"The only candidate who has a chance at beating Gavin Newsom"

My interview with SF Gate

The Gavin Newsom recall election last year demonstrated that the incumbent California governor is as close to unbeatable as it gets when he's running against a Republican opponent or a "Republican recall."

That's hardly surprising in a state where Democratic voters outnumber Republican voters 2-1, and at a time when the "R" label is a non-starter for many rank-and-file California Democrats disgusted with the national Republican Party. If the California Democratic Party's candidate for governor or senator was a paper bag, and the California Republican Party's candidate was Abraham Lincoln, it seems likely the paper bag would triumph so long as it had a "D" next to its name and Lincoln had an "R" next to his.

Perhaps that's an overexaggeration, but it underscores the fact that this year's gubernatorial race will not be competitive if CAGOP-endorsed Brian Dahle comes in second in the June 7 primary and advances to the general election. Newsom is running TV ads boosting Dahle's name ID because he'd prefer to run against the Republican and have a cake walk to re-election. 

While there has been no public polling for the race, the main threat to Dahle for second place on June 7 appears to be author Michael Shellenberger, a no-party-preference candidate who has raised $1 million, the third-highest sum behind Newsom and Dahle. While polls indicate Newsom's approval rating is above water, a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll found that there are more residents who believe the state is headed in the "wrong direction" as opposed to the "right direction." If Newsom ran against a well-funded independent candidate in November, that race would be much harder to predict than a showdown with another Republican. 

Shellenberger is a biting critic of Newsom on Twitter and has a large group of online fans, which makes him reminiscent of Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, one of Newsom's Republican opponents in the recall election. (That said, Kiley's online following didn't translate to actual votes: he received less than one-tenth of the votes garnered by conservative radio host Larry Elder). Shellenberger's most recent books are titled "Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All," and "San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities," though he disagrees with characterizations that he's more conservative than he is liberal, stating that he voted for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in the previous two presidential elections and supports liberal policies such as a $15 minimum wage, abortion access and various gun control measures.

In an interview with SFGATE, Shellenberger said he offers voters a credible alternative to both the Republican and Democratic parties. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

SFGATE: The first question I have is about what voters should know about you ideologically. You’re running as an independent, but if people listen to some of the arguments you’re most famous for — that most climate change discourse is alarmism and that progressive policies on crime and homelessness “ruin cities” — you sound much more like someone who leans to the right vs. the left. Where, specifically, do you have disagreements with the Republican Party at the national or state level?

Shellenberger: I guess if I had to summarize it, I guess I would say I'm a liberal in my compassion for the vulnerable, I'm a libertarian in my passion for freedom, and I'm a conservative in my belief that you need a civilization to support both of them. I am in favor of legalized abortion, I'm in favor of strong gun safety rules, I favor universal psychiatric care, philosophically I would like to see universal health care but it's not something I'm campaigning on because I don't think it's a high priority.

I voted for Biden and Clinton, I was a progressive Democrat until May of last year.

SFGATE: While guns are in the news, Gavin Newsom has talked about new gun control measures including the private right of action bill modeled after the Texas abortion bill. Is gun policy a priority for you?

Shellenberger: Absolutely.

SFGATE: Would you sign all these bills coming through?

Shellenberger: Very likely. I'd like to see the bills before I sign them and review them, but I'd be disposed to signing them. I've been in favor of strong gun safety laws my entire adult life and I remain in favor of them.

SFGATE: If the 2024 election were Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump, whom would you vote for?

Shellenberger: I'm not sure if I'd vote for either of them at this point honestly. I voted for Biden but I think he's done a pretty terrible job, he promised to pursue a moderate agenda, that's not what he pursued. I don't love that framing, I don't love the choice between Biden and Trump, and in fact, I'm running for governor in part because I don't like our choices. I don't like the polarization, I don't like the extremism. I think there needs to be a third way and I've created an agenda that I think is consistent with what the various problems facing California require, which is something other than the extreme polarization we see at the national level.

SFGATE: Let's talk about California policy. You talk a lot about homelessness and crime policy, specifically cracking down on what you refer to as "open drug scenes." What is the role of state policy in doing that, seeing as it typically falls in the hands of local jurisdictions?

