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On Tuesday, November 8, 2022, elections will be held in California where voters will choose who will rule the state for the next four years. The race will be between incumbent Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and Republican State Senator Brian Dahle.
Newsom has dedicated to focus part of his campaign to speaking about abortion while thousands of people and businesses have decided to leave California because since it fell into the hands of the Democrat governor, they say the state is an absolute disaster.
“I don’t know if he’s been out on the street or if you’ve been on the street talking to people who can’t afford to live in California. People are fleeing California because they can’t afford to live here,” Dahle said in a recent debate against the governor.
The scandals surrounding Gavin Newsom
Newsom has been embroiled in scandals that could take a toll on him in the upcoming November elections. The handling of the pandemic, progressive laws, insecurity, and benefiting some businesses are some of the things that could make thousands of Californians decide not to vote for him.
Mishandling of the pandemic: In late 2020, photographs were released showing the governor mingling, maskless, among guests at a dinner at the exclusive French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. Newsom apologized for attending and called the event a “blunder.”
In addition to that “blunder,” Newsom’s lockdowns caused unemployment to rise along with new cases of the virus, while many small business owners were frustrated and on the verge of bankruptcy.
During the pandemic in California, at least 30% of small businesses remained closed and at least 19,000 closed permanently, according to a report by the Little Hoover Commission, a state oversight agency.
State contracts to companies that donated to his governorship: a report by Reason revealed that the Democratic governor had compensated with lucrative state contracts to individuals and companies that donated to him.
The story revealed that Verily Life Sciences, a company owned by Google, received as much as $44 million in three different contracts to help operate the COVID-19 test sites; this, after Google donated $7 million in advertising credits to the governor’s pandemic campaign in April.
AT&T received more than $40 million in contracts from the Office of Emergency Services. They donated $310,000 to the governor’s office.
So did Blue Shield of California insurance companies, which reportedly donated $45 million last year. Newsom subsequently appointed Paul Markovich, CEO of Blue Shield, to co-chair the governor’s COVID-19 testing task force.
Companies flee California
The Golden State has led the way in promoting progressive employment proposals that, according to Bloomberg, are scaring businesses away because employers claim they cannot endure more legal uncertainty while they are still recovering from the aftermath of COVID-19.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s flurry of bill signings includes SB 1162, which will require nearly 200,000 businesses in the state with 15 or more employees to disclose salary ranges in their job postings starting next year.
Numerous businesses have fled Los Angeles and San Francisco in the past two years, not only because of closures in the wake of the pandemic but also because of increased crime and poverty.
California became a bunker for crime
Citizens in San Francisco report that, in broad daylight and without fear, people rob drugstores, clothing stores, and supermarkets without being arrested. The reason is that in that city the criminal code reduced “non-violent robberies” to misdemeanors. Proposition 47 establishes that thefts in San Francisco for products under $950 will not be penalized.
A report in The Epoch Times notes that “law enforcement reports that many thieves now calculate to take enough to stay below the $950 Prop 47 threshold.”
“They can repeat the same theft up to the same $950 threshold as many times as they wish without it becoming a felony. The thefts are not cumulative,” the media outlet notes.
Sabrina Martín Rondon is a Venezuelan journalist. Her source is politics and economics. She is a specialist in corporate communications and is committed to the task of dismantling the supposed benefits of socialism // Sabrina Martín Rondon es periodista venezolana. Su fuente es la política y economía. Es especialista en comunicaciones corporativas y se ha comprometido con la tarea de desmontar las supuestas bondades del socialismo