Liberal California may have political ‘awakening’ after forest disaster, historian predicts

Californians can have an “awakening” that could lead to a “political shock” among the nation’s top decision-makers after the state’s much-criticized response to the Los Angeles wildfires exposed vulnerability and failures of state leadership, predicts historian Victor Davis Hanson.

“So there’s a group of people in California that could fuel a revolt by liberals or Democrats,” Hanson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution’s public policy think tank, told Fox News Digital in an interview.

That group of people could include the wealthy along the coastline whose homes were destroyed or damaged by the wildfires that broke out on January 7. Several celebrities, including filmmaker Mel Gibson and actor Michael Rapaport, openly denounced it. California Leadership for his response to the crisis when the fire destroyed several districts of Los Angeles.

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“So the shock in LA is that most of the people who got burned in Pacific Palisades or the surrounding areas were very, very left-wing and very wealthy,” Hanson said. “And that was what is shocking politically, because the consequences of their votes and their ideology had never affected them personally to this extent.

“This is going to be an accelerator or a force multiplier. That’s because it affects two different groups of people,” Hanson explained. “It affects the very rich. For the first time, they got bombed. It looks like Dresden, and this is going to be $300 or $400 billion when it’s all over. And they’re going to have to deal with the Coastal Commission, the Los Angeles Planning Commission and permits for construction And they will get angry when they have to.

“The net result is that I don’t think any California politician will have a national profile after this.”

The absence of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass during the first 24 hours of the inferno, along with empty hydrants, a malfunctioning reservoir, an underfunded fire department and a lack of new water infrastructure , despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s support of billions for new reservoirs. serious flaws in the state’s response, pointed out by legislators and experts.

The state’s response to the crisis has fueled further criticism, particularly of its bureaucracy. In response, Newsom signed an executive order Sunday to suspend certain requirements of the state commission, with the goal of speeding up the rebuilding process for homeowners.

“Goodbye red tape,” Newsom wrote in a post on X. “Through an executive order, we’re making it easier for victims of the SoCal wildfires to quickly rebuild their homes and lives.”

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“If he could do it now, why didn’t he do it before the fire?” Hanson said of the order.

Another issue that has been a problem for several years is the loss of California residents to red states. Dubbed by experts “the California exodus,” California has lost hundreds of thousands of residents in recent years, many of them citing high taxes, unaffordable housing, crime i difficult business regulations.

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Many former California residents have moved to states with lower taxes and more business-friendly environments, such as Texas, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina. Major companies (Tesla, Oracle, Charles Schwab and Chevron) have also moved to other states.

Nearly 240,000 people moved out of California between 2023 and 2024, according to the Census Office This was the largest net loss of internal migration in the country during this time period. Between April 2020 and July 2022, the state saw a net loss of more than 700,000 residents.

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“They’re getting very, very angry because it’s hard to do business … and they’re angry about gas prices,” Hanson said. “And so I think the potential is there, if there was a smart, skilled, enlightened Republican candidate or political figure who could take advantage. So far, the Republican Party he doesn’t know what to do They don’t know whether to go to the left and try to accommodate this leftist population or to go further to the right and galvanize it.

“There are no dissenting voices … and I think that will change after what we saw.”