'EXPERTS’ MISS THE POINT ON MOVING WELLS FARGO’S HQ

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 31, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“'EXPERTS’ MISS THE POINT ON MOVING WELLS FARGO’S HQ”

 

Every published analysis of Well Fargo’s Christmas-week decision to sell its longtime headquarters high-rise deep in San Francisco’s financial district has missed the entire point.

 

Speculation has been rife that the huge California-centered bank plans to move its corporate headquarters out of San Francisco, where it been since Gold Rush days and the Pony Express era. Guesses for a new headquarters have included Minneapolis, Dallas, Charlotte and New York City, where Wells Fargo’s president now keeps his main office.

 

That came about because Charles Scharf joined Wells Fargo from Bank of New York Mellon and didn’t want to move. At the time, Wells Fargo had just completed a new “branch hub” complex along the Hudson River and Scharf moved into it.

 

So talk of Wells Fargo shifting its headquarters is old stuff, since the company already has a very diffuse headquarters structure, with yet another major complex in Minnesota.

 

The “experts” bemoaned Wells Fargo’s shift in San
Francisco and the upcoming sale of its 420 Montgomery Street building as a sign that California will soon be a has-been as a financial center. That’s hokum.

 

So long as this state retains anything near its current stature as the world’s fifth largest economy, it will need to have a significant banking structure even if bank leaders keep offices in other cities, too. Big banks like Wells and Bank of America, another California native whose nominal headquarters are now out of state (in Charlotte), will need big employee bases here.

 

But like other white collar industries including insurance companies, law firms and stock brokerages, they saw many of their workers – even at executive levels – switch to working at home during the Covid 19 pandemic. So the businesses no longer need as many employees in their offices as often as before. It translates to billions of square feet of vacant offices, even if Tesla, Space X and Twitter/X owner Elon Musk disapproves and wants to call his own workers back to their old cubicles.

 

That’s not happening even at his companies, which have seen large-scale employee departures since Musk began making those demands. Example: Tesla last year saw a 44 percent departure rate among its executives, about five times the normal turnover rate for large corporations.

 

The Wells Fargo move has to be seen in its overall context, not merely as a banking move. (In fact, Wells officials said of San Francisco that “The city remains vital to us. It is very important to the bank.)

 

What’s happening is the same kind of real estate turnover that’s affected other office-centric businesses. Wells Fargo in 2023 sold one of its major San Francisco buildings, at 550 California Street, for $45 million, taking a loss of more than $200 million from what it paid for that structure in 2019, just before the pandemic.

 

Wells Fargo’s experience is similar to what’s happened to other office tower owners, with real estate investment trusts having lost billions of dollars when hundreds of tenant businesses left their old leases in the pandemic’s dust, exiting as fast as they could.

 

Now Wells is doing the same. Its workers will still come to an office sometimes. One common practice is to hold meetings and make plans at company headquarters, with workers carrying out those decisions largely from home offices.

 

Recognizing this reality, state legislators last spring passed a new law making building conversions into apartments and condominiums far easier than before, almost automatic.

 

This is the best way yet devised to solve much of California’s housing shortage, with new living units created in existing structures without altering the physical character of cities or neighborhoods.

 

So the Wells Fargo building sale and move actually is part of a trend, just not the trend many financial and real estate analysts think they’ve spotted of yet another big corporation moving headquarters out of California.

 

Sure, Wells Fargo will have significant offices elsewhere; it has had many of them for a long time. But the trend that’s really at work in this move is the switch from office-centric work environments to home offices, which has been underway now for almost five years.

 

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

POLITICAL VULTURES MOVE IN WHILE FIRES BURN

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“POLITICAL VULTURES MOVE IN WHILE FIRES BURN”

 

Like vultures sensing fresh carrion, some politicians began moving in with false information and nonsensical claims even as the flames of California’s most damaging fire ever still burned strongly in early January.

 

Yet, there were some legitimate questions among the rhetorical flares.

