Here’s An Idea For Bill Maher’s Next Career Move: Make California Great Again

It’s November 3, 2026.

Californians are flocking to the polls, ready to elect their next governor to succeed the slick and slow-rolling disaster that is Gavin Newsom. The choice is between Kamala Harris, the bratty, incompetent, and failed presidential candidate, or … Bill Maher, running as an independent. The common-sense comedian and one of the few tolerable liberals left in America who’s willing to criticize his own party’s excesses.

Is it possible? Should Maher throw his hat in the ring for 2026?

Maher is a left-wing quasi-socialist who endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. He suffers from a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. He would never ditch the Democratic Party, or vote Republican for that matter.

But he does have one trait that unites all Americans, left and right: a hatred for stupid people doing stupid things, and California’s state and local governments are chock full of them. He also despises the woke left, and if there’s a lesson from the wildfires, it’s that boutique social issues do not matter in the slightest when government officials cannot perform the most basic of duties, i.e., preparing for and mitigating natural disasters. (RELATED: CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN’: The Dark, Painful, American Tragedy At The Heart Of LA’s Apocalyptic Downfall)

On his show “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday, the comedian went after the incompetent California Democrats who mismanaged the devastating wildfires that have razed thousands and thousands of homes and businesses and scorched nearly 40,000 acres.

“When asked why so many of the hydrants in the [Pacific] Palisades ran out of water, [Democratic] Governor [Gavin] Newsom said, ‘The local folks are trying to figure it out.’ Yeah, you gotta do that before the fire,” Maher said.

He went on to lacerate Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, whom he aptly described as the “Nero of American politics.”

“LA’s Mayor Karen Bass — the Nero of American politics — was fiddling in Ghana while the city burned, and later placed the blame on ‘eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in LA in at least 14 years.’ Yeah, that’s not that long a time. Maybe look in the history books to see how our ancestors handled it back in 2011,” Maher said.

It’s the kind of message that could win over Republicans, of course, but also disenchanted Democrats, even the most liberal and deep-pocketed ones who run Hollywood. Maher would get the backing of his pals in the entertainment industry, he’d win over the pragmatic tech workers sick of the government waste, and, if he ran against someone as unpopular and elitist as Kamala Harris, he could win over normal, working-class voters, despite himself being something of an elitist.

I would vote for him in a heartbeat if I still lived in California. Frankly, I would take him over someone like Larry Elder, who previously ran for governor. For the time being, California is far too blue to run an actual conservative. Someone with just an iota of common sense and who isn’t beholden to the woke elements of the Democratic Party could, at the very least, pump the brakes on the fiscal insanity crushing the state.

Maher 2026?