NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he most charitable thing you could say about Gavin Newsom is that he’s not intelligent enough to be the cause of California’s troubles. The Golden State governor — born to a fabulously wealthy and politically well-connected family, establishing himself as a local power player with the funding of family friends, and entering Democratic Party politics as a political appointee — “inherited a state in decline,” Rich Lowry noted in 2021. But “Newsom is the governor by and for all the forces that created this debacle. . . . From San Francisco mayor to lieutenant governor to governor, he’s wedded his ambition to a progressive elitism that can seem out of touch even in liberal California.”

What he lacks in originality and competence, Newsom more than makes up for in his enthusiasm for his role as an avatar of gated-community Silicon Valley progressivism. His public-relations strategy is an instructive example: Of the last 24 tweets Newsom has posted — spanning the four-week timeline from Biden’s State of the Union address to now — nine were about California, while 14 were about Republicans in red states, usually zeroing in on MSNBC-style culture-war fodder such as guns, abortion, and, in today’s favored formulation, the threat to democracy. (The one other tweet was about Pennsylvania Democratic governor Josh Shapiro banning the death penalty.)

This focus on red states is a consistent feature of Newsom’s public persona. Another tally of his tweets last April yielded similar results: Of his 22 most recent tweets at the time, seven were about California, “five were about national events,” and “ten out of the 22 were about Republicans in other states, with no discernible relationship to California.” And it’s not just his Twitter: Last year, Newsom’s reelection campaign “posted billboard ads in seven red states” with “information about how to get an abortion in the Golden State.” That summer, he also launched an ad on Florida’s Fox News affiliates, informing Sunshine State residents that “freedom is under attack by Republican leaders in states like Florida.” The price tag for Newsom’s “ads and billboards blasting Republican governors in other states,” according to the Sacramento Bee, was “about $230,000.”

That a California governor would campaign for reelection by advertising in Texas and Florida might seem counterintuitive. But it can tell us a lot about how California operates. From the standpoint of individual self-interest, Newsom’s strategy makes a good deal of sense. The Golden State’s golden boy knows where his bread is buttered — and it’s not with the dwindling California middle class, many of whom have either packed up and left or are seriously considering doing so. (An astonishing 2019 poll found that “more than half of California voters have thought about moving out of the nation’s most populous state, citing the high cost of housing, taxes or its political culture.”) It’s with the same progressive elites who propped him up in the first place, and who have gone out of their way to protect their hand-picked governor from democratic forces: When the rabble got it into their heads to attempt to recall Newsom in 2021, his wealthy backers — labor unions, Big Tech, and Hollywood, among others — rallied around him to the tune of a $71 million anti-recall war chest.

Newsom, ever the faithful servant, is simply reflecting the priorities and worldview of his main constituents. The fact that California has the highest illiteracy rates in the nation, that it’s now the poorest state in America after factoring for cost of living, that its cities — racked by crime, drugs, and homelessness — have come to resemble those in third-world countries, or that it’s seen net outmigration every year this century has very little bearing on the sumptuous quality of life in Montecito or Marin County. Insulated from the broader decay their policies have inflicted on the state, the progressive power-players in California have the same priorities as progressive elites everywhere: Abortion, the education system’s inalienable right to teach third-graders the 1619 Project and the spectrum of gender identities, and guns — not, of course, the gun violence perpetrated in California’s deep-blue cities, but the kind that can be used to stoke hysteria about the backwards, AR-15-toting rednecks in Alabama.

On Thursday, in response to the news that Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed a law restricting drag-show performances in public places where children might see them, Newsom fired off a characteristic tweet: “Tennessee has the 8th highest murder rate in the nation. It ranks 44th among states for health outcomes. And this is what the Governor is focused on.” As Governor Lee pointed out in response, Tennessee has consistently ranked among the top states for incoming U-Haul rentals for the past few years, whereas California has had more outbound U-Haul trucks than any other state in America for the last three consecutive years. (So much so, in fact, that in 2021, “it broke U-Haul’s ability to measure — because the company ran out of trucks to rent” to Californians, as Dan McLaughlin noted). But none of that matters much to Newsom: A few U-Hauls here, a lost congressional district there — so long as the Silicon Valley donor dollars keep flowing, it’ll all come out in the wash.

Nationally, the Democratic Party has embraced a desire to “make America California.” If the party succeeds, a neo-feudalist high-low political system — an alliance of an insulated ruling elite and a welfare-dependent urban underclass — will be coming soon to your state. The good news is, there will still be U-Hauls. The bad news is, there won’t be any Tennessees left to drive them to.