- Housing.

I've talked about childcare, healthcare.

I think we need universal basic healthcare.

We can pool all our resources.

You know, you know, I get that that single payer is something that people really gravitate towards because they're, they're nervous and they want more certainty, but we still need, well, I dunno what the certainty is when you still need waivers, federal waivers from the federal government.

But you can create universal basic healthcare that covers primary care, mental healthcare, catastrophic care.

You know, right now you could do that right now without needing the federal government.

I wanna be insulated from the federal government.

I don't trust the federal government.

They don't care about us.

We care about ourselves.

If we're the fourth largest economy in the world, we can create and strategic investments and to create programs where we can actually do funding and get a return on an investment so that we, it could end up equaling the amount of money we get from the federal government so that we don't have to live in that world of uncertainty anymore.

And I think you're gonna see a lot of states doing that, working together, and then insulating and, and trying to find ways to take care of themselves and what better state than California, than, than to lead that.

- Hey, everyone from KQED in San Francisco.

This is Political Breakdown.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

Today on the Breakdown, we continue our series of interviews with the many candidates vying to be California's next governor.

Today we're joined by former Los Angeles Assemblyman Ian Calderon.

The Democrat made history in 2012, at age 27 when he became the first millennial to be elected to the state assembly.

He left politics in 2020 to spend more time with his growing family.

Now at age 40, he's running for Governor Ian Calderon, welcome to the Breakdown, - Marissa, it's great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

- Great to see you.

We were both in Sacramento at the same time, over 10 years ago, and you are jumping back in.

So, to start, who are you politically, what's your vision for California?

Why this race now?

- You know, I, I, I got to be in Sacramento at a really unique time when I was the first millennial.

And, you know, there was this kind of upswing of some younger candidates that were running.

And I, I feel like I got to pave the way into, you know, helping that happen.

I got to work on a lot of things that were really important to me.

But as you talked about, because my family was young, you know, I made a decision that nobody makes, which is to give up power to go and be with your family.

And so I've been a business owner for the last couple of years, and I've been home.

I've been really enjoying myself, being able to take my kids to school and pick them up from school and being with my wife.

But it's just, it's really difficult to live in this state.

And it was actually a conversation that I was having with my wife.

- Hmm.

- 'cause we, we like to divide and conquer at night.

And so we have - Two, we have four children.

Yeah.

So you have to divide and conquer.

- Yeah.

We have two boys, two girls.

Girls are the oldest, which is actually really helpful.

And the boys are the youngest.

And so once we get them down, we go downstairs and we, that's our time to talk and we hang out.

And we started having this conversation about our oldest daughter, Charlie.

And when she was gonna come to us one day and say, mom, dad, as much as I love you guys, but if I wanna move outta your house, I wanna own my own home.

I wanna start my own family.

I'm gonna have to do it and move to another state.

And that was something significantly impactful to me just having that conversation with my wife, because I know of that if we're having these conversations, so many other families across the state are having those conversations.

And when you look at the generational shift in leadership that is happening across this country right now with Zohran Mamdani become the new mayor, you know, candidates in Michigan and, and, and, and in and Maine that are really, you know, galvanizing this idea of what it's like to be new and this new generation of leadership.

Well, I was, that I did that, I was that back in 2012 when I got elected.

And I just feel like, you know, especially with all the, even the retirements in Congress, you're seeing a ton of Yeah.

Members of Congress that are - Retiring now, now, especially California.

Yeah.

- Especially in California.

And what are they all saying?

It's time for a new generation of leadership.

So I think if there was ever a time for me to do this, it would be a, it would, it would be now.

And you have to recognize that everything that is the most important thing in the world to me, is tied to the future of the state and who the next governor's going to be.

It's whether or not my family gets to stay here, whether or not my kids are gonna be able to feel like they can stay here and raise their family here.

So it's important to me, and I feel like who better than myself to step up and do it because everything is on the line for me.

Yeah.

And I believe that I can do it.

I have the right experience and, you know, I I I know how to get things done in Sacramento.

- Yeah.

Well, I wanna get into a little bit about your background experience, but I, I do have to ask, this is a really crowded field, an incredibly expensive state to run in.

