Final weekend, Gavin Newsom launched the primary video advert of his marketing campaign for a second time period as California’s governor.
It's, due to this fact, an applicable second to take a look at what he mentioned he needed to perform as governor throughout his 2018 marketing campaign and the way it has turned out.
A two-word abstract could be “actuality bites.”
Candidate Newsom, touting a guide entitled “Constructed to Final: Profitable Habits of Visionary Firms,” embraced its central level that visionary leaders ought to search “massive, bushy audacious objectives.”
“I’d somewhat be accused of (having) these audacious stretch objectives than be accused of timidity,” he mentioned at one level.
True to that philosophy, Newsom instructed voters he needed to do massive issues, similar to making a single-payer well being system, fixing the state’s power scarcity of housing and utterly changing California to renewable power.
Throughout his 2018 marketing campaign, the state Senate handed a single-payer invoice and Newsom enthusiastically endorsed it, saying there was “no cause to attend round.”
“I’m bored with politicians saying they help single-payer however that it’s too quickly, too costly or another person’s drawback,” Newsom mentioned.
The 2018 invoice stalled within the Meeting however when one other invoice cleared the Senate and was pending within the Meeting this 12 months, Newsom made no effort to get it handed and it died and not using a vote.
A fee Newsom appointed to check single-payer’s feasibility has issued a report that lays out choices however presents no clear path to implementation. Primarily, single-payer isn't any extra probably right now than it was 4 years in the past.
As an alternative, Newsom’s budgets have incrementally prolonged Medi-Cal protection to uninsured residents, together with undocumented immigrants, however in the long run, that protection will depend on the state’s notoriously risky revenues.
As he was working for governor, Gavin Newsom pledged to “lead the hassle to develop the three.5 million new housing models we'd like by 2025 as a result of our options should be as daring as the issue is massive.”
The pledge would have required growing manufacturing to 500,000 models a 12 months, however precise development has been, at finest, about 20% of that determine. Newsom downplayed his pledge to “a stretch objective,” telling the Los Angeles Instances, “It’s a cussed situation. You possibly can’t snap your fingers and construct lots of of hundreds, thousands and thousands of housing models in a single day.”
And so it has gone — Newsom edging away from “massive bushy audacious objectives” one-by-one once they proved not possible to attain in the true world.
Two current positions on high-profile environmental points additionally illustrate how actuality has tempered his governorship.
One actuality is that California is troubled by extreme drought and, because of local weather change, might face everlasting shortages of water. One very controversial choice is tapping the limitless provide of ocean water and stripping out its salt.
Just lately, the state Coastal Fee beneficial that the state’s second desalination plant not be constructed, however Newsom reiterated his help. “We want extra instruments within the rattling software package,” Newsom instructed the Bay Space Information Group editorial board.
That, at the least, was a constant place, however he modified his stance on one other actual world situation — whether or not California’s solely remaining nuclear energy plant, Diablo Canyon, ought to be shuttered as now scheduled.
The San Luis Obispo County plant generates at the least 6% of the state’s electrical power and closure might depart California, whose energy provide is already marginal, at the hours of darkness.
Newsom had supported decommissioning Diablo Canyon however instructed the Los Angeles Instances editorial board final week that California will apply for federal funds aimed toward maintaining threatened nuclear vegetation in manufacturing, saying, “We'd be remiss to not put that on the desk as an choice.”
Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.