Gubernatorial hopeful Larry Elder rallies an eager crowd at Jastro Park

Sep. 9—It was a sweltering 100 degrees on Thursday afternoon, but Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder had no trouble fielding a friendly crowd of hundreds in Jastro Park.

Cheers erupted as the Recall Express rolled down Myrtle Street. A crowd gathered just outside the bus to be among the first to greet Elder or grab a selfie with the man stumping to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom during California's recall election on Sept. 14. The crowd cheered once again as he appeared.

One of those who met him was Pardeep Takhar, who brought her 5-year-old son to the rally and was shocked to find herself standing next to Elder for a moment.

"I lost my breath," she said. "I never thought in a hundred years I'd see him."

Takhar said that she relates to Elder as a person of color. She supports his policies of lowering taxes in California and school choice, which would allow tax funds to be used for homeschooling or private school tuition.

There was no comparing the crowd that Elder encountered in Bakersfield to the scene just one day earlier in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, where a woman in a gorilla suit threw an egg at him and missed, cutting his campaign stop short.

The crowd was eager and enthusiastic as Elder went through his stump speech. He promised to protect Californians from rising crime, rising home prices and rising taxes. He pinned California's problems, from labor shortages to forest management ,squarely on Newsom.

"Where has this man done anything right?" he said.

He told the crowd that he was not an anti-vax — and that he himself had been vaccinated — but he did say that he was against any and all mandates, involving masks and vaccinations. Should the recall be successful and should he win a plurality of the votes, Elder promised his first order of business would be repealing such mandates.

"I'm going to repeal it before my first cup of tea," he said.

But Elder's rally included extra attention to oil and gas and agriculture.

Taft Mayor Dave Noerr, a proponent of the oil and gas industry, opened for the rally and took aim at Newsom's "arbitrary, ridiculous nonsensical rules, trying to squash such a critical industry in the state of California."

Cattle rancher Austin Snedden joined Elder on stage to discuss water regulations, particularly the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. He's part of a family who traces its roots in the ranching industry in southwestern Kern County back 150 years. His extended family were out in support of Elder at the rally.

"We're excited about Larry Elder because he'll be a champion for business, which is what we need," said Susie Snedden, Austin's mother. "Having someone who is not a professional bureaucrat and not a professional politician would make all the difference in our business because autocratic control is what we have right now."

You can reach Emma Gallegos at 661-395-7394.