I’m not sure if this info will be accurate tomorrow, but it looks like Xavier Becerra will become the next governor of California (unless Steyer somehow pulls ahead).
He has a list of his views on the issues, but I have no idea if he will follow through on them or not. Newsom used to run on medicare for all until he actually had the power to implement it.
Newsom wants to run for president in 2028 (from what I can tell) but I seriously doubt he wins the primary. Who knows though.
I’m more curious if Becerra will be able to implement meaningful reforms in things like health care, housing affordability, etc when he wins. The democratic candidate usually gets about 60% of the vote in the general election for governor in CA.
I suspect not a huge change from the Newsom regime, though he seems to have a bit less charisma, energy and maverick impulses than Newsom. By CA standards he projects from afar like a somewhat bland, MOR, corporate Democrat. I’m sure he’ll propose reforms of one sort or another. Whether they’ll be bold or meaningful…eh, we’ll see. I’m not expecting much, but maybe he’ll surprise me. It’s certainly happened to me before (neither Schwarzenegger nor Jerry Brown in his second stint panned out as I first expected). It almost feels like he backed into the post position by accident - Harris decided not to run, Padilla decided not to run, Porter just couldn’t get traction, Swalwell very messily imploded, while Steyer was too plutocratic-looking for some of the masses and potentially too disruptive for some of the Democratic leadership and state business interests. It’s been a kinda odd campaign.
He’s miles and miles better than the alternative, though.
This is what I expect too. Basically nothing of use or changing anything. He’ll just keep the ship doing the same as always and not steer it into the rocks.
I hope he is better but I really do not think he will come close to meaningful change.
I don’t live there either, but housing affordability is a major issue there. so is homelessness and mentally ill homeless.
also California has such a huge economy (bigger than almost all nations) that when they institute statewide regulations in California it can set new national standards.
so if California sets new regulations for AI, companies will probably just make California’s standards the new national standard to avoid having two markets and two products.
also California is a state that can lead on health reform by improving the ACA and setting a positive standard for other states
Depends on the nature of the standards. Standards on use of AI might, in practice, cross state lines, but things like standards on datacenters would just mean that datacenters get built in other places instead of California. And standards on datacenters would be a lot easier for a state to regulate than standards on use of AI, which are probably better handled by school and corporate policies.
I guess that California could do something like mandate that any software sold in the state of California must have an option to come without any embedded AI tools, or the like. Residents of the state could still do whatever they want with AI, then, but once software companies are forced to make that available, it’d probably be available out of the state, too.
Yes Becerra will likely be our next governor, but the real election will be in November. Yesterday was just a runoff where we had 64(!) candidates running. The top two vote getters will compete in November for the position.