It's hard to break out.

And you are not super known statewide.

You're lagging in fundraising.

Like, what would your pitch be to somebody who says, I like your ideas, I like who you are, but are you viable?

- Yeah, I mean, I, I understand that.

I just feel like, take a look at, at where the race races right now, and how can you make the argument in terms of viability.

You're doing these name ID polls and name ID polls are saying, do you know this person?

Do you not know that person?

And what these polls are showing is like, okay, well I know this person so I know that name.

And so I, I guess I support them.

But if you really look at it, that support is really soft.

And what you're saying is voters right now, and you've seen this across the country, in my opinion for the last year, plus, they're not necessarily so attached to the, the rhetoric or the political party.

They're attached to the person, the candidate, and what that candidate is offering and their perception of how they can actually get things done and deliver on the things that they're promising.

And so I just believe that, you know, for somebody like me and my position, this is gonna be a late consolidating race.

The entire race is up for grabs.

30 plus percent of the electorate is completely undecided.

And so for me, my challenge is, yeah, sure it's visibility, but I feel like that's a momentary challenge right now that can be solved relatively quickly.

We've been spent a lot of time on social media optimizing it, you know, we've reached a lot of people just through my Instagram and other social media platforms.

So I just think that at some point in time, there is gonna be a breakout.

And that's gonna help me, that's gonna help me become a, a major factor in this race.

Especially because I'm the one they're not seeing.

And by, by the polling what I'm saying and who I represent and Yeah.

Technically is who they're looking for, - Obviously.

All right.

Well, you do come from a political family.

In fact, I don't think you had been born yet when your dad, Charles Calderon was first elected to the assembly many years later.

I sat right behind him when I was a reporter at the Chronicle on the floor of the assembly.

So I knew his policy as well.

But I wonder like how his service affected your upbringing.

Was it inspiring?

Was it hard to have him gone that much?

Like it's a long commute from LA to Sacramento?

- Yeah, I, because of him and because of his service, I learned the value of, of public service at a very early age.

And he learned it from his mom.

My grandmother was our first generation that was born in this country in Texas, grew very, very poor.

Hmm.

So poor that at night they would actually have to go through dumpsters to find food because they didn't have it.

- Wow.

- And it was actually a church one day that they had heard, and there was a loud music and singing.

So they went in and they st they found comfort in being, you know, hiding in the back and listening to the singing and hearing the inspirational messages.

And one day the parishioner saw them and, you know, brought them out and they'd feed them at night.

And so my grandmother was very, very committed to community, very, very committed to her church.

Very, very committed to public service.

And that translated to my father, who was a prosecutor in the LA DA's office, and then was a school board member.

And then he got elected to the state assembly in 1982.

And I was born in 1985.

And you can see literal pictures of him giving speeches in me as a baby in his arms while I was, you know, while he was giving those speeches.

And so I just, - You didn't know any different, - I didn't know any different.

- Yeah.

- But also at the same time, I mean, yeah, certainly, like, you know, I was a big sports guy.

I, not only did I play baseball, I surfed.

And so there was a lot of things that he couldn't be a part of and he couldn't see.

And so that was impactful.

And I recognized that with, with your own, with my own kids now and me running for this position if I were to be successful.

And that's also why I left it when I was in the legislature, because I did have that experience and I didn't wanna miss moments that I knew I was never gonna get back.

But I just feel like we're out of inflection point, and if, if we're gonna change the path and change the trajectory, now's the time to do it.

And I believe I'm the right one to do - It.

So you went to a college at CSU Long Beach.

Yeah.

I wonder, at the time, did you see politics as a potential future?

What did you think you were gonna do with your life?

- No, not a chance actually.

So I, I, I studied political science, which of course I minored in communication, but I, I, I was really into surfing.

I, I had, I received my first sponsor when I was 10 years old.

I was competitive.

I traveled, I got a lot of things for free as a sponsored athlete would.

- Yeah.

- And I just always assumed that would be my trajectory.

I eventually got to a point and it's like, okay, you know, Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Shane, Dorian, these are the guys that are actually making any kind of real money in this job.

