The choice for California governor: John Cox v. Gavin Newsom

In the battle for California governor, a surprisingly even-handed pro-Gavin Newsom flyer makes an incredibly strong case for voting for Republican John Cox.

In an ideal world, on June 5, when California voters go to the polls, members of the various political parties would have a chance to select which of the candidates affiliated with their party should end up on the ticket in November. But we do not live in an ideal world. We live in California, which several years ago chose to become an “open-primary” state.

What “open primary” means is “no primary” — party members cannot choose their candidate. Instead, an open primary is a “pre-election election,” with the top two winners facing off against each other in November. As I detailed in a post dedicated to the whole misbegotten scheme, the purpose is to remove Republicans entirely from the California ballot every November.

Sometimes, though, even the best-laid Democrat schemes go awry. In this case, two factors are creating the serious possibility that the Democrat front-runner, Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, will find himself running, not against a less popular Democrat, but against an actual Republo-Libertarian, businessman John Cox.

The first factor behind this unexpected scenario is that there are a ton of Democrat candidates, ranging from hard Left to harder Left to hardest Left, and they are literally tearing each other apart. While Newsom will undoubtedly end up on the ballot’s top spot, it appears that the other Democrats will divide the vote so much that none will take second place — which leads us to the second factor: The mini-conservative rebellion in California seems to be consolidating around John Cox.

I have to admit that, of the two top Republican candidates, I prefer Travis Allen. This is not meant as a cut at Cox, whom I’d be very happy to see in the California governor’s mansion. I just like Allen’s energy more.

The numbers, however, seem to be supporting Cox, which is, I assume, the reason why Trump just endorsed him. I don’t see Trump’s endorsement as an actual personal preference for one candidate over the other. I think he’s being a pragmatist and is throwing his weight behind the candidate currently most likely to prevail over Democrats other than Newsom for a spot on the November ballot.

What’s clear is that, now that Trump has endorsed Cox, Democrats are worried. How worried? I received an interesting flyer in today’s mail from the Citizens Supporting Gavin Newsom for Governor 2018, which I reproduce below. So that you can understand it, the flyer is a single sheet of 11 x 17 paper, folded in half. If you were holding the flyer in your hand, you would open it and see pages two and three facing each other:

In the interests of fairness, here’s a nicer photograph of John Cox that does not make him look like a senile dotard. Indeed, having met him, I can say with certainty that he is a vigorous, healthy, attractive man:

Also, before I go any further, I should say that I have long held a very low opinion of Newsom, whom I knew about as a protegé of Gordon Getty, a major Democrat party fundraiser, more than two decades ago, back when I was still a Democrat San Francisco voter. Newsom’s dad, a judge, was a Democrat party operative and his late aunt was married to Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law. Those kind of connections tell you a lot about a man. I pegged Newsom as a headline grabbing opportunist when he started issuing gay marriage licenses during his tenure as San Francisco mayor. (There may have been a hidden personal element to his actions — or he’s just a super sleaze.)

Anyway, back to that flyer that came in the mail. I find it fascinating because it perfectly demonstrates the ideological split in California. Let me explain:

Across the middle of pages two and three, the flyer states “Two Different Visions for California” and, boy, is it right about that. What’s really fascinating is that the flyer presents Cox’s vision with perfect honesty because to the flyer’s authors, the bare bones facts are sufficiently off-putting that they need no elaboration. I’ll quote them here so you don’t have to scroll up:

Republican John Cox has been endorsed by President Donald Trump who said John Cox would be the best Governor California has ever had.

John is a conservative businessman who:

– Supports Trump’s tax cuts

– Believes we need tough border security and supports building Trump’s wall

– Is supported by the California ProLife Council

– Will stand up for the 2nd Amendment and says California has more than enough gun laws

Reading all of that, I thought of it as incredible praise for Cox. First, we’re getting reminded that he’s receiving effusive support from a President who is

• sending the U.S. economy into hyper-drive;
• presiding over the de-fanging of North Korea;
• whipping Iran back into a corner while creating opportunities for Israel to live at peace with her neighbors;
• enforcing our immigration laws;
• placing on the federal courts judges who believe they are constrained by the constitution, federal law, and judicial precedent, rather than functioning as black-robed Leftist priests;
• pushing back against the fascistic tyranny of political correctness; and
• generally making America great again.

Second, Cox himself is supporting the same tax cuts that power-charged the economy, promising to protect our Southern border (which badly needs protecting in California), standing against the Democrats death-cult worship of abortion, and (hurrah!!) openly supporting the Second Amendment. This is my kind of candidate.

I was so thrilled by the above info that I double-checked the flyer’s last page to confirm that it really was from Gavin Newsom groupies — and it was. You see, in the divided state of California, cold, bare, honest facts that I consider absolutely wonderful are so bad in Leftist eyes that they believe those facts entirely disqualify a political candidate.

