Corey Gustafson, the former chair of the Republican Party of San Diego County, joined Politically Speaking this week to offer perspective on why Proposition 50 resonated with California voters, the cost of living crisis and the 2026 midterm elections.
A transcript of the full conversation is below.
Safchik: Let’s start with the passage of Prop 50, widely considered a rebuke of the Trump administration. How does that characterization land with you?
Gustafson: Well, look, this was all Gavin Newsom’s first foray, or many would say, a numerous foray into trying to run for president. This is what this whole thing was about. President Gavin Newsom wants to be president of the United States. And that’s what Prop 50 was all about. It was a big scam that he told the voters. Last November, this was all about fighting Texas and President Trump. That’s what he wanted people to believe, not only in California, but around the nation, because he knows that fighting President Trump is good for him within the Democratic primary process, not for California as a whole. What really happened was is that we had a fundamental, fundamentally hurt and destroyed our independent redistricting process, something that Democrats have agreed to since the beginning of redistricting of the independent redistricting commission in California, so I think that this was really a political move by Gavin Newsom, and it hurt California.
Safchik: But this did pass by a wide margin, so what do you think didn’t resonate with voters when it came to the no side’s messaging?
Gustafson: Well, look, the fact of the matter is there’s no way to sugarcoat it. There are two times as many Democrats in California than there are Republicans.
Safchik: This was a numbers game.
Gustafson: Absolutely. So, we tried our best. We put out a good effort in San Diego and in California. But we have to do more. And that starts with registering more Republicans. If we don’t have more Republicans in the state of California than we’re not going to be able to compete statewide. There’s a reason we haven’t had a Republican elected statewide since Arnold Schwarzenegger, because we don’t have enough Republicans and the Republicans that we did have, Gavin Newsom and Democratic politicians chased them out to Texas and Florida because of the unbelievably bad way they’ve governed the state.
Safchik: So what do you do about that? How do you register more Republicans?
Gustafson: Well, we have to show them what Republicans believe in. We have to show them that the affordability crisis that plagues so many Californians is not going to be solved by higher taxes. It’s going to be solved by lower taxes, less government regulation, less government involvement and letting people operate and, and engage in the entrepreneurial spirit that built up California from the beginning. So Californians have that, conservative streak in them. California was Republican for many, many years before it turned completely Democrat since 2006. So Californians are open to a message of getting things done using common sense. And Republicans have to take that message to each individual California voter and tell them that the Republicans are the party of solution and Democrats are the party of failure.
Safchik: What are some of the solutions?
Gustafson: We want to, number one, as I just said, we want to lower taxes. It’s too expensive in this state. And the idea that you’re going to make life more affordable for working families by increasing taxes, increasing regulation, is a fool’s errand. We need to have more businesses that come into California and allow more of people’s paychecks to stay in their wallet, in their pocketbook. Republicans around California, Republicans in San Diego specifically, are pushing that message. You have a supervisor, Jim Desmond. You have Mayor John Franklin fighting against the transfer tax proposal by Terra Lawson-Remer. They are not going, they’re going to try to put a sales tax, the Democrats on the council majority, are trying to put a sales tax on people’s houses. Aren’t houses expensive enough? And here Democrats are trying to increase taxation on people’s houses. And it’s just not fair to first time homebuyers and those who are trying to get ahead in San Diego.
Safchik: Is this notion of reversing course and making California lean more to the right, is that a pipe dream, though, realistically?
Gustafson: Short term, right. In the state, and California is an enormous state, but as I always said when I was chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, we can’t promise people results overnight, right? That’s not going to happen. But we can promise people progress. We can show them results. And what the party did, the Republicans in San Diego County did last election cycle, moved the Republican Party 5.7 points to the right. So San Diego County moved 5.7 points to the Republican side. That’s substantial progress. If that happens every couple of years, Republicans are going to be back in the fight in San Diego County. But we have to be solving problems and making an impact on Californians and San Diegans.
Safchik: OK, circling back to Prop 50. You alluded to this, but originally this was presented as a response to Texas redistricting. Voters were told this would only go into effect if Texas drew new maps. Just this week, a federal court blocked Texas’s new congressional maps. But of course, that language was ultimately taken out of the ballot measure here in California, so what do you make of all that?
Gustafson: Well, it’s amazing how these federal judges are targeting only conservative states. They’ve targeted President Trump’s policies, issuing stays on a lot of what they’re doing, really legislating from the bench. I think if you look at what Texas did, they did everything in a constitutional matter in accordance with Texas law. They had to redistrict because Galveston County was sued by the Biden administration, and the Biden administration lost. So the Trump administration, in order to get Texas going to where it should be in line with that judicial decision, that they had to redistrict. That’s the reason why Texas redistricted in the first place. And then their state constitution has the redistricting process go through the state Legislature, whereas in California, that does not happen, right? We have a redistricting process. And then Gavin Newsom decided, and why I think the lawsuit in California has a lot more legs to it when it eventually gets through the system is that Gavin Newsom wrote these, paid for by the way by the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Campaign Committee, they paid for the redistricting maps before the people voted on it, right, and because they had to rush it through because there’s a deadline on filing to get the special election done. So I think that this was obviously a political play. And Californians are going to, I think, regret what they’ve done.
