Opinion | Gavin Newsom’s 2024 Presidential Marketing campaign Has Begun

Stuffing too many photos into too little house, Mr. Newsom known as on Floridians to flee to California, “the place we nonetheless imagine in freedom: freedom of speech, freedom to decide on, freedom from hate and the liberty to like.” Mr. Newsom adopted with a CNN interview trash-talking Mr. DeSantis and summoning Democrats to “take the combat to them.”

Hubris is a standard illness for these coming from states the place the media are uncritical and political success is attained with out duress. The strains of “Hail to the Chief” are engaging whereas employees within the governor’s nook workplace prod: “Boss, that is your time.”

Mr. DeSantis and the opposite potential 2024 Republican candidates couldn’t be happier to welcome Mr. Newsom into the combination. Placing a magnifying glass on Mr. Newsom’s inept administration of what was as soon as the jewel of the Pacific will probably be a pleasure to the marketing campaign consultants and political motion committee managers ready to chew up one other California light-weight—as they did to

Kamala Harris

in 2020.

As soon as Mr. Newsom takes his present on the street, he’ll shortly discover the scrutiny that has escaped him in California. His slicked-back act gained’t play in Iowa cornfields, New Hampshire snows or South Carolina cities. It’s politically perverse that Mr. Newsom’s advert asks Floridians to come back to California when his personal constituents are leaving for friendlier enterprise and cultural climates in Florida, Texas, Arizona and elsewhere.

Mr. Newsom’s declare that he’ll “take the combat” to Republicans is laughable. His personal document of collapsed management is ripe for exploitation. Days in the past, 6 miles from the house the place I used to be raised in Tulare County, the Freeway Patrol arrested two suspected drug traffickers with 150,000 fentanyl tablets—sufficient to kill hundreds. They had been launched by an order signed by a Tulare County Superior Court docket commissioner earlier than Sheriff

Mike Boudreaux

was knowledgeable or requested concerning the dangers to public security. He positioned the blame straight on “Gov. Newsom and the legislators in California who’re actually gentle on crime—permitting individuals like this to be launched from our amenities, now we have no management over that.”

Homicides in San Francisco are up 36% in two years with the variety of individuals wounded by gun violence practically doubling. At the least 10 Walgreens shops have shuttered due to shoplifting and smash-and-grab thefts. Issues are a lot the identical in Los Angeles, the place homicides and robberies with weapons are on the rise, and the town has misplaced 40,000 residents up to now yr. Stretches of the 405 freeway are embroidered with graffiti and concertina wire.

Residential customers of electrical energy in California pay 66% greater than householders in the remainder of the U.S. This, in accordance with

Robert Bryce,

is owing to “the ruinously regressive impact of Sacramento’s decarbonization insurance policies.” How lengthy earlier than Mr. Newsom’s opponents ask whether or not excessive utility prices are included in taking the combat to Republicans? The Illinois soybean grower gained’t establish with Mr. Newsom’s Napa winery, however as an alternative will ask why California’s diesel costs strategy $7 a gallon.

Mr. Newsom’s supporters known as the $200 million value of the failed recall a “waste.” However his political opponents gained’t overlook the much more disgraceful waste of $10 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent unemployment advantages shoveled out to jail inmates by the governor’s Employment Improvement Division. “We’re paying lots of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} within the identify of serial killers, rapists and little one molesters,” Sacramento District Lawyer

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 “practice to nowhere,” which Mr. Newsom nonetheless helps, robbed Central Valley farmers of their land. Mr. Newsom hasn’t fastened the state’s struggling public colleges, however the issue isn’t private as a result of his kids attend non-public colleges whereas he toes the union line and opposes faculty selection. California’s governor is the ex officio president of the Regents of the College of California, however the “freedom” he touted to Floridians rings false. Conservatives on UC campuses usually want police safety.

So don’t be shocked if Mr. DeSantis and the others swing open the doorways for Mr. Newsom. The French Laundry restaurant doesn’t ship to Wheeling, W.Va., or Canton, Ohio. Mr. Newsom’s designer shirts gained’t slot in there both. He might want to be taught to stay with stale doughnuts, chilly espresso, cynical reporters and PAC advertisements that includes feces-filled San Francisco streets with boarded-up shops and homeless encampments.

Perhaps poking Florida’s eye with a stick wasn’t such a good suggestion.

Mr. Khachigian was chief speechwriter for President