Who is Leo Zacky?

California is in decline. Businesses and the general populace are both abandoning the state by the thousands.

In 2022, California lost 817,669 residents. An additional 239,575 left in 2023-2024, giving our state the highest per capita exodus for the fifth consecutive year. The declining population is partly due to declining births and increased deaths, but mostly because California residents are moving out of the state. From 2010 to 2023, over 9 million people have moved out of California. The state has lost residents to other states every single year since 2000.

Since 2018, over 350 major companies, including eleven Fortune 1000 businesses, have moved their headquarters out of California. Names such as Chevron, McAfee, Tesla, Charles Schwab, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, CBRE and McKesson.

Likewise, Hollywood doesn’t film movies and TV shows in “Tinseltown” anymore. Even iconic In-N-Out has “moved out” of the state.

Why is this happening? The story has become a familiar tune to anyone still residing within this once “Golden” state.

State tax laws and strict regulations have led to a massive corporate exodus. Other states’ business-friendly conditions, opportunities to save costs as well as home-ownership options for employees are a few reasons companies have decided to leave California. Businesses have simply chosen to seek better opportunities in other states, and many people have decided to move with them.

Home ownership is the definitive dream of most Americans, but has never been more out of reach if you are a late Gen’Xer/Millennial/GenZer who is just starting out in life and living in California.

The average cost of a single-family home in California is a shocking $737,677 – twice the national average. In other words, the average home in California is 216% of the typical U.S. home price. Renting is not any better, as the overall average cost to rent in California is $2,400/month, with utilities averaging nearly $440/month.

Since 2018, California has seen a 1.24% decrease in the population and the loss of a congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives – and could lose five more in 2030.

These failures have for years gone hand-in-hand with failing public schools, the mismanagement of our natural resources, farms that continue to go fallow, small businesses continuing to close, and nearly half a trillion dollars in state and local debt, with an additional $12 billion deficit in fiscal year 2025. Yet Sacramento politicians have done nothing … because they have very different agendas.

This is why things need to change. This is why I am running for governor.

Who am I? I am not a politician and I am not part of the Sacramento political elite. What I am is a fourth-generation Californian, born and raised in Los Angeles. I grew up living my family’s business, which did not include a “silver spoon” in my mouth.

As a youngster I spent long hours doing every dirty job there was on floor: loading crates, cleaning pens, mopping floors, peeling chicken poop off the walls. It was all doing my part to help keep the lights on for the thousands of employees that were part of the Zacky Farms community.

However, sometimes even that was not enough. In 2008 when the economic crash hit, like so many others I had to drop out of college and went back to work to help save the family business.

Over time, I rose to become vice president of Zacky Farms. I would spend years trying to work within the system, often travelling with my grandmother Lillian to Sacramento and Washington, D.C. as we lobbied on behalf of the agriculture industry.

What would be the end result of all of this hard work? More taxes. More regulations. More farms and businesses going under. More bureaucratic red tape.

It was the height of the Great Recession in 2012, and my family’s business suffered. It was at this time I learned the bitter lesson that “everything comes with a cost.” Zacky Farms had to shutter its doors and we had to sell our 100-year-old empire.

Despite those painful times, I learned something about loss, adapting, overcoming and getting back on one’s feet. California might be the world’s fourth largest economy, yet it is also one of the worst places for doing business. How ironic.

Thus we can do one of two things: 1) Complain about everything, or 2) Do something about it.

This is why I am running for governor. I have been respected in the agricultural industry and by statewide business owners. I have been a hands-on businessman since I was a teenager, with the knowledge, experience and passion to bring real solutions to the problems plaguing the world’s fourth largest economy. A constitutionalist at heart, and a true representative for all the people.