On April 20, 2023, Larry Elder, an American right-wing political commentator and conservative talk radio host who ran for governor of California in 2021, announced his campaign for president of the United States. He dropped out on October 26.
Background
California gubernatorial election
Elder is a conservative talk radio host who, in July 2021, announced his candidacy to replace Governor Gavin Newsom in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election. After his entry, Elder had been regarded as the front-runner on the election's replacement question.
Despite Newsom surviving the recall, Elder defeated a crowded slate to win the second question, and would've replaced Newsom if he lost. On the night of the election Elder told his supporters to be "gracious in defeat", stating that "we may have lost the battle, but we are going to win the war", proceeding to repeatedly criticize Newsom.
Presidential interest
Over a year after the recall, Elder began floating the idea of running for president. If elected, he would be the first African American presidential nominee of the Republican Party to become president and the second African American president after Barack Obama.
On August 22, Elder disclosed his financials, in which he reported to have made $1-$5 million from The Epoch Times and between $100,001 and $1 million from the anti-inflammatory supplement Relief Factor. Elder's disclosure violates guidance from the Office of Government Ethics which requires candidates to provide their exact income, not in ranges as he did.
First debate
Despite believing to qualify for the first presidential debate in Wisconsin, the RNC officially announced their list of candidates for the debate and Elder was left out. Elder then responded calling the process corrupt, and announced he would take further action in the form of legal prosecution to ensure he was on the debate stage.
Political positions
According to Elder, "America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable. We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That's why I'm running for President."
Economic issues
In his 2000 book, The Ten Things You Can't Say In America, Elder laid out a 10-point plan to "save America". He called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, creating a national sales tax, reducing government by 80%, ending welfare and entitlements, abolishing the minimum wage, and eliminating corporate taxes.
Elder opposes minimum wage laws, arguing that "The ideal minimum wage is $0.00." He opposes universal basic income. Elder opposes California's unpaid family leave law. In his 2020 film Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative, Elder criticizes the War on Poverty.
On a CNN Crossfire segment in 2013 along with New Jersey governor Chris Christie, Elder criticized Christie for accepting the "architecture of the welfare state" and claimed that "government took almost 50 percent of the American people's money" through mandates, a claim he supported by referring to an analysis by the conservative advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform. PolitiFact rated his claim "Mostly False".
Elder has been critical of public-sector labor unions, especially the California Teachers Association. He contends that some 15,000 California teachers are "incompetent" and previously proposed that thousands of teachers in the state be fired. He later said that he favored more charter schools and private schools instead.
Elder proposes to cap government spending at 10 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, while preventing the sitting president and all members of Congress from running for re-election in the next cycle if the spending cap is exceeded.
Social issues
Elder opposes abortion, calling it "murder". He argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, calling the decision "one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court ever handed down." He believes that abortion laws should be decided at the state level.
Elder has made anti-LGBT remarks on Twitter and has repeatedly used male pronouns when referring to transgender women, such as Playboy model Ines Rau and fellow gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner.
In 2021, Elder accused California of having a "soft-on-crime ethos"; he opposes a California law that banned police from using certain chokeholds. Elder opposes 2014 California Proposition 47, which reclassified as misdemeanors many lower-level drug and property crimes that had formerly been felonies, and said that if elected governor he would press for the proposition to be repealed.