by Frank Holmes, reporter
For a rising star in the Democratic Party, the Golden State is losing its shine.
Its liberal Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has been teetering on the edge of losing his job for months — and top Democrats are calling the movement against him a “California coup.”
Californians have started a recall petition to force the governor out of office—and now, the first challenger has stepped forward to wrestle the keys to the governor’s mansion out of Newsom’s hands.
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, a Republican, has thrown his hat into the ring—and he’s already attracted major support.
He raised $1 million before he ever officially entered the race.
“It’s time for the California comeback,” he announced. He said his campaign theme will be “restoring balance and common sense.”
Common sense has been hard to find on the Left Coast.
Tens of thousands of former state residents a year have hitched their dreams to a U-haul and headed east, fleeing the state’s high taxes, unaffordable cost of living, uncontrolled wildfires, crime, homelessness, and left-wing policies.
But the coronavirus pandemic was the last straw for a lot of California voters who couldn’t leave the state.
“Our public schools have not been safely reopened,” Faulconer said. “And yet private schools are open and public schools across the country have safely reopened.”
He blamed Newsom’s cozy relationship with teachers unions for the governor’s dawdling on getting kids back into the classroom.
Thanks to Newsom’s constantly changing COVID-19 shutdown orders, “we’ve had businesses that have been open and shut five different times,” Faulconer said.
He also accused the governor, who was spotted breaking his own ban on indoor dining at the ultra-elite French Laundry restaurant, of not making the data behind his lockdown orders “transparent.”
The state argued that the information was too complicated, and people might think it didn’t support Newsom’s decisions.
“Californians who are suffering because Sacramento can’t do the basics,” Faulconer said.
Newsom, who never hid his designs to move even higher in political office, is seeing his dream crash down to the ground.
Faulconer will have challengers if he runs in 2022: the more conservative Republican John Cox and the billionaire former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya.
And he’ll face strong opposition in the most liberal state in the union. The state hasn’t elected a Republican since Arnold Schwarzenegger replace Democratic Gov. Gray Davis—after a recall election.
Faulconer is a “moderate” Republican who supports amnesty for illegal immigrants and gay marriage. As mayor of the second-largest city in the state, he’s well known…and not everybody is favorable.
The Democratic Party is panicking so much, it’s trotting out some familiar tactics.
First of all, it’s trying to tie the San Diego Republican to the one man Californians hate even more than Gavin Newsom: President Donald Trump.
That’s ironic, since Faulconer said he didn’t even vote for Trump in 2016. Instead, he wrote in the name of 2012 vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, who was then the Speaker of the House.
But Faulconer has admitted he changed his mind and voted for Trump’s re-election in 2020.
And the Democrats are claiming this isn’t a recall: It’s an insurrection!
The chairman of the California state Democratic Party, Rusty Hicks, said, “This recall effort, which really ought to be called the ‘California coup’”—and he claimed it “is being led by right-wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers, and groups that encourage violence on our democratic institutions.”
Sound familiar?
The state’s Democratic machine knows it has a serious problem. It’s had one-party rule over California for most of the last 30 years. Now, one Democrat’s incompetence could put a Republican in Newsom’s place in Sacramento.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”