The independent trying to face Gavin Newsom in California |mchael shellenberger governor
across the country this weekend cities were wracked with gun violence outside a theater in philadelphia three killed 11 injured in a shooting chattanooga tennessee another three killed 14 injured outside a nightclub more shootings at a graduation party in south carolina a strip mall in arizona.
all of this in one weekend michael schellenberger running for governor in california is an independent in tomorrow's primary and joins us now how does this work if you're running for an independent uh in the primary it's good to be with you we have a open primary system so that anybody can vote for anybody so i was a democrat until last year i could no longer in good conscience be a democrat knowing what i had uncovered about the role of democrats in contributing to the crime and homelessness crisis but i'm now drawing support from democrats independents republicans again you can cross party lines it's the top two vote getters who then proceed to the runoff i believe at this point it will be the governor gavin newsom who i will face off in november all right how much of newsome's policies and if so which ones in do you think are responsible for the rising crime in california versus say uh gascone in los angeles and then uh boudin in san francisco's policies well i mean the fish rots from the head down and so what you've seen under gavin newsom is that drug overdose and poisoning deaths doubled since he was elected homicides went up 30 percent.
we've seen we're deeply under policed we need at least 1500 police officers between san francisco and los angeles alone the governor's done nothing of significance to get more police officers on the street he's led 30 000 people out of prison since he took office he said he would consider closing one prison instead now he's planning on closing three prisons without rehabilitating prisoners fair enough hard to imagine why anybody's leaving california these days uh considering the tax burden but given that and i'll turn over marnie after this but uh he won he won his recall election uh people seem to be pretty happy with them yeah i mean i think what happened is that there it became you know we're pretty liberal people in california so it became a referendum on his opponent who was a very strong trump supporter nice guy but he didn't have a view on the biggest problem in the state i've been an advocate for rehabilitation for 25 years people that are addicted to hard drugs or suffering from schizophrenia like my aunt was they deserve medical care they need rehab there's other people who are violent sociopathic criminals that need to go to prison but we californians want to discern between those two groups.
i'm able to do that on the far right they just want everybody to go to prison on the far left they want to let everybody out of prison where they they've gone into the homeless encampments we need a more balanced approach that's the approach that i've been taking and will take as governor crime and homelessness obviously big problems for california and for cities all along the west coast and really the nation for that matter um the economy though is going to be the biggest issue come november especially in california with gas prices where they are what do you see um in terms of of a not a light switch which the president says um is not possible but in terms of some short-term fixes to address what californians are facing and folks across the country with rising inflation yeah i mean here again you've seen gavin newsom but also democrats more nationally have really pursued the the suppression of energy production the governor governor of california he's been trying to shut down our last nuclear power plant i've been fighting to keep it operating he's now had to concede that he may keep it open because we're in the fourth summer in a row of blackouts we also are having water shortages a lot of people don't realize you know there's you can store more water you can desalinate water you can recycle waste water he's done none of those things out here you know there's basically anti-growth pro-scarcity environmentalists i'm pro-abundance i know that energy abundance is the key to lowering the cost of living protecting the natural environment moving towards cleaner sources of energy by making them cheaper is how we solve climate change so it's really a test between these two philosophies of an abundance-based environmentalism versus the governor's and unfortunately president biden's more scarcity-focused environmental agenda as we're looking at some of the video of the homeless situation in california why has it gotten so bad over the last few years i'm looking at numbers from 2020 and it's continued to go up and up and up you mentioned the drug issue what else do you think is contributing to so many people living on the streets right now well obviously everybody in the united states has had to deal with the huge drug crisis we had 17 000 drug deaths in the year 2000.
this year we had 105 000 drug deaths but it's worse in california homelessness increased 31 percent over the last 10 years even as it declined 18 in the rest of the united states the reason for that is that the governor and his party have made it a policy to offer anybody who wants their own apartment this sounds ridiculous but it's true their own apartment a free apartment without conditions we just don't have that kind of we're a wealthy state but we don't have that kind of money there's not enough room in la and san francisco to offer that we need to do what europeans do which is to provide clean basic shelter for people simple shelter safe shelter but then the limited amount of housing that's subsidized by taxpayers should be a reward for abstinence or making progress towards your personal plan towards recovery since the vast majority of the people on the street are there because of drug addiction or mental illness or both turnout for primaries is not typically all that high what do you anticipate for tomorrow do you folks think folks are going to turn out to let their voices be heard ahead of november well i think the there's going to be probably around a third of the voters will turn out for the primary the good news is i think the most passionate people will turn out those tend to be my people they really we've just got a huge amount of momentum people they want to see a middle path of carrots and sticks of tough love not just punitive but also not enabling addiction or enabling crime which is what the current government has done so a more balanced approach i think is drawing a lot of passion from all sides here we feel like if we can come in second tomorrow and establish tough love as our approach to the crime and homelessness crisis is really going to be a model for the rest of the united states fair enough if you do come in second um and i would suspect that you think you're going to get a lot of support from republicans then if you do come in second uh that would that would then cross over i'm looking at uh brian dale though republican at 10 percent uh where where is this crossover support for you well we're getting a huge amount of support really from all sides i mean again it's a balanced approach you know what the impulsive michael michael you're at five percent i'm trying to figure out where the huge support is well again that poll that's an early poll we hadn't even started advertising before the poll came out um our own internal polling shows much stronger support again we have 24 hours and we'll find out maybe i'm wrong i hope not but nonetheless i think we are drawing support from republicans who know that californians unfortunately they just don't they don't have any confidence in the republican party they're viewed as anti-immigrant they're viewed as too aligned with trump at the same time we know democrats have created the crisis of chaos on the streets so i do think people are going to give us the that we are going to come in second tomorrow you know but either way it's been a historic campaign we've been drawing more support as an independent than any other gubernatorial candidate in history thank you for watching go to newsnationnow.com to find news nation on your television provider and don't forget to click the red subscribe button below to get more of news nation's fact-driven unbiased coverage
