Voters Know CA Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Troubles Began Before Pandemic

A more contrite-sounding California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now acknowledging some of his mistakes in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, however, he still doesn’t understand that it’s much more than the pandemic snafus that are fueling the RecallGavin2020 movement. Because is it a movement now.

It appears the people of California will try to right this ship through a recall election, before it becomes the Titanic.

Newsom has been a disaster for California and has a long history of failures going back to when he was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and then when he was known as “Mayor McHottie” of San Francisco. But he’s just the latest – as well as the most condescending and arrogant – in a line of dreadful leftist governors who allowed labor unions to molest and ransack the Golden State.

Coming right off of the pomp and circumstance of being inaugurated California’s 40th Governor, in January 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced state-funded full scope Medi-Cal healthcare to 138,000 illegal immigrant adults ages 19-26.

Newsom also reinstated the Obamacare individual mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance or face tax fines.

He proposed a tax of $25 million on drinking water throughout the state “to help poor communities in California deal with contaminated water systems,” called the “Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund.”

Before his first month in office ended, Newsom announced he was singling out the city of Huntington Beach, CA by filing a lawsuit against the city over a lack of affordable housing, despite 50 other cities also on the list not addressing the housing crisis as the state mandated. Notably, Newsom sued the Orange County city of Huntington Beach for failing to provide enough additional “affordable housing,” as his own home county of Marin enjoyed a moratorium on affordable housing building requirements until 2028.

We learned in January 2019 that the California DMV and county voter registrars told California Secretary of State Alex Padilla in 2018 that the Motor Voter program was not ready. Motor Voter automatically registers voters when they renew or obtain a drivers license. But California under Gov. Newsom, moved forward anyway. Gov. Newsom used very strong language about the DMV in his State of the State address, and appeared to have very little patience for DMV excuse-making, but nothing changed.

Attorneys Harmeet Dhillon and Mark Meuser California filed a federal lawsuit against California for violating the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by failing to verify citizenship before placing voters on the voter rolls, compromising the integrity of our election system.

When then-President Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the southern border in February 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom doubled down on the claim that the California/Mexico border crisis is “political theater” and a “manufactured crisis.” Newsom pulled the CA National Guard from the border.

Then, Newsom and Attorney General Xavier Becerra lead a 16-state coalition of Democrat Attorneys General, filed a lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit U.S. District Court challenging President Trump’s declaration of the national emergency at the border.

Newsom signed an executive order in March 2019 that he would grant reprieves for all 737 death penalty murderers on California’s death row, calling the death penalty “ineffective, irreversible and immoral.”

Marc Klaas, the father of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was brutally raped and murdered in 1993 by Richard Allen Davis, said it was even worse than just re-victimization, in an interview and video with the California Senate Republican Caucus. Klaas said Gov. Gavin Newsom invited Klaas and six other families invested in victims rights to the Capitol to discuss creating some kind of balance for crime victims. But, Klaas said one hour into the meeting, the governor duped all of them when he shockingly announced that he was going to declare a moratorium on the death penalty. “I had no idea that was coming,” Klaas said. “That came out of nowhere.” Klaas said the only reason he and the other families were in the meeting with Newsom “was so he could say I told them before I made the announcement.”

Newsom announced a trip to Central America in April 2019 to “meet with leaders to learn about root causes of migration and lift up the deep ties between California and Salvadoran communities,” as a poke-in-the-eye to the Trump administration. “This is our answer to the White House: No more division, no more xenophobia and no more nativism,” Newsom said in his State of the State address.  Newsom also brought up “fear mongering coming out of the White House about this so-called border security.”

Gov. Newsom released his revised 2019-2020 budget, highlighting the largest tax revenue windfall in California history. However, Newsom’s $214 billion budget was also a record sized budget in California history.

“The state budget is flush with billions in surplus revenue. Twenty-one billion dollars ($21 billion), to be exact,” said Sen. Jim Nielsen. “But that’s not enough for some in the majority party. They want more. They want to raise taxes on water, fertilizer, dairy, tires, guns and businesses.” Nielsen wants to know “Why does the state need to raise taxes when there’s $21 billion in surplus?”

Gov. Newsom’s 2019-2020 state budget also contained more than $2 billion in new state taxes, even with the $21 billion state surplus.

In his May budget revise, Gov. Gavin Newsom allotted $650 million in grants to homelessness agencies and local government to help fund emergency shelters, housing assistance, and new construction, adding up to $1 billion in spending on the homeless in the Golden State. But no one could say where the money was actually going.

Couple the more than $1 billion in state funding with “LA county and city governments collectively spend an astonishing $1.1 billion annually on the costs of dealing with its growing homeless population,” Craig Powell of Eye on Sacramento wrote in 2017, and many are asking, just where are the billions spent on the homeless actually went back then.

Homelessness in California has only grown with the record increase in spending.

June 15 is the deadline for the passage of the California budget, which must be passed by midnight. In 2019, Gov. Newsom was nowhere to be found during what would have been budget negotiations. He left lawmakers, who are members of the Conference Committee on the Budget, waiting around all day for news of when the committee would convene. Friday the Committee was supposed to meet at noon… then they were supposed to meet Friday evening. Then it was Saturday.

