CNN host Fareed Zakaria has delivered a surprisingly blunt indictment of Californias Democrat monopoly, warning that the Golden State has become a showcase for how one-party progressive rule can wreck a place that should be thriving for ordinary citizens.
As reported by Gateway Pundit, Zakaria used his recent monologue to explain why voters in deep-blue California are increasingly angry and why Republican candidates such as Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt are gaining traction despite the states long-standing liberal tilt. According to a partial transcript via Real Clear Politics, Zakaria noted that, At a time when President Trump and Republicans are faring poorly in most polls, the story has been different in California.
Republican Steve Hilton finished ahead of many high spending Democrats in the governors race to advance to the November election, facing Democrat Xavier Becerra. He added that even in Los Angeles, an overwhelmingly Democratic city, Spencer Pratt, a Republican, former reality television personality, looked as if he might make the mayoral general election before finishing third.
Zakaria cautioned Democrats against brushing off these developments, arguing that the discontent is rooted in lived reality, not partisan spin. California Democrats will be tempted to dismiss all this as a sideshow, but the frustration is real and justified, he said, before reminding viewers that California is one of the most dynamic places on the planet. It has Silicon Valley, Hollywood, world class universities, extraordinary agriculture, ports, talent and natural beauty.
Despite those advantages, Zakaria described the state as a case study in how a rich society can spend more and more while producing less and less of what its ordinary citizens need. In his words, The paradox of California today is a successful economy attached to a failing model of governance. That failing model is the predictable result of unchecked progressive policies: bloated government, runaway spending, and a political class more interested in virtue signaling than in delivering basic services.
Zakaria walked through the numbers to show how far off course Sacramento has drifted. Consider the fiscal record. Since 2000, Californias population has grown by roughly 15 percent. But the states general expenditures have grown more than 200 percent, from $78 billion to about $248 billion. He continued, General spending per person has risen from about $2,300 to about $6,300. The number of state employees has grown by more than 50 percent by one count.
Then he posed the obvious question that many conservatives have been asking for years: Does anyone think that California government and its benefits have gotten 200 percent better in the last 25 years? For families crushed by taxes, crime, and collapsing public schools, the answer is self-evident, and it is fueling a quiet revolt against the Democrat establishment.
Zakaria identified housing as the central failure, exposing the hypocrisy of progressive rhetoric. Housing is the central failure. California has long spoken the language of compassion while building a system of exclusion, he said, citing Alicia Finley of the Wall Street Journal, who found that from 2021 to 2024, the L.A. metro area, with nearly 13 million people, issued only 118,000 building permits for new homes. Atlanta with about half that population issued 163,000.
The regulatory chokehold created by Democrats has made it too hard, slow and expensive to build, Zakaria observed. The result is predictable. Home prices soar, rents rise, workers commute farther, homelessness grows, young people leave. And people are leaving. Over the past seven years, the state has lost a net 1.9 million people through domestic migration.
That an anchor on CNN is now echoing long-standing conservative critiques of Californias progressive experiment underscores just how visible the failures have become. As Spencer Pratt is pushed off the Los Angeles mayoral ballot and Steve Hilton faces an entrenched Democrat machine, the question is no longer whether Californias model is broken, but how many more families will flee before its leaders admit what President Trump and Republicans have been arguing for years: big-government liberalism does not work, even in the richest of states.
Login