Former chair of CA Republican party worries about 'outflow' of state's middle class
LOS ANGELES - At last week’s Democratic National Convention, Senator Kamala Harris became the first California Democrat to appear on a national ticket.
Monday, as the Republican National Convention kicked off, Harris’ home state of California became the focal point of a number of speeches, most notably that of Kimberly Guilfoyle.
“If you want to see the Socialist Biden/Harris future for our country, just take a look at California,” said Guilfoyle, a prominent campaign surrogate for President Trump. “It is a place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation, and immaculate environment, and the Democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets, and blackouts in homes.”
“In President Trump’s America, we light things up. We don’t dim them down. We build things up, we don’t burn them down,” Guilfoyle continued.
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Guilfoyle, who has dated Donald Trump Jr. since 2018, was married to current California Governor Gavin Newsom from 2001 to 2006.
But was that depiction of California a fair one?
FOX 11’s Elex Michaelson spoke with Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee Member from California to find out if he agreed with Guilfoyle’s sentiment.
“I do,” Steel said, adding that he did not believe California was, in fact, central to the RNC’s opening night, as there was also major focus placed on releasing hostages, medical therapies, fighting big pharma, and unrest in bigger cities that is being felt in the suburbs.
In regards to California, Steel said the ultimate issue was an “outflow problem.”
“There’s a squeeze against the middle class,” Steel, the former chair of the California Republican Party, said. “The wealthy, Silicon Valley, the billionaires, they can live here, they’ve got the money moved all over the world, the Silicon Valley companies don’t pay taxes at all… so they’re having a good ride… the middle class doesn’t know how to do that.”
Given that inability to afford to stay in the state, Steel cited census bureau data that indicates California has been losing members of the middle class for 20 years, to the tune of 3,000 net individuals a week, many moving to Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.
The outflow of the middle class, Steel said, has resulted in a growing imbalance of the “seriously poor and super-wealthy.”
“The seriously poor go to work every morning, driving 50 miles to help the seriously wealthy,” Steel continued. “In the meantime, the middle class is looking around, with new taxes, and new regulations, and just the anti-middle class attitude from the Democrats, and they’re getting out of town.”
In an interview on The Issue Is, Steel also discussed his expectation for the reset of the RNC, his praise for Ambassador Nikki Haley, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), State Representative Vernon Jones (D-GA), and other night one RNC speakers, and his excitement over a new, more diverse, Republican party - including, potentially, his wife, Michelle Steel, a member of the OC Board of Supervisors who is running against Congressman Harley Rouda (D-CA) in the November election.
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