All pile on Newsom in candidates’ debate
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is the undisputed front-runner in the June 5 primary for governor, which made him the No. 1 target in Tuesday night’s candidates’ debate in San Jose.
For much of the 90-minute session, it was five against one, with the former San Francisco mayor fielding nonstop attacks from the other candidates looking to finish in the top two and advance to the November election to replace termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown.
Some of the harshest words came from one of Newsom’s fellow Democrats, Delaine Eastin, when she was asked if character should matter in politics.
“Being unfaithful is something that’s terrible,” the former state education chief said, adding that what’s important in politics is “a sense of self-control.”
That answer, aimed at the
affairs Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa admitted having when they were running their cities, let the rest of the candidates pile on.
It was Republican Travis Allen, an Orange County assemblyman, who took the toughest shot at Newsom, who had admitted a 2005 affair with a mayoral staffer who was the wife of his campaign manager.
“If you can’t trust Gavin with your best friend’s wife, how can you trust him with the state?” Allen asked.
Newsom reacted sharply, suggesting that was a strange attack “from a supporter of Donald Trump.” But he quickly went back to his standard answer when he’s asked about the affair: “I admitted it. I was wrong.”
Newsom stood up to both the personal charges and the attacks against San Francisco and the job he did as mayor, even when they were pretty far afield.
Allen, for example, blamed Newsom for the death of 32year-old Kate Steinle, who was shot to death in 2015 by an oft-deported undocumented resident who had been released from San Francisco jail about three months earlier.
But Newsom, who called Steinle’s death “shameful,” hadn’t been mayor of San Francisco since becoming lieutenant governor in 2011.
With Newsom taking care to avoid a misstep that could drop him from the top spot in the polls, the other five candidates were left to battle for the runner-up spot and another chance in November.
The two Republicans, Allen and San Diego County businessman John Cox, were each looking to wrap up the GOP vote in the primary election. They sparred all night, each trying to gain an advantage two days after neither was able to get the endorsement of the state party at its convention. Their bickering and crosstalk was so constant that moderator Chuck Todd of NBC said, “I think you two will have to take this outside.”
Allen tried to unnerve Cox, twice referring to him as “angry,” obliquely referring to the builder as a “slumlord” and pointing out that Cox lived most of his life in Chicago. “I just want to respond to my angry opponent from Chicago,” Allen said at one juncture.
Cox fought back just as hard, saying he’s the real leader of the effort to qualify a November initiative to repeal the state’s gas-tax increase and suggesting that Allen funneled money from his own gas-tax initiative effort into his campaign funds.
The candidates, in what could be the last televised debate of the primary campaign, had plenty of time to talk about issues troubling the state.
Some of the widest differences — particularly between the Democrats and Republicans — was on immigration. The Republicans supported Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.Mexico border and the Democrats opposed it. The Democrats supported California’s sanctuary state laws and the Republicans promised to overturn them shortly after taking office.
Cox said “this border wall needs to be built. It’s not about grandmothers being pulled out of their homes . ... I don’t want to live next door to MS-13” gang members.
“This is the kind of rhetoric that has no place” in the debate, Newsom said. In California, “we don’t tolerate diversity, we celebrate it.”
There was a similar partisan split on Brown’s high-speed rail project, with all four Democrats in favor and both Republicans opposed. State Treasurer John Chiang argued that more private money is needed for the system, a stance echoed by the other three Democrats. Both Allen and Cox, however, promised to ax construction as soon as they were elected, calling the plan corrupt and a boondoggle.
For Eastin, who polls show running sixth in the contest, there was nothing to lose, so she came out with a high-energy effort that won continuing applause from the crowd.
After other candidates talked about the need to scale back some environmental regulations to address the housing crisis, Eastin went on the attack.
“We’re not giving up on a clean environment, not on my watch,” she said. She also suggested that a realistic number of new homes is 300,000 a year, an undisguised slap at Newsom and Villaraigosa, who have called for 500,000 new homes each year.
But when Eastin talked about the need to make changes in Proposition 13’s corporate tax structure to provide money for education improvements like mandatory full-day kindergarten and universal preschool, it was possible to hear the Republicans muttering, “more taxes, more taxes.”
Chiang, trailing badly in the polls, tried several times during the debate to contrast himself with Newsom. “Gavin is talking about what he’s doing in the future, I’m talking about what I’m doing today,” he said.
Newsom received the evening’s biggest laugh with the final question of the debate, when each candidate was asked whom they wanted to run against in November, a member of their own party or someone from the other side.
“You know my position, Chuck,’’ he told the moderator. “A Republican would be ideal ... and either one of these will do.”
Newsom leads in most polling with Cox and Villaraigosa virtually tied for second place in an April survey from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
The question now is whether anyone other than the three front-runners can make political hay out of a good showing Tuesday.
“I don’t think any one debate gets you into the top two,” Villaraigosa said afterward. “I think all the candidates did what they wanted to do.”