The announcement that Jerry Sanders, 74, is retiring in coming weeks after 12 years as CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce was big news. Besides leading the chamber, where he helped the binational CaliBaja economy to prosperous new heights, the San Diego State alum also enjoyed a generally successful seven-year run as San Diego mayor. He took office in 2005 and stabilized City Hall in the wake of scandals that led to Mayor Dick Murphy’s resignation. (The low point was when the sweeping pension reform he pushed and voters endorsed was rejected by state courts.) From 1993 to 1999, he served as police chief, where he won acclaim for responding to criticisms of his department by introducing a proactive community policing approach. Sanders is on the short list of the most effective leaders in recent city history.
But Sanders’ journey is also interesting for what it says about the transformation of California politics during his time in public life. After years as a Republican stalwart, he left the party to become a no-party-preference voter following well-publicized breaks with conservatives on guns and gay rights. He was one of many to move on. Nevertheless, in an interview Thursday with an editorial writer, Sanders said he was among those who believed the GOP had an opportunity to escape its moribund status in California — if the party focused on pocketbook issues and crime instead of hot-button social issues.
This is not as improbable as it may seem to younger Californians who see nearly wall-to-wall elected Democrats across local, state and federal offices. New York City and the state of Massachusetts both had reputations as being bastions of liberalism well before the Golden State, and both have often elected pragmatic Republicans as mayor and governor, respectively, when dominant Democrats were perceived as out of touch.
Doesn’t that sound like what’s happened in California, where voters’ concerns about the cost of living just keeping growing but the issue never seems to be a major focus during elections?
Sanders sees this as possible. “The middle class and the lower middle class have been left out of the conversation. I think that had a big part in the national election,” he said. Moderate Republican “willing to focus on issues that really appeal to people” may do better in general elections than those who focus on the hard-right GOP base and winning the party’s . “That’s what really harms them,” he said. “We’ve got a much younger population, a different generation entirely.”
To be clear, The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board hopes that the state’s two-party system gets healthier not because of any deep affection for the Republican worldview but because it will mean much more attention will be paid to many neglected policy areas. As Sanders notes, the election of more business-friendly Democrats to the Legislature is already under way. But this trend only portends more moderate economic policies. It doesn’t make it more likely that state elected leaders finally will have no-holds-barred debates on crucial issues that don’t involve regulation and taxes.
One such issue is obvious: public education. California continues to have mediocre to abysmal test scores that are often worse than those in both blue union states and red non-union states. Yet it has an education establishment that is cool to the idea it is doing anything wrong and has even made it harder for parents to evaluate their kids’ schools.
Another issue is less obvious: how to incorporate rapidly improving artificial intelligence into government in a way that saves the state billions of dollars. It’s already clear that the government status quo will be fiercely protected as a de facto jobs program even more than as a provider of needed services. This will make fixing the state’s grim fiscal picture even worse than it already appears.
Plainly, California doesn’t just need pro-business moderates in the Legislature. It needs lawmakers who care much more about improving schools and protecting taxpayers than those now running the state Capitol. That’s not likely to happen in a state where progressive Democrats and pro-business Democrats are the only elected officials with real clout.
