Kudos to Ken Griffin and Sergey Brin, the two billionaires going public against leftist outrages in New York City and California. They understand that standing ground and fighting back against adversaries has great potential while accommodation hasn’t ceased the recriminations against their success.
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Griffin blasted Mayor Zohran Mamdani for showboating in front of the entrepreneur’s Manhattan residence to promote his bizarre pied-à-terre tax. Brin boldly stepped forward with a $57 million contribution for countermeasures to California’s proposed five percent wealth tax while pointedly invoking his family’s 1979 flee from socialism and “the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union.” Several other California billionaires and business leaders have joined Brin to defeat what the Wall Street Journal has called “the biggest act of economic self-sabotage in U.S. history.”
Words have power, but billionaires have real resources that can result in historic change.
But if Brin and his financial peers want to make their efforts last for years ahead, they should apply their vast resources to shape common sense governmental, tax, and regulatory policies and make a run at California’s governorship. Now that they’re in for the half, they should go in for the whole.
There is a brief window of opportunity before June 2’s gubernatorial primary where they can slow or potentially reverse the disaster wrought by Gavin Newsom and an increasingly democratic socialist legislature. With just a fraction of their fortunes, it might be possible to affect the outcome of the governor’s race and prevent the accession of another vassal into California’s left-wing kingdom.
Less than four weeks remain before California’s “jungle primary” decides where the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to November. Today, there appear to be four realistic “top two” survivors: Republicans Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton and Democrats Tom Steyer and Xavier Becerra. Nevertheless, polling has been extremely erratic, and six Democrats are splitting their party’s vote. The two Republicans are within striking distance of making it to the top two if the Democrats continue their circular firing squad.
On the other hand, national Democrats, union bosses, and left-wing special interests are likely on the cusp of spending tens of millions to assure that the top two survivors in the jungle primary are either both Democrats or one Democrat and one Republican. The Republicans have not won the governorship in the last 20 years, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was not a conservative favorite. So even if the Democrat nominee carries Newsom’s dead weight, the numbers will favor dynastic transition for zero change in Sacramento if the final match-up involves a Democrat versus a Republican.
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Hence, the best hope for reform and change is to elect a Republican governor, and to achieve that goal is to move urgently to weigh the electoral scales in favor of two Republicans vying in November. Either Bianco, a Riverside Sheriff, or Hilton, a Trump-endorsed television commentator would be preferable to a stale re-run in Sacramento.
A Republican governor would have vast authority over fresh appointments to boards and commissions to apply reasonable standards and rules promising growth and progress. Look for education reforms, strict deterrence of waste and fraud, assignment of common sense tough-on-crime judges, and a hard look towards reversing radical climate change rules that added to higher gasoline and utility prices. Executive powers are extensive in California, and vetoes would place a stranglehold on the legislature’s worst excesses and get the budget under control.
California political sage and radio commentator John Phillips agrees. He recently cautioned Silicon Valley benefactors of low-polling San Jose Mayor, Democrat Matt Mahan to stop wasting their dollars and, instead, to donate heavily to Republican candidates Bianco and Hilton. As Phillips wrote in a recent column, “The play here would be to try to engineer a Republican versus Republican runoff in November.”
Words have power, but billionaires have real resources that can result in historic change. How? They can form a Super Pac that brings together a winning team using their own superb social media, advertising professionals, and skilled marketing people — the same ones they use to make their billions. The political strategy would be to suppress the outcomes of the higher polling Democrats, increase the fortunes of the lower-polling Democrats and massively boost the fortunes and name identifications of the two Republicans. By spending upwards of $250 million, Brin and several of his counterparts might make this happen.
Those who achieved success and accumulate wealth didn’t get there by not taking risks. The added benefit is they would force their adversaries to bleed financial resources and limit the breadth of their effectiveness by forcing them to fight a multi-front war — making it harder to pass the wealth tax. By robustly entering the political battlefield, the billionaires would send messages of refusing to accede to the endless targets on their backs and that they are devoted to compete in the struggle for California’s destiny.
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Ken Khachigian was chief speechwriter to Ronald Reagan and chief campaign strategist for California Gov. George Deukmejian. He is author of the memoir Behind Closed Doors: In the Room With Reagan and Nixon.
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