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PA Brown's avatar

Hear, hear. California voters may even be ready to pivot to a center-right gubernatorial candidate - any moderate Republicans left in CA? - who promises to clean things up and reduce living costs.

I'm also familiar with a similar affordable housing supply problem in Maryland, a state replete with ostensibly liberal voters who have favored cost-free virtue signaling Rainbow, BLM and "Thank You Dr Fauci" lawn signs while also sporting signs opposing zoning and land use reform, and where the myopic Democratic controlled state assembly just effectively neutered Gov Moore's signature but modest pro-housing legislative package. Dumb and dumber.

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Iota Aurigae's avatar

Just a heads up, the redistricting map you used is from 2022. ARP has a more recent one from last December (https://thearp.org/blog/apportionment/2030-apportionment-forecast-2024/). You might want to update your post to reflect this.

It's not nearly as bad as the 2022 estimate, but we still have a lot of work to do.

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M. Nolan Gray's avatar

For reasons I explain in the piece, I think policymakers should operare on the more dire prediction. California's 2022-2024 population recovery was almost entirely driven by the return of high levels of immigration under Biden, which we should expect to taper off significantly under Trump II.

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Shaked Koplewitz's avatar

Footnote 6 seems missing some words? But yeah, good piece.

(I'd also add that making California more functional by 2028 could help a lot with democrats' odds just by showing they can actually govern a state. Especially if the candidate is Gavin newsome).

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M. Nolan Gray's avatar

Fixed, thank you.

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forumposter123@protonmail.com's avatar

Best of luck but my personal advise to my nephew in California was to give up and move to the sunbelt.

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Active Voice's avatar

Fantastic article. Absolutely California needs to move fast to build and create an alternative to Trumpism. I write about that here: https://www.activevoice.us/p/the-urgent-need-to-build

It's the idea that voters need tangibility now that persuades me and that I want to keep pushing too. Look forward to reading more on this substack.

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Planning Polity's avatar

States have taken the time to assemble many task forces and conduct endless studies. It’s time they start listening to all these experts.

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Jack Blueman's avatar

The Democrats would rather keep their comfortable sinecures in blue states than make the changes necessary to actually be competitive nationally. It's time to ditch this party.

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Spencer's avatar

I think it will be hard for Democrat leadership to see this as the viable strategy that it is. They have pivoted to being the party of the top 10% and I would love to know how that demographic falls on the NIMBY-YIMBY scale (I can honestly see it being spread out on ideology).

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Max Levin's avatar

Great piece. Here’s to hoping the committee tomorrow surprises us and doesn’t kill the bills. I love this state and hope we can get our head on straight

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