Shellenberger: So first of all, I don't love the word "crackdown," it's not a word that I use with any frequency. I think we need to shut down the open drug scenes, and that's the right description of what they are. That's the word Europeans use to describe what we call so-called "homeless encampments." In my research, I document how the word homelessness is a propaganda word that tricks the brain into thinking this is fundamentally a problem of housing.

We do need more housing, but people that do not have an underlying drug problem or mental illness typically do not go live in so-called homeless encampments. They do not go live in a tent in the Tenderloin or Skid Row, which is dangerous and dirty. The people living inside the open drug scenes are suffering from untreated mental illness and late-stage addiction.

The most important thing to do is to have a statewide psychiatric and addiction care system because our county-based system has totally failed. It's grossly inefficient and redundant, providing duplicative services in 58 counties that should be provided by a single statewide agency. It means the burden is disproportionately placed on places like San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego when the burden should be shared more broadly across California. My proposal is to solve this problem the same way that every civilized country has solved it: Enforce laws rather than not enforce them against people that have been identified as homeless, create a statewide psychiatric and addiction care program, and create a shelter-first, housing-earned approach which means everyone is entitled to basic and clean shelter, but they're not entitled to their own studio apartment in the most expensive real estate in California or the United States.

Michael Shellenberger in Madrid, Spain on February 25, 2019.NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

SFGATE: What other statewide policy levers would you pull? You propose a statewide psychiatric program, and Newsom has talked about supporting conservatorships and forcing people into treatment programs. What other contrasts would you draw from current proposals coming from Newsom as it relates to this issue?

Shellenberger: Given your interest in the left-right framing of this, I'm proposing a health care system as the solution to the problem. He's providing another court system that doesn't actually provide what is missing, which is that we don't have sufficient homeless shelters, we don't have sufficient psychiatric beds and hospitals, we don't have sufficient group homes, residential care or rehab centers. We need to build them and it will be much easier to build them when the burden is shared across the state.

I know that I'm being positioned or imagined as being to the right of the governor, but I'm proposing what is fundamentally a universal psychiatric and care system as the most important thing to do, and he's proposing another court system. We have an existing court system: we have mental health courts, we have drug courts, but they're not being used properly because we don't have the care system required to get people that are suffering from mental illness and drug addiction into them. So I find it somewhat bizarre that a governor who imagines he's pursuing a compassionate approach to this is on one hand allowing open drug scenes to spread, where there is widespread violence. Close to 100% of the women that I've interviewed in the open drug scenes are victims of sexual violence. They're obviously a menace to society, and then he's proposing another court system.

The only reason Gavin isn't pursuing a statewide approach is because he wants to be able to blame the counties for his own failure. He's only taking actions that will allow him to blame others for the continuing deterioration of the problem.

SFGATE: You were removed from the Tenderloin's Linkage Center. At the time, you said it was “covering a secret and illegal medical experiment.” What exactly happened there?

Shellenberger: I broke the story of the illegal and sinister supervised drug consumption site in San Francisco. I was inside twice, and as an investigative journalist, I don't share my reporting methods, especially not with other journalistic outfits. I'm proud of that reporting. They commandeered a public space illegally against state law and federal law and frankly I'm appalled that the so-called newspapers have cheerleaded it, and spent more time focused on what I've done as a journalist rather than their own role in justifying such an illegal and frankly dehumanizing facility. 

[In January 2021, The Third Circuit of Appeals ruled that Philadelphia's plans to open a supervised injection site violated federal law. Despite the ruling, New York City opened a supervised consumption site of its own and California lawmakers are working to legalize such sites at the state level.]

Shellenberger: I think that nobody on the left or the right thinks that the current tax system is a system devised for efficiency, to attract businesses or fairness. It's top-heavy, it's overly focused on the top income earners and that creates the famous boom and bust surpluses and deficits that we struggle with. 

