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The California Democratic Party would have you believe that the coming “blue wave” of progressive politicos will first crash down on the Golden State tomorrow as residents head to the polls for the primaries. And why wouldn’t it? The state is the bluest in the union, at least by the statistics.
The governor’s race is little more than a de facto coronation of current Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom. What the straight, white progressive prince of the San Francisco Bay lacks in intersectionality points, he makes up for with vociferous virtue signalling. However, voters are realising a tad too late that his endless screeching of ‘More housing! More mobility! More feminism! More progressivism!’ rings hollow.
Newsom’s early career was bankrolled largely by Gordon P. Getty, who just so happened to employ his father, William Alfred Newsom III, as an attorney. The elder Newsom nudged the Chair of the California Democratic Party to appoint his son to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, an ideal launchpad for a perch in state politics.
Maybe voters would be happy to bite the bullet and vote for a trust fund baby if he truly embodied the best of liberalism. But in the era of the #MeToo movement, Newsom’s record on women reads more like a rap sheet than a romance. After divorcing Fox News’ Kimberly Guilfoyle – who is reportedly dating Donald Trump Jr. – Newsom dated a teenager when he was the 39-year-old mayor of San Francisco, in 2006. The year prior, he slept with the wife of his campaign manager and (former) best friend. Mayor Newsom, who quietly siphoned off $10,000 of public funds reserved for city employees with life-threatening illnesses to his ex-mistress, blamed the affair on an alcohol addiction. Like his affair, his “alcoholism” was apparently short-lived; as it turns out, Newsom never went to rehab. In his own words, he “just stopped” drinking – for a while. According to an April interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, he’s back on the bottle again.
None of this should deflect from Newsom’s stellar record on policy. He spent $1.5 billion with the promise of eradicating homelessness while mayor of San Francisco. The result? The city’s homeless population increased by over 200 people. Newsom publicly lambasts the Trump administration for killing clean energy. But as Lieutenant Governor, he oversaw the closure of California’s last functional nuclear power plant. Newsom has declared that as governor, he would oversee the development of 3.5 million new homes…yet he refuses to support zoning relaxation, such as that in the since-failed Senate Bill 827.
The voters of California claim to be woke, progressive, and intersectional. But if the privilege of white mediocrity does in fact exist, Gavin Newsom exemplifies it.
