt, thank you so much for joining me.
00:12Thanks for having me, Brittany.
00:14I'm excited to talk about a statewide race that's really received national attention, and that's California's governor's race.
00:22A name that just came in is former Representative Katie Porter. She's the latest person to jump in this already packed race.
00:30What are you thinking about the field so far?
00:33The field is kind of all—everybody's waiting for the one name that hasn't declared yet, and that would be Vice President Kamala Harris.
00:43She said she's going to make her mind up in the summer. I think that she is enjoying being courted by various California and national Democrats because she's now relevant again in the national conversation.
00:58But certainly this week with Katie Porter jumping in and doing so with a really splashy video, I think that she highlighted to people that, hey, I'm in this and I want to win it and I'm going to run as a fighter.
01:12So, I mean, it was a very interesting week.
01:16So let's—before we talk about the name that's not in the race yet, let's talk about that name that is, and that is Katie Porter.
01:22And we saw in that video, like you said, she kind of has a two-pronged approach, right?
01:27She's calling out Trump by name. She's calling out GOP leadership.
01:31She's also saying California needs fresh blood, which obviously Vice President Kamala Harris, she has had statewide office in California before.
01:40She is a national figure. What do you make of her announcement? Do you think she has a shot, Katie Porter?
01:47Yeah, it's really important to remember that California has a top two primary system, meaning that we could have two Democrats run in a general election against each other,
02:00especially if there is not a credible Republican candidate, which right now there really isn't in the race.
02:06There is one, Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff.
02:10But I don't think he's electable statewide. He's just too conservative.
02:14And I don't think that the majority of Republicans will get behind him.
02:18So Katie Porter's trying to position herself as an outsider, but someone who is a fighter, who's not afraid to stand up to Donald Trump,
02:28but also realizes that the Golden State is pretty messed up right now.
02:32We've got huge homeless problem. We got an affordability problem. Housing, gasoline is expensive.
02:39Things are not golden in the Golden State.
02:42She she wants to position herself as someone I'm not tied to the status quo.
02:47I am a Democrat and I can fix it.
02:50If you're saying things aren't golden in the Golden State right now, what type of is this?
02:56Could this be a move for an elected or electable Republican?
03:00Rather, I mean, what is the shot of that happening?
03:03Where could an electable Republican, could a more moderate Republican come in and say, hey, we're in disarray right now.
03:10Here's how I can fix it.
03:13Absolutely. The field is wide open and obviously it's not going to be a Republican who's conservative on social issues,
03:22but someone who's tough on crime, someone who is supportive of, you know,
03:28that there has to be some role for government in California just because of the way the electorate lays out.
03:34Someone who understands that, you know, agriculture is so vitally important in the state and someone who realizes that they can campaign in cities like San Diego,
03:46Los Angeles and San Francisco because they need to draw dissatisfied Democrats into the Republican fold.
03:54That candidate may be like, for example, Rick Caruso from Southern California, someone who's viable.
04:02But right now, no Republican has thrown their their hat into the ring, so to speak.
04:08I think they're still waiting to see how the field flushes out.
04:12And again, everybody's kind of waiting on Kamala Harris.
04:16I know. Let's talk about that, because do you think that this conversation is pretty useless until she comes into the race?
04:22If she does announce because she would be the biggest name to jump in?
04:28Clearly, if Kamala Harris decides to run for governor in 2026, she instantly becomes the front runner.
04:36She'll instantly have access to tens of tens of millions of dollars.
04:41You know, the challenge is like you start to think back to Richard Nixon when he lost the 1960 presidential race and then ran for governor two years later and lost to Pat Brown.
04:53And, you know, he's famous for saying, well, at least you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.
05:00I'm not comparing Kamala Harris to Richard Nixon, but I am saying her calculation is, do I keep my powder dry to run for 2028 or do I run for governor?
05:12And will I stay there? Because what would be the worst is if she runs for governor and wins and then immediately starts running for president.
05:21And I think that California voters are going to need her to definitively answer that question.
05:26Now, candidates, they let's just say that they stretch the truth.
05:30She would probably say, of course, I'll serve my full four year term.
05:34But she's going to have to be pretty convincing that if she runs for governor, she wants to be governor.
05:41I'm curious if she's popular in California or if it's just name recognition, because she's won some statewide races before.
05:48She was California's attorney general. She was senator in California.
05:52Then obviously she became vice president. She was presidential nominee.
