California Underground: Your Sane Insight into California Politics
Oct 7, 2026 · 1 hr 18 min · 19 segments
play-by-play of the CNN debate between Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, candidates for California governor. Phil goes through the debate exchange by exchange, tracking whether each answer included…
I'll give you my first initial thoughts of this, which is one that I was frustrated watching this debate because, as I said at the top of the show, obviously there's one candidate who showed up.
who actually came with like policy proposals and ideas of how to actually try and fix California.
And one came with the strategy that I'm sure his advisors told him about, which is blame Trump for everything.
Just blame Trump and say it's all Trump's fault and scare everyone into thinking that if you vote for Steve Hilton, you will be voting for Donald Trump and that Donald Trump will somehow get into Sacramento and change all of the laws in California and destroy California.
That was basically it.
That's basically the debate.
I mean, we could just end the show there and say that's basically the debate and talk about other things.
But I did want to, like, actually go through the debate because there are things that I want to talk about.
And obviously, as I...
Watch this.
I got more and more frustrated.
So I said it sounds like I just sounded like I needed to.
It was something that I needed to discuss.
It was something that I needed to, you know, obviously go into depth.
Obviously, as I was getting more frustrated, I was like, this is a good topic for a show.
And obviously we need to discover and discuss it because a lot of people didn't even know this debate actually happened.
So it's important that this debate is resurfaced and talked about again so that people have a better idea.
We're not going to go through the entire debate.
Obviously, that would take a long time.
We're going to go over some of the highlights of this.
So without further ado, let's get started in this first story.
This is all about Javier Becerra and Hilton talking about taxes and housing, which we're going to go through and I'm going to add some commentary as we go along.
So let's get started.
Let's pull this up and we will get going on this.
And as always, if you have any comments or questions, if you're tuning in live, make sure that you let me know in the comments.
I'll give you my first initial thoughts of this, which is one that I was frustrated watching this debate because, as I said at the top of the show, obviously there's one candidate who showed up.
who actually came with like policy proposals and ideas of how to actually try and fix California.
And one came with the strategy that I'm sure his advisors told him about, which is blame Trump for everything.
Just blame Trump and say it's all Trump's fault and scare everyone into thinking that if you vote for Steve Hilton, you will be voting for Donald Trump and that Donald Trump will somehow get into Sacramento and change all of the laws in California and destroy California.
That was basically it.
That's basically the debate.
I mean, we could just end the show there and say that's basically the debate and talk about other things.
But I did want to, like, actually go through the debate because there are things that I want to talk about.
And obviously, as I...
Watch this.
I got more and more frustrated.
So I said it sounds like I just sounded like I needed to.
It was something that I needed to discuss.
It was something that I needed to, you know, obviously go into depth.
Obviously, as I was getting more frustrated, I was like, this is a good topic for a show.
And obviously we need to discover and discuss it because a lot of people didn't even know this debate actually happened.
So it's important that this debate is resurfaced and talked about again so that people have a better idea.
We're not going to go through the entire debate.
Obviously, that would take a long time.
We're going to go over some of the highlights of this.
So without further ado, let's get started in this first story.
This is all about Javier Becerra and Hilton talking about taxes and housing, which we're going to go through and I'm going to add some commentary as we go along.
So let's get started.
Let's pull this up and we will get going on this.
And as always, if you have any comments or questions, if you're tuning in live, make sure that you let me know in the comments.
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