So I should probably go to college that, that's probably gonna, it's not that I don't doubt my talent and my skills, but they're just so few people making any money.

And at that time and being successful.

So I went to college Long Beach State, and then while I was there, it was kind of where my perception and my perspective changed.

It didn't mean I gave up surfing.

I mean, I, we were, me and my, my buddy, we revived the surf club.

We were competing in 2006.

I was a collegiate state champion for, for CSU Long Beach.

So I, I held onto that, but I really started to kind of reevaluating what it is that I'm, what I, that I'm going to do.

And so outta college, I did end up going to work for Hurley International.

They were my main sponsor.

And so I did LA retail LA and then Empire Retail Marketing.

So basically from Long Beach all the way out to Goleta, into Palmdale and Victorville.

That was my territory where I managed VIP clients and, you know, our best client accounts.

But I didn't really love the sales life to be honest with you.

And then that's why I ended, decided to make the transition to work for a state legislator.

And the rest is history.

- Alright.

We are gonna talk about that in just a minute.

We're gonna take a short break first.

When we come back we'll continue our conversation with Democratic candidate for Governor Ian Calderon.

You're listening to Political Breakdown from KQED news.

Welcome back to Political Breakdown.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

Today we're speaking with former state assemblyman Ian Calderon.

He is part of a crowded field running for governor.

We are trying to interview all the major candidates.

And Ian Calderon, as we said before, you were elected in 2012, age 27 to the assembly.

I'm curious, like coming into office, what were your huge priorities then?

What do you see as your biggest legislative accomplishments?

- I, I ran on a new generation of leadership at the time.

You know, there were a ton of decisions that were happening in Sacramento and those consequences were really rolling downhill.

And so the, the, the argument I made to my community was just let me be at the table, let our generation have a voice at the table.

I don't need to be the one calling the shots.

I don't need to be the one getting all the attention.

But I do think our perspective is important because we're gonna have to live with all of the consequences of the decisions that are being made now.

And so I, I talked about financial literacy, tech literacy, modernizing how government delivered its services.

And that's really a lot of what I worked on.

I mean, yes, I worked on film tax credit legislation so that we could keep the film industry in California because that's really important.

I mean, half our economy is the creative economy.

So we want to be able to continue to build that.

I also did fo focus on arts, arts education funding.

When I stepped in, we were funding arts education about a million dollars a year statewide.

- Wow.

- Now we're up to $25 million a year because I champion that because it's, if we have a, a an economy completely built on creativity and, and that creative economy generating all this revenue that we turn into all these programs or fund all these programs and education, well, we should be making sure that we're investing in programs that are gonna help us continue to be that, you know, creative, innovative capital of the world.

And so I got to work on that.

Financial literacy, this is coming out of the great Recession.

Right.

And so we, we ended up in the great recession.

'cause people don't understand money.

And my argument was every kid graduating from high school in California should be completely financially literate.

And as you know, because your time in Sacramento, the two most political issues in Sacramento.

Water and education.

Yeah.

Most political.

And so this wasn't an easy lift, but I authored a bill saying you need six years of financial literacy education.

K through 12, two years in elementary, two years in middle school, two years in high school.

And this was when Brown was still governor.

I muscled that thing all the way through the legislature with a whole lot of pushback, especially from the own the Senate education committee chair who in committee was trying to kill the bill.

- Wow.

- But I got senators to roll with me on this.

We got it to the governor and got signed to create six years of financial literacy.

Fast forward 10 years, 'cause I authored this bill around 2016.

Yeah.

State Board of Education has still not implemented that bill.

And I'm so frustrated because it is such a common sense thing.

I mean, and then just technology.

I'm the co-founder of Legislative Tech and Innovation caucus.

And you know, I created the blockchain working group and the blockchain working group.

The emphasis of that whole thing is blockchain technology is the under underlying technology, which is a digital ledger that, you know, it, it, it underlies and underpins Bitcoin cryptocurrencies, but it's transparent and it's immutable.

And so I said, why don't we use this technology to modernize how we deliver services and make ourselves more effective and more efficient at delivering those services.

