Posted on 07/02/2024 4:32:55 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Months of speculation and complaints about when, or even if, Gov. Gavin Newsom would give his annual State of the State address ended Tuesday morning with more of a whimper than a bang.
At a few minutes past 10 a.m., Newsom posted a pre-recorded speech to his social media channels. Flanked by American and California flags, the Democratic governor solemnly warned that “the California way of life is under attack” by forces threatened by the state’s diversity, pluralism and innovative spirit.
“Our values and our way of life are the antidote to the poisonous populism of the right, and to the fear and anxiety that so many people are feeling today,” Newsom said. “For conservatives and delusional California bashers, their success depends on our failure.”
Eschewing the convention of delivering live remarks to the Legislature in the stately Assembly chambers of the Capitol, Newsom’s subdued approach this year drew fierce condemnation from his Republican critics — who had fastidiously tracked the days since he canceled his original speech in March and called him a coward for not showing up in person to defend his record in office.
“While this pre-recorded speech fulfills the governor’s legal mandate, it does not in any real way fulfill his responsibility to Californians who deserve a safe, affordable and opportunity-filled future,” Sen. Kelly Seyarto, a Murrieta Republican, said in a pre-response video.
But the governor’s dodge is unlikely to matter to most Californians, many of whom may not register this low-key event at all — barely 1,000 people tuned in for the premiere on YouTube. And that’s precisely the point.
Letting the rescheduling of the State of the State drag on for so long was a mistake that opened Newsom to unnecessary, if largely inconsequential, criticism, said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant who served as communications director for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Forgoing a big speech ends the saga with as little attention as possible.
“He got caught in tough circumstances here,” Stutzman said.
Even with his unorthodox solution, the remarks were classic Newsom, incorporating many of his favorite talking points as stock footage played on the screen.
The 28-minute address included a lengthy defense of what California has accomplished in the past few years — protecting reproductive rights, seizing fentanyl at the border with Mexico, clearing homeless encampments — which he argued undermines a persistent narrative of a failing state.
Faced with rising concerns over how California is handling crime, Newsom cited statistics that indicate gun violence and homicide rates are higher in Republican-led states.
“All of those facts fly in the face of the California haters who want to tear us down because they know our success is a spotlight on their own failures,” Newsom said.
The governor did not announce any major new initiatives, but highlighted the CARE Court system that he developed to push more people with serious mental health challenges into treatment and a bond approved by voters in March to fund more beds for those patients.
“Every year, the people of California stun the world with something new that our detractors could never have dreamed of,” he said. “The only surprise is that they keep being surprised.”
It’s not unprecedented for Newsom to skip a traditional State of the State address. He’s done it four times in his six years in office, including a speech from an empty Dodgers Stadium in 2021, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and a four-day policy tour across California last year.
But Tuesday’s event — fulfilling the governor’s constitutional obligation to “report to the Legislature each calendar year on the condition of the state” by sending them the text of his remarks — was the most muted of Newsom’s tenure, reflecting the sour political mood that he currently faces.
Newsom originally planned to deliver the State of the State in March, following the primary election, but he abruptly delayed the speech when results for his signature mental health care proposal wound up too close to call. It ultimately passed by less than four-tenths of a percentage point, after weeks of counting.
The governor’s office said at the time that it would work with the Legislature to find a new date. As weeks turned into months, however, their time was consumed instead by negotiations to close California’s multibillion-dollar budget deficit, not to mention bill hearings and a gubernatorial trip to the Vatican to discuss climate change. Newsom has also battled recently with proponents of an initiative to strengthen criminal penalties for drug and property crimes, pushing unsuccessfully to remove it from the November ballot.
Amid a season of unflattering headlines for the governor, a new survey from the Public Policy Institute of California this month found that just 44% of respondents approved of Newsom’s job performance while 54% disapproved, the worst assessment he has received since taking office in 2019.
With Newsom and legislative leaders reaching a budget deal over the weekend, and the Legislature soon heading out of town for most of July on recess, the State of the State was suddenly back on — sort of.
The governor’s office announced its plan for a reformatted speech on Sunday. Instead of visiting the Assembly chambers, Newsom held a private reception with lawmakers the evening before his remarks were posted online.
Despite the brouhaha over this year’s address, the pomp and ceremony of the State of the State has long fluctuated as different governors found variable utility in the event.
Two decades ago, Schwarzenegger capitalized on his movie star power and got the evening newscasts to broadcast his speeches live. Stutzman said the State of the State was a tool for Schwarzenegger to launch his annual agenda.
“There is some benefit to the governor working with the Legislature to lay out some priorities at the beginning of the session,” Stutzman said. “Let ’em know where you’re going to put your political capital.”
Schwarzenegger’s successor, Gov. Jerry Brown, did not seem to relish the requirement and even folded it into the inauguration for his final term. But Brown was very bound by tradition, noted Miriam Pawel, author of “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation,” and he showed up to the Legislature each year to speak — albeit often for fewer than 20 minutes, offering philosophical admonitions alongside rundowns of his accomplishments.
“They were very in character,” Pawel said. “They were short, they were to the point.”
Though longer, Newsom’s latest speech leaned toward the Brown mode, placing California at an “extraordinary moment in history.” The governor evoked the spread of fascism across Europe in 1939 and, without naming former President Donald Trump, suggested that California was a bulwark against a similar creeping rollback of progress.
“We are presented with a choice between a society that embraces our values and a world darkened by division and discrimination,” Newsom said. “But California won’t bend. We are a success story exactly because of our universality and our extraordinary diversity, and because we practice pluralism.”
I live in the town of La Verne... a small very conservative town ...really..
.. and every TIME I have been out in the last week, someone has come up along side me on the WRONG side of the road and MADE illegal RIGHT TURNS right in front of my car!!! It is scary to drive here any more...
It’s frightening how long they go on. I see them pop up live on YouTube frequently. Be careful.
DarkForces: interesting FR keyword. Those dark forces are extremely busy these days.
Brown forces.
He is the dark force.
California is totally run by the Democrat Party. There are no other forces in the state to compete with the Democrats' lock on control of the government there.
Except maybe in Fresno...
-PJ
He is right. They are called “Democrats,” and they are ubiquitous in CA “government.”
Dark forces? That’s racist!
“Dark forces”
Um....you mean...like...himself?
That I would believe!
His “values” literally have ZERO value!
A President Newsom for some reason makes me think of something along the lines of a Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada.
We are a success story exactly because of our universality and our extraordinary diversity, and because we practice pluralism.”
https://kirkcenter.org/conservatism/ten-conservative-principles/
Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.
Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation.
Pol Pot warns Cambodians....
The pursuits in S. CA are commonplace now.
But the one today that happened in Newport Beach Fashion Island Mall ended really bad for at least one patron...Once a very exclusive mall, reportedly a woman in her sixties with her husband were robbed in the parking lot at gun point, shots fired and the suspect vehicle wound up running over the woman killing her on the spot.
Another real ugly scene in S.CA.
The multicultural diversity of illegal aliens, gangs, mentally ill, rampant crime, vandalism, drugs, homeless, and trash everywhere make a mockery of this once great state.
“posted a pre-recorded speech to his social media channels”
Ah yes, social masturbation channels.
How fitting for that airhead state.
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