Where’s Larry Elder? Leading Republican recall candidate avoids debates, financial scrutiny

The leading Republican recall candidate won’t debate his rivals.

He hasn’t released his taxes, as the other Republican candidates have done.

His political opponents have accused him of hiding information about his finances.

Radio talk show host Larry Elder is in a good position to become governor of the world’s fifth-largest economy and the most populous state in the nation. He’s leading the pack of Republicans seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom if the recall succeeds in the Sept. 14 election.

Elder’s campaign shows that, if elected, he would be a leader who likes to make his own rules about which questions he will answer, and when.

“I don’t think that this campaign has been one where transparency and disclosure are the trademark,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor of law and director of Loyola Law’s Public Service Institute.

While other candidates have accepted three debate invitations, Elder so far is sitting them all out. At an Aug. 4 debate at the Richard Nixon Foundation, four Republican candidates answered questions about COVID-19 mandates, critical race theory and homelessness. Elder couldn’t attend due to a prior commitment at a fundraising event, spokeswoman Ying Ma told the Times of San Diego.

“It makes no sense to have a circular firing squad among GOP contenders, where the only one who benefits is Gavin Newsom,” Ma said.

Fellow Republicans have begun to chastise Elder for skipping the questioning.

“He needs to show up and debate. Why is he hiding? Why is he not answering questions?” former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Elder has been making the rounds on conservative TV and radio shows, promising to undo COVID-19 safety mandates, bashing Newsom, and walking back his statement that Joe Biden won the 2020 election freely and fairly.

In an interview with The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board in early August, Elder said the president won “freely and fairly,” but days later went on the record with conservative radio hosts to “clarify” his position.

“Do I believe Joe Biden won the election fair and square?” Elder said on the Salem Radio Network. “Give me a mulligan on that one ... No, I don’t.”

He has chosen other friendly venues. In a San Jose church that openly rejected COVID-19 guidelines last year, Elder vowed to a largely maskless crowd that he would jettison mandates immediately. Other leading candidates have also said they would eliminate Newsom’s vaccine mandates for school employees and health care workers and mask mandate for schools.

”When I get elected, assuming there are still face-mask mandates and vaccine mandates, they will be repealed right away and then I’ll break for breakfast,” Elder said, as ABC 7 News reported.

Larry Elder’s finances

Since announcing his bid for office, Elder has released scant information about his business dealings and finances.

While most of his competition, including Newsom, released income details, Elder didn’t make his tax returns public.

Candidates were originally required to submit five years of tax returns to the Secretary of State’s Office under a 2019 law. After Elder was briefly barred from the ballot for what the Secretary of State’s office said was a redaction issue, a Sacramento judge struck down that requirement.

Elder’s campaign said he submitted more than 300 pages of tax documents to the state, but since the judge’s ruling, he has not made them public.

California public officials have long been required to submit a separate statement of economic interests detailing their relevant financial holdings, such as property, business positions and/or ownership, investments, income and gifts, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the state elections watchdog.

“The purpose is to give the public the ability to see the financial interests of their public officials to ensure the officials are making decisions to best serve the public, and not acting in their own financial interests,” the FPPC says on its website.

Elder’s initial statement of economic interest provided little information about his business dealings. He has since amended it to include more details of his finances.

Filed in Los Angeles County on July 16, his statement was two pages long and disclosed one source of income: Laurence A. Elder and Associates, where he is listed as talk show host and president of the company. The form showed Elder receiving more than $100,000 from the business but provided no other details.

Under FPPC rules, if a filer has 10% or greater ownership in a company, they must disclose more details about where the company gets its money, and list the name of each source of income of more than $10,000 to the company.

Caitlyn Jenner, for example, lists Cait’s World Inc. on her seven-page statement of economic interests, and reports income of more than $10,000 to the corporation from herself, Luxe Media Studio Inc., and five other media companies.

According to state business filings, Elder registered Laurence A. Elder and Associated in California in September 2000 as a foreign corporation with its principal location in Ohio.

Ohio records show Elder started the company in Cleveland in 1979, and it is currently active in Ohio. The most recent filing in California, submitted in July 2021, lists Elder as chief executive officer for the company and lists a Lake Tahoe address.

Following media reports and a formal complaint from the California Democratic Party, Elder submitted an amended report on Tuesday. The new report shows 11 sources of income to his business totaling $10,000 or more. Contributors include The Epoch Times, Turning Point USA, Cavalry Chapel Chino Hills, and Heartbeat at 22, an anti-abortion nonprofit organization.

Levinson and other experts say some of the fog around Elder’s finances could be due to an honest mistake by a first-time candidate. Newsom has committed paperwork gaffes, including failure to designate his party preference on the ballot.

But she said voters have a vested interest in knowing where candidates get their money.

“The idea is that people who want to hold a position of public trust should be accountable to those who they serve,” she said.

Elder’s lack of transparency and disclosures aren’t the actions of someone who is “serious about being governor,” said longtime GOP strategist Rob Stutzman.

“My impression is there’s no evidence that he grasps any of the fundamental skills to govern the largest state in the country,” he said.

Whether Elder’s transparency has any bearing on his ability to win election is a different question. As a longtime right-leaning, libertarian media personality, Elder thrives on flouting political norms.

“Either way it’s not going to hurt him, not nearly as much as it would a conventional candidate,” said Dan Schnur, a former chairman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission. “Because most of his voters don’t really care that much what the mainstream media thinks.”

Larry Elder and the media

California reporters gathered on a recent Friday for an online press conference with Elder and expected to ask some questions of the leading Republican recall candidate.

Over the course of an hour, Elder spoke about crime, race and anti-Asian hate. Bypassing questions from The Sacramento Bee, the Los Angeles Times, Politico and other mainstream outlets, Elder instead took questions from five journalists who write for Asian American audiences. They asked Elder about his feelings on defunding the police, keeping business in California and tackling crime in the Golden State.

One journalist, who works for a Bay area news outlet serving a Chinese-American audience, introduced himself as “longtime fan” of Elder.

His decision to ignore the mainstream media that day garnered praise from The Epoch Times, a far-right media publication. Elder hosts a video series published by the outlet, which has ties to an obscure Chinese spiritual movement called the Falun Gong.

According to an investigation by The New York Times, some former practitioners of Falun Gong have characterized the group as having “an extreme belief system that forbids interracial marriage, condemns homosexuality and discourages the use of modern medicine, all allegations the group denies.”

Questioned about the connection in a meeting with The Sacramento Bee editorial board in early August, Elder said he knows nothing about Falun Gong.

“‘I’ve met some of (The Epoch Times) executives. They seem like reasonable people to me, and many of the articles that I read in the Epoch Times seem like reasonable articles as well. I don’t know anything about that organization you mentioned,” he said, referencing the Falun Gong.

Elder has more difficult relationships with California media, including The Sacramento Bee. His campaign has said it will no longer grant access to its reporters because it objected to The Bee’s longstanding practice of limiting voter guide responses to a candidate’s own views, not attacks on their opponents.

Stutzman, the longtime Republican political consultant, said that Elder is not campaigning to represent all Californians.

Elder has a wide-established following of conservatives after 30 years as a radio talk show host. His listeners have heard him opine on many topics for years.

His views might make difficult winning a regular election in a largely Democratic state. In a recall election, Elder could win with little more than 10% of the vote.

“He is purely interested in gaining the plurality of the small a subset of voters in this state because that’s who’s gonna control the candidate side of this ballot question,” Stutzman said. “Essentially, it’s a Republican primary.”

This story was originally published August 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.