'Like Waking Up From a Nightmare': California Democrats on Trump's Departure

Over the last four years, California has embraced the mantle of legal opposition to the Trump administration, with Attorney General Xavier Becerra filing more than 100 lawsuits alone and in conjunction with other states on issues ranging from the travel ban, immigration, LGBT rights, the environment and women's health.

President Trump returned the favor, targeting California's policies on immigration, sanctuary cities, forest management and wildfires, mail-in voting and much, much more. The conflict played to each party's base, but the net result was a fraught relationship that surely did not benefit the people of California.

You might say the relationship was poisoned right from the start.

"You look at what they're doing in California, how they're treating people," Trump said early in his administration. "They don't treat their people as well as they treat illegal immigrants. So at what point does it stop? It's crazy what they're doing."

Demonizing immigrants. Dismissing climate change as a hoax. It was all part of the playbook, like calling our presidential election rigged.

"Like California, the same person votes many times you probably heard about that," Trump said last year. "They always like to say, 'Oh, that's a conspiracy theory.' Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people."

That's not true, of course. But baseless conspiracy theories like that one animated the violent mob of Trump supporters that stormed the U.S. Capitol to "stop the steal."

So now that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris prepare to take office, what will change, both substantively and politically?

"It feels like waking up from a nightmare," said said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. "And not just the nightmare being over, but being in a beautiful dream."

Garcetti – one of five co-chairs for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration committee – remembers how the Obama/Biden administration worked with cities.

"All the time they were reaching out. What’s working in L.A.? What's working in California? How can we amplify that? How can we scale that up? Is there anything we can do for you?"

Garcetti is looking forward to an administration that isn’t constantly at war with the state, "Where, you know, our fires are politicized, our homelessness is politicized, where we're told that we're, you know, this evil outlier state ... What we have now are people who know us."

High Hopes for High-Speed Rail

Jerry Brown was governor for six of Obama’s eight years as president, before Trump took over in 2017. He said while there was a big difference under Obama, "It's not an open sesame to whatever you want because government is a structure. However, having a line of communication can help – it’s just an obvious thing. It’s better to have friends than enemies."

In particular, Brown said it will make a huge difference having Biden embrace what California is doing on the environment, rather than trying to stop or undo policies in the courts. 

He’s hoping the administration’s pivot on infrastructure, COVID-19 relief funding to state and local governments and climate change will finally get federal support for one of his priorities: high-speed rail.

"And I'm hoping that Joe will put the billions into California needed to get the high-speed rail as the first instance from the Central Valley, from Fresno, Merced, right into San Jose and Silicon Valley and right up the line there to San Francisco. That's a real possibility," Brown said.

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom sent the incoming Biden administration a long list of policy priorities, including high-speed rail, vaccine distribution, small-business support, funding for homelessness and much more. 

Newsom, like Brown before him, had to perform a political dance – criticizing Trump at times while also making sure to praise him in order to keep the federal funding spigot open, especially around relief for wildfires and the pandemic.

Losing the 'Bigger Boogeyman'

Jerry Brown said while California will benefit from Trump’s departure, there will be a downside – especially for Newsom.

"When you have Trump and you're a Democrat, you lose a punching bag, and for a governor, especially in a difficult period, it's very handy to have someone that I would call a bigger boogeyman," Brown said. 

In other words, someone to blame when things go wrong.

"And with Trump out there, an outsized personality occupying the airwaves in the way that he did, he became a plausible candidate for the cause of our misery," Brown said. "With him not there, they may tend to be more focused on the governor."

One big advantage for Newsom and California is having Kamala Harris as vice president. He was mayor of San Francisco when she was district attorney and will be a good ally.

The city’s current mayor, London Breed, is especially looking forward to having more federal direction on the pandemic.

"Frankly, these are the basic things we should have been doing all along, but I'm excited to see them finally being put into action," Breed said Tuesday. "It's been a long, long four years, but we are finally, finally moving forward."

Former Gov. Gray Davis knows the difference between having a president of your own party versus one who is not. He said while George W. Bush wasn’t hostile to California the way Trump is, he wasn’t particularly helpful either, especially with the state’s energy crisis.

"The short of it is it's far better to have a president that shares your belief system than one who opposed it," said Davis, who was recalled by voters in 2003 in large measure by an energy crisis generated by Enron, a Houston-based company with close ties to the Bush/Cheney administration.

Now, Davis thinks Biden will adopt many of California’s policies and nationalize them.

"I think California is going to have more influence than it ever had before," Davis said. "Now, are they going to follow us on every issue? No. ... But at least they'll give us a hearing. In the past, we were just dismissed as a bunch of fruits and nuts out here."

A welcome change for many. But it’s not going to solve all California’s problems either.