State of Gold
State of Gold
Podcast Description
Restoring the California Dream One Bold Idea at a TimeCalifornia was once a beacon of prosperity, hope and innovation – symbolized by the Gold Rush, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Today it’s the least affordable state in the nation and plagued by poverty, homelessness, and sky-high taxes. How did we get here, and how do we turn California around?State of Gold is a media platform and citizens’ movement dedicated to restoring the California dream. Host and longtime real estate and tech executive Jon Slavet combines practical wisdom and insurgent energy, as he sits down with voices from across the spectrum. The show will examine and promote the best ideas from any corner to solve the state’s most pressing issues. State of Gold cuts through the noise to explore what’s gone wrong in the Golden State – and what it’ll take to make things right.www.stateofgold.com
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores various themes such as housing affordability, budget crises, education reform, and government transparency. Episodes delve into topics like the detrimental impacts of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) on housing, the state's financial issues as discussed by Arnold Schwarzenegger's former budget director, and the issues of government oversight highlighted by a young assemblyman. The show's focus is on presenting actionable ideas to restore the California dream.
Restoring the California Dream One Bold Idea at a Time
California was once a beacon of prosperity, hope and innovation – symbolized by the Gold Rush, Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Today it’s the least affordable state in the nation and plagued by poverty, homelessness, and sky-high taxes. How did we get here, and how do we turn California around?
State of Gold is a media platform and citizens’ movement dedicated to restoring the California dream. Host and longtime real estate and tech executive Jon Slavet combines practical wisdom and insurgent energy, as he sits down with voices from across the spectrum.
The show will examine and promote the best ideas from any corner to solve the state’s most pressing issues. State of Gold cuts through the noise to explore what’s gone wrong in the Golden State – and what it’ll take to make things right.
www.stateofgold.com
Guest
Roxanne Hoge, Chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party
Guest Bio
Roxanne Hoge is the Chair of the Los Angeles County Republican Party, the largest Republican county party in the United States. A legal immigrant from Jamaica and a U.S. citizen, Hoge is a former business owner, actress, and SAG member who has run for California State Assembly and the LA County Board of Supervisors. She has appeared on Fox News, CNN, and OANN, and writes for the California Globe. She ran the LA County GOP's voter turnout operation through recent election cycles including the successful campaign to replace George Gascon with Nathan Hochman as District Attorney.
Show Summary
Only 40% of registered Republicans in LA County voted in the June 2026 primary. In this episode of State of Gold, host Jon Slavet sits down with LA County GOP Chair Roxanne Hoge to ask why Republicans keep complaining about a system they refuse to show up for.
Hoge makes a blunt case: Everything most people call voter fraud, from ballot harvesting to bloated voter rolls, is already codified in California law. The left has been building this architecture since 2011, starting with driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, then Motor Voter automatic registration, and now a system that pushes voter registrations to anyone who interacts with state government. She wrote to both Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Department of Justice asking for election monitors and got no response from Bonta, just hate mail.
The conversation then turns to LA's taxpayer-funded campaign matching system, which has quietly grown from a voter-approved 1:1 match in 1990 to a 6:1 ratio today. Raise $100,000 and the city hands you $600,000. Hoge argues the system is nearly impossible to use without public sector union ground operations, and that Mayor Karen Bass made a political mistake by publicly touting it. Hoge also calls for outlawing public sector unions entirely, warning that unfunded pension liabilities are ”coming like a train, unlike the bullet train, a train that will actually hit us.” The episode closes on the LA City Council's push for non-citizen voting and why Hoge believes California's best-run cities share a common thread: Conservative leadership at the local level.
Chapters
00:00 – Cold Open: ”Voter Fraud Is an Excuse for Not Doing the Work”
00:16 – Welcome: Roxanne Hoge on Republican Voter Turnout in LA County
00:30 – Voter Fraud vs. Voter Apathy: The Real Reason Republicans Lose
01:17 – Charlie Brown and the Football: Why Conservative Wins Get Reversed
02:22 – Gascon Out, Hochman In: Proof That Turnout Works
02:56 – Ballot Harvesting, Motor Voter, and the Legal Framework of ”Fraud”
03:42 – The Open Letter to Rob Bonta and the Unsecured Ballot Box on Skid Row
04:34 – Election Monitors and the DOJ: What Hoge Asked For
04:59 – Automatic Voter Registration and How It Harms Legal Residents
05:40 – 200,000 Missing Republican Voters: Fix Your Own House First
06:08 – The Basketball Analogy: Stop Whining About the Refs and Play
06:32 – LA's 6 to 1 Taxpayer-Funded Campaign Match: How We Got Here
08:24 – Karen Bass Broke the First Rule of Fight Club
08:40 – DSA-Backed Candidates and the Stakes for Non-Democrats
09:11 – The 88 Cities of LA County: Where Common Sense Still Wins
10:09 – Queen for a Day: Outlaw Public Sector Unions
10:50 – The Sword of Damocles: Unfunded Pensions Coming Like a Train
11:31 – Non-Citizen Voting: The LA City Council Push
11:54 – Incrementalism: From School Board Votes to Full Franchise
12:54 – Pre-Registering 16-Year-Olds and Boiling the Frog
13:21 – Would Non-Citizen Voting Pass? The Exodus Problem
14:28 – Support the LA GOP: lagop.org and Every Dollar Goes to Turnout
Connect with Roxanne Hoge
- X: https://x.com/RoxanneHoge
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxanne-hoge-42323193/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/goplosangeles/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LosAngeles.GOP
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GOPLosAngeles/videos
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Connect with State of Gold
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