California Gov. Gavin Newsom is not interested at all in hiding his ambition for power, as he has all but announced that he wants to run for president in 2024. But he also faces a unique issue in that regard: California’s sanctimonious travel ban on other states.
Newsom recently visited Texas to continue his shadow campaign, despite the fact that California bans government-funded travel to Texas because Texas is among the 22 states that don’t base their laws on what California liberals want on religious freedom, women’s sports, and gender transitions for children. Texas has been blacklisted since 2017.
If Newsom’s security was funded by California taxpayers, that would mean he violated the ban. This isn’t even the first controversy for Newsom regarding the ban this year. Newsom traveled to Montana to visit family in July, even though Montana dared to prevent men from competing in women’s sports. Newsom’s office refused to say whether taxpayers were funding his security then as well.
Even if Newsom is not funding his personal vacations or vanity campaign appearances with taxpayer money, he is certainly violating the “spirit” of the law. That was how he described it when he was caught eating at the French Laundry in violation of his COVID orders, and it applies here as well. Newsom may be able to afford his own travel to Texas to talk about how great of a governor he is, but California groups trying to attend competitions or conferences in red states are forced to miss out because California refuses to allow them to go using taxpayer money as they had before the ban was put in place.
Barring an electoral miracle, Newsom will win reelection later this year. Unless he resigns at some point, that means Newsom would still be the governor of California while running for president in 2024, something he desperately wants to do. That means Newsom would have to fund his own security to campaign in 22 of the 50 U.S. states he has deemed hateful, and he would have to explain to voters in all of those states the label he has given them.
If Newsom’s terrible governance hasn’t disqualified him from being president, his brazen hypocrisy and his open contempt for nearly half the country should. Newsom thinks he is morally better than everyone and that he deserves special privileges that the peasants can’t afford. He should be nowhere near any form of power, least of which the U.S. presidency.