 

The actual flames were so forceful and fast-moving that not even his famous light saber could have helped save the Malibu home of Luke Skywalker (aka “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill) during the hurricane-strength winds driving the mega-firestorm that began in the Pacific Palisades district of Los Angeles.

 

As multiple blazes erupted and spread over an always fire-prone fifty-mile stretch of mountains and foothills from Malibu to Altadena, burns also took the homes of celebrities like actress Paris Hilton, actor-director Billy Crystal, actors James Woods, Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, plus Los Angeles Lakers Coach JJ Redick.

 

To hear President-elect Donald Trump, this was all the fault of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and outgoing President Biden.

 

“NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS, NO MONEY IN FEMA,” Trump vastly exaggerated on his Truth Social service while fires raged and evacuees struggled to find housing.

 

Trump also blamed a supposed state policy document he called the “water resources declaration” for depleting water supplies to Pacific Palisades, causing low water pressure that hampered firefighters’ efforts.

 

But there never was such a document. Water mains supplying the Palisades fire area were already deemed too small decades ago, long before Newsom or Biden’s time. Pressure in some hillside fire hydrants fed by those mains dropped precipitously during the firestorm, because so many hydrants were tapped at once. Los Angeles officials sent water in by truck.

 

Yet, critics correctly noted a 117-million-gallon reservoir in the area was shut down for maintenance. If filled, that facility might have kept pressure up for a few more hours than it lasted in affected hydrants. One retired water engineer noted that “it is a guessing game when to take metal reservoirs out of service for maintenance.”

 

Larger mains were never installed in the area because until now, there were no serious water pressure problems. Generations of local politicians deemed such a project unnecessary.

 

Victims could find a logical candidate for some blame in Sam Yorty, the late congressman and conservative mayor of Los Angeles from 1961 to 1973. His appointees okayed the Palisades Highlands development where the fires started Jan. 7. The obviously fire-prone Highlands were designed and approved with only one road leading in and out.

 

The route became so jammed while wind-driven flames chased escaping residents that many abandoned their cars to flee on foot. Major delays followed as firefighters tried to deploy equipment.

 

Past generations of politicians and other officials – not Newsom or Biden – created these conditions. Still, Newsom ordered an “unbiased” investigation of the reservoir closure, also inviting Trump to visit disaster zones.

 

As often, facts did not faze Trump, who previously blasted Newsom and predecessor Jerry Brown for allegedly letting brush and forest areas become more fire prone. He tried to withhold federal aid money as punishment. Yet, most lands he referenced belong to the federal government, raising doubts about where blame should lie.

 

But there was also possibly legitimate criticism. One example: developer Rick Caruso, a potential 2026 candidate for either governor or Los Angeles mayor who lost narrowly to current Mayor Karen Bass in 2022, blasted her for reducing the city’s brush clearance budget. Could more brush cutting have slowed this fire? With winds up to 99 mph, no one knows.

 

Others also blamed Bass. They griped that as high-wind “red flag” fire warnings were issued two days before flames broke out, she flew off to a political event in Ghana. No one has shown events would have differed if she’d been home.

 

The critics’ failure to wait until the fires died down before making their attacks gave them the look of vultures seeking dead meat. Meanwhile, Bass was blasted by her own fire chief for cutting the fire department budget, a move later partially reversed.

 

The big question for Trump, Caruso and other critics: why did they pour all blame on present officials who had to cope with many faulty decisions from decades ago?

 

-30-

 

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

NEWSOM ORDER AMOUNTS TO PURE GRANDSTANDING

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “NEWSOM ORDER AMOUNTS TO PURE GRANDSTANDING”

 

If ever there's been a political move that amounted to pure grandstanding, it was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s late 2024 executive order telling a state commission to give millions of California electric customers some rate relief.

 

Normally, when the governor orders a state commission to do something, he can be pretty sure his wishes will be carried out. That’s because the governor appoints virtually all state commission members and they serve at his pleasure. He can bounce them any time.

 

That’s true for the state Energy Commission, the Air Resources Board, the Parole Board and many others. But not the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which sets natural gas and electric rates for all the private, investor-owned utilities in the state.

