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POINT OF VIEW - Politics in Los Angeles has no shortage of candidates who sound like they were grown in a lab of political correctness. Their ideology, Housing First, Trump Bad™, and the promotion of climate change hysteria are only about garnering enough votes to stay in office. Using their offices and heaps of voter suicidal empathy, they are turning California into a third-world country in record time. While never taking responsibility for the fact that their policies have degenerated the very City and State they claim to be fixing.
Most candidates come out of the same political pipeline, moving from internships to staff roles in elected offices, NGOs, and unions, where they learn how the system works and how not to fix it. They know and live by the script because their very existence and the blue political machine depend on it. They have been focus-group-polished and tested, endlessly rehearsed, but every once in a while, someone who has not been trained or brainwashed, and who has no stake in the existing political dysfunction, decides to crash the status quo and the stagnant political atrophy that typically make up the vast majority of candidates (unfortunately) in this state. Mike Netter is one of those candidates. He is running for the 22nd Senate District.
He doesn’t speak in consultant-approved language, and, dude, he frames his arguments like a streetwise Socrates. He doesn’t hedge, and he certainly doesn’t pretend that California’s problems are complicated mysteries waiting to be solved by another blue-ribbon panel of PhDs deliberating for years.
He talks like a guy who walked into a system, read the rules, and started asking why nobody else bothered to. That alone makes him an anomaly in a state where failure is usually narrated away as an excuse to throw more good money after bad rather than confronting and fixing the problem. Netter’s background is not political; it’s operational.
He came from the private sector, negotiating large-scale distribution contracts for office supplies, commodities, and the mundane infrastructure that keeps companies running. While that sounds unremarkable, his framing is not. Those products, he explains, touched everyone, from the executive to the night-shift worker. Both used the same system, so whoever controlled it controlled communication, flow, and behavior. That mindset, distribution at scale, systems thinking, and friction removal are exactly why he entered politics. This is why he sounds like an angry voter and an engineer who discovered that the machine was purposely assembled incorrectly.
His entry point wasn’t theory; it was the Recall of Gavin Newsom, where most people saw a grassroots uprising, Netter saw a logistics problem. Two million signatures were required, with no infrastructure to get there, and a group of activists was convinced enthusiasm would substitute for execution. His reaction was blunt: none of them had ever collected two million of anything.
So he did something almost unheard of in California politics: he read the rules carefully. What he found was absurdly simple and devastatingly effective. Political insiders insisted that petitions had to be printed on legal-size paper, which immediately limited participation because most people don’t have legal paper at home. The statute, however, required legal margins, not legal paper. Nobody had ever asked the question. That single clarification allowed petitions to be printed on standard letter paper, posted online, and distributed at scale, removing friction and increasing participation overnight. That is Netter in a sentence: find the unnecessary barrier, remove it, and watch the system move. The fact that it took an outsider to notice tells you more about California politics than any campaign speech ever could.
From there, his view hardens quickly into something Sacramento is not used to hearing. Politics is marketing, not in the cynical sense, but in the mechanical sense. If people do not want what you are offering, messaging will not save you, and if they do, you are competing for share. But in California, too many candidates are selling a product they have no intention of delivering. They promise affordability and produce higher costs, promise safety but provide less of it, and then act surprised when things get worse. In the real world, that is called false advertising. In Sacramento, it is called a campaign promise.
In his view, California stopped competing a long time ago. The numbers don’t lie: Democrats aren’t an overwhelming majority of registered voters, yet they hold a supermajority of legislative seats. That’s not dominance, he argues; it is a structural failure enabled by voter disengagement. The largest political party in California isn’t Democratic or Republican; it’s apathy. People vote at the top of the ticket, skip the down-ballot races, and then wonder why the legislature, the body that actually writes the laws, operates without meaningful accountability. This is where and why the worst laws can sail through the legislature.
When voters disengage from the important down-ballot races, the crazies, the ideologues, and the sociopaths rise to the surface. We see outcomes in which bad ideas, turbocharged by ideology, replace common sense, so a State with every natural advantage produces dysfunction on an industrial scale. Those bad ideas fall most heavily, regressively, on the lower half of the State's taxpayers.
