Has Anyone Checked on 'Unhinged' Dave Min?

Good morning, Happy Friday, and thanks for opening the latest edition of the OC Conservative Brief!

Today we’re checking in on freshman Democrat Dave Min’s first two months in office and discuss why Washington Republicans are calling him “unhinged.” We’ll also take a look at the explosive bombshell released this week that is throwing a $3.4 billion wrench into Sacramento Democrats plans. Plus, a big announcement from former OC Congresswoman Katie Porter is teeing up a potential big fight in 2026.

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Now let’s dive in…

HAS ANYONE CHECKED ON DAVE? Orange County’s freshman Democrat Congressman “DUI Dave” Min (CA-47) won his election by less than three points in a swing district that Kamala Harris only carried by four … but he sure isn’t acting like it.

During just his first two months in Congress:

• Min was one of the handful of House Democrats who dramatically walked out of President Trump’s joint address last week in protest.

• He called Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt a “fake Christian” on X and belittled her for wearing a “giant cross” (Yes, Leavitt clapped back).

• He spoke about Elon Musk at a DC rally next to unapologetic far left Democrats like Maxine Waters while the crowd chanted “lock him up.”

• This week, he called Musk an “asshole” on X before he posted - then deleted - that “I don’t understand how any decent and moral person can support Trump” (167,000 of his Trump-voting constituents might like to have a word with him).

• …and just last night, Min commented on a video of the American Airlines plane that caught fire in Denver and sent a dozen passengers to the hospital with “this feels like a pretty good metaphor for today.”

Min’s anti-Trump antics online have been so aggressively conspicuous that the Orange County Republican Party fired off a statement of their own. “He’s not some kindly professor,” the party wrote on X this week, a reference to his former role at UCI. “He swears at people. He questions their religion. He mocks patriotism. Remember who he is.”

• 🤣 The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which targets House races for Republicans, has dubbed him in their press released “Unhinged Dave Min.”

Min has become “unhinged” from the moderate, pragmatic, problem-solver image he successfully crafted in 2024. That may please the Democrat base, but it doesn’t do much to shore up his re-election chances in a perennially-contested battleground congressional district with conservative roots. Most members from swing districts of either party work to keep a low or pragmatic profile.

Sure, Democrats might retort that his liberal predecessor, Democrat Rep. Katie Porter, narrowly won re-election in this exact same district in 2022 (her races in 2018 and 2020 were for a differently-drawn district.) What should Min be worried about?

But that’s the thing … Dave Min is no Katie Porter. While Min may share Porter’s policy positions, he lacks - at least so far - her style and charisma. Porter became a media darling of the Left over her viral “white-board” videos and other stunts that propelled her grassroots fundraising prowess and made her a formidable figure in TV interviews and on the campaign trail.

• 🤑 MONEY SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS —> In 2022 Porter raised a stunning $25 million, more than any House Democrat running that year, including Nancy Pelosi.

Min may be trying to emulate his predecessor’s persona. He posted a clip of himself from last week’s House hearing with Democrat mayors of sanctuary cities, where he tried to mic drop an unrelated point that there is no city or state law that “stops” federal authorities from enforcing federal immigration law … but it was a dud (that’s not what a sanctuary city is, Dave!)

Porter’s feverish support from the Democrat base, along with her lethal $25 million war chest, helped her narrowly cling on in her 2022 re-election despite her far-left record. Fast forward to 2024 after Porter’s retirement, when Min won the seat as a relatively quiet state lawmaker and ran a deluge of safe ads touting his support for law enforcement and abortion rights.

Will Min be able to count on that same battleground terrain if he runs for re-election in 2026? He’ll have an actual voting record - and combative social media posts - to defend. He almost certainly won’t have Porter’s unlimited cash resources, and it seems unlikely he will, like Porter, become a dazzling star of the Democrat media apparatus.

• 📺 WATCH —> The NRCC already has a new digital ad up in the 47th district attacking him for his vote last week against the CR to keep the government open.

Yes, there are for-now unknown variables in the 2026 midterms, like the economy and President Trump’s job approval. Min has nearly two years in Congress to figure himself out and define himself and his record (perhaps that’s why he voted with a few dozen other House Democrats for the pro-border security Laken Riley Act.) Who Min’s eventual Republican opponent is will matter as well.

• ◀️ LEAN LEFT? The 47th District has also had a small but unyielding blue edge in the past couple elections. The Cook Political Report ranked the district as “Leans Democrat” in their initial round of House ratings released this year.

As of now, as far as optics for re-election are concerned, Min is out of the gate to an eye-brow raising start.

THE $3.4 BILLION BOMBSHELL Governor Gavin Newsom quietly informed the legislature this week that California will need to take a $3.4 billion loan (the maximum allowed) from the general fund to close a budget gap in the state’s Medicaid program (known as Medi-Cal), noting it will only cover the program through the end of the month.

Here’s the kicker: the governor has been mum on the details, but the unexpected budget shortfall likely resulted from Newsom’s recent expansion of Medi-Cal to cover illegal immigrants, the cost of which has been skyrocketing far beyond what the government initially estimated.

• From the Los Angeles Times: “The $9.5-billion price tag of California’s state-sponsored healthcare for undocumented immigrants is already more than $3 billion above the budget estimate from last summer and is expected to grow.”

This is explosive news and the opening salvo in what will become a rough political situation for Democrats in Sacramento, who are now, according to the LA Times, asking questions and “under pressure” how to get the explosion of Medi-Cal costs under control. Per Politico, Democrats were “caught off guard by the news and still don’t understand the extent of the shortfall.”

