At what point do we admit that the Left-wing California city model is a failure?
The latest development in California’s failing cities is in Oakland, with Gov. Gavin Newsom sending an additional 120 California Highway Patrol officers to combat crime. Violent crime rose in Oakland by 21% from 2022 to 2023. What exactly those additional officers are supposed to do is anyone’s guess, though, given that the district attorney in charge of prosecuting criminals in Oakland has no interest in doing anything of the sort.
Meanwhile, homelessness has risen again in Los Angeles. San Francisco brought on record drug overdose deaths last year with its permissive drug policies. San Diego, which replaced its Republican mayor with a Democrat in 2020, is seeing an increasing number of residents looking to leave the state and is the most expensive place in the country to live, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The cities have also been mired in recall elections, as even their Democratic voters have noticed things decaying. San Francisco recalled three school board members and a pro-criminal district attorney. Los Angeles nearly pushed forward with a recall of its pro-criminal district attorney, and Oakland is looking to do the same along with recalling the mayor. Oakland isn’t even the first city to which Newsom sent CHP officers: last year, he sent them and the National Guard to San Francisco amid that record number of overdose deaths.
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Would you look at any of these cities and say they are well-run? They are too expensive to live in, too dangerous to live in, or both. They all follow the same California Democratic model, and they are all seeing some combination of people and businesses fleeing, recall elections, or intervention from the state government. In the case of San Francisco and Oakland, they are seeing all three.
The California Democratic model is a failure for business owners, everyday residents, and everyone else other than career criminals or the elitist politicians and activists who typically don’t have to live around the consequences their disastrous policies have created. California’s Democrat-run cities are failures. At some point, you would think the party should be held accountable for that.