Politics & Power Quote by Gray Davis

A politician’s favorite kind of brag is the one that sounds like bookkeeping. Gray Davis doesn’t thump the podium here; he tallies. “There’s no question” tries to preempt dissent by framing pride as plain fact, not partisan spin. Then comes the careful calibration of credit: California hasn’t just grown, it has been “privileged” to add “disproportionately.” The word choice does double duty. “Privileged” flatters the state as both fortunate and deserving, while “disproportionately” signals dominance without having to say “we carried you.”

The timeframe - “the last three or four years” - is the tell. This isn’t a timeless ode to California exceptionalism; it’s a claim staked to a recent cycle, the kind you make when your governing coalition wants evidence that its model works right now. In the late-1990s/early-2000s glow of Silicon Valley’s boom (and the political mythology that grew around it), “technological productivity” is code for innovation-as-legitimacy: the state’s cultural swagger translated into GDP, patents, and venture capital.

Subtext: national prosperity is riding on a coastal engine room, so Washington should treat California less like a scolded outlier and more like a strategic asset. It’s also a quiet defense against the perennial critique that California is fiscally unruly or culturally self-absorbed. Davis’s line seeks to turn that stereotype inside out: whatever you think of us, the numbers suggest you’re benefiting.