A California of Boundless Opportunity

There are so many thank yous that I need to make. My wife Lori is here tonight, who made more sacrifices for my campaigns than can possibly be described.

I want to thank Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte whose leadership in the Senate has been an inspiration for all of us who have had the honor to serve with him.

But most of all, I need to thank all of you for everything you did on behalf of my recent campaign for state controller. The outpouring of support from all of you is something Lori and I will never forget.

Across the entire breadth of the Republican family—from the California Republican Assembly to the Congress of Republicans to the Republican League—you came together and did everything we asked of you—did everything that could have been asked—and by coming together the way you did - you brought us within 23/100ths of one percent of the vote—about a half a vote per precinct—of restoring the chief fiscal office of California to Republican hands for the first time in 28 years.

By uniting behind our common Republican principles, you—the volunteers and activists of our party—set an example that must become the model for all leaders of our party, all donors of our party, all wings of our party for all future campaigns of our party.

I want you to look around this room. I want you to look at each other. We are the California Republican Family. We are the antidote to a party that is progressively destroying the commerce, the innovation, the prosperity and the freedom that we once knew. We are all in this together, we are all on the same side and we—together—are all that stands between that party and the future of California.

What are we to do? Abraham Lincoln already answered that question for us: "Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not "can any of us imagine better?" but, "can we all do better?" The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our cause is new, so must we think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."

Three months ago, we lost every statewide race for the first time in 120 years. We hold no statewide offices. We hold majorities in neither legislative house. And yet, at this moment in history—and if united—we are the most powerful political force in California.

We are the force of political change at a time when change is imperative. We are the force of freedom at a time when our freedom and prosperity are being systematically destroyed by over-taxation, over-regulation, and over-litigation.

Look at what has been done to our state. A record budget surplus turned into a deficit bigger than the deficits of all the other states combined. A state that's now spending a larger portion of our incomes than ever before and delivering less than ever before and the only response from the Democrats is more taxes.

And that's just the tip of the fiscal iceberg dead ahead. Four years ago, California owed $7 billion to outside creditors. This year, it owes $41 billion. The Governor's answer? More borrowing.

This regime has placed enormous new obligations on the state's pension systems, while funneling pension funds into the suspicious ventures of their political contributors and pet political causes. The result is devastating: crushing unfunded liabilities mounting exponentially into the future.

Payoffs to trial lawyers have brought the worker's compensation system to the brink of collapse, with costs now reaching 40 percent of payroll for some employers. The Chamber of Commerce estimates that a business today needs to gross 10 percent more than last year just to pay for the cost of Davis' regulations.

Ladies and Gentlemen, our state's back is to the wall. I know we're all disappointed with the elections last fall. But does anyone here doubt that if the election were held today, the results would be radically different?

The people are awakening. And they can hear us now. And they're asking, "What has happened to our state?"

My parents moved our family to California in 1965. They came here seeking a better future for their children. My Dad had been out of work for over a year; my mom was a homemaker. And yet they came here in the summer of 1965 and immediately found good jobs and a home of their dreams. It was a 4-bedroom ranch style home with a 40-foot swimming pool and a third-acre fully landscaped. They bought that home for $35,000.

California was the land of opportunity. Taxes were low and jobs were plentiful. The highways were the finest in the world. My Dad commuted 40 miles to downtown Los Angeles every morning—about a 45-minute drive in rush-hour. Our hydro-electric and nuclear plants were making electricity so cheap, that electricity meters were supposed to become obsolete within ten years. Our water storage was so immense that many communities didn't bother with water meters. Coming from Westchester County, New York, where the schools were supposed to be the best in the country, I had to scramble to catch up with California's schools.

I remember that state. I lived there. It was real. And it's gone.

The home my parents bought for $35,000—if it were new - should be selling today for $180,000 after adjusting for inflation. But the homes in that neighborhood—now 40 years older—now cost more than twice that.

My parents wouldn't have been able to afford that house. They wouldn't have been able to find work, either. California lost over 200,000 jobs last year. And if they had found the work, they couldn't have gotten there—Downtown Los Angeles is now TWO HOURS from Thousand Oaks in rush hour.

They couldn't have afforded their taxes either. That year, the state spent a little over six-dollars from every hundred that people earned. Today, Davis is spending nearly ten-dollars out of every hundred you earn.

If my family—and every family like ours—came looking for a better future for their kids today—they wouldn't find it in California.

According to the Census, those families today look at our state, with its bountiful resources; with the most equitable climate on the entire continent; with every blessing that God could possibly bestow upon a land—and they're finding a better place to live and work and raise their families out in the desolation of the Arizona and Nevada deserts.

No conceivable act of God could ever wreak such devastation upon our state. Only government could do that. And it has.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have the opportunity to make our state over again.

We are already putting $9,000 behind every student in this state; can you imagine the kind of classrooms we would have if that money were actually getting to them?

Our revenues already vastly exceed anything we've had before—we have it within our means already to restore the finest highway system in the world; to complete the greening of California; to produce clean, cheap and abundant electricity.

We are poised on the Pacific Rim in a position to dominate trade and commerce in the next century—and all we have to do is remove the obstacles that our government has placed in their way.

We have everything that we need to bring this state back—except for one thing—the votes.

And the votes merely await a united and earnest appeal from us.

My campaign received the most votes on the ticket last year despite running for a lesser-known office and despite a five-to-one spending disadvantage for two reasons. The appeal was united across the broad rank and file of our party. And the appeal was earnestly based upon our core Republican principles.

There's a lesson here. If we will simply do what Lincoln and what Reagan taught us—make a united and earnest appeal to the voters—we will succeed. And then we will fulfill the momentous task that history has placed in our hands: to bestow upon our children the California of boundless opportunity that our parents once bestowed upon us.

I thank you.