California’s Horror Flick: Why Voters Keep Running Upstairs

I grew up in the 1980s watching Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees chase teenagers who always made the same dumb decision. Instead of bolting for the exit, the damsel in distress sprinted upstairs and locked herself in a dark room. Psychologists call it a fight-or-flight hijack. The amygdala floods the body with adrenaline, the prefrontal cortex checks out, and normalcy bias insists everything is fine until the chainsaw starts. California voters have been pulling the same stunt for decades.

The latest Emerson College/Inside California Politics survey of likely June primary voters put Steve Hilton at 17%, Chad Bianco at 14%, Tom Steyer at 14%, Xavier Becerra at 10%, and Katie Porter at 10%, with 23% undecided. The race reshuffled after Eric Swalwell dropped out following sexual assault allegations from four women, including a former staffer who says he raped her. He denies everything. Only 30% of likely voters say California is on the right track; 53% say it is headed in the wrong direction. The horror movie is still running, and the audience keeps sprinting upstairs.

The numbers don’t lie. The Legislative Analyst’s Office has confirmed four straight years of budget deficits — an $18 billion shortfall for 2026-27, with structural gaps projected to reach roughly $35 billion annually after 2027-28. Sacramento has navigated a cumulative $125 billion in budget problems since 2023, almost entirely through one-time fixes and borrowing that future taxpayers will repay. The LAO put it plainly: “deficits have persisted even as revenues have grown, underscoring that the problem is structural rather than cyclical.”

Then there is Proposition 50. While running a $20 billion deficit and slashing homelessness funding in half, Newsom called a special statewide election costing taxpayers more than $200 million to override the voter-approved California Citizens Redistricting Commission and replace its nonpartisan maps with a partisan gerrymander targeting five Republican-held congressional seats. Voters approved it 64.4% to 35.6%. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called it “a brazen power grab that tramples on civil rights and mocks the democratic process.” The citizens who passed that reform in 2010 were overruled by the party that can always outspend the opposition. The house is on fire, and they’re rearranging the furniture.

Unchallenged power produces complacency, and California has the receipts. Homelessness exploded. Housing priced out the middle class. Jails emptied. Criminals walked. Look at who’s running to replace Newsom. Becerra carries the legacy of billions in pandemic-era unemployment fraud on his watch as attorney general plus two years of school closures as Biden’s HHS Secretary. Steyer is still talking green mandates while families choose between groceries and gas. Porter’s recorded blunders did more damage than any opposition ad could. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is the lone Democrat who can point to actual results, faster homelessness reductions than the statewide average and Proposition 36 enforcement that made his city measurably safer. He is the exception that proves the rule.

On the Republican side, Steve Hilton is running the full-reset playbook: domestic energy, regulatory rollback, and an end to the bureaucratic machinery that treats taxpayers as a limitless ATM. Chad Bianco brings genuine law-enforcement credentials from Riverside County to a state where crime remains a defining voter anxiety. Off the ballot but very much in the fight, Carl DeMaio’s Reform California is backing initiatives for voter ID, clean voter rolls, and a Taxpayer Protection Act requiring two-thirds approval for new local special taxes, measures designed to bring accountability-minded voters to the polls in November and hold the line regardless of who wins the governorship.

Critics will call any push for change a threat to democracy. That argument collapses under its own weight. Democratic accountability was forfeited the day Republicans became mere spectators in Sacramento. Supermajority rule produced the dysfunction these same critics now blame on everyone but themselves. The solution is what it always is in horror movies where someone actually survives: stop running upstairs. Demand candidates who enforce Proposition 36, treat the budget like a family checkbook, restore voter consent on taxes, and end the sanctuary theater shielding repeat offenders. Back DeMaio’s ballot initiatives. Show up in June and November ready to crack the one-party stranglehold before it buries another generation under structural debt.

I coached high school track and field for years. The athletes who cleared hurdles were not the ones who hoped the bar would lower itself, they were the ones who exploded out of the blocks and attacked it clean. California voters face that same choice. The monster in the basement is one-party complacency. Arm up, vote common sense, and end the horror show before the credits roll on another lost decade.

The basement door is still open. Your move.