California GOP leader Heath Flora expenses $11k at local dive bar amid fury at backing Dem tax hikes

Eleven thousand dollars at a dive bar. Not a steakhouse, not some Sacramento power lunch spot with a wine list that reads like a mortgage application, a dive bar. That detail is the whole story in miniature. It's not really about the tab. It's about a guy whose job is supposedly to hold the line against tax increases spending campaign or caucus money like it's Monopoly cash while the people he's supposed to represent are the ones actually footing the bill for the tax hikes he just helped wave through.

Flora is the top Republican in the Assembly. That's not a backbench nobody, that's the guy who's supposed to be the last line of defense when Democrats come looking for votes to raise taxes on Californians already fleeing the state in U-Hauls. Instead he crossed over, gave them what they wanted, and then apparently celebrated on somebody else's dime at the local watering hole. You don't need an ethics investigation to tell you that looks bad. Regular people figured that out on their own the moment the number hit the news.

What's happening now, the ethics probes, the leadership fight brewing, is the natural consequence of a guy forgetting who put him in the room. California Republicans are already an endangered species in Sacramento. They don't have the luxury of a leader who blurs the line between "pragmatic dealmaking" and just going along with the other team, especially not while racking up a bar bill that would make a lot of his constituents wince at their own grocery receipts. If Flora wanted to survive this, the move was to be boring and disciplined. Instead he gave his own party a very expensive, very public reason to ask whether he's still on their side at all.