Is Marie Waldron Chad Mayes 2.0? She is co-authoring (not just sponsoring mind you) legislation to enact proxy voting in the Assembly. She also has gone off the rails on giving criminals get out of jail free cards.

Somebody needs to tell Waldron that Latinos disdain the term LatinX. #PANDERFAIL

Note that Gavin Newsom is one of the fans of this post. Nowhere does Waldron mention the causes of crime (fatherlessness, drop out rate, etc etc etc), but she has gone full Chad Mayes and is taking the Jessica Patterson pandering course seriously. Yup, Waldron posted a black out tweet too.

This leads me to the latest scuttlebutt in the Capitol. The natives are getting restless. Kevin McCarthy wants one of his people in the Assembly leader spot. He already has Shannon Grove in place in the Senate.

The two leading candidates I am aware of for Assembly Republican Permanent Minority Leader are James Gallagher and Kevin Kiley. It appears that Vincent Fong understands he is perceived to be too close to McCarthy?

If you are watching things these days, Kiley started coming out strong for Re-Open about a month ago, joined by Gallagher. Both have been on fire – promoting Republican principles while Waldron has been collaborating with Governor Newsom crowing about all the neat committees she is on related to the green BS they plan to institute courtesy of the COVID opportunity.

Both Kiley and Gallagher are ambitious. I will take that over placeholder lumps or French Terror Threat Level 5 Republicans (collaborate).

There is a third candidate I think should run for leader and that is Megan Dahle. Dahle is tough as nails, intelligent and checks all the boxes. She would be my first choice out of the 19 remaining GOP Members of the Assembly.

That said, Kiley wants to run for congress. Before getting stopped in his attempt to graduate to State Senate, he had established a profile for himself. He has appeared to move to the right in the months since the aborted election. His recent social media and email messaging has been spot on and is some of the best I have seen from a Republican in a long time. (Check out Eric Early for Congress for another stellar example of GOP messaging)

It would be a natural for Kiley to look at a leadership post as he was body slammed by Chad Mayes in his rampage out the door of the GOP. It would also be a resume builder for his (Kiley’s) future political ambitions.

A big plus for Kiley is that he is independent of the political factions. A big minus for Kiley is he plays his cards close and you never 100% know where he stands on an issue.

James Gallagher is a rock star. He is a prototypical conservative. While both he and Kiley are attorneys by trade, Gallager made his mark defending farmers and lacks the Ivy League pedigree of Mr. Kiley. I’ve never once seen a stance on an issue Gallagher has taken that I disagree with. (Until internal party politics that is)

My main issue with Gallagher was his proximity to the McCarthy-Randle-Patterson squish machine. It appears that in the last year Gallagher has separated from said machine and has charted his own path. If true, my main reservation about Gallagher will have been removed.

We had Newt Gingrich with the Contract With America. We have Marie Waldron with the Suicide Pact With California. Perhaps Megan Dahle (Gallagher/Kiley?) can get us back to “Republican Values Matter”.