Unz, a software entrepreneur, is well known to VDARE.com readers. He spearheaded a successful nationwide anti-bilingual education (= Spanish-language retention) initiative campaigns, while repeatedly clashing with us over immigration. (Full disclosure: VDARE.com and his Unz Review now cross-post a number of items). Unz, a Republican, entered the race belatedly because he was incensed that the useless state party (see above) has apparently signed off on a Democratic attempt to undo the 1998 California version of his initiative, Proposition 227. Of course it is better for immigrant kids to learn good English in school to give them a chance for opportunities in America, but the Mexicans et al want the kiddies to remain attached to the beloved homeland.
Unz also has his own typically unusual ideas about other issues—including raising the minimum wage as an anti-illegal immigration measure and trading Amnesty in return for a dramatic cut in legal immigration. (The late unlamented Rand Paul appeared briefly to propose this concept, before reverting to left-libertarianism. Perhaps significantly, Unz has just been endorsed by Ron Paul. [Ron Paul endorses Ron Unz for California’s U.S. Senate seat, by Christopher Cadelago, May 9, 2016]
Another sign of GOP lassitude: the choice of questioners for the May 10 debate. The debate was co-sponsored by a gaggle of liberal media— KQED (San Francisco), KPBS (San Diego), KPCC (Los Angeles), Capital Public Radio (Sacramento). The questioners included a reporter from Univision, Marco Serrano. Not surprisingly, they assumed a liberal viewpoint and never got outside that box. For example, Scott Schafer of KQED asked California Attorney General Kamala Harris a question about controlling police—because cops treating criminals with less than perfect manners is a source of anxiety for liberals. The Univision reporter inquired about immigration, naturally.
Why didn’t the Republican Party demand a conservative questioner for the panel, who would presumably ask a non-liberal question? One topic, safe for even for Cuckservatives: regulation. California has been very slow in adding jobs during the recovery – has excessive regulation hampered the state’s growth? Interestingly, a 2009 state-commissioned study found that regulations cost California $492.994 billion and the loss of 3.8 million jobs, so the policy has serious real world effects.
The two Democrat candidates stuck to the party line. State Attorney General Kamala Harris, favored to win the Senate seat , is a perfect exemplar of liberal California values. When she was San Francisco DA, she rejected the death penalty for Edwin Ramos, the convicted triple murderer of Tony Bologna and his two sons, whom Ramos mistook for rival gang members. Ramos was sentenced to life without parole. One hopes the illegal alien gangster will indeed die in prison.
(In a curious crime sidebar, Marla Zamora, the attorney who defended Ramos, was recently stabbed to death in her San Francisco home in early May, apparently by her nephew.)
The other Democrat on stage, Rep. Loretta Sanchez, is also hyper liberal, but with some personal quirks. The daughter of Mexican immigrants in southern California, she has been a favorite target of Los Angeles radio hosts John and Ken for her loopy behavior. A “cringe-inducing gaffe” from last year provided great radio material: shortly after her announcement for Senate, she told a story of going to meet an Indian supporter saying, “I’m going to his office, thinking I’m going to meet an (makes childish Indian war whoop sound “wah-wah-wah”) Indian American.” [Man behind Loretta Sanchez 'war cry' video raised money for Kamala Harris , by Peter Jamison, LA Times, May 17, 2015] So she managed a double insult to both Indians from the subcontinent and indigenous Americans. [Listen to John and Ken’s radio report from a few days later.]
Sanchez won her seat in Congress from Republican incumbent Bob Dornan in 1996 by a margin of just 984 votes. There was evidence of voting by illegal aliens, but allegedly not enough to change the results, so a House task force rejected Dornan’s challenge to her election. (Wikipedia says "in consultation with the INS, the House committee identified as many as 4,700 questionable registration affidavits.The probe was dropped before these affidavits could be investigated.").
The televised debate lasted just an hour. Answers were kept to one minute – good for moving things along, but limiting the serious examination of complex issues.
You can watch the debate online: California Counts: U.S. Senate Debate.
The immigration discussion, headed up by the Univision reporter, begins at around 15:10. Serrano’s questions, although basic and not exactly accusatory, of course assumed that immigration requires “reform” rather than enforcement.
Loretta Sanchez was all in for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” (= Amnesty for lawbreaking millions and, on recent legislative form, an Immigration Surge). She characterized it as “the moral imperative of our time.”
Ron Unz made his ingenious proposal of conditional support for Amnesty (a word no-one dared use at the event): “If we include a 50 percent cut in legal immigration, we can get the package through Congress and solve our immigration problem.”
Of course, this misses the behavioral aspect. As the brilliant psychologist (and Senator) Chuck Grassley said of the 1986 amnesty, “You know what I found out? If you reward illegality, you get more of it.”
Furthermore, if an illegal behavior is to be reduced, then punishment must be the response from government. Our whole legal system is based on this simple human principle of punishing bad behavior. Immigration should not occupy another universe.
Tom Del Beccaro made the point that immigration enforcement is a national security issue, and he reminded the San Diego audience of the jihadist murder of 14 Americans in nearby San Bernardino last December.
Duf Sundheim was the worst Republican: he said he supports a “path to legal status” for the illegals as soon as possible. Furthermore, he went out his way to define himself as a get-along sort of Republican: “Even if we pass legislation, we have to have the conversation in this country between the immigrant community and those that have been here a long time.”
Hey Duf, does the word “citizen” ring a bell?
