OPINION:
The definition of insanity, attributed apocryphally to Albert Einstein, is to do the same thing over and over again and yet expect different results.
That’s the conundrum facing California voters ahead of the so-called jungle primary next month for governor of the Golden State.
On June 2, the top two vote-getters among the eight candidates — six Democrats and two Republicans — will advance to the general election in November to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat.
If both of the two finalists are Democrats, then the November election will offer beleaguered Californians an echo, not a choice, and represent a de facto ratification, not a repudiation, of Mr. Newsom’s spectacularly failed eight-year administration.
On Mr. Newsom’s watch, and despite massive spending by a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature, the quality of life for Californians has suffered greatly.
The high cost of living (fueled by the nation’s highest gas tax, at 61 cents a gallon), rising crime and poverty rates, and the largest homeless population in the nation (187,000-plus, according to a 2024 estimate by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) have made California the leading state for out-migration of residents, as measured by one-way U-Haul rentals, for six years running.
Let’s not forget Mr. Newsom’s much-hyped bullet train to nowhere and his “butterfly bridge,” both of them years behind schedule and beset by enormous cost overruns.
Yet, despite a CBS News-YouGov poll released Tuesday — ahead of a second gubernatorial debate that found a scant 7% of Californians polled were “very confident” they could still attain the “California dream” — the six Democrats were mostly reluctant to criticize Mr. Newsom or to distance themselves from him.
Asked in their first debate, April 22 in San Francisco, to give Mr. Newsom a school-style letter grade for his job performance as governor, as it specifically related to dealing with California’s huge homeless population, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter gave him a B, and billionaire hedge fund manager and environmental extremist Tom Steyer gave him a B-.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, after initially resisting evaluating Mr. Newsom’s performance, gave him a B for his policies but a D for implementation.
Mr. Mahan came across as the closest thing to a moderate among the Democratic contenders on the debate stage, but California voters should be wary after what has happened in Virginia since November. Democrat Abigail Spanberger campaigned and won the governorship as a moderate, but as soon as she took office in January, she shed any pretense of being anything other than a flaming liberal.
So Mr. Mahan’s claim that he is “running for governor because Californians deserve better” and that he was ready “to take on the establishment of my own party” should be viewed with considerable skepticism.
Former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, by contrast, made no pretense to moderation. “On effort, I would give [Mr. Newsom] an A,” he said — evidence to the contrary all over the streets of California’s cities notwithstanding.
That by itself should be a disqualifier for California voters because a Becerra governorship surely would be little more than a third Newsom term.
In the April 22 debate and a follow-up debate Tuesday night at Pomona College in Claremont, which included two additional Democratic contenders, all the Democrats, to a greater or lesser extent, blamed President Trump for their state’s woes more so than the oleaginous operative in the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento.
Not surprisingly, the two Republicans in the race — former Fox News host Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco — gave Mr. Newsom an unequivocal F. In both debates, Messrs. Hilton and Bianco repeatedly faulted the 15 years of Democratic governorships and the one-party rule in the Legislature for the tarnishing of the Golden State.
“Obviously, we need change in California,” Mr. Hilton said in closing remarks at the first debate. Insofar as the alternative is more of the same, that should be self-evident to every voter in the Golden State, and they should vote accordingly.
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