California turned its back on the GOP. Four Harvard degrees won’t help Republican Lanhee Chen
Dr. Lanhee Chen, a candidate for California State Controller, has a problem: He’s a Republican.
In a state where Democrats have 22% more registered voters, where President Donald Trump was thrashed by 29 points and where a GOP candidate hasn’t won statewide since 2006, that’s a problem.
For his part, Chen is a nearly-ideal candidate — for 2006. He has not one, not two, not three but four degrees from Harvard. He’s a professor at Stanford and has been an advisor to former President George W. Bush and Sen. Mitt Romney. He regularly appears on CNN.
He’s young, telegenic, Asian American and has a compelling personal story. Unfortunately, being a Republican in California means you’re yoked to Trump.
Those four Harvard degrees couldn’t help Chen cobble together an answer about whether or not he voted for Trump, who fomented insurrection, screwed up the pandemic response, thinks fascism is kind of OK and generally had no idea what he was doing.
Chen said he doesn’t “want this candidacy to be defined by the former president.” Of course he doesn’t. But his party does, and Chen can’t dance around that.
The once-mighty California GOP congressional delegation has been whittled down to nine people who don’t want the Jan. 6 insurrection investigated.
The recall, a massively expensive, elaborate practical joke, features exactly one remotely-credible GOP candidate, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who probably wishes he had never posed for a photograph with Trump.
Another Republican, Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, is running for California Attorney General as a No Party Preference candidate — her way of saying, “I got nothing.”
Schubert, who would be a perfectly plausible candidate back in that mythical election of 2006, has now decided that the party of Ronald Reagan is the party of radioactive reactionaries.
Schubert has even attracted an $8,100 donation from Angelo Tsakopolous, a Sacramento developer, Democratic money-hitter and father of Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (awkward). Schubert has raised $1 million, which would buy her 30 seconds of Los Angeles television time at 3 a.m.
Formerly quasi-sensible political figures like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy now parrot the Jan. 6 lie. His immediate reaction on the day of the insurrection was the correct one, and then he decided that he would shelve whatever was left of his personal dignity.
McCarthy did, however, enthusiastically endorse Chen as “a brilliant policy mind and proven problem-solver who has spent his career tackling some of California and America’s biggest fiscal challenges.”
Maybe Chen can tackle why McCarthy’s party rejects linear thought.
The road to California’s GOP resurgence has been littered by people like former Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who came within eight points of being elected state controller in 2014. There was also Dan Schnur, a former Gov. Pete Wilson spokesman, who tried to run for secretary of state in 2014 as an NPP. He got 9.2% of the vote.
Neel Kashkari, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury, ran an I’m-the-future-of-the-GOP race for governor in 2014 against former Gov. Jerry Brown. He managed to do marginally better, spending several million dollars than former Hewlett-Packard and eBay CEO Meg Whitman did against Brown in 2010, who spent $148 million.
Kashkari gave up on reforming California’s GOP and moved to Minneapolis to run the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a kind of meteorological penitence.
What passes for the future of the Republican Party in California in the recall election are wealthy dilettantes, washed-up formers, name ID builders and people with $4,000 to throw out the window. That’s not a base, it’s a Zoom call from hell.
Unlike the Reagan era, the California GOP numbers aren’t there anymore.
As a would-be state controller, Chen will have lots of time to crunch them after. Or before — in 2006.
This story was originally published July 9, 2021 at 6:00 AM.