Netter doesn’t respond to that with abstract reform language; he reduces it to moves. First, taxes. Not trimming around the edges, not symbolic rebates, but a direct, immediate reduction-28% for people earning under $150,000. He frames it not as ideology but arithmetic. People don’t live on gross income; they live on what they take home, and California has systematically reduced that number while inflating the cost of everything else.
The estimated hit to the budget, seven to nine billion dollars - he calls a rounding error in a $300-plus billion system. His argument is that restoring purchasing power would expand the base rather than shrink it. Fewer inputs are taken from the system, and more activity is generated within it.
Second, fund what voters already passed. Proposition 36 is his example: an initiative approved without a dedicated funding stream that effectively allows politicians to claim compliance while starving it in practice. His position is procedural, almost clinical: “if voters approve something, fund it or admit you’re ignoring them”.
Third, the regulatory state. California passes roughly 1,500 laws a year, layering them on top of decades of existing mandates until the system resembles sedimentary rock, dense, opaque, and largely incomprehensible even to those inside it. His solution is not another study commission but a systematic audit-and-elimination process, because, in his words, “if you can’t explain why a regulation exists, it probably shouldn’t”.
Housing is where his tone shifts from analytical to openly contemptuous. He finds it absurd that politicians announce housing targets as if they personally build homes. “Builders build houses. Markets respond to incentives.” In California, governments have spent years constraining both and then expressing confusion about the results. “The state mandates production, strips local control, layers regulations, and then wonders why supply doesn’t materialize.”
Netter’s answer is not complicated: restore local authority, unlock dormant land, partner with builders, and remove the barriers that make development economically irrational. He points to empty commercial parcels, long-term lease entanglements, and bureaucratic dead zones that sit unused for decades because nobody wants to build, and because nobody can. The result is a manufactured shortage, and like every shortage, it drives prices up. It’s supply and demand, he repeats, as if reminding Sacramento that the laws of economics do not stop applying at the state line.
On homelessness, the rhetoric becomes harsher. Netter rejects the framing that the problem is too complex to solve. California has roughly 170,000 homeless individuals in a population of nearly 40 million, and he finds it remarkable “that policymakers speak as if that number represents an unstoppable invasion force”. In his view, the situation persists because it is allowed to persist. Laws against public camping exist but are inconsistently enforced.
“Addiction and mental illness are treated as peripheral rather than central drivers, housing policy focuses on expensive, high-profile projects rather than scalable solutions, says Netter. His critique of “homeless-first” developments is particularly blunt: “building units that cost millions of dollars for individuals who generate no recurring tax base is not compassion, it’s fiscal insanity.” His alternative is not politically popular with the NGO-gravy-train grifters, but it is far more practical and consistent: enforce laws, provide treatment, expand lower-cost housing, and stop pretending that indefinite street habitation is a humane outcome. It’s a position that will draw fire, but it is delivered without hesitation, which is precisely why it resonates with voters who feel the current approach has produced obvious, non-ending failure.
Energy policy is where Netter’s mindset becomes resolutely uncompromising. Electricity comes from spinning turbines. Everything else, including hydro, gas, and nuclear, is just a way to do that. From that starting point, he dismantles what he sees as self-inflicted scarcity. Removing dams reduces hydroelectric capacity and, more broadly, our ability to store water over a dry summer. Over-regulating drilling reduces supply. Forcing refineries to close denies California abundant fuel supplies and further disrupts the system. Then policymakers blame the oil companies for price gouging, when it’s their laws, taxes, and regulations, fueled by delusions of a zero-emissions nirvana, that are literally driving prices higher and fueling potential supply disruptions.
