May 2, 2020 – We’ve seen it before. “Read my lips, no new taxes,” said George H.W. Bush. It was the car tax for Gray Davis. They were the high-profile defining moments that brought about the end of a political career. For Gavin Newsom, it was the closing of the OC Beaches.
While no one envies the difficult decisions he has been forced to make through this crisis, people went along so long as they believed he was acting in their best interests. They went along, until they saw this. He didn’t close the beaches of his political allies in San Francisco and Santa Monica, he closed only the beaches of Orange County, the land of his political opponents. It was a raw exercise of political power; power that he doesn’t have in the first place.
Campaign stump speeches, political mailers and TV commercials are all carefully crafted messages by political consultants to make a candidate appear reasonable. If you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Gavin Newsom was not even really given this power, he seized it, and now we know what he will do if given the opportunity: he will use power to hurt those who disagree with him.
If he can take away the surfboards from the Surfrider Foundation, and take away public beach access from the California Coastal Commission, is there really anyone who is safe from his overreach? Free people should never again elect a man whose true desire is to be a dictator. Now we know.