Sundheim did make a strong objection to sanctuary cities, with a reference to the five-times-deported illegal who killed Kate Steinle in San Francisco: “I think that if you've been deported five times and committed seven felonies, you shouldn't be allowed to stay in this country.”
That clear defense of law and order made no impression on California’s Attorney General. Harris responded with dependable Democrat disinformation: “Well first of all if you're not native American you’re an immigrant, so let's start there, and I would say that immigration reform and the need for comprehensive immigration reform is the front and center civil rights issue of our day.”
Note to Kamala: an “immigrant” is a person who relocates to another country to live there. Most people residing in the United States are native-born citizens, not immigrants.
Harris went on to brag about providing “legal assistance for unaccompanied minors.” Plus she said her office directed local law enforcement to “make decisions in the best interest of security for their community, and that does not require them to comply with ICE detainers.”
So the failed security for Kate Steinle doesn’t matter to the liberal AG.
Harris finished up with an economic howler: “When we pass comprehensive immigration reform in this country, California will benefit in three years by $5 billion and 600,000 jobs.”
Of course, this makes no sense. Or perhaps she meant 600,000 jobs would go to foreigners and business owners would then reap an extra $5 billion profits via cheap immigrant labor beating down wages.
A round of questioning about refugee resettlement brought safety issues more to the front.
Except for candidate Unz, who commented: “I think the vast majority of immigrants we get are very decent hardworking people who are certainly not terrorists or a danger to our society. The problem is the numbers. In other words, the overall numbers of illegal immigrants are simply too high.”
He thought that refugees were okay as long as the overall numbers were kept low.
Maybe, but did Unz not notice the head-choppy stuff going on in the Middle East, including Syria?
Tom Del Beccaro is apparently more attentive to recent news regarding Syrian refugees. He said “When the FBI director says that he can’t ensure that people coming from Syria are safe to bring here, then I'm going to side with him because it should be safety first.”
Duf Sundheim concurred: “I agree with Tom that until the FBI director can assure that the people that want to enter this country can do so, and he can assure that they are not going to provide us with a problem, I think we need to keep them out.”
Needless to say, the do-gooder Democrats wouldn’t let a little thing like the safety of the American people to get in the way of their liberal cred.
Harris condemned what she called “anti-Muslim rhetoric” and said “We have to embrace our Muslim brothers and sisters wherever they are and not assume that because of the god they pray to and believe in that they are terrorists that are going to harm us when they come here.”
Presumably, no Muslim rapefugees will be resettled in Kamala’s safe neighborhood.
Loretta Sanchez rambled a bit about how Orange County has been a beacon to the less fortunate, how “we actually have a history of resettling refugees. That’s one of the reasons why we have the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam in the world.”
Sanchez described the screening process as rigorous (although Obama is changing that to a quickie-vet). And she was disappointed that Orange County accepted only three Syrians last year…!
Democrats are amazing. (And I used to be one). There are over 90 million Americans not engaged in the workforce in this country, and yet the Dems cannot resist importing millions more freeloaders, some of whom are active enemies of Western Civilization.
Looking forward to November, racial and ethnic tribalism will ever more strongly dominate diverse California’s elections.
Kamala Harris is a racial twofer: the daughter of an Indian immigrant mother and a Jamaican immigrant father, as noted in a 2010 CNN article headlined, “A 'female Obama' seeks California attorney general post.” California is home to around 600,000 Indians who tend to be tribal boosters, so she will likely get support from that quarter.[Indian Americans advance in national, California politics, By Curtis Tate, SacBee, April 4, 2015]
And despite Loretta Sanchez’ general strangeness and lack of expertise with issues, she will rack up many votes just because of her Hispanic name and Democrat Party membership.
Remember, in 2010, California’s weird Prop 14 created Top-Two voting: party affiliation doesn’t matter, because the two highest vote-getters advance to the November election. This was touted as a way to encourage more moderate candidates and loosen the ideological hold of the parties. [How top-two primary system has changed California politics, By Carla Marinucci, SFGate, May 6, 2014 ] But in a state that has been turning more demographically Leftist because of non-white immigration, the 2016 California Senate race may well end up as a contest between two Democrats. Was that the plan all along for Prop 14?
Ironically, in 2014 it looked for a moment like the plan would backfire: there was no Democratic challenger to the incumbent governor, Jerry Brown, and immigration patriot Tim Donnelly was well ahead for number two slot. It took a lot of money, and the intervention of national cuckservative Big Feet like George Will, to tip the race to another Indian American, Neel Kashkari, who (interestingly given the current #NeverTrump trumpeting) was not only not a conservative–supporting homosexual marriage and Amnesty–but barely even a Republican, having voted for Obama in 2008. Of course, Kashkari lost disastrously, getting only 46% of California’s white vote.
Tim Donnelly is now running for Congress in California 8th district, against GOP incumbent Paul Cook (NumbersUSA rating C+).
Gradual death by millions of legal and illegal immigrants, because of suicidal cowering by its leaders, has been the story of the destruction of the Republican Party in California. This year’s Senate election is just the latest case in point.
Brenda Walker [Email her] lives in northern California and publishes the blog LimitsToGrowth.org.
The May 10 California debate among candidates running for the U.S. Senate seat that Barbara Boxer is vacating was a sad reminder of how the state’s Republican Party has shriveled as a result of its failure to grapple effectively with immigration. Its two 
