It’s easy to criticize the field now running for California governor, an office now occupied by perhaps the ultimate lame duck — Gavin Newsom.
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One thing that’s for sure is Newsom will not have much influence over the race to replace him. He’s certainly not positioned to name his successor, the way President Biden did when he quit his reelection run and anointed Vice President Kamala Harris. Instead, the ultraliberal Democrats who dominate every major office in California and run both houses of the state Legislature will be glad to see him go.
After all, Newsom is the man who vetoed state-funded home loans for undocumented immigrants and immediately afterward forced legislators to come back to Sacramento earlier than they wanted for a special session aimed at preventing sudden large gasoline price spikes.
No one in the field to succeed him has come close to doing some of the things he’s done: debating a governor from another state who seems to delight in taunting California and doing the opposite of whatever this state does, from banning almost all abortions to keeping schools and businesses open during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Instead, we have the likes of Toni Atkins, a longtime legislator who has pushed through a lot of laws but very few of which are on the tip of anyone’s tongue. There’s also Betty Yee, the termed-out state controller, and Tony Thurmond, the two-term state school superintendent who can’t point to many ways he’s improved public education during his eight years in the office.
Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who has done about has much in her current office as Newsom did while he held it — virtually nothing — is also running. Add in former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whom Newsom beat handily when he ran in 2018.
There will possibly be California Attorney General Rob Bonta, best known for tough enforcement of state laws mandating huge amounts of dense new housing. There could also be outgoing U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine, who was defeated last spring in her quest for the U.S. Senate.
None but Porter is exactly a household name. Yet. All are Democrats, with nary a Republican in sight. The closest thing to a GOP candidate is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, now being sued for claiming his deputies prevented an assassination attempt when they arrested a man with guns and ammo in his car outside a Donald Trump presidential rally in Coachella.
In that way, the gubernatorial race looks a lot like this year’s run for the U.S. Senate did before former baseball player Steve Garvey got into it. In short, the state GOP’s extreme lack of a bench — to use a baseball term — is painfully obvious. The party not only holds no statewide offices, but it will not for at least another two years, and there’s no clone of Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting to pounce on Democrats as the muscleman actor did to former Gov. Gray Davis in the 2003 recall election.
Schwarzenegger is proof that the Republican label doesn’t have to be poison in California. Where are Republicans with experience in public policy, though, who could govern as a bit of a counterweight to the big majorities held by legislative Democrats? One big reason the state GOP has no significant bench is that so much of the party drank the “Make America Great Again” Kool-Aid of Trump, who threatened to “primary” any Republican officeholder opposing him on almost anything and then did so repeatedly.
The MAGA tag has been pure anathema in California, though. When GOP candidate John Cox adopted it while running against Newsom in 2018, he lost by the widest margin in almost 70 years. Running again in the 2021 attempt to recall Newsom, Cox drew just 4.4% of the vote.
So much for MAGA in California, which Trump has never come close to carrying. The reality is that there are not many differences among the current corps of candidates to take Newsom’s place in the state Capitol’s “horseshoe” executive area in 2027.
It’s doubtful that any of them would oppose many ideas the Legislature has been itching to pass, like those home loans for the undocumented. That’s what California gets for having a Republican Party almost fully impotent at the state level.
Email Thomas Elias at [email protected], and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