And so it created the blockchain working group and we did all of our meetings at Berkeley and we brought all the different groups together to talk about it.

And it was a huge success.

And I, what I was saying is, let's use it to, to, to do state payments because if we, you know, we implemented for state payments, we really can cut down on fraud because we can see, and it's transparent.

Everybody can see it.

Well that was back in 2017.

And then come COVID 2020 and we ended up losing 20 plus billion dollars in fraud.

Had we had implemented blockchain technology, we might not have lost that $20 billion.

Yeah.

Or we would've at least known who approved the spending, you know, and who was accountable and responsible for making the decisions That resulted in a lot of fraud.

That was important.

Money we could have used for a lot of other important things to fund in the state.

- Yeah.

It's always amazing to me.

It's the home of Silicon Valley, how far behind our government is.

I wanna dig in on a couple things though.

Like you brought up education.

We're at a really tough moment right now.

We're seeing a lot of potential strikes around the state.

And I wonder, you know, the governor actually in his budget proposal this year is proposing kind of stripping some power from the state superintendent of education, bringing the board of education more directly under the governor's office control.

Do you support that?

- You know, I support reinventing the way government operates because it's been so inefficient for so long.

Whether this is the right proposal, I need to spend more time with that and I need to understand a little bit more of the dynamics of the, of the superintendent.

But it's like, I mean, even even me now, when I tried to, when I was struggling with the frustration of my bill not being implemented.

Well that's right.

I called, - That's, yeah, - I called the superintendent, public instruction who I served with.

And I was like, Hey man, like, this is not right.

Another - Candidate for Governor Tony Thurman.

Yeah.

- Can we get this done?

And he is just like, oh, they're dragging their feet.

I really don't know where it is.

I want to help.

And it's just like nothing happened.

And so, I mean, that was an eye-opening moment for me just because like, well, you are in this position and you should be able to effectuate change in this way.

But, you know, I just feel like it isn't, I feel it.

It is, it's no secret.

We we're, we're at a moment in time where people just feel like they're being failed left and right by their government, and they feel like they're not the ones that are the priority.

They're, you know, it's politics and your own political aspirations and how much attention you can get online.

That's that.

That, that's what people perceive Sacramento and politicians in general is what's being important to them.

While we're struggling, we're suffering, you know, and you're seeing these strikes and, and a lot of it, to be honest with you, falls on the state and it falls on the state because if the cost of living wasn't so high, then these teachers wouldn't be begging for raises so that they can, to live in this state, you know, covering childcare.

We have four kids when all four of our kids were in daycare, we were spending more a month in childcare than we were in our rent.

- I mean, far more.

I think when two of my kids were in childcare, we were exp you know, exceeding - That.

Yeah.

But that's so backwards, especially when, you know, when you take a look at all the funding that comes in right now, right now, what we could do is we could pull all of that funding together, you know, and cap spending for families across the state that covers 95% of the kids at $500 a month, zero, zero to five.

And you're probably looking at maybe another $4 billion, $5 billion of state allocated money.

So in a budget of $381 billion, we can't find another, or repurpose four or $5 billion to fund basically universal childcare capping at $500 with, you know, different levels of funding where people that are getting it for free could still get it for free.

And those that are making more pay the $500.

- I mean, I wanna push you on that a little though, because the money in the budget is spoken for and as we know, costs grow every year, the cost of paying people grows, the cost of health benefits grows.

That is by far the largest sort of price tag in the state budget.

And then within that, most of the money's going to health and human services or to education.

Like let's take healthcare.

We're seeing billions of dollars in cuts from the Trump administration, another 600, I think million just this week, that they're threatening to pull from a variety of programs.

How do you do the things you're talking about while dealing with these deep, this deep uncertainty both from the Trump administration and just from the economy.

- I mean, yeah.

But we're also spending $200 million on electric vehicle rebates for people that probably don't need the rebates to buy an electric vehicle.

So, you know, that's not the sign, that's not the greatest portion of the funding.

There's a lot of money, you know, that's being spent in other ways that I just wouldn't spend it.

