One thing is certain after the Thanksgiving week flash mobs: the bandits who raided high-end stores from Walnut Creek and San Francisco to Beverly Hills and the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles didn’t think of Governor Gavin Newsom when they met the Tens of thousands of dollars in sledges were preparing for looting.
But they have presented Newsom with both an opportunity and a danger, as evidenced by the immediate response from California Republican Party activists who blamed him and his Democrats for the mess.
“Gavin Newsom and the California Democrats have made our state a more dangerous place to live, work and raise families,” said Orange County’s Republican Party statement in a statement while the gang burglary was still going on.
The GOP accused Newsom of supporting Proposition 47 of 2014, which demoted many crimes to the category of offense, as well as mitigating measures such as one that only makes theft or break-in a crime if there is more than 950 worth of material or cash US dollars is stolen.
But here’s a reality: when between 30 and 50 cars and about 80 people together walk into a department store, as happened in Walnut Creek, well over 80 people knew about it. Why didn’t any of them warn the police or the store itself about the highly organized raid? Was it a failure of parental moral education or a failure of the public schools to educate students independently?
We may learn more as the interrogations and trials for the few bandit police continue. Or not.
We already know that while the tide of lawlessness persisted across the state, Newsom took action by ordering increased patrols near stores and malls by the California Highway Patrol during the Christmas shopping season.
“The level of organized retail theft that we are seeing is simply unacceptable,” the governor said in a prepared statement. “Companies and customers should feel safe when shopping for Christmas.”
But they won’t do it now, no matter how many CHP officials station Newsom in shopping center parking lots. If everything else was unacceptable, it was the fact that just as his office was making his statement, Newsom was leaving for a family vacation in Mexico instead of showing up in stores to show his support, as any Earl governor does Warren to Ronald Reagan to Jerry Brown would have done it.
As a result, there is likely to be a drop in sales in stores that may or may not be made up for through online ordering.
Certainly Newsom’s political opponents will use his quick exit against him when he runs for re-election next year. Republicans might even be effective against Newsom, who is more moderate than Larry Elder, the right-wing talk show host who was their de facto standard-bearer in the election last summer.
Kevin Faulconer (ex-Mayor of San Diego who received just under 8 percent of the recall replacement votes), are you listening?
Newsom still has plenty of time to recover. If he can get his ultra-liberal Attorney General Rob Bonta to charge every shoplifting caught with a crime, and not just a misdemeanor, he could end up smelling good.
But if the justices appointed by Newsom and Brown insist on misconduct tried instead, the “soft-on-crime” label could haunt and prosecute him, especially if he ever runs for president.
Like all other events, the store break-ins did not occur in a vacuum: they are tied to Newsom and Prop. 47, just as they are legitimately linked to the nationally televised criminal rampage of May 31, 2020 through Santa Monica and trendy Melrose may avenue area of Los Angeles which was an example of the recent invasions with very slow police responses and very few thieves caught.
Surely next year Republicans will try to hang all of this on Newsom and make crime and public safety as big as possible.
Newsom has the power to defuse all of this if it gets more active than just sending out a few police patrols. But he will never advance his career if he takes extended family vacations to key moments in the lives and fears of other Californians.
Send an email to Thomas Elias at [email protected].
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