Democrats are stuck between two hard political realities: California’s already tight budget crunch and looming cuts to the state’s federal Medicaid funding from Washington.

• A side note —> Medicaid is, by law, jointly financed by the states and the federal government. But check out how states like California exploit a Medicaid loophole to essentially “launder” money to squeeze even more funding out of the federal government without having to match even a dime for any of it. Axing this abusive Medicaid exploitation is one of the cost-savings Republicans in Washington are looking at. (Here is a Wall Street Journal editorial on the topic).

Who could have possibly seen this coming?

• FACT —> Illinois tried expanding Medicaid to cover illegal immigrants a few years ago. Costs have soared 286% higher than initially estimated, and last month Illinois’ Democrat Governor JB Pritzker proposed a radical scale back of illegal immigrant coverage due to the financial insolvency of the program.

There’s too much that could be said about this topic for one newsletter - trust me, we’ll keep following this story. But I will say this: there is political malfeasance in Newsom and the Democrats’ unaffordable expansion of Medicaid to illegal immigrants while legal residents and U.S. citizens who rely on the program see their coverage and quality of services suffer. This revealing line from the LA Times says it all about where Democrats’ priorities lie:

• “The potential for cuts to Medicaid…could also leave Democrats at the state Capitol forced to decide whether they should maintain coverage for immigrants if services for legal residents must be significantly reduced.”

Ironically, these will be the same Democrats that will cry and fear-monger about Republicans in Washington cutting Medicaid funding in the reconciliation bill. Perhaps Washington cutting off California’s U.S. taxpayer-funded Medicaid gravy train is what Sacramento needs to wake up and get its house in order?

If you have time for a deeper dive, California Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who has been a leading voice on this issue on the Budget Committee (before the Democrats unscrupulously kicked him off), posted a video Thursday explaining what’s going on (the real meat begins around the 3 minute mark).

KATIE VS KAMALA? Katie Porter (yes, back to her) officially announced this week that she is running for governor of California in 2026. She launched her campaign on Monday with a 3-minute video - set around her addressing a classroom full of students next to a whiteboard - highlighting her familiar talking points of fighting the Trump Administration and defending other liberal priorities.

This announcement has been in the making for a few months. In December, her PAC released a poll showing Porter as the dominant favorite among California Democrats in a hypothetical primary. This week, her campaign released another internal poll showing in her in a similarly-commanding role in the Democrat field.

However, a wild card remains, as neither of these polls included the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee and California native Kamala Harris.

• 👂 DID YOU HEAR? Harris made headlines last Friday when she said she is actively considering running for governor and will make a decision by the end of the summer.

What would happen to Porter if Harris were to jump in the race? We don’t have to speculate. A February poll found that Harris would earn the support of 57% of Democrat voters if she ran and Porter’s support would crater to just 9%.

Think strategically. Harris can clearly afford to bide her time while she mulls over a gubernatorial run. She won’t have to worry about money or name ID if she gets in late. If you’re the dominant favorite, why would you get in early anyway and give your opponents more time to tear you down?

• ⏲️ WAITING GAME —> Maybe Harris wants to wait and see how Trump plays out and run for president again in 2028 instead? (She hasn’t ruled it out.)

Katie Porter does not have the same luxury. It may not be a coincidence that, after Harris made her news on Friday afternoon, Porter launched her campaign that following Tuesday. She didn’t want to be counted out, and if you want to take down a political giant like Kamala, you need all the time you can get.

So if Harris jumped in, would Porter jump ship? According to Politico, Porter didn’t answer directly when asked, but subtly threw down a (sort of) gauntlet:

• "If she decides to enter this race I think it is going to have a very, very serious effect on everyone in it including me — I will also say there’s a hunger for leadership.”

That last bit to me sounds like a subtle dig at the failed presidential candidate’s, well failures … and a preview of the kind of campaign Porter would wage against Harris.

Porter also appeared on a podcast that aired this morning and was asked if she would stay in the race if Harris jumped in. She again did not answer directly, but slyly told the host a Harris run would have a “near-clearing effect.” Emphasis on the word “near.”

STRICKLAND SWORN IN Republican Tony Strickland, who was officially certified as the winner of the special election in OC-based Senate District 36 earlier this month, was sworn in to the state Senate in Sacramento this week, bringing the number of Republicans in the chamber up to 10 against the Democrats super-majority 30.

Strickland ended up winning 51.3% of the vote, enough to clinch the election outright and avoid a runoff.

As for Strickland’s now vacant-seat on the conservative-dominated Huntington Beach City Council? The council members - all conservatives - will reportedly appoint a new member to the empty seat next week. (Andrew Gruel, the famous Huntington Beach chef who has become famous among conservatives on X, has been formally mentioned on the City Council agenda as a contender).

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🐘 The California Republican Party is hosting its convention this weekend in Sacramento to, among other things, elect a new chair to replace outgoing Chairwoman Jessica Milan Patterson.

🚗 The sale of electric vehicles in California has reportedly stalled well below Newsom’s 35%-of-all-vehicle-sales mandate that is set to kick in for the 2026 model year.

📈 The city of Costa Mesa announced it is expecting a $3.6 million deficit for the last three months of the current budget due to declining revenue from local sales taxes.

🧑‍🎓 A special election is being set for a vacant seat on the Newport-Mesa Unified School District board after local residents successfully petitioned for an election instead of an appointment by the board’s liberal majority.

🪧 Protests erupted last week outside an event hosted by the Republican Club of Laguna Woods featuring a January 6th rioter convicted of pepper-spraying Capitol police officers recently pardoned by President Trump.