Safchik: But ultimately, voters did approve this by a wide margin. So should the will of the people here in California not take precedent here?
Gustafson: Well, I think that we are a democratic republic. We have certainly, in California, a strong system of having initiatives or recall votes or special elections like we saw on Prop 50. But the fact of the matter is, things have to be done in the proper fashion, right? In a democracy, we also want to follow the rule of law. So just because the folks decide that something is against something that is constitutional, that does not mean that the democratic element of society should overrule the constitutional side of our democratic republic.
Safchik: OK, let’s go back to cost of living. According to the conservative leaning Tax Foundation, the average American household’s costs will increase by $1,200 a year due to tariffs. How do you justify that?
Gustafson: I would say that you have to look at the bigger picture, right? Yes, the cost may be partly going up from tariffs, right? But we also have to look at the other side of it. It’s shifting the tax base right where Americans just got the largest tax cut in American history. Largest tax cut. This applies to all Americans, specifically working class Americans, right? Where you have a no tax on tips policy, a no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, keeping the income brackets where they were under the first President Trump tax cut. So Republicans are lowering the cost of living, lowering taxes across the country, nationally. But what we have to remember here in California is that most government that affects each and every viewer today is done at the local level and the state level. And guess who’s in charge in California and have been for 20 years like we just spoke about: the Democratic Party. They control the San Diego Board of Supervisors. They control with supermajorities. Sacramento, both houses of the legislature, and, of course, Gavin Newsom as governor. When the cost of living crisis we’re talking about in California, when we talk about that, it’s at the Democrats feet. They’re the ones who have created this cost of living crisis, a crisis through their tremendous tax policies.
Safchik: You predicted my next question. We know that a lot of these cost of living decisions are made at the hyper local level of government. So what can Republicans in California do to ease some of these burdens? We’ve seen rate increases and new fees at the city of San Diego, but that’s an all Democratic council.
Gustafson: Well, San Diego Republicans do pretty well in local elections. If you look just in North County, in Escondido, we have a Republican mayor, Dane White. He’s doing a fantastic job. And four Republicans on the council there. So Republicans are making inroads in local cities. I think that the balance between Democratic mayors and Republican mayors right now is roughly equal in San Diego County. And that’s because we get away from the national politics, right? We talk about what’s hurting people in their homes and what they’re hurting is, is the high cost of living, including high gas prices, a high taxation. These are all things that people are concerned about every single day when they wake up. And Republicans have the policies to, to stop those and to help the working families.
Safchik: I’m curious if you see a future where Republicans can gain a foothold in the city of San Diego, specifically.
Gustafson: The city of San Diego, again, has the same sort of problem except, to be honest, the numbers are even worse in the city of San Diego than the state of California. So we have a ways to go, certainly in the city of San Diego. But again, if you look historically, at San Diego and San Diego County, before the last 10 years, it was a Republican area. And I think that the mantra, the feeling, as a person who’s lived here for my entire life, San Diegans want the government out of the way. They want to live their life. We live in the most beautiful place in the world, and we want to live our lives without government interference. We want to be able to go to a Padre game and not see homeless people on the side of the street everywhere you go. We want to be able to go down the highway and not see people living out of, out of the, out of tents as we drive by. This is not the San Diego that we all grew up with. When we had Republican leadership in this town, in this county, this was not the case. Again, elections have consequences. And all these things that San Diego complains about, high cost of living, high homelessness, it’s come with Democratic leadership. If people want change in San Diego, they should vote Republican.
Safchik: Those don’t sound like they should necessarily be partisan issues, though.
Gustafson: They shouldn’t be. But if we look at it, California since 2019, under Governor Gavin Newsom, $25 billion has been spent on homelessness and nothing’s been solved. Right? Maybe marginal decreases over the past six months? Maybe. But if you look at the steady stream of homelessness over the last six years, it’s gone on an upward trajectory, right? Even though they’re spending billions of billions of dollars. And for some reason, this isn’t working. Republicans have ideas to stop this. If you look at what John Franklin in Vista is doing and again, Jim Desmond, on the countywide basis, I know that John Franklin is calling for the idea of making sure that we have the ability that government has the ability to take people off the streets if they are, have mental problems or are drug addicted. Right. We can’t just have people choose to be living on the street. There has to be accountability to this whole system. We’re hurting people there. I think there were 594 people who died on the streets last year, right? We can’t have this happen. People can’t choose that pathway because it’s not compassionate. The compassionate way of going about this is getting, we have plenty of money in the system. We have the beds available, but we have to make sure that the people who need our help are given that help and are put into these places, so that they can get the help that they need.
