Gavin Newsom’s 2024 Presidential Campaign Has Begun He takes on Ron DeSantis in ads urging Floridians to move to California. Good luck with that. By Kenneth L. Khachigian
San Clemente, Calif.
Emboldened by his victory in last year’s recall election and looking toward an easy November re-election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his presidential ambitions over the Fourth of July weekend. He challenged potential opponent Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis with a television commercial in the Sunshine State.
Stuffing too many images into too little space, Mr. Newsom called on Floridians to flee to California, “where we still believe in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom to choose, freedom from hate and the freedom to love.” Mr. Newsom followed with a CNN interview trash-talking Mr. DeSantis and summoning Democrats to “take the fight to them.”
Hubris is a common disease for those coming from states where the media are uncritical and political success is attained without duress. The strains of “Hail to the Chief” are enticing while staff in the governor’s corner office prod: “Boss, this is your time.”
Mr. DeSantis and the other potential 2024 Republican candidates couldn’t be happier to welcome Mr. Newsom into the mix. Putting a magnifying glass on Mr. Newsom’s inept management of what was once the jewel of the Pacific will be a joy to the campaign consultants and political action committee managers waiting to chew up another California lightweight—as they did to Kamala Harris in 2020.
Once Mr. Newsom takes his show on the road, he’ll quickly find the scrutiny that has escaped him in California. His slicked-back act won’t play in Iowa cornfields, New Hampshire snows or South Carolina towns. It is politically perverse that Mr. Newsom’s ad asks Floridians to come to California when his own constituents are leaving for friendlier business and cultural climates in Florida, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere.
Mr. Newsom’s claim that he will “take the fight” to Republicans is laughable. His own record of collapsed leadership is ripe for exploitation. Days ago, 6 miles from the home where I was raised in Tulare County, the Highway Patrol arrested two suspected drug traffickers with 150,000 fentanyl pills—enough to kill thousands. They were released by an order signed by a Tulare County Superior Court commissioner before Sheriff Mike Boudreaux was informed or asked about the risks to public safety. He placed the blame directly on “Gov. Newsom and the legislators in California who are really soft on crime—allowing people like this to be released from our facilities, we have no control over that.”
Homicides in San Francisco are up 36% in two years with the number of people wounded by gun violence nearly doubling. At least 10 Walgreens stores have shuttered because of shoplifting and smash-and-grab thefts. Things are much the same in Los Angeles, where homicides and robberies with guns are on the rise, and the city has lost 40,000 residents in the past year. Stretches of the 405 freeway are embroidered with graffiti and concertina wire.
Residential users of electricity in California pay 66% more than homeowners in the rest of the U.S. This, according to Robert Bryce, is owing to “the ruinously regressive effect of Sacramento’s decarbonization policies.” How long before Mr. Newsom’s opponents ask whether high utility costs are included in taking the fight to Republicans? The Illinois soybean grower won’t identify with Mr. Newsom’s Napa vineyard, but instead will ask why California’s diesel prices approach $7 a gallon.
Mr. Newsom’s supporters called the $200 million cost of the failed recall a “waste.” But his political opponents won’t overlook the even more disgraceful waste of $10 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits shoveled out to prison inmates by the governor’s Employment Development Department. “We are paying hundreds of millions of dollars in the name of serial killers, rapists and child molesters,” Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert wrote in a November 2020 letter to Mr. Newsom.
California’s farmland is drying up. Former Gov. Jerry Brown’s high-speed “train to nowhere,” which Mr. Newsom still supports, robbed Central Valley farmers of their land. Mr. Newsom hasn’t fixed the state’s struggling public schools, but the problem isn’t personal because his children attend private schools while he toes the union line and opposes school choice. California’s governor is the ex officio president of the Regents of the University of California, but the “freedom” he touted to Floridians rings false. Conservatives on UC campuses often need police protection.
So don’t be surprised if Mr. DeSantis and the others swing open the doors for Mr. Newsom. The French Laundry restaurant doesn’t deliver to Wheeling, W.Va., or Canton, Ohio. Mr. Newsom’s designer shirts won’t fit in there either. He will need to learn to live with stale doughnuts, cold coffee, cynical reporters and PAC ads featuring feces-filled San Francisco streets with boarded-up stores and homeless encampments.
Maybe poking Florida’s eye with a stick wasn’t such a good idea.
Mr. Khachigian was chief speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and chief campaign strategist for California Gov. George Deukmejian.
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