Gavin Newsom has been criticized for his recent rhetoric at the Munich Security Conference. But it’s his neglect at home that is the real problem.
Newsom has indulged intwo European visits in 2026 alone, and expects more travel in the months ahead.
It’s not so much leaving his state that’s a problem (even if Newsom ignores the late Arthur Vanderburg’s counsel that“politics ends at the water’s edge”), as it is Newsom’s lack of follow-up and follow-through with matters back home.
In case you missed it, there’s a pattern to Newsom’s wanderlust: The Golden State’s governor heads elsewhere in America or overseas, thus stoking thepresidential buzz in his ongoing gameoftrolling President Donald Trump, only to return to California and to stage a public display of his commitment to his day job in Sacramento.
It happened in November 2023, not long after a Newsom China tour most memorable for Newsom plowing over a kid on a Beijing basketball court (as in politics, the progressive governordriving hard to the left). On his return, he held a Los Angeles media availability during which the governor informed reporters that a fire that had shut down a portion of 10 Freewaywas the work of an arsonist.
The pattern repeated itself this month, on the heels of Newsom’s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with the governorshowing up in rural Kern Countyto hail the progress of California’s beleaguered high-speed rail project. (Appropriately for a dumpster fire of a transit plan, a fire broke out at a rail construction sitethe following day).
Watch for more of the same in the weeks ahead, as Newsom promotes his forthcoming memoir about his formative years in Marin County (which includesa stop in early-primary New Hampshire). California’s governor will return home and find a way to claim that he’s conquering his state’s myriad woes.
The problem is Newsom’s at least one-third shy of Caesar’s boast: He’s not so much a conqueror as he is a conveyor of problems that will be sitting in his successor’s in-box.
Take the case of the freeway fire. Yes, the 10 reopened weeksahead of schedule. But the arsonist never was arrested, despite the impression that an arrest was nigh.
As for high-speed rail, there is no proverbial light at the end of a tunnel for a project that, in 17 years’ time,has yet to have a mile of track laid, and whose financial recordsare veiled in secrecy.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
