Most Californians appreciate how important the governor’s race is. It is, if course, extremely important that Steve Hilton win in November. But, what many do not often understand is precisely how important the attorney general race is, because it is the Attorney General who decides whether the law is enforced or not.
Last Thursday’s Santa Barbara GOP Lincoln/Reagan Dinner at Timbers featuring Republican Attorney General candidate Michael Gates, who, after the dessert plates were cleared and while checkbooks were still open, electrified the rowdy crowd with insight into one of the most important races in California, a race even political junkies rarely understand.
“Of all of the races you can possibly think of in California right now,” Gates said, “the most important race in this entire state of California right now, if we want to rescue California, is the attorney general’s race.” He added, “that is not a self-serving statement. I will prove it to you.”
And prove it he did, explaining that while it is the governor who sets the agenda, it’s the attorney general who decides whether the law is enforced, and whether a law the public itself just passed survives the first lawsuit.
Candidate Gates, polished and articulate, is a lifelong Californian, married nearly 30 years, father of five, grandfather of four. He made his name as a trial lawyer defending police and refusing to settle. “If my officers would go out and put their life on the line to keep me safe, I was not going to settle their cases.” He never lost a cop case and is admitted to the Supreme Court bar. As Huntington Beach City Attorney for more than a decade, he took those fights statewide, from COVID beach closures to parental rights. In January he went on the trail full time. “I’m sacrificing time with my wife of almost thirty years, five kids, and four grandkids,” he said. “This is the moment.”
Gates then points out that “Sixty-five percent of poll respondents say that California is headed in the wrong direction. Four years ago, that figure sat in the low forties. Californians have woken up.” Against incumbent Rob Bonta, who he refers to as “a disaster,” Gates credits Bonta as “largely responsible for the fact that California is a dumpster fire,” and that he, Gates, is running as the change candidate for the office as someone who can make a rescue stick, or slip away.
Article V, Section 13 of the California Constitution makes the attorney general the chief law officer of the State, charged to see that the laws are uniformly and adequately enforced. He supervises every district attorney and sheriff. When a county will not enforce the law, he may prosecute with all the powers of a district attorney.
“There isn’t a deputy sheriff… there isn’t a sheriff… there isn’t a prosecutor, who’s not ultimately under the attorney general,” he notes. Gates believes that George Gascon’s Los Angeles was not a local mishap, that it was an indictment of the state’s top cop. “The fact that those DAs were ever soft on crime is the Attorney General’s fault,” he says. If another Gascón appears, Gates vows that he would “reach down and prosecute those cases myself.”
Huntington Beach is one of California’s bigger cities, with 200,000 residents and 15 million visitors a year, “the recipe for high crime,” Gates notes. However, as City Attorney, he told prosecutors to reject back room deals and “demand maximum penalties.” Huntington Beach became one of the safest cities in California, while Bonta’s California ranked among the most dangerous in the country. The difference, Gates said, was will. “No excuses, no exceptions.”
Compliance With Federal Law
The AG’s civil power does not wait on the governor. Bonta can sue anyone he wants, and he has. He is leading the lawsuit to block Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros., a case Newsom has urged him to settle after Paramount threatened to leave California. “He does all the civil cases.” That same independent docket is how Bonta sued hospitals, “including a children’s hospital,” to force “trans surgeries on minors.”
On day one, Gates said, under his leadership those hospital suits will be dismissed. California will comply with federal law instead of filing a hundred suits against Washington. “Who is responsible for making sure California is compliant with federal law? It’s the attorney general.”
A new governor still needs that officer. “If Hilton gets elected and Bonta gets re-elected, how much do you think Hilton will be able to get done?” Bonta, Gates warned “is going to sue him every day of the week.” Winning the Capital’s corner office is necessary. It is not sufficient.
In 2008 Californians wrote traditional marriage into its Constitution, “marriage equals a man plus a woman,” and they did it at the ballot box, 52 percent to 48 percent. Then the lawsuit. “It was challenged in court and then it failed because Kamala Harris didn’t show up to court to defend it.” Harris did not repeal the measure. She refused to defend it, and in doing so she undermined the will of the people. When the attorney general will not appear, the people’s law has no lawyer. It dies by default.
That is the warning for Proposition 39, the voter ID measure on the November ballot. “If you want to keep your voter ID when it passes,” Gates said, “you need Michael Gates as your attorney general.”
Someone will sue.
“Whose responsibility is it to show up to court to defend the law of the land? The attorney general.” Bonta, who already sued Huntington Beach over local voter ID “hates election integrity” and “will not show up.” If he is re-elected, “voter ID will be taken from us by operation of law,” the will of the People be damned.
“Career politics versus career lawyer,” Gates said of Bonta, a legislator-appointed AG in 2021. Gates has spent his life in courtrooms, not karaoke rooms with lobbyists. He jumped in because “California is crying out to be rescued,” and because “as goes California, so goes the nation.”
California can elect a new governor and still lose the rescue in court. The attorney general is the lawyer who either defends the law the voters passed or lets it vanish. Michael Gates is asking to be that lawyer. “Look at Article Five, Section 13,” he said. “It’s all right here.”
California law hinges on who is sworn in as Attorney General.
Bonta represents a brick wall of continued lawfare, division, waste, and fraud.
Gates opens the pathway to saving California.
Vote MICHAEL GATES for Attorney General!
Given California’s crooked election system, no GOP candidate is going to be declared the victor in a Statewide or otherwise important election. I still vote every time, but feel like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football while Liberal Lucy is the holder.
Ex-dem here. Thank you. I’m one of the ones who woke up. Will vote for Hilton and Michael Gates.