Neel Kashkari has his sights set on defeating Tim Donnelly in the upcoming June primary for the California Republican nomination for Governor, and subsequently to depose Gov. Jerry Brown from Sacramento.
In a special Breitbart News Sunday show dedicated to the launch of the Breitbart California site, Kashkari met with Executive Chairman Steven K. Bannon to share his insights on why he can turn California around and help restore California’s greatness.
Kashkari says he wants to lead in Sacramento in order to rebuild the Golden State’s middle class, which he says “has been decimated over the last 30-40 years.”
The former Bush administration Treasury analyst explained that his background working as a vice president for Goldman Sachs in the hi-tech group and his time in the federal government, where he was an official in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, honed his skills in crisis management. Kashkari wants to bring those skills to the table as Governor of California.
Bannon told Kashkari that Breitbart News prides itself on being the voice of the grass roots–“the voice of the antiestablishment, whether it is libertarian, tea party or grass roots conservatives.” He observed that Kashkari seems to come across as kind of an “uber-moderate” and asked Kashkari if that was “too harsh of a term.”
The 40-year-old former engineer and financial expert claimed that was not the case at all. Kashkari sees himself on a mission to help the middle class of California by “growing the economy and making sure there are good jobs available and that kids are getting a good education.”
Kashkari reiterated that what he wants to put forth in his campaign “is a pro growth economic policy, a good education, and making sure jobs were available; these are the ways we lift everyone up. Democrats are always talking about more welfare, more food stamps, those don’t solve poverty those don’t lift people up.”
During the interview, Kashkari referred to the proposed California High Speed Rail program as the “Crazy Train,” and said he would cancel the program and use $10 billion dollars to build more dams, given the drought situation in California.
Kashkari also said he would be tapping more into oil and gas reserves, as Texas and North Dakota are doing. According to Kashkari, that could lead to hundreds of thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenues. Moreover, he said, would bring back manufacturing jobs by offering 10-year state tax exemption incentives.
The Goldman Sachs alumnus was on the fence about the nationalized education program Common Core, and he stated that it has positives and negatives. Yet he expressed that he wants to put the power of education in the hands of the parents and the teachers. Moreover, he asserted that he is an advocate of vocational school education, and that college is not always the most productive route to learning.
Kashkari supports greater security on our borders and feels there has to be a national solution on illegal immigration control. “We need to upgrade our immigration laws so that we actually get the workers in our society that we need. As I go up and down California, farmers all tell me that they need farm laborers and that they can’t get them. So some form of guest worker program could be part of the solution.”
The gubernatorial aspirant has bagged a reported $976,000 in contributions since announcing his candidacy on Jan. 21.
Listen to Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125 from 7 PM to 10 PM EST.
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