Susan Shelley: Gavin Newsom’s pipe-dream goes up in smoke

Don’t even ask about the Second Amendment.

On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom was in New Hampshire, the world capital of presidential ambition.

Newsom was campaigning as a surrogate for the country’s politically decomposing president, still Joe Biden as of this writing. The governor stepped away from California’s problems to be the featured speaker at the “Blue Summer Campaign Kick-off” hosted by New Hampshire House and Senate Democrats. Tickets were free. A Boston TV station reported that about 200 people RSVP’d to attend.

Newsom also made stops in South Haven, Michigan, on July 4 and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on July 6. Photos and video that the governor posted on his Twitter/X account showed very small crowds, roughly four rows of people at each event.

He’s no Bernie Sanders. Screaming fans filled arenas to hear the socialist firebrand denounce the “rigged system” when he ran for president. Then the Democratic Party rigged the primaries to squash him like a bug and nominate two worn-out warmongers, and he backed them both.

Newsom apparently calculated that his own best path to the White House was to be a Biden loyalist. He was at CNN in Atlanta singing the president’s praises to reporters the night the vacancy sign went up behind Joe Biden’s eyes. “On the substance, Joe Biden won the debate,” Newsom declared in a fundraising pitch the next day. “That is what matters to me.”

On the substance, Gavin Newsom’s record as governor deserves a presidential disaster declaration. Ever since taking office in 2019, he has been at war with the expressed wishes, constitutional rights and general well-being of the people of California.

Newsom kicked off his first term with an executive order ending the death penalty. California voters had very recently rejected a ballot measure that would have abolished the death penalty and instead passed a measure to speed up executions. But the new governor didn’t care.

A year later Newsom rushed to be the first governor to shut down a state for COVID, then clung to his emergency powers longer than governors in other states. Instead of responsibly opening schools, Newsom let children suffer while he empowered teachers’ unions to extract contract concessions from local school boards as a condition of returning to work.

Where other states carefully managed pandemic unemployment benefits, Newsom’s administration admitted to handing out at least $31 billion on fraudulent claims, sticking employers with the cost of repaying the federal government’s loan for jobless benefits.

Corruption is actually legal in California, and Newsom has used the power of his office to ask for and receive unlimited donations from companies and organizations with business before the state. These are called “behested payments.” Newsom has “behested” more than $317 million so far, including $8.8 million for his own inaugural festivities and over $3 million for his wife’s “California Partners Project.” In 2021, the since-failed Silicon Valley Bank was asked by Mr. Newsom to give Mrs. Newsom’s “project” $100,000. It did, of course. “No” is not the right answer if you want to do business in California.

If Newsom cares nothing about the appearance of corruption, he cares even less about fundamental constitutional rights. In September 2022, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 2098, threatening the licenses of doctors who spoke with their patients about COVID and dared to say anything not authorized or approved by the government. The law was challenged in federal court and struck down as a violation of doctors’ rights under the First Amendment.

Don’t even ask about the Second Amendment. Newsom routinely signs grandstanding bills that bulldoze the right to keep and bear arms, then hurls invective at federal judges who overturn the laws. Newsom’s disdainful view of Second Amendment rights is unlikely to play well in the rest of the country. Almost every other state has the right to keep and bear arms inscribed in its state constitution.

Other states also have a lower cost of living and, as a result, a lower poverty rate. One reason is the high cost of energy compared to other states. That’s entirely due to California’s taxes, green energy mandates and regulations, all vehemently backed by the governor. In-state energy production has become more difficult and costly, so the state imports oil in tankers and electricity on interstate transmission lines.

These pie-eyed policies have jacked up the cost of electricity in California to the point where 20% of the customers of the major investor-owned utilities are delinquent on their bills. Newsom’s solution was a requirement for income-based charges for electricity, a provision slipped into an omnibus budget trailer bill that was passed at lightning speed without debate.

California’s state and local governments have also been reaching for new ways to raise taxes, exploiting court-created loopholes in the state constitution. In response, over 1.4 million registered voters signed petitions to put a taxpayer protection initiative on the November ballot. Newsom filed a lawsuit asking the state Supreme Court to remove it from the ballot before voters could get to the polls to pass it. And the justices granted his wish.

Typically any legal issues with initiatives are challenged only after the election, when a severability clause would have preserved the provisions that survived legal scrutiny. Instead, Newsom killed off the entire measure, paving the way for higher state and local taxes.

He failed, however, to kill off an anti-crime initiative that makes changes to Proposition 47, the 2014 measure that reduced theft and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. Newsom first tried to coerce the proponents to withdraw the measure, then sought to engineer a misleading ballot description, then tried to fool voters with a weaker “lookalike” measure at the top of the ballot. But he couldn’t get it done before he had to leave the state to campaign for “saving democracy.”

Newsom’s approval rating in California has been sinking like a prop Titanic in a studio water tank. Another effort to recall him is underway at RescueCalifornia.org. It certainly would be a twist of an ending to this movie if Joe Biden finishes his term and Gavin Newsom doesn’t.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley