Gavin Newsom is presently the Lieutenant Governor of California. He was previously the Mayor of San Francisco. Absent a major miracle, he will be the next Governor of California. One can hope that he has some degree of sense regarding crime and public order rather than being completely overboard on the soft-on-crime side.
Matier and Ross have this column in the SF Chron:
Former Mayor and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom says San Francisco has become "too permissive" when it comes to open drug use and other bad behavior on the city's streets.
"People shooting up on the streets and sidewalks, where kids are in strollers, is not acceptable -- it's just not," Newsom said during a visit to The Chronicle's editorial board last week.Newsom, who served as mayor for seven years before being elected lieutenant governor in 2011, has been attacked by GOP opponent John Cox for his leadership in San Francisco, a city that has drawn attention for homelessness, feces littering the streets and blatant drug use.
In any other context, one might shrug and say, "well, yes, that unacceptability is completely obvious," but this is San Francisco.
Newsom said he isn't ready to specify what programs or tough-love measures he would advocate to remedy the addiction and other problems on the streets, but he did tell the editorial board that his own views have been "hardened by the reality" of having served as mayor."When you are accountable to a quality of life, and accountable to diverse communities, you cannot allow the streets to be taken over," he said. "And so I supported sit/lie ordinances, I supported panhandling restrictions, and I took the hits for that."
So do Mr. Newsom qualify as a "person of sense"? No, at least not yet.
On the other hand, Newsom was an early supporter of Proposition 47, the statewide measure approved by voters in 2014 that reduced penalties for many drug and theft offenses. Critics argue it has fueled an uptick in car break-ins and other street crimes.
Maybe he can be "hardened by reality" a bit more after he becomes governor. How far does our society have to spiral downward before our friends on the left snap out of it and realize what they are doing? Does the whole state have to get as bad as San Francisco is now?
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