Is California now a deep blue state in which moderate conservatives no longer have a chance of victory in statewide elections? Or do such candidates still have hopes if they pass on the two-party system and run as independents apart from the partisan fray?

The former theory has been the topic of recent stories in the national media. But it’s the latter view driving the candidacy of tech entrepreneur Steve Poizner, who was elected California insurance commissioner in 2006 as a Republican and is seeking a second term this year while running as an independent. (Incumbent Dave Jones is termed-out and is running for attorney general.)

Poizner, a resident of Los Gatos in Silicon Valley, is a lock to advance past the June 5 primary to a November general election race against state Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens. The other two candidates in the race have little name recognition and are lacking in institutional support.

But a Poizner win would seem to be a long-shot in the general election, based on 2014’s results. That year, several Republican candidates ran for statewide office with plausible claims to Arnold Schwarzenegger-style moderate conservatism. Since they were not going up against incumbents, two of these candidates – Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who ran for controller, and Pepperdine University administrator and civic activist Pete Peterson, who ran for secretary of state – were thought to have decent chances. Both lost by at least 500,000 votes.

Yet Poizner has factors in his favor that those 2014 GOP candidates didn’t.

The first is Lara’s struggle to define the campaign on his terms. Since Poizner got generally good marks as insurance commissioner for balancing the interests of consumers and insurers, Lara has focused on Poizner’s strong anti-undocumented immigrant positions in 2010, when he sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination but lost to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman. Poizner now disavows those positions. In endorsing Poizner, the editorial boards of the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury-News and the San Francisco Chronicle focused instead on Poizner’s readiness to deal with such difficult insurance issues as autonomous vehicles and increasing wildfire risks.

Meanwhile, the “issues page” of Lara’s own campaign website lists nine topics, including transportation and criminal justice – but not insurance. It appears designed for a gubernatorial candidate. Poizner’s website focuses primarily on his dealings with insurers in his previous term and his endorsements.

Lara’s history as co-sponsor of Senate Bill 562 – which would commit the state government to adopting a single-payer health care system – is also proving a double-edged sword. His high-profile support of the proposal has won raves from the California Nurses Association and progressive Democrats.

But SB562, which passed the Senate last summer before stalling in the Assembly, has faced a backlash from across the ideological spectrum for being vague and incomplete. The measure’s language doesn’t specify how its estimated $400 billion annual tab would be covered; how it could overcome a California Constitution provision blocking sharp increases in state spending; and how it would be able to divert federal health dollars for unprecedented use on a single state’s unique program.

Poizner campaign literature suggests questions about the cost of SB562 will be a focus of his fall campaign ads.

Should high-risk homes get insurance protection?

Lara’s similarly populist position on wildfire costs may also play better with progressives than with voters in general. He has proposed legislation to make it more difficult for insurers to consider recent fires when setting rates and deciding on whether to offer coverage in high-risk wilderness areas.

This has won praise from officials and homeowners in rural counties. But the measure has also faced criticism from insurers, who say if Lara’s proposal is enacted, millions of homeowners in low-risk areas would have to subsidize the rates of those in wilderness zones.

Still, Lara has a conventional but potent ace in the hole: his ability to run a fall campaign ad blitz reminding Californians of Poizner’s history as a Republican in a state with a dwindling number of Republicans. The latest state registration data show only one-quarter of voters identify with the GOP – a record low.

A Probolsky Research poll from last month put Poizner ahead of Lara. But most of those surveyed were undecided or didn’t want to take any position.

Poizner, a 61-year-old tech entrepreneur, was California’s insurance commissioner from 2007 to 2011, and besides Arnold Schwarzenegger, is the last Republican to successfully win statewide office.

In a comment to SFGate, Poizner argued that it makes more sense to have the position be held by an independent, saying that “there’s no room for partisan politics. The insurance commissioner needs to be fiercely independent.”

Additionally, Republican registration in the state has continued to decline – and the party only faces increased hurdles in the Trump era, with the state firmly situating itself at the center of the so-called “Resistance.”