Finally, one office said they were told the Committee would meet Sunday evening. Each Capitol office I spoke with said there had been no communication from the Governor or his office. This was and continues to be the number one complaint from Democrat lawmakers in the Capitol – that Gov. Newsom doesn’t give them the time of day, and instead is running California like a one-man show.

The winter of 2019 brought 200 percent of average rains and snow pack. Yet under Gavin Newsom, the state continued holding back on water to farmers, and residents were mandated to be rationed by 2020. Farmers were  already rationed precious water for crops and livestock.

Gov. Newsom filed a lawsuit in 2019 against the Trump administration over the Federal Rail Authority plans to terminate a grant of $928 million for the state’s high-speed rail project, charging that the federal government’s decision to pull the grant agreement “was precipitated by President [Donald] Trump’s overt hostility to California, its challenge to his border wall initiatives, and what he called the ‘green disaster’ high-speed rail project.”

President Trump called for California to return all federal rail funding in February 2019, following Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state of the state address where he announced he planned to pull back on the high-speed rail project, saying, “there simply isn’t a path to get from Sacramento to San Diego, let alone from San Francisco to LA.” However, Newsom also said that the high Speed Rail leg from Madera to Bakersfield in the Central Valley would be completed in order to use the allotted federal funds.

Gov. Newsom announced the formation of the Homeless and Supportive Housing Advisory Task Force and its co-chairs Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, “two city leaders from cities ravaged by homelessness, filth, and disease.”

Homelessness has grown significantly in California’s cities, along with crime. Notably, while Los Angeles, and other large California cities have been experiencing rat infestations within homeless camps, Gov. Newsom signed legislation to ban Rodenticides – rodent poisons.

However, California topped a list of states in 2019 with the most unsheltered homeless people living on the streets.

As for signing bad legislation, here are just a few examples:

• Gov. Newsom signed legislation to impose statewide rent control by capping rent increases. Assembly Bill 1482 prohibits landlords from raising rent by more than 7 percent plus inflation over the course of a year.
• Gov. Newsom signed  SB 310 by Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) to allow convicted felons to serve on a jury.
• Newsom signed SB 132 by  LGBT Caucus Chairman Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) to allow prison inmates to decide their own sex, how they want to be addressed (Mr. Miss, Mrs. Ms.), and would require California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials to refer to them by that chosen sex and, and house them with other inmates of the same sex.
• Newsom signed  AB 44, to ban fur products and clothing in the state, despite the many diverse climates within the 164,000 square miles of California. San Diego to Siskiyou, Death Valley to Bodie State Park (near Bridgeport, Mono County), temperatures range from 110 degrees to -5 degrees, where people wear fur for warmth.
• Gov. Newsom signed SB 276 to disallow vaccination medical exemptions parents were receiving from family physicians.
• Gov. Newsom signed AB 392, which mandates that police deadly force may only be used when necessary. AB 392 criminalized police use of force, unnecessarily jeopardizing public safety, and encourages law enforcement to increasingly rely on de-escalation techniques like verbal persuasion and other crisis intervention methods.
• Gov. Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5  by former labor union leader Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), which the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated had in 2020, already affected more than 1 million independent contractor and freelance working Californians. AB 5 significantly limited Californians’ ability to work as independent contractors and freelancers. It was revealed during Senate debate that the AFL-CIO wrote AB 5.
• In 2019, Gov. Newsom commuted the sentences of 21 inmates, most of whom were serving life terms. Newsom’s clemency and commutations grant each offender hearings with the state Board of Parole Hearings. Yet 19 of the 21 were convicted for serious crimes involving firearms. The Governor has frequently opined on the evils of “gun violence” yet releases violent criminals, who used firearms in their crimes, back into the general population.
• Gov. Newsom signed Senate Bill 61 by Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Lan Canada/Flintridge), which prohibits individuals from purchasing more than one gun, of any kind, per month.
• Newsom signed SB 24 by Senator Connie Leyva (D-Chino) to require student health centers on University of California and California State University to provide free abortions to students by January 2023.

Through an Executive Order, Gov. Newsom redirected gas tax money to fund railway systems and other projects. The gas tax revenue would have repaired and upgraded the state’s broken highways and roads.

By October 2019, California utilities and energy providers were warning about power outages and rolling blackouts, and not in terms of security and safety, but because of an anticipated lack of available power. The CPUC outage authorization provided the utilities cover. Notably, there was no increase in summer temps, but the renewable energy mandate was ramped up.

Newsom, avoiding responsibility for decisions leading to California’s power failures, blamed “dog-eat-dog capitalism” for the state’s fall 2019 rolling blackouts and loss of power. As he struggled to stay in control, he continued blame “climate change” and “extreme weather,” as well as criticizing PG&E for its failure to invest in its infrastructure and technology, never acknowledging that state government is in charge of regulating these utilities to make sure this never happens.

California’s energy crisis is the direct result of 40 years of Democrat rule, and their leftist policies. While neglecting crucial infrastructure repairs and maintenance, they’ve imposed strangling environmental priorities.

By the end of October 2019, more than 2.5 million Californians were without power in 36 counties, while parts of the state burned down. Utilities warned the power outages could go on for 10 years because of infrastructure disrepair… while Gov. Newsom blamed climate change.

Next: Part ll, Voters Know CA Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Troubles Began Before Pandemic, 2020