It’s mechanical: “reduce supply, and prices go up, duh! Increase supply, and prices stabilize.” He supports an all-of-the-above approach, retaining hydro and not blowing up dams, “because hydro is the cleanest and cheapest electricity we can produce.” Expand responsible drilling, invest in nuclear, and “treat the current strategy as an experiment in scarcity that has already failed.” He argues there are environmental tradeoffs, but they skew toward the most expensive solution and the worst possible outcome for the average Californian. Certain impacts are amplified, while others are ignored entirely, such as importing oil and gasoline from Iran and India, 6,000 miles away via supertankers, using the most polluting of all fuels. That is a stupid environmental tradeoff and is not economically efficient. Netter’s framework: inputs, outputs, and consequences.
Where Netter becomes most politically dangerous to the current super blue majority is in his view of leverage. Unlike traditional candidates, he does not rely on media intermediaries to communicate. He has built a large social media presence that functions not only as a broadcast channel but also as a feedback loop, allowing him to identify localized concerns and respond in real time. More importantly, it gives him the ability to apply pressure.
If legislation stalls, he will target the districts of the legislators responsible for the obstruction and make it visible to their constituents. In a state where many political decisions occur out of public view, that is not a minor capability or threat. It is a structural advantage. It also explains why he is not concerned about entering a legislature dominated by Democrats who are slobbering over themselves to tow the party line. His argument is simple: “They need to keep their seats, and if their voters know exactly what they’re blocking, that can be a big problem for them”. That is not rhetoric; it is strategy and a promise.
His critique of California’s regulatory bodies follows the same pattern. Agencies such as the California Air Resources Board and the Coastal Commission wield enormous power while operating at a distance, insulated from electoral accountability. Their members serve staggered terms, receive substantial compensation, and shape policy in ways that outlast the officials who appointed them.
Netter’s solution is not incremental reform but structural change, altering how these bodies are constituted and how members are selected, and reducing their authority to delay or obstruct needed projects. “We don’t need unelected zealots adding significant red tape and costs. Put it on the ballot, let voters decide, and reinsert accountability into a system that has drifted away from it.” It directly challenges one of the least-discussed yet most consequential features of California governance: the extent to which unelected commissions, boards, and authorities exercise substantial control over policy, regulation, and daily economic activity.
On fraud and spending, his tone is incredulous. For years, California could not even produce a clear accounting of where the money was going. When billions go missing, “everyone acts surprised.” Netter’s response is simple. “Stop pretending. Leave that kind of money unsupervised, and it will be wasted, abused, and stolen. This is not a scandal; that is a predictable outcome. What did you think was going to happen?”
His proposal is straightforward: continuous auditing, transparent reporting, and systems designed to prevent abuse rather than merely detect it after the fact, when the G-Wagon and $4,000,000 mansions have already been bought. He loosely calls this “DOGE-ing the state,” but the underlying idea is not a buzzword; it is control architecture. Inputs are tracked, outputs are verified, discrepancies are addressed immediately, and results are tallied. It is how every functioning enterprise operates, and in his view, there is no reason the government should be exempt.
Netter does not soften his arguments to broaden his appeal. He does not avoid language that might offend. He moves quickly, mixes humor with criticism, and treats policy debates as matters of cause and effect rather than as a debate about virtue. His purpose is to cut through a political culture that promises everything and delivers nothing, while billions of dollars are lost to lost causes.
Netter’s underlying claim is not that California lacks resources or talent. It is that the system, as currently constructed, produces the outcomes it is designed to produce, and those outcomes are increasingly disconnected from the needs of the productive people living under it. Fixing that, in his view, does not require reinvention. It requires asking basic questions that, for far too long, have been verboten because no one in the upper echelons of California’s ruling elite has an incentive to ask them.
Why rock the boat when you can tap into California’s firehose of tax dollars, funding failure, rewarding it, and using it to stay in power? It is a circular firing squad, and taxpayers are trapped inside it. California, already drowning in deficits, cannot afford it anymore. Netter’s point is simple. The system will not fix itself; it must be forced.
(Eliot Cohen is a longtime civic advocate who has served on the Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and the Board of Homeowners of Encino, where he was president of HOME for over seven years. A retired Wall Street executive with a 35-year career, Eliot brings a sharp eye to local governance. He critiques the bureaucratic missteps of City, County, and State officials. Eliot and his wife split their time between Los Angeles and Baja Norte, Mexico.)
