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As Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrats go looking for Republican votes to pass a state budget, one of the political realities they face is that elected Republicans in California fear being picked on by KFI's afternoon talk hosts, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou. Helping Democrats can get Republicans targeted for defeat by John and Ken, and by two other men who hope to influence GOP election fortunes. From the LAT:
The KFI-AM personalities, whose frequent targets are taxes, labor unions and illegal immigrants, not only reach more listeners than any other non-syndicated talk show in California but also have the ear — and fear — of Sacramento's minority party."There is nary a conversation about the budget that does not involve the names John and Ken," said Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the state Senate leader, who says the pair complicate his party's negotiations with Republicans.
As Gov. Jerry Brown seeks the handful of Republican votes he needs to ratify his spending plan, his foil is not so much GOP lawmakers as "the Three Johns" insiders' shorthand for a potent band of anti-tax activists including, in addition to the radio hosts, state Republican Party official and blogger Jon Fleischman and Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.
None of them holds public office. Kobylt and Chiampou aren't even Republicans (they're unaffiliated), and Kobylt says he's never met Coupal or Fleischman. But together they work to tug Republicans away from compromise in the Democrat-dominated Capitol. State Sen. Sam Blakeslee, a Republican from San Luis Obispo, said some of his GOP colleagues "crouch in fear and hide under their desk" lest they offend these enforcers of anti-tax orthodoxy.
Fleischman runs The Flash Report, a major aggregator of state political news.