Safchik: Well, then let’s look ahead to next year. Let’s talk about the governor’s race for a second. Do you see any opening here where a moderate Republican can hold the highest office in California?
Gustafson: I don’t think, you know, moderation in principles necessarily, a way of winning elections. Right. Just because you agree with the Democrats half the time, agree with Republicans half the time. That’s not a way of, it’s not an elixir and a mathematical formula to win an election. What people want is authenticity, and they want solutions to their problems. And so a way a Republican can’t compete in California is through offering connecting with folks on how do we solve your problems, right. The everyday problems that everybody pays attention to. Most of the people watching this show pay very close attention to politics. But that’s not the case with the majority of San Diegans and Californians and Americans. They’re busy with their everyday lives. We have to make an impact. The Republicans, not only in the governor’s race but everywhere, on solving people’s problems.
Safchik: Sticking with next year as we wait to see how things shake out regarding maps here in Texas, across the country, what can Republicans do to hold on to their majority in the House?
Gustafson: I think, again, letting our politics, our policies work, right? The big beautiful bill is going to work for the American people. But I got to be honest with you, the Democrats left a very bad situation, right? This is not just shifting the blame, but give President Trump and Republicans in Congress the chance to fix the problems that they promised that they would fix. They’ve already done one of them. I would say two of them. The big three problems. Right, where we have, the border crisis, President Trump and Republicans have completely sealed the border and made it safe for Americans. And the Democrats said it couldn’t be done during their four years in office, but President Trump has done it. Number two, you look at foreign policy. President Biden was constantly talking about the world being at war, and America couldn’t do anything about it. Right. But we look at what has happened in Palestine and Israel, where we have a peace process started there. What we have seen with President Trump’s deals around the world bringing American, bringing American, and bringing investment into America. These are things that President Trump is really doing successfully, $8 trillion worth so far into America invested. Right. So he’s doing a great job on those two things. And then the third, of course, is the cost of living. Republicans know that there’s a crisis. That’s what we campaigned on. Democrats were sitting there for four years talking about how everything’s fine, everything’s copacetic. And now I see Mayor Bass in Los Angeles and Gavin Newsom talking about the cost of living. These are the most expensive places in the world. They’ve been in charge forever. Republicans, when given a chance, when we have that chance down the House, our policies will help the cost of living. But we got to give it some time.
Safchik: What about health care costs? Millions of Americans are seeing their health care premiums soar right now. Is that going to be leveraged against your party?
Gustafson: Well, certainly, we are in power. So everything’s going to be blamed on Republicans.
Safchik: So should Republicans be negotiating on that front?
Gustafson: The Republicans should do, we should do whatever it takes to lower the cost of living for Americans. But the problem is when you negotiate with Democrats, as we see in California, their only solution is putting more government involvement. What we’ve seen since the beginning of Obamacare is a massive increase in the amount of spending that we’ve done on health care in the United States of America. Prices have not gone down. Prices have steadily increased because the government is not an effective mechanism to solving health care inflation. What you have to do is bring in more market forces, more competition. And if Democrats are willing to do that, Republicans will certainly come to the table and work with them on that.
Safchik: Let’s briefly touch on the shutdown. I know everyone is eager to move on from that, but did the Trump administration make a mistake by withholding that food assistance? Is that going to come back to bite Republicans?
Gustafson: Republicans had, we had, it was the Schumer shutdown. This was obviously a political shutdown that eight Democrats who joined Republicans to open up the government, I think, proved that beyond any reasonable doubt. I mean, we saw the reaction from the AOC, AOC side of her party saying, ‘Oh my, we caved into the Trump administration. We lost.’ Well, this is because they wanted to keep the government shut down. They wanted to hurt the American people. So when I hear about the Trump administration withholding any kind of benefits, Republicans consistently voted to open government. We wanted to continue, a continuing resolution to keep the government open and funded. Democrats were the ones who didn’t provide the votes until eight members of their party rightfully made the decision to open up the government for the American people.
Safchik: Before we run out of time, I do want to ask you about immigration, obviously a motivating issue here locally. Do you think the administration’s one-size-fits-all enforcement policy could hurt Republicans at the polls here?