And so what I'm saying is that, you know, my budget is gonna represent a statement of my values and what I believe to be important in people's lives right now to make the biggest significant difference in their lives.

Right.

Now - Talk about some of those proposals, affordability.

I know you've talked about like more tax credits for renters and homeowner, first time homeowners.

What, what is sort of the core of your affordability agenda here?

- Yeah, I mean, well when it comes to housing, you know, renters need to be able to save, to buy house.

We don't have a reasonable pathway to home ownership.

55% of Californians are, are homeowners.

The average age are first time home buyers, 40 years old, medium price homes, $800,000, twice the national average.

So what we need to do is we need to be able to give renters the ability to save for tax credit, I mean, sorry, save for a down payment and giving them a refundable tax credit so they can save up to $1,200 a year, you know, provide relief for, for homeowners by increasing the property tax exemption from $7,000 to $70,000.

And you pay for it by charging institutional and foreign investors that own one in five homes in this state.

A large upfront fee for anything that they buy.

And an ongoing annual fee for buying our homes and, and, and pricing families out of our out of home ownership.

And so, I mean, so yeah, housing, I've talked about childcare, healthcare.

I think we need universal basic healthcare.

We can pool of our resources, you know, you know, I get that that single payer is something that people really gravitate towards because they're, they're nervous and they want more certainty, but we still need, well, I dunno what the certainty is when you still need waivers, federal waivers from the federal government, right?

But you can create universal basic healthcare that covers primary care, mental healthcare, catastrophic care.

You know, right now you could do that right now without needing the federal government.

I wanna be insulated from the federal government.

I don't trust the federal government.

They don't care about us.

We care about ourselves.

If we're the fourth largest economy in the world, we can create strategic investments and to create programs where we can actually do funding and get a return on an investment so that we, it could end up equaling the amount of money we get from the federal government so that we don't have to live in that world of uncertainty anymore.

And I think you're gonna see a lot of states doing that, working together, and then insulating and, and trying to find ways to take care of themselves and what better state than California than, than to lead that.

- If you're just joining us, you're listening to political breakdown from KQED news.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

Our guest today is Democratic candidate for Governor Ian Calderon.

Well, I mean you, universal healthcare is expensive.

We're seeing $30 billion a year being cut from California just from that big policy bill passed last year by Republicans and Congress signed by Trump.

I, I mean, how are you, how do you square that?

Are you talk, do you wanna look for new funding sources within California?

Because we're seeing not only these cuts, but they're preventing the state from being able to continue expanding universal coverage.

- Yeah, I mean, right now, at least right now collectively, between what the state puts in and what all of us spend through our premiums and our deductibles, it's, it's $400 billion, a little over $400 billion.

And that would cover a universal basic healthcare system.

There are, there are gonna continue to be challenges from the federal government, but what I'm saying is, is we always love talking about being the fourth largest economy in the world.

And the focus shouldn't be just spend, spend, spend, spend only.

It should be on reinforcing our position to take care of ourselves, to account for the fact that we have uncertainty from the federal government.

So over a five to six year period, you strategically fund a fund, maybe it's, you know, to support green infrastructure and, you know, and, and, but you're getting a return on that investment from those dollars going out and, and funding these programs and these projects that over time it generates revenue that supplants the, the lack of funding that we're getting from the federal government or the whole that are in, that's in the state, state budget.

I mean, my idea when it comes to, you know, charging fees on foreign and corporate interest, buying our homes, that's a $15 billion raise right there.

You raise $15 billion.

And so there are a lot of different creative in innovative ways that we can do that accountability.

I mean, it would be great if we, it was gonna be, it's going to be great when we do forensic audits of every state spending spending program, every tax credit to really know where we stand, where's the money going, and are we really getting that return on investment that was always intended.

I bet you there are some tax credit programs that exist that are 30 plus years old that maybe aren't giving us what we intend to get.

And I'm not saying that that's a certainty, but I, I'm pretty sure we're gonna find some money and then better utilizing that, those dollars when we find those.

But I think a lot of money gets blown in ways that we're just not paying attention to.

There's not enough accountability.

