California’s governor is going to show the red states a thing or two about promoting social equality

In order for California Governor Gavin Newsom to be able to travel the country campaigning for President – without being called a hypocrite – he’s orchestrated the introduction of a new bill to end California’s travel ban to “anti-LGBT law” states.

Senate Bill 447, authored by Senator Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), would end California’s ant-LGBT law travel ban to 23 states, including  Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Last summer, Newsom was busted vacationing in Montana – one of the 22 states on California’s list of state-banned travel. Montana is not only among the 22 states to which California has banned state-funded and state-sponsored travel, Montana is also one of the states Newsom’s office has called out for restricting abortion access.

That should have been a thoroughly embarrassing issue for the governor.

This time, with Newsom agitating for a Presidential run in 2024, California’s growing list of banned states could make it a lot more difficult for the governor since it won’t just be his friendly California media on his tail.

And rather than admit just how stupid it is to ban states from state travel, Newsom and his PR team think they’ve cooked up a really witty reason to change the law: “rather than just end the ban, the bill would instead replace it with the Building and Reinforcing Inclusive, Diverse, Gender-Supportive Equity Project (BRIDGE Project) to ‘promote social equity, civil rights, and antidiscrimination through marketing and advertising campaigns,’” the Globe reported.

Ahhhh, California’s governor is going to show the red states a thing or two about building bridges, promoting social equality and civil rights, and anti discrimination.

Good luck with that Gavin. Those red states aren’t the back-woods hayseeds you think they are.

Think about this – Gov. Newsom is authorizing spending California taxpayers’ money in other states so he can teach them a lesson about social equity.

“I think polarization is not working,” said Senator Atkins on Wednesday. “We need to adjust our strategy. We know what we need to do, but we need to be able to be there to do it.

Newsom claims he’s not running for President but his actions, even as buffoonish as they are with this new bill, indicate otherwise. He will discover on his whistle stop social equity tour of Red States that he isn’t as attractive to the rest of the country as he and his team think he is.

Click here to read the full article in California Globe

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called for an overhaul of Democrats’ political strategy on Saturday, saying the party is “getting crushed” by Republicans in part because they are too timid, often forced to play defense while Republicans “dominate with illusion.”

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas — the territory of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, one of Newsom’s chief political foils — Newsom was careful to praise current party leaders like President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

But he said that mantras that may have worked for the party in the past — like Michele Obama’s famous quip “when they go low, we go high,” — simply don’t work today because “that’s not the moment we’re living in right now.”

“These guys are ruthless on the other side,” Newsom said. “Where are we? Where are we organizing, bottom up, a compelling alternative narrative? Where are we going on the offense every single day? They’re winning right now.”

Newsom said that’s why — even though he is running for reelection as governor of California — he has been spending some of the millions of dollars in his campaign account on TV ads in Florida urging people to move to California, newspaper ads in Texas decrying the state’s gun laws, and putting up billboards in seven states urging women to come to California if they need an abortion.

“There’s nothing worse than someone pointing fingers. What are you going to do about it?” Newsom said. “The reason we’re doing those ads is because … the Democratic Party needs to be doing more of it.”

Of course, the main reason Newsom can do those things is because he faces little pressure at home. Newsom is likely to cruise to a second term as governor of California in November, facing a little-known and underfunded Republican challenger one year after defeating a recall attempt.

Newsom’s actions have increased speculation he might be running for president, an idea he has repeatedly denied — doing so again on Saturday in Texas. Asked if he was considering running for president in 2024 or 2028, Newsom said: “No, not happening.”

“I cannot say it enough,” he said. “I never trust politicians, so I get why you keep asking.”

Newsom said that President Joe Biden’s first two years in office have been “a master class … on substance and policy.” But later, he said good governance, by itself, is not enough to win elections — adding that “otherwise Biden would be at 75% approval.” In reality, about 53% of U.S. adults disapprove of Biden, according to the most recent poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The problem for Democrats, Newsom said, is that they “fall in love so easily” with “the guy or gal on the white horse to come save the day.”

“We missed a more important paradigm that leadership is not defined by that person in formal authority, it’s defined by people with moral authority every single day,” he said.

Newsom’s aggressiveness could end up helping Abbott, who is locked in a more competitive race with former Congressman Beto O’Rourke. Kenneth Grasso, a political science professor at Texas State University, said there has been concern among some in the Republican Party that Abbott is “not conservative enough.” Newsom’s attacks against Abbott “only helps him with those people,” Grasso said.

“If you stress that they’re right-wingers, you call them extremists, using that kind of language, all you are going to do is enhance their popularity in their own base,” he said.

Despite that risk, Texas Democrats seem to be welcoming Newsom’s attention.

“I like this guy,” Texas Democratic Party chair Gilberto Hinojosa said of Newsom. “I like the way he’s showing the contrast between what y’all do in California and what the narrow-minded, extremist positions that occur here in the state of Texas.”

Click here to read the full article in AP News

SB 57 was supposed to help addicts, but critics decried legal drug dens

He’s trolling red-state Republican governors with attack ads, picking fights over the country’s most hot-button issues and calling out political “bullies” in a baseball cap to cover up his usually-coiffed hair.

