What are California values? Are they sprawling homeless encampments, public intoxication and drug use, and naked people walking through the streets? Are they rising crime rates, small businesses closing, families being driven out of their communities, and parents who cannot safely take their children to a park?
Those were the questions the Daily Signal’s senior national security and legal analyst Mehek Cooke raised during ABC News’ coverage of California’s primary elections Tuesday night.
The answers are already visible on the streets, she noted. The Daily Signal recently sent reporters into Skid Row, a Los Angeles neighborhood known for having one of the highest homeless populations in the United States. Residents described a city in crisis and demanded accountability from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. One military veteran who spent 26 years in Skid Row told the Daily Signal, “The whole city of LA is now Skid Row.” Another resident called the city’s homelessness spending scandal the “biggest rip-off in history.”
While Los Angeles allocated $1.3 billion to address homelessness in fiscal year 2023-24, it spent only an estimated $599 million by the end of that fiscal year. City leaders are trying to celebrate a recent 2.2% decline in homelessness, but they cannot spin the truth, Cooke noted. Homelessness in Los Angeles remains nearly 40% higher than it was in 2018. Residents are left asking where the money went and why the crisis remains visible on their streets.
Cooke argued on ABC News that Republicans can compete in California after years of one-party rule by refusing to overcomplicate their message and by focusing relentlessly on the issues that directly affect families.
“If Republicans continue to tell the truth and continue to deliver on affordability, moving forward, and the American dream for every single American, regardless of their ZIP code, they will not only win California,” Cooke said. “They are going to lock down the midterms.”
That message is landing with voters. Republican Steve Hilton emerged as the leading candidate in California’s open gubernatorial primary on Wednesday. In Los Angeles, Republican Spencer Pratt appeared poised to secure second place behind Bass, positioning himself for a potential November runoff.
Cooke said Pratt’s unexpected rise is not just about one candidate or one city race.
“This is exactly why you are seeing Spencer Pratt surge,” Cooke said. “He took a page out of President Trump’s playbook.”
For years, Democrats have missed the mark by dismissing Republicans and reducing their message to a single label: MAGA. But Cooke argued that this strategy misunderstands the voters President Trump and Republicans are reaching.
“Democrats continue to say ‘MAGA,’ meaning every Republican, and that is their number one failure,” Cooke said. “Make America Great Again is about everybody. It is about independents, blue-collar Hispanics, young men, the middle class, the working class, and the people that Democrats failed to show up for.”
Cooke described California as the clearest example of what happens when one party controls government for years without meaningful accountability. She also rejected the idea that public safety, accountability, and clean streets are partisan issues.
“That is not Republican or MAGA,” Cooke said. “That is basic human decency that Democrats have abandoned.”
California has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger won reelection in 2006. Tuesday’s results do not guarantee a Republican victory in November, but they are a warning shot to the Democratic Party: Voters are tired of paying the price for decline.