So you want an independent auditor, and I want a prosecutor stationed within the governor's office and the administration independent, independent from any influence from the governor's office or anybody else.

But that is prosecuting fraud.

And, and I think that you have to restore trust.

People don't trust the institution of government.

I mean, on my generation, we don't trust any institutions anymore because they've constantly failed us and let us down.

So you have to rebuild that trust.

You gotta do it with accountability and transparency.

And you gotta really focus on policies that make people feel like, okay, you are finally seeing me and you're doing something that's making a meaningful difference in my everyday life.

And my experience as a legislator, in particular, the majority leader, the youngest in the history of the state, is I understand where the power lies in the legislature.

I understand where the power lies in state government.

I know how to do things that a lot of other candidates in this race don't know, know how to do because I'm the only one that's been in the legislature within the last decade.

So I had the right experience to do it and relationships to do it because I did it.

- Yeah.

You know, one thing you talked about in your campaign launch was Bitcoin.

And I, I wonder like, why are you talking about crypto?

How do you see it sort of fitting into everything we're discussing here?

- I mean, it's, it, this is an asset that's never gonna go away.

There is no CEO of Bitcoin.

There is no, you know, it, it, it's completely separate from any entity and of being, you know, controlled by one individual, which a lot of other cryptocurrencies are.

But bitcoin's different than these other cryptocurrencies.

But for me, the point I'm making is, here's a new technology that, you know, if you look at the, you know, 10 year cycle, four year cycle of this asset, it continues to go up, up and up.

So if there's a way for the state to benefit from investing some strategic dollars, just like we would in a rainy day fund, why wouldn't we attach it to an asset that has ability to, to provide explosive growth, to generate revenue that we can then put into funding these programs and meet, you know, filling the gap of some of some of these holes.

So I'm not saying, you know, we're gonna rely on Bitcoin or any type of digital asset to solve our problems, but it should be part of the conversation.

- Do you have concerns about the regulation?

I mean, it's a very under-regulated industry, a lot of risk to consumers at this point.

- I mean, I think that what's happening in the federal government is important.

The Clarity Act is gonna be a huge, huge issue when it comes to the, the certainty that people feel around the asset and its, and its regulation.

So I mean, yeah, you always have to be concerned to a degree, but I also think that you have to be willing to look at things differently.

And just because there's, you know, there's not so much that's known about a specific asset or issue, doesn't mean you don't, you know, look at it as a potentially viable option.

Yeah.

- I wanna switch gears and ask you about one thing.

Your dad was part of a political dynasty.

Both his brothers were in the state legislature, but a couple years after you were elected, they both were charged with corruption - One year, - One year, right after you got there.

I wonder how that affected your view of what to that point had been the family bus business and, and quite frankly, your relationships with 'em.

- The reality was is that there was already a strained relationship between my father and my uncles long before this had already happened.

There's just a difference in opinion about how to do things and how not to do things, and conversations that had been had of like, Hey, be careful.

Okay.

And, but when that happened, that was significantly hurtful in a lot of ways to the family.

I mean, I had just gotten elected, I was 27 years old, and now everybody's looking at me like, okay, well what role did you play?

It's like, well, obviously I didn't play a role.

I knew nothing that was going on.

But it didn't, it, my, my political career had had almost just was about to end in my opinion, as quickly, quickly as started right after started, started, - Yeah.

- Through nothing that had anything to do with me.

I mean, think about my father.

He had dedicated his life to public service.

What he had was his name.

And because of the actions of these two other guys, his brothers, that's wiped away.

Yeah.

Immediately.

And so that was, it was a really hard time for our family.

I almost lost my very first reelection as a result of that.

I mean, when you take that issue and you couple it with the fact that it was historically low voter turnout, lowest that we've, we had seen, I think somebody had said since the Civil War, - This is 2014.

- Yeah, yeah.

You know, it was, it was a, it was just an interesting time, but it was really scary because I didn't know what my future was gonna be.

And all I knew is that people were looking at me judging me for the actions of somebody else that I had nothing to do with.

And, you know, but I, but I am glad from, from the perspective of my own experience, that I did experience that because it really taught me how I should operate.