Under 30 percent of the electorate in California is Republican. 

When Poizner lost his 2010 primary for governor to Silicon Valley CEO Meg Whitman, he ran as a hardline opponent of illegal immigration, a position unlikely to help him in his campaign. However, he’s since said that his views on the issue have “evolved.”

But despite his history of advocating for a Republican agenda in the deeply liberal state, the tech mogul has the ability to self-fund, giving him the opportunity to present a more formidable challenge to Democrats even without a party infrastructure backing him.

For example, Republican Peter Kuo has just under $4,000 cash in his campaign account, according to recent financial disclosures.

If he’s successful, Poizner will be the first Californian to win statewide as a “no party preference” candidate. But he may be situated in the middle of an emerging trend, as an increasingly sizable segment of the voting population – nearly 5 million California voters – cite “no party preference” on their registration.

Meanwhile, among Democrats, State Senator Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, and San Gabriel Valley pulmonologist Dr. Asif Mahmood are also running for the seat.

Current commissioner Dave Jones is termed out and running for attorney general.

And while the job of insurance commissioner is to oversee regulation of the state’s insurance markets and act as a consumer protection advocate, political beliefs on issues outside of the position’s core roles will likely factor into voters’ decisions.

I just got a mailer from from JobsPAC, a 527 organization, touting Republican Mike Villines, who’s running for insurance commissioner. The group reportedly is funded with insurance-industry money, from companies that don’t like Democratic opponent Dave Jones.

It pillories his opponent as: “Dave Jones — Just Another Tax and Spend Politician….A Career Politician Who Spends and Taxes Too Much…Largest Tax Hike in State History…Dave Jones voted to raise your taxes by $37 billion during the worst recession in a generation and with unemployment above 10%. Since Jones’s tax hike, California’s unemployment rate rose to 13%. Source: ABX3 3, 2009.”

But it was Villines who provided the key, Republican vote for that tax increase! As Assembly Republican leader, according to Wikipedia, “Villines’ leadership was key to the February 2009 Budget Deal…. He was recognized by members of both political parties for his willingness to pursue a bipartisan solution to rapidly expanding crisis despite the risk to his political career.”

His treachery to California taxpayers even won him the big-government John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, which is falsely named because JFK actually cut taxes.

In his sycophantic acceptance speech, Villines said of his sellout on taxes:

Most of us will reach a defining moment, where we gain a new level of understanding and learn a lot about ourselves….

For me, there was nothing more fiscally or socially irresponsible than inaction…especially when we knew the facts.

I was determined not to let California fail and to the best I could to solve the problem

And so I worked with Dave, Karen, Darrell and  Governor Schwarzenneger to craft a budget compromise.

It wasn’t easy.  Our budget was one that we all disliked.

But in the end, we believed it was practical, fair, and the only way to get California on the road to recovery.

It was not until I faced this moment that I learned a great deal about politics and myself.

I learned there can be a big difference between practical truth and ideological truth.

I gained a new understanding of what it means to make choices that are not black and white.

I learned that courage is taking the hard road even when there is an easy way out.

And I gained a real understanding of what politics should be – putting the interests of the people ahead of what’s easy or best for my career.

Of course, here we are 20 months after his tax-increase sellout, and there’s no “recovery” in sight. Unemployment still is more than 2 percentage points higher than the national average. And it has risen from 10.5 percent in February 2009, when the tax increase was passed because of Villines’ sellout, to 12.4 percent today.

And as to “courage” and “putting the interests of the people ahead of what’s easy or best for my career,” he’s now trying to lie his way into another government job.

Jones also is terrible. But he never advertised himself as something other than what he is: a tax-increasing socialist Democrat.

Villines’ sellout was so big that it almost cost him his GOP primary election against no-name Brian FitzGerald, who lost by just 16,436 votes.

Treachery needs to be punished. Let’s hope Villines loses on Nov. 2.

OCT. 21