LETTER FROM SAN FRANCISCO
During an election period, elected officials are generally confined to their constituency. Not Gavin Newsom. The governor of California is everywhere, except campaigning in his state. Leaping from coast to coast, and on every opportunity to cross swords with his Republican counterparts. The battle for the midterm elections this year is accompanied by a competition of governors. In the States, the presidential ones sharpen their stature. From the day after midtermswhich will be held on November 8, they will be ready.
Gavin Newsom, 54, has said it over and over again. He has “zero interest” to stand in the ranks for the succession of Joe Biden in 2024 (or even 2028). In his state, the press obviously does not believe anything. If the governor wanted a national audience, he wouldn’t do it any other way. It is true that at home, the Californian Republicans failed miserably to dismiss him, during the “recall” of September 2021. For the November 8 ballot, they only found an obscure figure to oppose him, Brian Dahle , a former farmer and local elected official from the rural north of the state.
If he is bored at home, Gavin Newsom makes up for it elsewhere. And his war chest – $23 million – allows him to be bold. Objective of sound “road show”according to the expression of the online media Politico : show the rest of the country that a progressive policy is possible. A kind of counter-propaganda with the image hackneyed by the Republicans, always quick to denounce the ” bankruptcy “ of the Golden State: its high taxes, its fires, its homelessness. To what the governor opposes innovation, the budget surplus, investment in clean energies, family policy…
An all-round politician
On July 4, National Day, the Governor aired a 30-second video on Fox News in Florida: “Freedom is under attack in your state. Republican leaders are banning books, making it harder to vote, restricting free speech in schools, criminalizing women and doctors, he declares. I call on everyone who lives in Florida to join the fight, or join us in California, where we still believe in freedom. »
After the Supreme Court’s decision questioning the federal right to abortion, the governor posted posters – signed by the “Gavin Newsom 2022” campaign committee – in seven conservative states to remind women that they can count on California. “Your body does not belong to Texas/South Dakota, etc. It is yours. » After the killings at Uvalde Elementary School in late May in Texas, he bought inserts in local newspapers to denounce the law that allows 18-year-olds to buy assault rifles. Most recently, he meddled in the campaign in Arkansas with a $100,000 donation to African-American candidate Chris Jones, a nuclear physicist who is vying for governor with Donald Trump’s former spokesperson in the White House, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
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