And that there just is a line that you never get close to.

Not that I would've ever gotten close to that, but it's just don't - Really clarifies that, you - Know, I understand the, I I understood to a different level and to a different degree.

You know, you, you, you're here to do a job and you better do it the right way.

And, and I just learned a lot to protect myself and also mature in a way that I think a 27-year-old guy at the time needs to mature about, you know, the heaviness of the role that you're taking on and what you're stepping into.

- Yeah.

Well, thank you for answering that.

I think it's really interesting to kinda hear your perspective and I'm sure, yeah, having the same last name, it's been a challenge.

Well, we're getting short on time.

You know, when we started, I, I mentioned just how crowded this field is, how hard it is to break out.

You might be able to say, this is a long shot candidacy.

I wonder to you like, is success only winning this race?

Or is it helping influence the debate?

- Why?

I think I already am influencing the debate.

Nobody was talking about corporations buying homes until I was started.

I started talking about it now it's the, now, now it's the hot button, - Trump and Newsom agree on it.

- You know, I've just got these ideas, Marisa, and I'm setting the tone.

I mean, even when it comes to ICE and, and they're, and, and, you know, and the actions around ICE and the concerns around ICE.

I was the very first one to say that I would file, I would direct the Attorney General to file charges against any federal agent that comes into our state and violates our laws.

And so, and now all the candidates are picking that up.

So I, I have been able to impact this, this race, and I have been able to impact the discussion and what we talk about and what the priorities are in a significant way.

I think other candidates in this race, because they have more money, they think that they can take these ideas and use 'em as their own without any consequence.

But in my opinion, it's just a matter of time until people see me and really understand who actually came up with these ideas and why I'm really just different from anybody else in this race.

This isn't about me.

I'm not an ego guy.

My whole job as a majority leader was behind the scenes and being quiet.

- Yeah.

- You never saw me out there standing up on anything, you know, to try to get attention.

If I came up, I stood on the floor, I spoke, or I did something, it was for a purpose.

It was for a reason.

Otherwise, everything that I did was quiet because I cared about doing the job the right way and getting things done that I had got elected to do.

And that's exactly what I did.

And I think that that's the type of leadership that Californians are looking for.

And so, yeah, I think success is winning.

And I, you know, Zohran Mamdani was pretty much an outsider that nobody thought was gonna get there until all of a sudden, a couple months out, he started gaining traction and became, became the mayor.

People are looking for something new.

They're looking for something different.

They do not want a continuation of what has been.

They don't want the same thing.

They want something different, innovative, creative.

And I just believe that I'm the only one in this race that represents that, and I represent it because when I had power, I gave it up, and now I'm coming back.

- Yeah.

All right.

We're ending on the same question for all the governor candidates.

And this might, I, I, I have a guess that you might cite a beach given your surfing background here.

Okay.

Where would you take an out-of-state friend to give them a taste of California, - Give them a taste of California?

An out-state friend?

Mm.

Yeah, I think it's gonna be a beach.

I, I would probably take them to Salt Creek and Dana Point.

It is just such an, it's such a really interesting, unique place.

It's a huge beach.

You walk all the way down to the end, there's tide pools that you can walk around and, and it's just like, it's an amazing place.

But also at the same time, it's also, that's very coastal California.

And our coastline is beautiful, you know, and of course, who wouldn't want to take, you know, somebody to Disneyland if they hadn't been to Disneyland?

- Well, yeah.

All right.

Disney, the beach, the morning, Disneyland in the afternoon.

Ian Calderon, thank you so much for coming in.

- Thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate it.

- And that's gonna be a wrap for Thursday, February 19th.

Political Breakdown is a production of KQED.

Our engineer today is Jim Bennett.

Our producer is Izzy Bloom, and our video team includes Matt Morales and Vivian Morales.

You're gonna be able to find all of our interviews for governor in our podcast feed in the coming weeks.

And you can also watch them on the KQED News YouTube channel.

We're gonna be posting a lot more content there this year in general.

So check it out for today.

I'm Marisa Lagos.

We'll see you next time.