Newsom gets his debate with DeSantis, and California is still failing
Zachary Faria
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has agreed to California Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s debate challenge. But the question remains: what could Newsom possibly boast about amid California’s decline, especially when matched up against Florida’s prosperity?
DeSantis agreed to the debate on a Wednesday appearance with Fox News’s Sean Hannity after Newsom had proposed the idea to Hannity in September of last year. For some reason, Newsom now says that the debate can’t take place until November, but it is presumably now going to happen.
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And yet the debate has essentially been decided by residents voting with their feet. The 2020 census marked the first time that California lost a congressional seat due to population growth (or lack thereof). From April 2020 to July 2022, over 871,000 people fled California, while Florida landed a net increase of over 600,000, more than any other state.
So what could Newsom possibly argue? He will almost certainly boast about California’s gross domestic product, which is on the verge of passing Germany’s and would currently rank fifth among all countries. But California also has the highest poverty rate in the country when adjusted for the cost of living and a homelessness crisis so bad that California officials had to go to Texas for guidance.
Newsom will have no economic message of success. Nor will he have one on energy and climate, given how destructive California’s climate policies have been for residents.
Newsom will certainly bring up the media misinformation narrative about Florida “banning books,” but Florida ranks at the top of the list on education according to U.S. News & World Report, while California ranks 20th. Florida also made the correct decision to keep schools open during COVID, while Newsom shut schools down while he partied with lobbyists.
So what does that leave?
Newsom will almost certainly trot out liberal platitudes about how killing unborn children is “reproductive rights” and permanently disfiguring children with sex change surgeries is “gender-affirming care.” Perhaps he will complain about DeSantis sending illegal immigrants to California even though it’s a “sanctuary state” that is supposedly the best state in the country.
Better those arguments than having to explain away how such a high GDP works for California’s elites and not the everyday residents who are struggling to get by or get out of the state.
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The bottom hasn’t fallen out yet, but California is clearly failing.
People are fleeing, the energy grid is failing, homelessness is getting worse, and the state can’t make a dent in the poverty rate despite its massive GDP. The DeSantis-Newsom debate will show to the country what we in California have recognized for years: the state’s “successes” are only for liberal elitists, and there are better ways to run a state than Newsom and Democrats have in California.