05:56But is she a popular Democrat in the state?
06:00She is popular in the state. In fact, she you know, she did win, obviously, California in the 2024 election.
06:09She underperformed. Traditionally, she should have gotten a little higher statewide total.
06:14But the Republican totals for Donald Trump were very, very strong in California.
06:19But no, Kamala Harris, aside from name ID, she is popular.
06:23She has run successfully three times with her name on the ballot.
06:27And then obviously once as Joe Biden's vice president.
06:30So the voters are used to seeing her name and she is a, you know, a rock solid Dem.
06:38Her biggest challenge is, you know, one questions about whether she's going to stick around.
06:44And to her propensity for word salad, that someone who can, you know, coherently and concisely explain what's wrong with California and how they fix it.
06:56They could really challenge her if she gets all tied up in her words and can't get out clearly what she wants to do.
07:05I know that she had some issues in a national run because she couldn't really untie herself from President Biden.
07:12He was an unpopular president. His administration was largely unpopular, especially at the end there.
07:18Is that going to be an issue if she does decide to run?
07:22No, I don't think that any any ties to Joe Biden will really influence the 2026 election.
07:30She has she has been a statewide elected official in California.
07:34She knows how Sacramento works. She knows what the budget cycle is like.
07:39She knows the problems facing the state so she can run on her California bona fides.
07:45I mean, she was she was you know, she lived in Oakland.
07:48She now lives in Southern California and Los Angeles.
07:51So the national political influence will not be an overhang here.
07:57Her challenge is going to be what am I going to do different in the future?
08:02You know, it's the proverbial question that she flubbed in the 2024 race.
08:07What would you do different than Joe Biden? And she said nothing.
08:11Someone's going to ask her the question, what would you do different than Gavin Newsom?
08:16And she's going to have to outline a clear plan, because right now, California is not is not heading down a sustainable path.
08:25What is the answer to that? What is the answer to what would you do differently than Gavin Newsom?
08:31Because Gavin Newsom, governor of California, also a national name.
08:35And in the national headlines, I want to read some of the things that have stuck out to me since his tenure.
08:40He ate dinner maskless with a group of people at the French Laundry, which is a fine dining restaurant during the during the thick of covid in 2020.
08:48He's also a Democrat who is willing to go into Republican spaces.
08:52We've seen him on Hannity a bunch on Fox News.
08:55Most recently, we've seen him have that podcast where he's sitting down with Charlie Kirk.
09:00Charlie Kirk, he's moving more towards a moderate center when pressed by Charlie Kirk.
09:06He's sitting down with Steve Bannon. He's also one of President Biden's surrogates.
09:11And then when you most recently think of California, you're thinking about his leadership during the wildfires, which was largely criticized.
09:18So if a candidate asked, what would you do differently than Gavin Newsom?
09:23What do you think the answer needs to be?
09:27Wow. You know, if I had that answer, Brittany, I would probably be able to declare my candidacy for governor.
09:33In all seriousness, I think that, you know, one, it's going to be continue to focus on crime.
09:39I think that we saw with the passage of Proposition 36 overwhelmingly by Democrats and Republicans in 2024 that that's a priority.
09:49I think two is affordability is a problem, whether you're whether you're well off or whether you're not well off.
09:56You have eggs, milk, diapers and gasoline are too expensive.
10:01I think that we just need an injection of common sense.
10:04You know, it takes you know, if it takes 11 different permits to rebuild a home in the greater Los Angeles area, that's not conducive to rebuilding the state's largest city.
10:14So it's going to be a whole series of these common sense solutions that say, you know, building homes is not Republican or Democrat.
10:22It's common sense and the ability to fly over the top of that and to demonstrate progress.
10:28And it's one thing to say we're going to build three million homes like Gavin Newsom did.
10:32He's only built like one hundred fifty thousand homes.
10:35So it's going to have to be rhetoric is going to have to meet reality.
10:40And again, that's Kamala Harris's biggest challenge.
10:44So, I mean, at least with Katie Porter, you know, when she was up in Congress, she's famous for her whiteboard where she raked the CEOs over the coals.
10:53You know, I could if she were to say I will do that to department heads in the state to drive the change that we need to make California the economic engine of America again.
11:05I think that that would attract people to her.
11:07But again, any candidate is going to you can't just say I'm a Democrat.
11:12I'm going to fight Donald Trump. That's not going to work anymore.
