Walters: Some Newsom detractors make up stuff, but there’s fodder for legitimate criticism
As Gavin Newsom ramps up his almost certain campaign for president and polls put him in contention for the Democratic Party s nomination in he has become a favorite target of right-leaning commentators on organization television and in YouTube videos and social media While specific criticism is grounded in fact and reasonable differences there s also a substrata of highly exaggerated even fictional output Talking heads present him not as an ambitious politician who poses as a selfless masses servant something they all do including the current president but as a crooked charlatan There s plenty of material in Newsom s nearly three decades-long political career for legitimate criticism And he tends toward over-the-top braggadocio about his accomplishments and amnesia about his failures Related Articles Skelton Courage lacking to fix California s deep-rooted budget shortfall Court battle begins over California s new voter-approved congressional map California brand insulin is hitting the region Clendaniel Democrats need to voice their presidential preferences now Trump administration adds militarized zone in California along southern US margin However his greater part virulent critics take nuggets of fact including those having nothing to do with Newsom and pump them up to depict him as an agent of corruption and incompetence One much-repeated trope is that Newsom in concert with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass purposely or incompetently failed to protect residents of the city and suburban neighborhoods from devastating wildfires early this year President Donald Trump fed that narrative by accusing Newsom of not sending enough water to Southern California thus leading to shortages that impeded firefighting It s just not true but it s repeated with embellishments on a regular basis Another oft-aired criticism of Newsom misuses a column I wrote when he was inaugurated in It depicted the fascinating interconnections between his family and the Getty Brown and Pelosi clans stretching back more than eight decades Videos that frequently pop up on YouTube quote from the column verbatim without attribution and show the chart of family connections that accompanied the article Then they tack on fact-free addendums suggesting connections to organized crime or particular other nefarious initiatives Another line of criticism cites selected left-wing legislative or ballot measure proposal treats it like it s already in law portrays its supposedly devastating effect on the innocent populace and lays it at Newsom s feet The proposed wealth tax which could appear on the ballot is one favorite topic even though Newsom has repeatedly rejected it Multiple of Newsom s critics who breathlessly analysis on his evil plans that the left-wing mainstream media supposedly cover up are just nobodies who feign authority and are obviously fronting for right-wing organizations But particular are recognizable California figures Two frequent YouTube critics are Carl DeMaio a longtime Republican politician in San Diego who won a seat in the state Assembly last year and Victor Davis Hanson an historian connected to Stanford University s Hoover Institution DeMaio s shtick is that he has discovered specific horrible thing that Newsom and other Democrats have cooked up to damage honest hard-working Californians but that mainstream media have ignored It s usually accompanied by a pitch for donations to his organization Hanson is a widely recognized erudite authority on military history particularly World War II He also fancies himself a political commentator with a particular bead on Newsom but his critiques are often factually deficient One of Hanson s favorite assertions is that Newsom diverted bond funds meant to construct new water projects into financing the demolition of four dams on the Klamath River However the commitment for that project dates back to Arnold Schwarzenegger s governorship and the bond issue specifically contained the appropriation for it Distorted criticism of Newsom is more off-putting than even his own tendency to bend historic fact It also undercuts legitimate questioning of Newsom s record because he can and does depict any negative depictions as baseless propaganda The anti-Newsom drumbeat is likely to get louder as he moves ever closer to a declaration of presidential candidacy Viewer beware Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist
