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California Gov.’s Race Challenger Nails Newsom in Debate: ‘We’re in a Constant State of Crisis Under Your Leadership’

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


In California’s only gubernatorial debate of the 2022 race, GOP challenger Brian Dahle nailed current Governor Gavin Newsom for a failed track record in the state that he did not appear to dispute.

“Your policies don’t end up with results, and Californians know that,” Dahle argued. “We have to suffer in a constant state of crisis under your leadership.”

“Yeah, alright,” Newsom said.

“Your leadership has not solved one problem,” Dahle continued. “We have five fires that you haven’t solved. We have storage you haven’t solved. We have electricity you haven’t solved. All those things you talk about, but what are the results? Zero. And Californians are suffering.”

WATCH:

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Dahle, who is a Republican farmer from rural Northern California, blasted the governor for focusing more on his national political ambitions than fixing the many problems facing the state. Newsom is widely believed to be a potential 2024 presidential candidate.

“The governor is focused on his message to America,” Dahle said. “Californians are fleeing California for one reason — because they can’t afford to live here — and he’s out of touch with everyday, hardworking, middle-class Californians.”

Interestingly Newsom was also challenged in the debate to name a time he was wrong about something.

“Name a time in your life you were wrong about something and did a complete about-face. How did you realize your mistake and what did you do to remedy it and make sure it wouldn’t happen again?” he was asked.

“I mean, there’s, there’s a myriad of issues where that’s the case,” he said. “Look, mistakes are a portal of discovery. I have a failure award in businesses I’ve started out. One of the great pride in my life is starting a business right out of college, putting pen to paper, and creating roughly a thousand jobs at peak.”

“And one of the things I always encourage was initiative. Risk-taking, not recklessness,” he continued. “And if we make a mistake, we learn from that mistake and we try not to repeat it.”

“Now let me be specific,” he continued. “Over the course of my life, personally, professionally, in every way, shape or form, I’ve been iterant. There are things that I asserted that I learned from, that didn’t turn out to be as clear as I had hoped or consequences intended that turned out to actually produce the results as intended.”

“I’ll tell you one of the perhaps most significant ones,” he added. “I have a significant learning disability. I couldn’t read or couldn’t write, and I was doing speech therapy. As a kid, I thought I was dumb. And I made the mistake of falling prey to that back of the classroom, not raising my hand…”

As reported by the LA Times in October, Gov. Newsom declared the COVID-19 state of emergency in early 2020 in order to waive state regulations and statutes and to redirect funds to respond to the public health crisis. Newsome has held off on declaring an end to the emergency, which he has said will expire in February 2023.

Gavin Newsom survived a recall election in September.

“I am humbled and grateful to the millions and millions of Californians that exercised their fundamental right to vote,” Newsom said at the time.

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In California, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-to1 margin. As KQED reported on the recent state of the governor’s race, Dahle suffers from a lack of name recognition and funding.

“Preelection polls — along with voters’ solid rejection of a Newsom recall last year — suggest the outcome is a foregone conclusion,” KQED reported. “According to a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey released earlier this month, 53% of voters support Newsom while 32% support Dahle.”

“Newsom’s huge advantage in polls and fundraising have allowed him to nearly ignore his opponent, using his campaign cash to air commercials on other ballot topics, supporting Proposition 1 on abortion rights and opposing Proposition 30, which would raise taxes on the wealthy to fund climate goals and fight wildfires,” the report added.

But Newsom may be just warming up with a predicted re-election victory in the 2022 midterms.

“Newsom also raised eyebrows with strategic ad buys in Texas and Florida — highlighting his political differences with two Republican governors who are thought to be weighing a run for president in 2024,” KQED notes.

During the debate, the moderator asked Newsom: “I want to ask very clearly, you’re asking voters for four more years. Do you commit to serving all four?”

Newsom answered, “yes.”

We shall see. U.S. voters should pay attention to California because a ‘constant state of crisis’ has become the norm in every Democrat-run state. As we have seen with the Biden administration, the Democratic Party has every intention to make the same policies that fail repeatedly at the state level be implemented at the national scale.

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