11:15It's I'm a Democrat. I'm going to fight Donald Trump.
11:18And here's how I'm going to change the deeply ingrained sclerosis that exists in Sacramento to move California forward.
11:28Any candidate that can do that is at least going to make the runoff for November.
11:34And I'm willing to bet that it's going to be a Republic. It will be a Democrat.
11:38And if there is a credible Republican candidate, the Republicans will unite and you'll get a Republican and Democrat competing against each other.
11:45But if if it's where we stand now, you could have two Democrats running against each other.
11:51And that would be a fantastic and interesting dynamic, the likes of which haven't been seen ever in California.
11:58To your point in 2020, I'm a Democrat fighting against Donald Trump.
12:02That was enough in 2024. That messaging clearly wasn't enough because we saw Republicans take the White House, the House and the Senate.
12:11I am curious, what do you make of Gavin Newsom in the last leg of his term here trying to make inroads with conservatives?
12:19We knew him as a national figure who was largely to the left.
12:23Now he's having, like I said, Charlie Kirk on his podcast, Steve Bannon on his podcast.
12:28In a conversation with Charlie Kirk, he changed his stance on trans athletes.
12:33This is the this is what his podcast says.
12:36Quote, It's time to have honest discussions with people that agree and disagree with us.
12:40It's time to answer the hard questions and be open to criticism and debate without demeaning or dehumanizing one another.
12:46I will be doing just that on my podcast, inviting people on who I deeply disagree with to talk about the most pressing issues of the day and inviting listeners from around the country to join the conversation.
12:56For him, why is the time now, considering he's been governor since 2019 and has has had a political career before that?
13:05Sure. Gavin Newsom's podcast is important for two reasons.
13:09So, one, if he does aspire to run for president in 2028, he can't do it by talking about the California miracle.
13:17He realizes that. I mean, he's been governor for eight years.
13:21That's an accomplishment. But, you know, you don't get points for showing up.
13:25California is not something that everybody can say, yay, California is crushing it because we're really not right now.
13:32The flip side of it, though, is I think what he's doing is really smart.
13:36What he is doing is he's bringing on Trump or Trump focused Republicans, and he's largely listening to them so that he can say, I understand what their thinking is.
13:49And what you're seeing right now is he's doing a lot of listening, a lot more listening than talking, which is actually quite smart.
13:56I wouldn't be surprised at a certain point in this dialogue if he flips the switch the other direction and he will bring these guests on and he'll listen.
14:06And then he'll start to challenge them with various arguments so that he is now seen as, OK, I get what the MAGA Republican base thinks.
14:17Here's how I'm going to pull some of those voters away for 2028 and attract them back to the Democrats again.
14:24But he can't do it unless he listens first.
14:28And it sounded almost like the Charlie Kirk interview. That was almost like an informational interview.
14:34Gavin Newsom was like, hey, my 13 year old likes you. Why?
14:37What are you doing that's so popular? What are you doing that is making you so widely successful?
14:42But I am curious, because as I sit here, I'm on the I'm on the East Coast. I'm in New York.
14:48What do you think the national media, the national dialogue surrounding California, surrounding this race is missing?
14:58I think it's you can't forget the the extreme natural disaster that just happened in California.
15:07I think that and this is where California is in a pickle.
15:11We can't be the state that is the resistance to Donald Trump while at the same time saying send us one hundred billion dollars to rebuild Los Angeles.
15:24Donald Trump is not going to say, oh, you can say what you want. I'll forgive that here.
15:29Let me open my checkbook for you.
15:31So there's going to have to be a balance here where the the rhetoric attacking Trump is going to have to drop if we want to get the funding that, quite frankly, is necessary.
15:43I mean, look, California, Los Angeles County is larger than 40 United States.
15:50It's huge. And if L.A. County suffers and the parts that burned in L.A. County Pacific, specifically the Pacific Palisades, that's where all the tax revenue comes from.
16:02So if California or if L.A. hurts, California hurts.
16:06If California hurts, the nation hurts. So I think that, you know, Gavin Newsom, people see, oh, he was on he was on Hannity.
16:17He went toe to toe with Ron DeSantis. That's the dialogue that's going on.
16:21I think what you're going to see more importantly, what's interesting is how does Gavin Newsom moderate himself so that he can always attack Donald Trump?
16:31That's easy. How does he moderate himself so that I mean, right now and the Democrats are looking for anybody that has figured out a way to attack Donald Trump and not look foolish or not look small.
