California Governor’s Race Gets Libertarian Candidate Who Wants to Cut Everything Except the Candidate’s Speaking Budget

2026 gubernatorial field includes freedom-minded challenger whose platform diagnoses all of California’s problems correctly

Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.

The Candidate and the Platform

SACRAMENTO — The 2026 California governor’s race includes at least one libertarian-adjacent candidate whose platform identifies California’s housing shortage, energy costs, wildfire vulnerability, and business exodus as the products of excessive regulation, mandatory permits, and the specific Sacramento dysfunction that produces fees, mandates, and cronyism in sufficient volume to drive the state’s best economic producers to Nevada and Texas. The diagnosis is correct. The Libertarian Party of California’s electoral record — zero of 52 US House seats, zero of 40 state Senate seats — suggests the diagnosis has not found its treatment.

The Platform Specifics

The libertarian platform for California includes: suspending fuel taxes and Cap-and-Trade fees, which could reduce gas prices by one to two dollars per gallon; stopping zoning codes and NIMBY regulations from blocking housing development; ending the IP laws that prevent farmers from fixing tractors and consumers from repairing phones; and shutting down Fusion Centers while passing a California Privacy Sanctuary Act. The platform is internally consistent and reflects a coherent libertarian analysis of where California’s regulatory environment creates costs without corresponding benefits.

The Electoral Reality

The Libertarian Party of California represents approximately 1.02 percent of registered voters. The gubernatorial candidate will receive votes in the range that 1.02 percent of registered voter support produces, which is the specific outcome that correct diagnosis without electoral coalition produces in California’s political environment. The surfers will still be in the water. Sacramento will still be Sacramento. The Libertarian Party of California manages the gubernatorial candidacy and publishes the platform. The California Legislative Analyst’s Office provides independent assessment of the regulatory costs that the libertarian platform identifies. Both confirm the situation, which continues.

California, Freedom, and the Surfboard

California in 2026 is staging a governor’s race that includes at least two libertarian-adjacent candidates arguing that Sacramento’s regulatory apparatus has produced the housing shortage, the energy costs, the wildfire vulnerability, and the business exodus that define the state’s structural problems. The Libertarian Party of California represents approximately 1.02 percent of registered voters. Its candidates represent 0 of 52 US House seats, 0 of 40 state Senate seats, and 0 of 8 statewide executive offices. The argument is structurally correct about many of the regulatory causes of California’s problems. The electoral record suggests the argument has not yet found the persuasion strategy that converts correct diagnosis into governing power. The surfers are in the water. The regulators are in Sacramento. Both continue at their respective paces, which are different paces and which the column documents with the affection that the subject deserves. The Reason Foundation makes the libertarian case. California makes the counter-argument by continuing to be California.

The Structural Conditions Continue

Journalism and California libertarianism are both subjects whose structural conditions generate new specific events every week from the same underlying pressures: the journalism industry’s economic collapse producing layoffs and restructurings; the California regulatory apparatus producing costs and constraints that the libertarian analysis correctly diagnoses and the electoral record suggests the libertarian prescription has not yet resolved. Both are ongoing. Both are worth documenting. The documentation is the contribution that the column makes to the record of what the structural conditions produced in a specific week, which compounds into something approaching a longitudinal account of what the industry and the state are becoming. The account continues. The subjects provide the material. The material is always available from subjects as productive as a collapsing industry and an ungovernable state.

The Press Gazette and the Reuters Institute document the journalism industry. The Reason Foundation and the Legislative Analyst’s Office document California from their respective political premises. The satire documents what all four are too serious to document. All continue. The column continues with them.

The story above is one specific event from structural conditions older than the event. The column tracks the conditions. The event is the evidence. The record continues next week with the same subjects in their next specific forms, which they are already generating as this entry is written.

The documentation above is the week as it was, recorded at the pace that weekly documentation operates, which is slower than the pace the subjects operate at and faster than no documentation at all. The column makes the record. The imperfect record is better than the absent one. The structural conditions that produced this week’s specific events will produce next week’s specific events from the same underlying pressures, which are older than any individual event and which will outlast any individual column’s capacity to document them. The column documents what it can. The documentation compounds. The record grows. The subjects continue at the pace of a collapsing industry and an ungovernable state respectively, both of which are faster than the column and both of which are worth the documentation regardless. Both continue. The column continues with them next week. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends. The record is accurate. The week is documented. The next week begins where this one ends.

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SOURCE: Satirical Journalism