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July 14, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
08:02
Larry Elder's First Move As Governor of California
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Hey, how many of you could say one of your closest friends is running for governor of your state?
I can.
But that's not the reason I'm so happy.
I'm happy for California.
There's a ray of light of hope for this state.
It's been destroyed almost by the left, by the Democrats, and here's a Republican.
Who can reach out to others?
Look, the obvious, Larry, is the black vote is incredibly important.
So you said you're going to Oakland.
How will they even know you're there?
Connection is pretty bad, Dennis.
Can you still hear me?
I hear you fine.
Did you not hear my question?
No, I didn't.
Okay.
How will they know?
You said you're going to Oakland.
How will they know you're going to Oakland?
How will people know?
Well, of course, I'm putting all my activities on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram, so people will know what I'm doing and where I'm going and why I'm going there.
But Dennis, you mentioned my being black.
As you know, I went to Crenshaw High School, and I picked up the LA Times the other day, and only 3% of kids from my former high school could do math at grade level.
The first step, of course, toward getting to the middle class is getting a decent education.
One of my big, big, big issues.
It's going to be school choice.
The polls show that urban black parents and urban brown parents desperately want school choice.
The teachers union desperately do not because they feel they're going to lose union dues.
And the charter schools do not require the teachers to automatically join the union and therefore they don't get automatic dues.
Now you would think the teachers union would be about making sure that your kids get a good quality education, but they're about making sure that teachers don't get fired.
We have 300,000 teachers in In the state of California, Dennis, in any given year, 2.2 out of 300,000 are fired.
2.2.
And I've been told by many experts there are anywhere between 5 and 7 percent that are completely incompetent, roughly 15 to 20,000.
And if we fired them, the quality of education would be improved dramatically overnight.
I'm thinking about using my powers as governor to declare an emergency and get rid of the bad teachers that are often the ones in the inner-city schools, the schools where the kids most need good teachers.
Oh, my God.
Just to imagine that, is there any profession where only 2.2% of its employees are fired?
I can't think of one.
I can't think of any.
And Dennis, remember that horrible teacher at that elementary school that was feeding kids cookies laced with something I won't even mention on your show?
It took him years to get rid of this guy.
I think well over a million dollars in legal fees to get rid of him.
And the only reason he left finally is they gave him a buyout for about $40,000.
Now, you can't get rid of a teacher like that.
What about just your regular garden variety incompetent teachers?
Tom Sowell calls it the dance of the lemons.
And that's when a teacher is in a good school district.
The parents are involved in their kids' education.
The teacher has gotten rid of out of that school, goes to another school, goes to another school, and finally ends up in a school where the parents are either indifferent or don't realize what's going on.
Tom Sowell called it the dance of the lemons.
The lemons are the ones that end up in the worst schools where the kids need at least competent schools so they get that first step out of poverty toward the middle class.
Larry, what ultimately moved you to run?
Because obviously we have discussed this in the past, and you were quite dead set against it.
I started hearing from other people I respect, like people like Pastor Jack Hibbs, and I started thinking about why I wasn't going to run.
And the first one was the huge financial sacrifice, and I realized that I can still function perfectly well on making a lot less money.
The other thing, Dennis, was exposing my personal life.
You know, nobody's had a perfect life.
I certainly haven't.
And I talk to people, and one pastor told me, every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.
And I recall a line that Pat Robertson once said when he ran for president.
He said, as for the sins of my youth, either the Lord has forgiven me or the statute of limitations has run out.
So I began thinking about the things in my private life, and they're relatively minor.
My goodness, Dennis, Gavin Newsom had an affair with his best friend's wife.
His best friend was his then campaign manager, and the man still survived.
Nobody even brings it up.
I've never done anything that scummy.
That is hilarious.
By the way, it is worth the shout-out to Pastor Jack Hibbs, who is one of the great men of our generation.
I love that man, too.
You have no idea how many times he texted me.
Speak to Larry.
Speak to Larry.
And Dennis, it wasn't just Pastor Jack.
It was also his assistant, Gina Gleason.
They did a high-low on me.
Pastor Jack would hit me, and then she would call, and Pastor Jack would hit me, and she would call.
And she was even more persuasive than Pastor Jack.
I guess she learned from the best.
But Dennis, somebody's got to do this.
You've driven around L.A. You see this homelessness.
And what do they do?
They spend more and more money to, quote, buy housing.
Even if you can induce them to go into the housing, they're not going to stay because the underlying problem as to why they're on the streets in the first place has not...
It's been resolved.
And Pastor Jack, another pastor, says, get us involved.
We know what to do.
We know how to do this far more efficiently, far more humanely, far more effectively, and far more cheaply than the taxpayer can do through the government.
Let us get involved.
Let us adopt a street, adopt a block.
We'll figure this out.
Let us do it.
Get the government out of the way, Larry.
God, is that ever true.
So where are you headed right now?
Right now I'm headed to Norwalk to sign the papers to officially launch the campaign.
Where will you officially launch it?
Where's the place?
It's Norwalk.
No, no.
I mean, will you be making some big rally, some announcement?
Because I want to help you publicize it.
That's why I'm asking.
I see.
I see.
Well, no.
I'm going to make my first TV announcement on the Sean Hannity Show.
That'll be, I think it's tomorrow.
I'm going to have a little speech today in Norwalk where there are going to be probably a few hundred people.
No biggie.
And then I'm going to go place to place to place and start making the case.
This is a big media state, Dennis.
It's about getting on television.
It's about getting on radio.
You don't get on television and radio.
You can do as many coffee clashes as you want, and you're not going to get anywhere.
It's about television and it's about radio, and that's one of the reasons I have an advantage over my Republican rivals.
Aside from Caitlyn Jenner, I have more name recognition than anybody else.
You know, Dennis, we've been on radio up and down California for years, in Sacramento, in the Valley, in Ventura, in L.A., in Riverside, in San Diego.
And so I'm going to be going on all sorts of TV outlets and radio outlets trying to make the case, because Gavin Newsom can spend unlimited amounts of money.
There are no campaign finance limitations on him, but there are on us.
I can raise, I think it's around $9 million.
It's a little complicated, and I'm not sure I even understand it.
All I know is I can't raise anything like what he can raise.
The only way to beat this man is to go on TV and go on radio and make the case, because he's not going to debate me.
There is not a single article that I could find on your announcing in the LA Times.
Wow.
I haven't checked.
Yeah, I checked.
Yeah, we just checked.
Alan and I just checked.
Maybe they're on vacation.
Yes, they're on vacation, exactly.
They're on moral vacation.
All right, let me remind everybody.
The site is electelder.com.
It is up at dennisprager.com.
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