over the course of the shutdown, i have moved from mild approval mixed with irk to super proud of and grateful for our california governor gavin newsom. while donald trump’s approval rating has fallen several points since the beginning of march, california governor gavin newsom’s has shot up by more than 41%. think about this for a minute, newsom, already fairly popular, shot up 41%, that’s just insane! in contrast, it is almost unthinkable that any president wouldn’t have gotten at least a slight tick up in approval during such an unprecedented crisis.
since voting for newsom for governor, i have been largely disappointed by his pre-pandemic leadership on health care. he campaigned on medicare for all and then promptly installed insurance reform obamacare hacks in his administration and “discovered” upon election that it was hard to do medicare for all at the state level without federal cooperation. i could have told him that for free.
on newsom and the environment, its been mostly encouraging. he retained the amazing chair mary nichols at the california air resources board and appointed an energetic and intelligent jared blumenfeld as head of the california environmental protection agency. improving greatly on his predecessor jerry brown, newsom fired the head of state’s top oil and gas regulator last year and suspended all new fracking permits pending a stricter review. but then just earlier this month, the state granted 24 fracking permits, what? but then just earlier this month, the state granted 24 fracking permits at a time when there’s more oil than people know what to do with we need to frack? what’s that about?
the point is that i went from fair to partly meh about newsom to “my governor rocks!” almost overnight. he may not be the greatest speaker but how many politicians can hit this sweet spot of rich white guy handsome and seriously policy geeky? that almost never happens (and no, Mitt Romney is not that smart). beyond that, he is a leader. i don’t know what’s happening backstage but from the cheap couch at home it sure looks like newsom has pulled together the whole west coast to come up with a serious, credible, detailed forward looking plan. friends of mine in oregon and washington have called me gushing over newsom’s detailed proposals. after almost three years of empty demagoguery in washington, we are thirsty sponges for actual leadership soaking newsom up.
