Victor Davis Hanson interviews California gubernatorial candidate Elaine Kolot about California’s fiscal, regulatory, and infrastructure failures, arguing the state’s money is siphoned through middlemen, mandates, and nonprofit/NGO structures rather than delivered to core services.
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This is a long-form political interview centered on California governance rather than a narrow market call. Victor Davis Hanson opens with concerns about California’s leadership, the Pacific Palisades fire recovery, infrastructure decay, and the idea that the state’s problems stem from a mix of incompetence, ideology, and bureaucratic drift. Elaine Kolot introduces herself as a no-party-preference candidate for governor, a farmer in San Diego County, and a home developer in the Pacific Palisades area, saying she entered the race after years of watching California decline. The discussion repeatedly returns to a few core themes: fire recovery, water and power systems, high costs, unfunded mandates, NGOs/nonprofits as middlemen, and the state’s alleged dependence on a small number of wealthy taxpayers. …
Near term, the actionable setup is political and state-level: California’s affordability, fire recovery, and permitting failures remain live campaign catalysts. The immediate risk is that reform messaging gets drowned out by better-funded establishment candidates or breaks against her if voters prefer a familiar partisan label.
Over the next few months, the base case she is arguing for is that frustration with housing, taxes, infrastructure, and public safety keeps building until a broader anti-status-quo coalition forms. That view would need evidence from polling or turnout shifts among independents and moderate Democrats to be credible.
The structural thesis is that California is increasingly constrained by a centralized, mandate-driven regime that weakens local capacity and drives capital and talent out. If that regime persists, the long-run implication is a less dynamic state with higher costs, weaker infrastructure, and more dependence on a narrow tax base.
California’s disaster recovery and rebuilding are slowed by a system that routes money through middlemen rather than directly to the people or work that need it.
Kolot argues FEMA money and state funds move through contractors, accountants, and NGOs before reaching actual projects, creating room for fraud and delay.
California’s network of NGOs, nonprofits, churches, and special-interest groups should be radically reduced or shut down because it enables fraud and blocks accountability.
She repeatedly says these entities act like government agencies without equivalent auditing and should be stopped one by one.
California is financially overdependent on a small number of high earners and billionaires, and punitive taxes or retroactive taxes risk pushing that base out of the state.
She says a large share of tax revenue comes from roughly 200 billionaires and that exit by high earners would deepen the deficit.
Was there an agenda behind the slowness and incompetence in the Palisades fire response, or was it just typical California incompetence — and was there an ideological agenda that made the disaster worse?
Collett argues it wasn't intentional but a three-to-four-decade problem of not returning taxpayer dollars to California infrastructure meaningfully. She points to aging water systems (tree system), lack of brush clearance, inadequate fire department turnarounds, and too much conflicting legislation as systemic failures rather than a deliberate ideological agenda.
Why don't you introduce yourself to us and give us a brief description of why you're running?
Collett introduces herself as a no-party-preference candidate for California governor, a former Daily Signal correspondent, a farmer in San Diego County and home builder/developer in Pacific Palisades. She explains that she had an awakening in 1991 about how California changed — she went from feeling lucky to live there to worrying daily — and realized California's one-party state system is 'killing us' while 41% of Californians are independent or disillusioned with the major parties.
What would you do to speed along the rebuilding in Pacific Palisades, and can you connect that to your ideas about the billionaire tax and below-market loans for people?
Collett does not directly answer what she would do to speed rebuilding. Instead, she reiterates the systemic infrastructure failures — the tree water system that couldn't maintain pressure, no fire department turnarounds, lack of brush clearance — and notes California has too much conflicting legislation, suggesting a 'bill for a bill' approach.
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