I'm proposing tax peace. Members of the legislature, the legislature analyst's office (LAO) and the governor's own people don't even know how much money California spends on homelessness. There's no good audit of it. We don't really know how money is being spent, so I don't really feel comfortable making any changes to the tax code. It may be that we're due for tax reform after we make serious progress addressing the biggest issues facing the state, but for now I'm for tax peace. I think we need to put the surplus into the rainy day fund, I agree with the LAO that the governor's budget estimates are far too optimistic and we should not be throwing money at programs that are under-performing.

SFGATE: What are your PG&E plans?

Shellenberger: The governor's record on PG&E is abhorrent. He accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from PG&E, his wife accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from PG&E for her nonprofit, he turned around and gave PG&E billions in a bailout. The governor has consistently failed to hold PG&E accountable for its behaviors.

The governor's track record in general on forest fires is terrible. In his first year in 2019, he cut the budget for forest fire prevention by $150 million, the result was the worst year of forest fires in California history, which he then turned around and blamed on climate change, as though climate change dooms California's forests to high intensity fires. It doesn't. My research and that of others shows we can prevent high-intensity fires in the mountain forests if we reduce the fuel load, and we can do that through mechanical clearing as well as prescribed burns. Gavin not only cut the budget, but he also failed to waive the regulations getting in the way of much more significant fuel load reduction in forests.

What we've seen is a governor whose head has been focused on what looks good to Democratic primary voters and caucusgoers in Iowa and New Hampshire rather than what's in the best interest of the California people. That's been true for electricity, for forest fire management and through the governance of PG&E. I'm not beholden to PG&E or any other company; I'm the person voters should want to hold big monopoly utilities like PG&E accountable. This is basically a utility that depends on the goodwill of the California people because we've already bailed them out once and they're under a strict agreement to perform. I don't trust the governor is properly regulating that utility because of the financial entanglements he has with them.

SFGATE: What is your view on housing? I specifically want to ask you about SB9 and any other proposals you have outside of that.

Shellenberger: California needs to be producing significantly more housing and I think most Californians agree with that. I think that the problem we have to recognize is homeowners, particularly, would like to keep their neighborhood character, and that means they've been pretty averse to change and adding housing units in their own neighborhoods. I don't think we Californians have been particularly honest about that when pressed on it. We kind of have it both ways, so you end up with this battle between two extreme views: one of YIMBYs and one of NIMBYs.

When you start with a recognition that we all need to add more housing in our communities, and that it would be appropriate actually and consistent with what those neighborhoods are already similar to, that helps because part of the problem is we end up in a prisoner's dilemma where everybody is looking at each other saying, "You should add housing in your community, but I don't trust that if I add it in mine that you'll add it in yours."

I think the solution to this is a society-wide consensus building process. I don't think the legislature is ready to enact sweeping legislation. I'm fine with and support SB9, but I think we need to have a broader societal consensus, so what I'm proposing on housing is a citizens' jury, which is an impaneled group of voters randomly selected from a representative sample of the population. This has been done in Germany and South Korea, where you have a period over 9-12 months in 9-12 parts in the state of deliberative weighing of the evidence, engaging with experts, hearing from all sides. The group would then deliver recommendations to the Legislature. It would not be binding, but it would get the process out of Sacramento where ordinary citizens feel disconnected. I think we get too focused on specific bills, specific minor things without any view of the broader picture, and as governor I'm going to lead Californians through that process of developing consensus through the citizens' jury on housing.

SFGATE: You have built a pretty sizeable social media following, you definitely have online fans. It's strikingly similar to Kevin Kiley in the Newsom recall election, where he built up an online following of plugged-in California policy types. When the recall election came around, he got just 3% of the vote. Do you believe that you're actually going to be able to finish in the double digits in June?

Shellenberger: I do. I think Californians are sick of the extremes on the left and right. They want someone who has an agenda based on the best available evidence and what has worked around the world. We've raised almost a million dollars at this point, we just read in the news that there's an independent expenditure Super PAC that was just announced. I don't know much money it will spend, I don't know what it will do, but I think it's a sign that there are people out there that believe in me and believe in our candidacy.

I'm going to be doing Bill Maher a week from Friday, I've been on Joe Rogan twice, I have something like 10-20 times more social media followers than any of my opponents, so we feel really confident we're going to come in second on June 7. I wouldn't have run if I didn't feel confident I could come in second.