Despite all the signs, Gov. Gavin Newsom insists he’s not running for president.

But a very high-profile veto message this past week quickly had both critics and some supporters asking if the proud progressive governor has suddenly started weighing how his decisions in Sacramento will go over with more moderate voters in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, the first stops on any presidential hopeful’s road to the White House.

Newsom vetoed SB 57, which would have allowed Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles to open supervised injection sites for drug addicts. It seemed like the kind of out-of-the-box approach to a vexing social problem that Newsom would embrace.

As San Francisco’s mayor in 2004, he made national headlines marrying gay couples when most fellow Democrats clung to the tradition that only a man and woman could tie the knot. So this past week when he rejected SB 57, critics blamed his rumored presidential ambitions – and his fear of attack ads decrying his state’s legal drug dens.

“We are incredibly disappointed and heartbroken that Governor Newsom has put his own political ambitions ahead of saving thousands of lives and vetoed this critical legislation,” Jeannette Zanipatin, California state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement after the veto.

With the Legislature wrapping up its latest session this week, there are dozens of bills from California’s left-leaning Democrats headed to the governor’s desk that could signal whether Newsom is concerned about his appeal to more moderate voters. Those include bills that would make it easier for felons to pass background checks and require judges to consider alternatives to jail when sentencing offenders.

None pose as big of a threat to his national aspirations as the safe injection site bill, political experts agree.

“This was definitely the biggest obstacle on the road to New Hampshire,” said veteran political analyst Dan Schnur.

Claremont McKenna College political science Professor Jack Pitney said it would be “easy to write the script for the attack ad” on SB 57. Opposition researchers would have a trove of visuals at their disposal of addicts passed out on the streets of San Francisco, where the city’s liberal voters in June overwhelmingly recalled their district attorney who’d campaigned on alternatives to jail for offenders.

With even progressives pushing back when it comes to crime and quality of life, Pitney said, Newsom has to be wary of bills that could feed a narrative that he’s soft on crime.

“Particularly when it comes to crime policy, he has to reflect on what happened to Michael Dukakis,” Pitney said.

Dukakis was the Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee whom Republican George H.W. Bush clobbered in a 1988 campaign that hammered on Dukakis’ veto of a bill that would have ended prison furloughs for murderers. Bush supporters ran ads calling out a Maryland rape by furloughed Massachusetts murder convict Willie Horton.

Pitney in a column earlier this month noted similarities between Newsom and Dukakis, who had won reelection in a landslide and was lauded for pushing progressive policies while balancing budgets. Both Democrats, Pitney wrote, suffer “Blue Bubble Syndrome” from spending their political lives in comfortably blue states. Progressive crime policies applauded by social justice activists might land with a thud among voters who have shown heightened concern about declining public safety and quality of life.

To that end, SB 731, which has passed the Legislature and would expand expungement of felony arrest and conviction records so people can more easily pass background checks, “could become a political liability,” Pitney said.

“Newsom may well sign it, but with the awareness that it is politically risky,” he said.

With Newsom so comfortably ahead in the polls, there’s not much focus on his re-election campaign this November. Instead, even though Newsom has said his longtime political ally, Vice President Kamala Harris, should be next in line after President Biden, his name is front and center about running for the White House in 2024. Polls show Biden and Harris are unpopular, even among Democrats, and that Newsom would be a viable alternative should Biden and Harris bow out.

Newsom’s Republican reelection opponent, state Sen. Brian Dahle, said he was “thankful SB 57 was vetoed” and “appalled” it even made it to Newsom’s desk. But he said others are on their way, like SB 2167, which would require judges to seek alternatives to incarceration.

“I voted NO! Enough is enough,” Dahle said on Twitter.

Another crime and drug-related bill Newsom may be wary of is SB 519, which in its early language would have decriminalized possession of hallucinogenic drugs by adults 21 and older including LSD, Ecstasy, mescaline and psilocybin mushrooms. The current version of the bill would merely require a study on doing that.

“If you were worried about being Governor Psychedelic,” said Thad Kousser, a UC San Diego political science professor, “I can see the campaign poster with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.”

Bill Whalen, a Hoover Institution fellow who worked in the administration of former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and has consulted for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan, said a number of pandemic policy bills also may give Newsom pause.

Newsom ordered the first statewide stay-home order in March 2020, oversaw the most extensive school closures and some of the longest-lasting face mask mandates, and called for California to be the first state to require COVID-19 vaccines for children to attend school.

He has touted his pandemic policies as life-savers over Republican-led states that took a more hands-off approach. But at a time when most of the nation has moved on from pandemic concerns, more mandates from Sacramento may leave a bad taste among voters across the country.

“If you want to cobble together 270 electoral votes, I don’t think you want to get bogged down in a mask issue,” Whalen said.

A couple of the most controversial bills, SB 1464, to require local law enforcement to enforce mask mandates, and SB 871, to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for schoolkids, haven’t made it out of committee. But another bill, SB 866, that would let teens age 15-17 get the vaccine without their parents’ consent continues to move through the Legislature.

Click here to read the full article at The Mercury News