Former Republican Congressman Doug Ose announced Friday that he was running for California governor, joining a crowded field of candidates and potentially increasing the chances of a Democrat-on-Democrat general election in November.
Ose, who represented a suburban Sacramento district for six years between 1999 and 2005, said in an interview Friday that he was running because he wanted to help “rebuild the California dream.”
“What we’re getting today is not satisfactory, and we don’t have to settle for this,” Ose said, citing high costs of living and rising rates of homelessness in the Golden State.
He joins Republicans Travis Allen, an Orange County State Assemblyman, and John Cox, a San Diego County businessman. In recent polls, Allen and Cox have trailed behind Democrats Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor, and Antonio Villaraigosa, the former mayor of Los Angeles. Also in the race are State Treasurer John Chiang and former public schools chief Delaine Eastin, both Democrats.
In Congress, Ose was seen as a moderate Republican. He fought for tax cuts, chaired a House Government Reform subcommittee, and wrote a bill that would have carved former President Ronald Reagan’s face into the granite of Mount Rushmore — right next to Abraham Lincoln.
Ose, who owns real estate, storage units, and a farm, opened a campaign finance committee on Friday and plans to begin raising money immediately. He spent several million dollars of his personal funds on an unsuccessful 2014 Congressional challenge to Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, which was the most expensive House race in the country that year. But he suggested that he didn’t intend to self-fund his gubernatorial campaign at that scale.
A strong backer of President Trump, Ose volunteered on the Trump campaign and has met the president in person. He said he thinks his relationship with Trump would give him a leg up as governor over other candidates. “If there’s a problem in California and it’s a choice of me calling the president as governor or someone else calling the president as governor, who do you think’s going to get through?” he asked.
Ose also vowed to focus on issues like combating homelessness and dealing with mental health problems during the campaign. “I am going to make people think about uncomfortable subjects,” he said. And he previewed a law-and-order theme, criticizing voter-backed ballot measures providing early parole for some felons convicted of nonviolent crimes.
Ose’s entry in the campaign could dilute the Republican vote further. If all three Republicans stick in the race and divide up the GOP electorate in the top-two June primary, it would make it easier for two Democrats, like Newsom and Villaraigosa, to slip onto the November ballot. That’s what happened in the 2016 U.S. Senate race, when a bevy of Republican hopefuls split the vote and Democrats Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez went on to the general election.
But Ose didn’t seem concerned when asked about that scenario. “I guess the other two need to get out,” he said.
His two GOP rivals aren’t thrilled with Ose’s decision. “Ose is testing the waters, and he’s going to hear from a lot of people that having a third Republican in the race is a really bad idea in a top-two system,” predicted Cox spokesman Matt Shupe. “Everyone is going to say, ‘why didn’t he do this a year ago?’” An Allen spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Allen and Cox traded barbs on Thursday night in the first Republican debate of the campaign season, at a tea party event in San Bernardino County. Allen blasted Cox for not voting for President Trump in 2016, and Cox bashed Allen for donating to Democratic candidates like Newsom and Gov. Jerry Brown in the past.
Also on Friday, Cox launched a statewide, three-week radio ad, asking voters to join him in “liberating California from the grip of Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom.”