Let me say that again: According to Leftists, a candidate who wants Americans to pay lower taxes, to have strong borders, to have the right to self-defense, and to defend the helpless among us, is evil without further argument.

And what does the Left believe is a qualified political leader? Again, the Newsom list is simple and honest. The positions that make you and me recoil instead make Leftist hearts sing:

Democrat Gavin Newsom will stand up to President Donald Trump to protect California’s interests.

As Governor, Gavin will:

– Combat climate change and put California on a path to 100% renewable energy

– Protect immigrant families

– Fight for health care for all and protect a woman’s right to choose.

– Continue to push for tougher gun safety laws.

I would phrase things a different way. As Governor, Gavin will:

– Act to ensure that California becomes like Germany. Germany too opted to have 100% renewable energy, resulting in soaring energy costs, rolling brownouts, and poorer people entirely without energy. Moreover, as is true in Germany, California will inevitably be forced to buy cheap, dirty energy from other sources because there is no way in Hell that renewable energy (i.e., sun and wind) will ever power a state with around 40 million people.

– Continue to act as a sanctuary state for illegal aliens, all of whom are criminals simply by virtue of being here, and some of whom are violent criminals who commit a wide variety of crimes, ranging from pedophilia, to assault, to manslaughter, to out-and-out murder. What’s noteworthy is that, aside from the DUI deaths, most of these crimes prey on California’s most vulnerable poor and minority people. In order to increase the California Democrat voting bloc, Newsom wants to continue a policy that harms blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and poor people generally.

As you contemplate that fact, keep in mind that these crimes could be avoided simply by complying with federal immigration law. Also, I think everyone should recognize that this same “state’s right” attitude, which benefits the ruling class and harms blacks is the same as the “state’s right” attitude that allowed the antebellum South to justify slavery long after the north had recognized its immorality.

– Continue to have the shrinking California middle class fund everyone else’s socialized medicine, including medicine for illegal aliens. (Really — there’s a pending bill about that.) We know from looking at all other places with socialized medicine that the end of the road is always rationing, with the government deciding who lives and who dies.

Ostensibly socialized medicine worked in Europe as long as it did only because hard-working Americans were paying for Europe’s defense costs, freeing up money for that much-vaunted “cradle to grave” care — care, moreover, provided to homogeneous societies that had the same ideas about lifestyles, including everyone contributing to socialist policies. Now that American funding is drying up (and thank you again, President Trump, for forcing Europeans to step up to their NATO obligations), and now that Europe has invited in millions of Africans and Middle Easterners who don’t share in the homogeneous belief system about contributing to socialized medicine, European medical care is beginning to stink up the room with dead and dying bodies.

And here’s another interesting point: If you want to know who’s making bank on Obamacare (and CaliforniaCare) look no further than one of the sponsors of this flyer: Blue Shield of California. For those unaware, that’s a health insurance company. Don’t let its not-for-profit status fool you. It’s in the business of making money for its employees, if not any shareholders, so those who work for it are deeply invested in forcing consumers to pay for its services. I wrote on the eve of Obamacare that greedy insurance companies were salivating for it to pass because it would get them millions of new — who cares if they’re unwilling? — customers. As Blue Shield shows, they’re still salivating.

Regarding abortion, that’s a moral issue. After growing up supporting abortion, I’ve changed my mind and, indeed, have written repeatedly about the Leftist death-cult obsession with slaughter babies is so disturbing I want no truck with it. I’ve also written about the fundamental lie underpinning the Democrat abortion obsession, which is that we’re still living in the same moral world as in the 1950s and before.

— Continue to disarm Americans. Newsom is driven by an ignorant fear of guns and an inchoate sense that it’s always better for those in political power to preside over a disarmed citizenry. Regarding that fear about guns, it matters not that a CDC study shows what Second Amendment supporters have argued all along, which is that guns are used more often defensively, than offensively — much more often.

Never mind that logic and fact show that concealed-carry decreases mass shootings. You can’t shoot fish in a barrel if the fish shoot back.

Never mind that school shootings have consistently been minor tragedies not major tragedies when a good guy with a gun was on site at the time of the shooting. And of course, regarding Newsom’s sense that the only good gun owner is the government, never mind that the greatest killer of all is not a crazy high school student, a person hopped up on drugs, or even an MS-13 gang but is, instead, government acting against unarmed citizens (or more accurately, disarmed citizens).

I find Newsom’s positions appalling. They’re either illogical or immoral on their face or stupid, harmful, and expensive in practice. Yet, as I said, Democrats believe that all good-thinking people will review this flyer and pull the lever for Gavin Newsom.

My hope is that, this year in California, we have our own populist uprising. In a just world, California’s still sane citizens, the ones pushing back against the sanctuary state, the ones drowning in taxes, the ones struggling to pay their energy bills, the ones unable to afford health insurance, the ones seeing illegal aliens commit heinous crimes, will look at this very same flyer and, rather than seeing it as an encomium to Newsom, will do what I’m going to do: Vote for John Cox.