Larry Elder 2024 presidential campaign

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.[4][5][6]

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.[7]

Over a year after the recall, Elder began floating the idea of running for president.[8] 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 22 August, 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.[9]

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.[10] Elder was 2,000 donors short of meeting the 40,000 donor threshold to participate.[11]

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.[13]

Elder opposes minimum wage laws, arguing that "The ideal minimum wage is $0.00."[14] He opposes universal basic income.[15] Elder opposes California's unpaid family leave law.[16] In his 2020 film Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative, Elder criticizes the War on Poverty.[17]

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,[18] a claim he supported by referring to an analysis by the conservative advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform.[19] PolitiFact rated his claim "Mostly False".[19][20]

Elder has been critical of public-sector labor unions, especially the California Teachers Association.[21] He contends that some 15,000 California teachers are "incompetent"[21] and previously proposed that thousands of teachers in the state be fired.[22] He later said that he favored more charter schools and private schools instead.[22]

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.[23]

Elder opposes abortion,[24] calling it "murder".[25] He argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned,[26] calling the decision "one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court ever handed down."[25] He believes that abortion laws should be decided at the state level.[26][25]

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.[27]

In 2021, Elder accused California of having a "soft-on-crime ethos"; he opposes a California law that banned police from using certain chokeholds.[28] 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.[28]

During his media career, Elder published and gave airtime to misinformation and fringe views on scientific topics, such as secondhand tobacco smoke, climate change, and COVID-19 treatments.[29]

In a 2000 book, Elder suggested that the health hazards of secondhand tobacco smoke had been exaggerated, rejecting the scientific consensus that secondhand smoke is a serious threat that caused 2.5 million deaths in the half-century before 2014.[29]

Elder's website once described climate change as a "myth"; in a 2008 interview, he called climate change a "crock," disparaged Republicans such as John McCain and George W. Bush, who acknowledged climate change, and said that global warming is not a "big peril" to planet Earth.[29] In 2021, Elder acknowledged that the climate is warming,[29] but refused to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is the primary contributor,[30] claiming that concern about climate change is "alarmism".[30][29]

In 2021, Elder pledged to remove current statewide public health mandates for state government workers in California, such as COVID-19 vaccine requirements, face mask requirements, or regular COVID-19 testing.[30][31] Elder encouraged "people in high-risk categories, people who are older" to be vaccinated but said that "young people" do not need to be vaccinated.[31] In 2021, Elder did not challenge a call-in listener to his radio show who espoused COVID-19 misinformation suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous and part of a Bill Gates-orchestrated plot, and a page on Elder's website promoted the call-in listener's comments by saying, "You'll want to hear this physician's take on the vaccines."[29]

Elder has proposed suspending or waiving the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, contending that doing so would speed up housing construction.[32][30][29]

Elder is a vocal critic of "soft-on-crime" Democrats.[33] He is also critical of "George Soros-backed district attorneys," claiming "the people most hurt are the very Black and brown people living in urban America whom the Democrats claim to care so much about."[34] In his words: "Reduce the chance of a bad guy being caught, convicted, and incarcerated, and crime goes up."[35] A supporter of law enforcement, Elder also blames "fatherlessness" for rising crime rates.[36][37]

Elder does not believe in systemic racism, calling it a lie. He is a critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, blaming it for rising crime. As part of his criticism of welfare, he stated that it is more harmful to Black families than slavery ever was. He has proposed school choice as a solution for poor performance of Black children in school.[38]