California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday postponed his State of the State address scheduled for next week, as the fate of his signature mental health initiative from the primary ballot remains uncertain.
No new date was given for the speech, which had been scheduled for Monday afternoon.
Hey! I could have done it for oleaginous Gov Gavin – it SUCKS!
But it seems our favorite heavily oiled, helmet-haired chief executive wanted to use the State of the State as a victory lap. Perhaps even a springboard to catapult him onto the national stage just as a pathetic POTATUS looks weaker and more vulnerable than ever, with nary so much as a dead cat bounce from his insane, frenetic SOTU performance.
I’m sure Newsom’s thinking that his slick, made-for-TV looks and anchorman smile could easily gloss over what his dictatorial ways have done to the formerly Golden State. A stellar speech performance would position him as the savior-substitute-in-waiting for the aging, dementia-ridden sack of POTATUS mumbling his way to the convention in Chicago…if Biden’s able to remember that’s where it is this year.
…Prop 1’s disappointing showing — despite facing no funded opposition but happening during an exceedingly low-turnout election — comes at a tough stretch for the second-term governor, who is facing another recall and staring into the abyss of a huge budget deficit he must close by summer.
Newsom and his team had expected Prop 1 to register about 55 percent of the vote, though that number was revised down some the weekend before the election. His gamble to appear on the primary ballot rather than waiting until November — when more Democrats are expected to vote — appears to have been an overly risky choice. As of Friday morning, the measure was ahead by just over 20,000 votes out of the more than 6.7 million ballots counted so far.
Giving the speech on Monday posed a challenge to Newsom on both a policy and a political level: Prop 1 is central to his broader agenda to make a dent in the twin crises of homelessness and housing, and its potential failure would blow a massive hole in those plans — a setback he seemingly was unprepared to address.
What a chicken Schlitz, huh?
Speaking of a budget blowout, what’s that number again? Oh, that’s right – it’s GINORMOUS.
And Newsom just keeps giving away the farm regardless, as if taxpayers were never going to catch on
The biggest challenge facing lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom is the state budget deficit — and it just got bigger.
Today, the Legislative Analyst’s Office projected the shortfall as $15 billion higher, or $73 billion.
The analyst’s office had pegged the 2024-25 deficit at $58 billion in January, using Newsom’s revenue estimates when he presented his initial budget proposal of $292 billion.
Proposition 1 opponents had, like, all of $80,000 in the bank to spend against Newsom’s signature “mental health” boondoggle bill, and they are this close to tanking it anyway. That should be the shot across the bow that CA residents are getting tired of the taxing tyrant, that they’re plain running out of money or all of the above.
…Proposition 1 is a two-part ballot initiative. It includes a bond to build treatment facilities and permanent supportive housing for people with mental health and addiction challenges. It also proposes changes to a longstanding tax on personal incomes over $1 million, known as the Mental Health Services Act, by requiring counties to spend 30% of that revenue on housing instead of other services.
As I’m writing, it’s still within a hair’s breadth of losing.
Gov. Newsom’s State of the State address that was supposed to be delivered Monday afternoon has been rescheduled. No word yet on a new date.
Worth mentioning, Prop 1 is still uncertain.
Latest results: Yes – 50.2%, No -49.8%
— Daniela Pardo (@danielapardotv) March 15, 2024
What Newsom should be squirming about is not that his baby might still go down in flames, but that his state can’t count ballots deciding the issue going on two weeks after an election.
‼️WOW! As California continues to count hundreds of thousands of ballots from an election that occurred a week ago, the @GavinNewsom multibillion dollar Prop 1 “homeless and mental health” scam is now at a statistical tie 50/50 just hours after opponents effectively conceded! If… pic.twitter.com/8iff5Rvq3a
— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) March 13, 2024
The primary was March 5, it was darn near a record low turnout, and the state is still shuffling paper.
Get it together, guys.
…Based on the late Friday numbers, the total of nearly 7.3 million votes means a turnout of about 33%, well below the norm for presidential primaries, but not the record low that some analysts projected based on early numbers.
It also means that it’s going to be a while before some results are finalized, likely amplifying complaints that it takes too long to count votes in California. While voting by mail has been happening for a month, as long as ballots were postmarked by last Tuesday and they arrive at elections offices by this Tuesday, they will be counted. As expected, the votes being counted after primary day are trending more Democratic and younger.
Schmaybe it’s better he stays undercover for a while – lets this all unpleasantness blow over.
But have you seen him dance
— Blank (@PaulJansents) March 15, 2024
Wouldn’t want to dent that shiny armor before Chicago.