16:45You know, the Democrats haven't figured it out in the Senate. Look at Chuck Schumer most recently.
16:50So Gavin Newsom is taking a different path and he may fail, but at least he's trying right now.
16:58I love talking about these types of races because it's so interesting and to seeing what issues matter.
17:04I know in the New York mayoral race, I've talked to voters that they're one issue voters and that issue is subway safety.
17:12When you're thinking about voters in the governor's race, what issues are most important to them?
17:18That's easy. The same issues have pulled one, two in California for the last decade.
17:25It's homelessness and crime. And here's where the story that California tells is not a very good one.
17:32In Sacramento, we've spent over 20 billion dollars on homelessness.
17:37That's just from Sacramento. And the problem has gotten worse. It's not gotten better.
17:43We've had we now have California has half the United States homeless population.
17:51I'm sorry to interrupt you, but 20 billion dollars spent on this. Is it a money management problem at that point?
17:59It's a money management problem and just they're stupid and how they spend money to build.
18:05You know, the money goes to an affordable housing provider, which then subcontracts to other affordable housing provider.
18:12And every level, someone takes their cut. So the money just consistently shrinks.
18:18And that's why you have, you know, homeless housing in Los Angeles right now is running at about eight hundred thousand dollars a door to build a new home.
18:27Build a new homeless home or house or apartment complex.
18:31So, I mean, look what we would have been better off if we had just written people a big fat check and said, figure it out.
18:39But the problem is, is that we're doing 19 different things. Nobody is in charge.
18:45And then that doesn't include what the cities are doing. And then the second issue is crime.
18:51I mean, look at downtown San Francisco right now, the Union Square area, which was, you know, the beautiful Macy's and the Nordstrom's with the curved elevator.
19:01It's beautiful. It's a ghost town right now. And the problem is, is that crime is one rampant.
19:08And it's these soft on crime policies by big city mayors.
19:12And the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, just lost to someone who is a more common sense Democrat.
19:18And Proposition 36 passed. So Californians are clearly worried about crime and keeping their families safe.
19:26And then, you know, the social issues here, again, I think that, you know, Gavin Newsom coming out and supporting, you know, or I guess putting it the other way, saying that boys shouldn't play in girls sports.
19:38That's an 80-20 issue. That's not a controversial view.
19:43But in California, the far left Democrats and especially Democrats in San Francisco Bay Area, they went crazy on this because they think that that's normal.
19:56And here's the difference. The Democrats talk about it in the abstract.
20:00What does Donald Trump do? He brings a female volleyball player who suffered a traumatic brain injury because a boy playing in a woman's game spiked a ball and it cost her to be to have a life threatening injury.
20:17He has humanized that issue. The Democrats talk in abstract. Parents are concerned.
20:24If you have girls, you should be concerned about this 80-20 issue.
20:28And Gavin Newsom realizes that he can tack back to the middle. He sounds reasonable.
20:34He didn't say that he would pass policies to make this a reality.
20:37He just said he just expressed a differing opinion on the issues.
20:41But the far left in California, they went completely bonkers.
20:47And from what Gavin Newsom said, it seemed to be a long way from his stances previously.
20:54But that is where a lot of Americans are. If you look at polling.
20:58So if if these governor if the governor contenders focus on crime, focus on homelessness, you think that's the way to go?
21:07I think that that focusing on the top two issues for sure.
21:10And then when you campaign throughout the state, you need to be able to localize issues.
21:16And again, this is with a state of approximately 40 million people.
21:20The issues that voters have in the city of Sacramento are a lot different than the issues voters have in the Central Valley.
21:28And I mean, Bakersfield is oil country. That's where oil is still is still drilled in California.
21:34It's a major part of Kern County. Those issues are going to be different than what L.A. is facing or San Diego is facing.
21:42So you talk over the top on big issues and what your platform is, and then you localize so that when you go into a community,
21:50people say, oh, she relates to me or I like what he has to say.
21:55That's what a successful campaign is going to do in 2026.
22:00Well, a lot remains to be seen in this race, definitely, especially with the looming vice president, Kamala Harris, deciding, will I jump in?
22:08Will I not? And I think that there are a lot of discussions that will be had.
22:13And I hope you will come back on, join me and have those conversations with me.
22:17Matt Klink, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. The best is yet to come in California.
22:23So stay tuned.