Gavin Newsom, the Ron DeSantis of the Left

Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, has made a striking choice of which public fights to pick. Since 2019, he has been in charge of America’s most populous state—one that confronts severe water, energy, and housing shortages; growing homeless encampments in multiple cities; rising homicide counts; failing schools; perpetually gridlocked traffic; and infamously bad public transportation. In a poll earlier this year from UC Berkeley and the Los Angeles Times, a majority of voters said that California is headed in the wrong direction.

Nevertheless, he has been devoting much of his attention to publicly heaping scorn on conservatives around the country. As a Californian, I struggle to imagine a bigger waste of time than the way Newsom has been spending his: “I just joined Trump’s Truth Social,” Newsom in June. “Going to be on there calling out Republican about trolling MAGA sycophants on an off-brand Twitter? This summer, he has attacking Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the Republican governors of Florida and Texas (where getting attacked by Californians helps you).