The uncertainty that engulfed the Democratic Party after CNN’s presidential debate is the type of chaos that Las Vegas’ bookmakers thrive on.
Shortly after President Joe Biden’s disappointing-to-party-elders performance, the odds against his re-election soared. Should Biden withdraw or the party mount a successful effort to take him off the ballot, moving up the charts as possible replacements are California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Vice President Kamala Harris, former first lady Michelle Obama, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Las Vegas insiders are rarely wrong, but their odds on Newsom should be much higher. During his time on the campaign trail, which would only last a few months until the November election, Newsom would have no accomplishments to point to as inducements to gain voter support.
Democratic power brokers who might support Newsom would have to consider California’s huge budget problem. Newsom recently announced a $26.7 billion deficit. Two years ago, California had a $97.5 billion surplus, meaning that over a two-year period, the state had a minus $124.2 billion swing into red ink.
Newsom raised the minimum wage for fast-food workers to $20 an hour. Wage inflation spread to other service areas, made food less affordable to the poor, and led to 10,000 workers losing their jobs. Rubio’s California Grill, famous for its fish tacos, closed 48 of its nearly 134 locations at the end of May, the first major chain to fall victim to the new law that raised the minimum wage. The San Diego-based company cited the “rising cost of doing business” in the state for its closures.
A huge variable in businesses’ overhead is gasoline. Californians pay 60 cents a gallon in gasoline tax, the nation’s highest, which brings the current total per gallon price to a $4.79 statewide average.
In his State of the State address, Newsom touted job growth, but a new report from the state-funded, non-partisan Legislative Analysts’ Office found the state’s private sector employment has been collapsing since 2022. Public sector hiring accounted for the entire net increase in jobs. Since California’s peak labor market hiring in September 2022, the private sector lost 154,000 jobs and the public-supported sector gained 361,000.
Twenty-seven percent of Californians are foreign-born, a total that, because of Newsom’s welcoming, sanctuary state illegal immigration policy, is on the rise. Earlier this year, Newsom announced California would begin providing health care to an additional 764,000 illegal immigrants on top of the 1.1 million already in the Medi-Cal system, the state’s version of Medicaid. More than one-third of California’s 39 million population is enrolled in Medi-Cal. California has been incrementally adding illegal immigrants to Medi-Cal since 2015, the year it made illegal alien children eligible. Four years later, Medi-Cal added illegal immigrant adults aged 50 and older.
Now California is a hot spot for illegal aliens’ entry. Since Texas has effectively deterred illegal immigration, aliens have discovered the San Diego corridor. Jacumba Hot Springs, a town of 540 people, has seen record-high numbers of Chinese nationals cross, part of a nationwide pattern that has grown exponentially year-over-year. Between October and May, crossers numbered 55,922, surpassing the entire 2023 fiscal year’s 52,700.
Shadow candidate Newsom knows Biden’s open borders are voters’ top concern. Trying to portray himself as tough on illegal immigration, Newsom claimed he had ordered a doubling of National Guard troops to the border. But in Jacumba, national correspondents on location said they had not seen any California National Guard troops, a statement that Customs and Border Patrol officials confirmed.
The Democratic National Convention, scheduled Aug. 19-22, is about six weeks away. Biden is determined to remain in the race.
California is symbolic of how quickly incompetent leadership can destroy a great state. And Newsom, who has pushed out millions of productive but frustrated, overtaxed, and underserved middle-class residents and replaced them with illegal immigrants, is the governor that helped wreck the state.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. His column is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
