Somebody is going to vote for Herb Morgan, don't let it be you
State controller
If you are reading this, you are going to vote for Malia Cohen for state controller.
You must, because doing otherwise would mean voting for Herb “Herb” Morgan, who is a Republican and part of the GOP’s “California’s Golden Ticket,” who are all real pieces of work, and who no one will vote for, for fuck’s sake, because this is California in 2026, which is probably why only people who are raving mad would even run for the GOP side of things, which they are (and are).
And it’s not the main thing. But. Morgan just “released a new single” as part of his campaign, which seems to mean that he asked an AI to create a song, which comes in just under the two minute and thirty seconds that is the hallmark of this AI-generated garbage. Vote against that.
Oakland Review of Books
Since you are not going to vote for Morgan, you are instead going to vote for Malia Cohen, who was London Breed’s successor as president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors—by general acclamation—and despite how many times her and London Breed’s names appear together, she seems basically fine.
It doesn’t matter. You’re going to vote for her because you’re not going to vote for Herb Morgan, champion of CAL DOGE (the Elon Musk–run California version of the Department of Governmental Efficiency that tore through the federal government at the beginning of Trump’s second term and literally killed like a million people).
You are also not going to vote for Morgan because he wants to move the state to “Blockchain-Based Public Finance,” which sounds like a great way to lose tons of public money on something so confusing you won’t notice the rich people getting richer on it.
You are most definitely not going to vote for Morgan because he didn’t have the courage to do the singing, the rap, and the harmonica solo in his own single.
And you are going to not vote for him once more because his slop-heavy website will give you a goddamn migraine.
\O/
Someone is going to vote for Morgan, though, and it’s not because of his magnetic personality. They’re going to vote for him because his entire campaign for controller is, essentially, that he will be a watchdog on Big Government Overspending YOUR Tax Dollars. And to be honest, we’re not even sure there are any real dog whistles in it, though we also can’t really see what we’re typing anymore—because we looked at his absolute war crime of a website and the aura is still fading—but even if his crank-ass position feels less overtly racist than just insane technobabble, it still sucks. But even here in Oakland, there are people who fundamentally DON’T TRUST THE GOVERNMENT with the money they give it, and so, even someone as manifestly unfit as this dude, will garner more than a few “fuck ’em” votes.
Vote for Malia Cohen, even though her website makes it far from clear what she thinks the office of state controller is. But also, I don’t know, find the person in your life who’s susceptible to Morgan’s or Morgan-like arguments and ask them about where their lack of trust is coming from? Resist the urge to interrupt while they tell you about how everything’s corrupt. Ask questions. Correct them if you can, but gently. More than we need Morgan to lose or Cohen to win, we need neighbors, coworkers, and relatives who feel like they can talk to us about their politics and who can learn to trust us to tell them when we think they’re talking like a lunatic.
Find more of our voting guide here.