CA Politics

Willie Brown, California's Mr. Democrat, has been both a SF mayor and a long-time speaker of the Assembly, Sacramento's lower house. I don't agree with him about much - politically - but I admire his political skills, his pragmatism and his snarky sense of humor. All three are reflected in his column for the SF Chronicle.

Today he writes that Gavin Newsom isn't going to find beating Republican John Cox a walk in the park. About Cox he notes:

Listen again to his victory speech Tuesday night, if you want to know how he’s going to hammer Newsom. It isn’t just that we need to build more housing — it’s that the price of housing is ridiculous. The schools are a mess and have been for years. And who’s responsible for that? Not the Republicans — they haven’t had a whiff of power in Sacramento for nearly a decade.

And then there’s the big one. You’ll be hearing a lot about rolling back the state’s 12-cents-a-gallon increase in the gas tax, which will pay for $52 billion in road and bridge improvements.

Cox will point to California’s problems and say Trump didn’t cause them. So it may all come down to whether Californians think their state is in pretty good shape or a steaming mess.

I still think Newsom is going to win. But it’s not going to be the glide that Democrats expect.

Analysis: Cox is a long shot, but so was candidate Trump.

California is trying to become "Argentina del Norte." Like Argentina, it's a physical paradise, being turned into "a steaming mess" by a wrong-headed political culture.

The present governor's father - Edmund G. "Pat" Brown - was an excellent governor, fifty plus years ago. Son Jerry's 'apple' fell much too far from the tree. I find this a sad irony.