California Republicans share some blame for the poverty, homelessness and crime currently plaguing the state, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez argued.
Though Lopez acknowledged how Democrats “deserve to be on the hot seat” based on their current control in all statewide offices, he explained “none of that happened overnight, nor did it happen exclusively under Democratic leadership.”
“For decades, through Democratic and Republican leadership, California made the mistake of not building enough housing to keep up with the flood of people who moved here to fill jobs in the state’s burgeoning economy. It’s one of many factors in rising home prices and homelessness today,” Lopez wrote Saturday.
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He more directly blamed the GOP for crime and illegal immigration based on its support for gun rights and the agriculture industry.
“Many of them come here to work in the largely conservative agri-business industry, which looks the other way while writing campaign checks to GOP lawmakers. Many more come to escape narco-violence in Mexico, where as many as 70% of the guns are sourced from the U.S.,” Lopez wrote. “It’s more than a little bit hypocritical to bash crazy, reckless California on public safety when no amount of carnage in the nation, including mass shootings at shopping malls and schools (on Wednesday it was two students and two teachers dead at a Georgia high school), can loosen the gun lobby’s death grip on GOP lawmakers.”
He also criticized Republicans for refusing to expand their base and regain power in California to solve these problems.
“In a state that proudly celebrates inclusion and leads the resistance to the politics of race-based scapegoating, climate change denial and the stripping of women’s reproductive rights, the out-of-touch GOP has been hell-bent on shrinking its tent. Reagan, who signed an abortion rights bill as governor and an immigrant amnesty bill as president, would be booted out of today’s GOP,” Lopez wrote.
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“None of them has offered winning solutions to deep-seated problems, and it might be too late for a party resurgence because as the electorate has grown more diverse, GOP voter registration has dwindled to roughly 25%. You can’t blame Democrats for that,” he concluded.
California has not had a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger who served from 2003 to 2011.