Gustafson: I think that it’s a nationwide issue. Right. And I think that if you look at what happened in the last election, since President Trump came into office, we have been told that his immigration policies will hurt him amongst a certain part of the electorate. But if you look at where, specifically, how Latinos voted in the last election, they’ve never voted at a higher clip for Republicans since 2004. Why? Because people come here legally want to make sure that folks who follow in their footsteps do so as well. They don’t want people cutting in line, and they want to know who’s in the country and who’s not. This is very simple stuff. All Republicans want and have provided the American people as a secure southern border, where we know who is coming in, where we know who’s coming out and providing a deterrent to the rest of the world who we don’t know, doesn’t necessarily mean from Mexico, from South America, from Asia, from the Middle East, from China, these people are all flooding in from the southern border. Now Republicans have provided the security to where we can talk about immigration reform, but we could never do that before because the border wasn’t secure. But now Republicans have accomplished that because of President Trump’s leadership and Republicans in Congress’ leadership.
Safchik: Do you think that distinction between border security and immigration reform is clearly communicated to the American people?
Gustafson: I think that the American people see what’s going on. I think that they remember the images on their television screen of people pouring across the border of agents being told not to stop, people coming across the border, of having private flights, or of bringing illegal immigrants into the country. I think that’s what the American people remember. And what Republicans have to do a better job of is reminding folks of what it was and what it is now. And when you look at the southern border, we have a secure border where there is not the chaos that is going on. And that’s good for all people. Whatever you believe should be. On how immigration reform should be done. Having a secure border is good for all Americans.
Safchik: Because people are also going to remember images of babies being pepper sprayed.
Gustafson: I did not see that.
Safchik: This was a story from last week. So how does that square right about the Trump administration’s promises to deport?
Gustafson: I did not see that image. I have, the Trump administration and federal law enforcement are doing everything they can to protect people’s due process rights. But they’re cleaning up an enormous mess that the Biden administration left them right again. 12 million people came into this country. When you talk about if what you said is true, because I didn’t see it, I’m not saying one way or the other, but if that’s true, we have the chaos created by the Biden administration. If we would have had a secure border where we knew who people were here and who were not here, this kind of thing would not be going on. But the Trump administration is trying to fix the problem of this chaos that was left because of the open border policies of Democrats.
Safchik: According to NBC data, under 30% of migrants in ICE detention have criminal convictions. How does that square again with the promises to deport the worst of the worst?
Gustafson: Well, you got to start somewhere, and it looks like 31% is a pretty hefty amount. Right. And we also, there’s other studies that have shown that, the incarceration rate of folks who have been deported once is 61%. They are offenders in some way, right? Whether it be, coming back into the country again or through another criminal, a crime, there is a high risk for a certain segment of these folks, right. And the fact of the matter is, even if it was 1%, 2%, 3%, 10%, 90%, whatever the number is, these folks shouldn’t be here to begin with because they’re breaking the law and not following the process to come to our great country right. Republicans are in favor. President Trump always talks about having the big, beautiful golden door through the wall because we want people to come here legally into this country, right? We have a long, great tradition of that in the United States, but it has to be done in a lawful manner.
Safchik: Does any facet of the administration’s immigration enforcement give you pause?
Gustafson: I think that they’ve just done, I think they’ve done a marvelous job. And I think that if you look at the opinion polls, it shows that the American people are confident in President Trump’s handling of the border crisis or we should say, previous crisis because President Trump solved it. I mean, we’re talking about the idea that we’re having a net zero illegal immigration in the country, right now. Right? We have hundreds of thousands of people deporting the lines have stopped coming across the border because the President Trump said, we’re not going to have this anymore when you actually have a deterrent policy where you say to the rest of the world that you can’t just come here for any reason, anytime you want, illegally, then the rest of the world gets the message. And what President Biden did throughout his entire administration, whether it be on the border, whether it be overseas, was not send a message of American strength to the rest of the world and the rest of the world’s bad guys walked all over us. And President Trump is standing up to the rest of the world and fighting for his America First agenda.
Safchik: Very quickly. Before we wrap up, I want to know what you have to say to the hundreds of thousands of registered Republicans here in San Diego County who could be at risk of losing their congressional representation?
Gustafson: Look, we’re going to, you we got to, as President Trump said, we have to fight, fight, fight. And I think the Democrats are going to be surprised at what’s going to happen. I don’t think that they’re going to win the five seats that they’re expecting to win. I think you look specifically at California’s 48th Congressional District, where Darrell Issa has been leading there and a great manner up, you know, helping pass these bills that have been helping Americans with affordability. I think he’s going to win that seat. I think Darrell Issa, the voters know him very well, and they know that he’s delivered for California. They know he’s a great leader and he knows that. They know that he has the seniority in Congress, to make sure that money and resources are coming back to California and he’s going to do the right thing by the American people. And this new district that the Democrats drew up for Congressman Issa includes former places that he used to represent. So they know him very well. And Vista and San Marcos and Escondido. So I think Darrell is absolutely going to win the 48th race.
Safchik: Certainly a race to watch. Yes. Thank you so much for your time. We always appreciate it.
Gustafson: Thanks for having me, Joey. Thank you.
Want more insights? Join Working Title - our career elevating newsletter and get the future of work delivered weekly.
