What the canceled debate reveals about Democrats

Two Republican candidates for governor are leading a crowded field in the polls, so what do Democrats do? Cancel a planned debate. Just hours before it was scheduled to start. 

What a total joke California Democrats have become. 

The cancellation of the USC gubernatorial debate is just the latest example of total Democrat incompetence.

The same Democrat incompetence that gave us high speed rail without tracks, a “butterfly bridge” to nowhere, and hundreds of billions lost to fraud and corruption, now denies Californians the opportunity to hear any challenge to their 16 years of failed and corrupt one-party rule.

This was to have been an important debate. Californians were expecting to hear directly from the candidates about the future of our state, especially in a crowded race.

Instead, candidates who didn’t qualify started whining. They were led by Xavier Becerra, the utterly useless health secretary under President Joe Biden, who pushed the outrageous and unjustified vaccine mandates and masks for 2-year-olds. 

Of course it’s no surprise that Becerra and the other LPDs (Low Polling Democrats) immediately played the race card. They are Democrat career politicians, after all.

But as I pointed out last week: If you want to make it to the debate stage, run a better campaign! Why should you be given a platform if your support among Californians barely registers?

Then, exactly as you would expect from California’s insular ruling elite, Democrat politicians in Sacramento piled on. Assembly leader Robert Rivas, at the head of a laundry list of left-wing factions and pressure groups, wrote to USC demanding the debate be changed.

Preposterously, they described politicians trundling along in low single digits for months as “leading candidates,” and demanded that the rules should be rigged in order to include them.

Shamefully, USC caved to false accusations of racism, and canceled the debate with less than 24 hours’ notice. 

What a pathetic humiliation. How can anyone take USC seriously as a higher education institution after this? 

USC gets over $1.3 billion in federal funding every year. That’s taxpayer money, which comes with a basic expectation that you can handle something as simple as a debate with competence and independence.

That didn’t happen.

It’s why I have written to Education Secretary Linda McMahon calling for an immediate suspension of all federal payments to USC, pending a full investigation into this anti-free speech shambles. 

Of course whoever is responsible at USC should be fired, and the university’s president Beong-Soo Kim should show some accountability for this debacle and resign.

What lessons should we draw from this fiasco?

First: These Democrats simply cannot run anything properly. 

How can they possibly be trusted to deal with the cost of living crisis they created, or homelessness, or crime, or the next wildfire, if they can’t even organize a debate?

This is what we see all the time in California. Nothing gets fixed. Everything turns into a mess. And the public is always let down.

It’s the same dysfunction that’s given us the highest poverty rate, highest unemployment rate, and highest cost of living in America.

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It’s why we have some of the worst school results in the country despite spending nearly the most.

It’s why California is ranked 50th out of 50 states for opportunity, 50th out of 50 for affordability — and dead last for our business climate too.

But perhaps even deeper than the incompetence, this sorry episode highlights the arrogance of a failed regime desperately trying to cling to power.

They care more about pandering to their activists than serving the public.

California Democrats always put the interests of their political insiders ahead of the people.

This isn’t just about one event. It’s about a corrupt political culture where no one is held accountable, where insiders call the shots, and where failure is brushed aside.

Canceling a debate instead of fixing a problem is exactly how California has been run for years. Californians are tired of it. We just want things to work.

Every aspect of this ridiculous farce shows why we desperately need change in California, and why I’m leading the race for governor.

Steve Hilton is a Republican candidate for governor. @stevehiltonx stevehiltonforgovernor.com