Laurence Allen Elder (born April 27, 1952) is an American conservative political commentator and talk radio host.

[5][6] In 2021, Elder launched his first run for public office, as a Republican candidate in the recall election of California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom.

[3][9] Laurence Allen Elder was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the city's Pico-Union and South Central areas, the middle child of three brothers.

In 2013, Elder and his brother Kirk accepted a Congressional Gold Medal from U.S. Representative Dana Rohrabacher on their father's behalf.

[14] Elder began co-hosting Fabric, a topic-oriented television show produced by Dennis Goulden that aired on Cleveland's PBS member station WVIZ in 1988.

[17] In 2000, Elder won a Los Angeles Area Emmy Award for his KCAL-TV News special Making Waves – LAUSD.

[22] In 2007, Elder was one of the rotating talk hosts auditioning for the slot vacated by the now-canceled Imus in the Morning on MSNBC.

[32] In August 2015, The Larry Elder Show began national syndication through the Salem Radio Network, including Los Angeles station KRLA.

[38] In July 2021, Elder announced his candidacy to replace Governor Gavin Newsom in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election.

[40] California Secretary of State Shirley Weber initially omitted Elder's name from the list of candidates to be on the ballot, saying that he failed to submit complete tax return information that was required according to Senate Bill 27, which was enacted in 2019; the law mandated tax return disclosure for both presidential and gubernatorial candidates in order to appear on a "primary" ballot (the presidential requirement was later struck down by the courts).

He refused to participate in debates with other Republican recall candidates, such as former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, state Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, and business owner John Cox, and had refused to share a stage with certain other candidates at Republican Party events.

[51] If elected governor, Elder pledged to replace one of California's two Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein, with a Republican.

[62] During a television appearance announcing his decision, Elder said "My father was a World War II vet, He served on the island of Guam.

[66][67][68] Elder claims, “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable.”[69] He has made addressing crime a campaign priority, criticizing district attorneys with connections to billionaire George Soros for failing to “protect people and property.”[70] Elder is known for highlighting crime rates in cities like Chicago, Illinois.

[74][75][76] In an op-ed column published in The Hill, he called the requirements "artificial and arbitrary," refusing to "serve as a piggy bank for a political party.

Elder's disclosure violates guidance from the Office of Government Ethics which requires candidates to provide their exact income, not in ranges as he did.

Elder then responded calling the process corrupt, and announced he would take further action in the form of legal prosecution to ensure he was on the debate stage.

[80] After being left out of the first Republican primary debate in late August, Elder criticized the RNC for excluding select polls from Rasmussen Reports, due to alleged connections to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

[81] Rasmussen denied any connection to Trump, prompting Elder to state that “the rules of the game were rigged” to bar him from the debate stage.

[85] He also claims Biden is "stuck" with Harris as his running mate in 2024, criticizing the president for aligning himself with Gavin Newsom and his "unaffordable dystopia" in California.

[94] The Sacramento Bee pointed out his ties to The Epoch Times, a newspaper considered to be far-right, which is published by the Falun Gong movement.

[40] In his 2020 film Uncle Tom: An Oral History of the American Black Conservative, Elder criticizes the War on Poverty.

[98] On a CNN Crossfire segment in 2013 along with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Elder criticized Christie for accepting the "architecture of the welfare state" and claimed that "government took almost 50 percent of the American people's money" through mandates,[99] a claim he supported by referring to an analysis by the conservative advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform.

[90][40] Elder has made anti-LGBT remarks on Twitter and has repeatedly used male pronouns when referring to transgender women, such as model Ines Rau and fellow gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner.

[102] During his media career, Elder published and gave airtime to misinformation and fringe views on scientific topics, such as secondhand tobacco smoke, climate change, and COVID-19 treatments.

[113] In 2021, Elder did not challenge a call-in listener to his radio show who espoused COVID-19 misinformation suggesting that COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous and part of a Bill Gates-orchestrated plot, and a page on Elder's website promoted the call-in listener's comments by saying, "You'll want to hear this physician's take on the vaccines.

"[40] Elder has proposed suspending or waiving the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, contending that doing so would speed up housing construction.

[116] Elder blames the Democratic Party and organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for ignoring crime and the "epidemic of fatherlessness" in Black neighborhoods.

Datig said that Elder had demanded she show devotion by having "Larry's Girl" tattooed on herself and, during an argument, brandished a gun threateningly at her while "high" on cannabis.

[120][121] After Datig's allegations became public, The Sacramento Bee editorial board and fellow candidates Kevin Faulconer and Caitlyn Jenner called for Elder to withdraw from the race.