A few weeks ago, I received an email from a guy named Stephen Cloobeck, asking to chat. Cloobeck? The name sounded familiar, but I had to Google him to find out that he wasn’t some former high school classmate or colleague, but rather a sixtysomething real estate mogul running for governor of California. Cloobeck has been fantastically successful, building and selling multiple hospitality businesses, and here he was, emailing a reporter himself rather than outsourcing that routine task to a comms guy. Now, I know a lot more about him. In short: Cloobeck is wealthy, hates over-regulation, thinks California is being mismanaged—and he’s a Democrat who is very wired up with other Dems, and leans hard into calling his home state “the country of California.” Anyway, I was happy to take the call.