I have to admit that I did not even know who in the GOP was running for governor in California until I read this sfgate article. It is Neel Kashkari. He does seem to have a unique way to get attention, but his conclusions do not seem very well thought out.
From sfgate:
” ‘California Comeback!” is the favorite slogan of Gov. Jerry Brown and other Sacramento politicians,” Neel Kashkari writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece published Thursday. “I wanted to see firsthand what that comeback looks like for many Californians.”
So the 41-year-old Republican trying to unseat Brown in the Nov. 4 election writes that he hopped a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles on July 21 and headed to Fresno on a job-hunting expedition with only $40 in cash, a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
Over the next week, says the former investment banker, he walked from business to business and “offered to do anything: wash dishes, sweep floors, pack boxes, cook meals, anything.” Nada.
Running low on cash, Kashkari says, he switched gears and went to a homeless shelter for food. There were no beds available, he writes, so he “slept on the streets all six nights.” Police and security guards kept rousting him, and “I had only one shower during that time.”
His takeaway from the experience? “California’s record poverty is man-made: over-regulation and over-taxation that drive jobs out of state, failing schools that don’t prepare students for the skilled work force and misguided water policies that prevent us from saving surplus water in wet years to prepare for our inevitable droughts.”
The RCP average has Gov. Jerry Brown up by 20.5 percentage points.
Here is a youtube video that Mr. Kashkari made: