Will Woke Baggage From California Sink the SS Newsom?

A trio of news items reveals the Achilles’ heel that threatens to sink the presidential dreams of California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom. To put it bluntly, things aren’t normal in the Golden State, and the Cali baggage the would-be Blue Boy Wonder will carry as he works to boost his national profile is poised to weigh upon his back like a 1,000-pound anvil.

The first example exemplifies Ronald Reagan’s classic PR saying: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Newsom’s administration may or may not be responsible for financially supporting a dangerous secret China-run lab in Reedley, CA, that, according to a Fresno Bee report, illegally stored “biological agents [including] coronavirus and other exotic contagions, such as malaria, Hepatitis B and C, chlamydia, human herpes, and rubella, among others.” But just the allegation amplifies the fact that this reckless venture was allowed to operate under the not-so-watchful eyes of his administration.

His Own Private Wuhan

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is among the prominent figures seeking answers as to whether Newsom helped fund the Prestige Biotech lab via his California Competes program aimed to support business ventures in the state. “Now we’re finding out that the governor of California provided them with $360,000 in this process,” McCarthy asserted on Aug. 3.

The truth is a bit more complicated.

“A spokesperson from the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) told The Sacramento Bee in an email that Universal Meditech, Inc., the predecessor of Prestige Biotech, received a $360,000 tax credit through the office’s California Competes program in April 2019, but the credit was ultimately revoked,” the paper reported Aug. 4. “(Universal Meditech, Inc.) did not achieve any of its milestones and was not approved to claim any of the tax credits. GO-Biz recaptured the entire credit and voided the Agreement with UMI,” the spokesperson stated.

Funded or not, the discovery of a Chinese bio-lab furtively conducting its hazardous research on the governor’s home turf is not the kind of attention Newsom needs at a time when evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a similar lab in Wuhan, China, has become overwhelming.

Doctor Newsom Will See You Now

Example two is a showcase for the special brand of progressive insanity in which California specializes. “Two doctors are suing the Medical Board of California over the state’s law that forces physicians and those who teach them to accept radical political and racial indoctrination in order to continue practicing medicine,” The Epoch Times reported on Aug. 2.

“Assembly Bill 241, signed in October 2019 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who supports DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion – initiatives, requires all doctors in the state to log 50 continuing medical education (CME) hours every two years in order to retain their medical licenses. The left-wing Equal Justice Society, based in Oakland, took credit for drafting the language of the bill,” ET related.

“AB 241 is just one of many implicit bias-related bills that Newsom has signed in recent years,” the news site noted.

Imagine how the following is going to play under a national microscope:

“Joshua Thompson, director of equality and opportunity litigation at [Pacific Legal Foundation], said although his clients are medical practitioners they are contesting the statute as CME instructors.

'The last thing we want a doctor performing an appendectomy or brain surgery to be doing is thinking, “hmmm, maybe I should be thinking about the race of this patient when I’m performing this medical function,"' Thompson said.”

The Wiener Factor

But when it comes to woke California icebergs sinking Newsom’s Titanic ambitions, one name towers above all: Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener. Many of his most infamous legislative excesses have ended up on Newsom’s desk.

Here's an excerpt from a Wiener victory press release from September 2022:

“Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)’s legislation to provide refuge for trans kids and their families ... SB 107 will protect trans kids and their families if they flee to California from Alabama, Texas, Idaho or any other state criminalizing the parents of trans kids for allowing them to receive gender-affirming care.”

And here are a couple of paragraphs from a 2022 San Francisco Chronicle article that surely won’t go over well in Boise:

“On [July 1], Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB357 by state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, which repeals a 1995 law that prohibits loitering in public places with the ‘intent to commit prostitution.’ Wiener said the current loitering law is written so vaguely that it has led to police officers and prosecutors profiling trans, Black and Latino women ...

“‘Everyone – no matter their race, gender or how they make a living – deserves to feel safe on our streets,’ Wiener said in a statement.”

Quite simply, Wiener is a Republican opposition researcher’s dream come true in a national campaign against Newsom. Perhaps Wiener’s most shocking legislative success was the passing of SB145, ushered into California state law in 2020 by, well, you know who.

“California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a controversial new law regarding judges' discretion on whether or not to add individuals to the state’s sex offender registry who have committed sodomy with minors,” the Washington Examiner reported in September of that year.

To call the Wiener-led bill repulsive only scratches the surface of the outrage it can still generate.

“California law permitted judges to decide whether to place a man on the sex offender registry if he had consensual intercourse with someone 14 to 17 years old and was not more than 10 years older than the other person,” The Examiner explained. “However, that discretion only applied to vaginal intercourse, which LGBT advocates, including the author of the new bill signed into law, argued was discriminatory toward gay men.”

Even elected Democrats were mortified, the paper observed. “‘I cannot in my mind as a mother understand how sex between a 24-year-old and a 14-year-old could ever be consensual, how it could ever not be a registrable offense,’ Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez said when the bill was being debated in the legislature. ‘We should never give up on this idea that children should be in no way subject to a predator.’”

Accounts of the law’s passage, complete with Newsom’s John Hancock, regularly resurface in viral social media flashes. X, formerly known as Twitter, had just such a moment at the same time that reports on the secret Chinese bio-lab and PC medical mandates hit the 24-hour news cycle.

It’s a reminder that as Newsom carefully hones his image for the national stage he should prepare to defend such hard left progressive policies that were advanced on his watch.