 

Yes, the governor does appoint the five utility commissioners. But no governor can fire them. They serve staggered six-year terms, with either one or two appointments expiring every two years. The only appeals from their decisions are to state appellate courts, not ordinary county courts, as with all other agencies.

 

Once a governor anoints a PUC member, they are set for years to come, almost as secure in the job as federal judges, who get lifetime appointments.

 

So when Newsom issued his executive order, it wasn’t really an order. It was a wish. It was for show. He can tell PUC members what to do, but unless they have ambitions for other future appointments, his wishes mean no more than those of any other citizen.

 

When it was designed in the early 1900s, all this was supposed to make the PUC independent. Instead, regardless of whether they’ve been appointed by Democrats or Republicans, PUC members for more than 50 years have tended to kowtow to the utilities they are supposed to keep in check.

 

Newsom’s order told the commissioners to review more closely how companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric spend customer money to stop transmission lines from sparking wildfires. Those expenses have been the supposed basis for several rate increases over the last two years.

 

One result is that California now has the second highest electric rates in the nation, behind only Hawaii, where all fuel burned to create power has to be shipped thousands of miles before it is used.

 

 California electric bills have risen by as much as 110 percent – meaning they’ve more than doubled – over the last 10 years. In just the last three years, charges to customers of the three big privately owned utilities are up by more than 20 percent.

 

Those increases, paid by every consumer either directly or as part of their rents, were all approved by Newsom appointees who received only cursory vetting from the state Legislature before they were rubber-stamped.

 

Newsom may not have power to enforce his current executive order, but if commissioners want reappointments to their cushy jobs – where almost all the tedious scut work is done by clerks or administrative law judges – they might at least try to please him.

 

Newsom’s executive order comes atop his calling a special legislative session last fall with the aim – achieved – of getting lawmakers to force gasoline refiners to keep substantial stocks on hand at all times to avoid price gouging during times of routine maintenance or plant outages.

 

Such gouging has been frequent over the last 40 years, with collusion between the oil companies that run the state’s big refineries becoming obvious. Any outage at any one refinery invariably brings huge price increases at every gas station. In February 2023 alone, this amounted to a $2 per gallon increase in pump prices within a two-day span. 

 

Newsom tried to seem like a consumer champion by putting the clamps on some energy price hikes, while at the same time allowing his appointees at the Air Resources Board to make changes in gasoline formulae that appear certain to cause price increases.

 

It's a complex scene and one that suggests political motivation by Newsom. Why else would he issue his latest executive order, knowing all the while that no one involved has to pay it any heed?

 

    -30-

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

REDUCED VOTING SHOWS DISILLUSION WITH GOVERNMENT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“REDUCED VOTING SHOWS DISILLUSION WITH GOVERNMENT”

 

When Gov. Gavin Newsom looks out over the state Legislature while giving his still unscheduled state of the state speech sometime in the next few weeks, he will see slightly reduced Democratic majorities in both the Senate and Assembly.

 

He may wonder why. The answer is much the same as it was in years like 2002 and 2012, when Democrats voted in far lower numbers than previous elections because many were disillusioned, maybe even uninterested, by state government.

 

Under Newsom, voters have authorized spending more than $15 billion in state and local taxes to solve the problem of homelessness. But California today has about 10,000 more homeless than a year ago, and possibly as many as 30,000 more than four years ago, when the total stood at about 150,000 and was already a crisis.

 

Under Newsom, the state went from sumptuous budget surpluses to vast deficits, much of it papered over by borrowing from the future.

 

Under Newsom, several major corporations, including Chevron and Toyota USA and Tesla have moved their headquarters out of state, even while leaving much of their California operations intact.

 

All this seeming decline has not toppled the state from its status as the world’s fifth leading economy. But it left ordinary citizens far less than impressed with government.

 

Many reacted just as past voters have. In a fiercely fought 2024 election, onetime voters in unprecedented numbers simply didn’t bother. Back in 2020, more than 17.12 million voters turned out or sent in their choices, giving Joe Biden a record 5 million vote margin in California. Just four years later, with population almost exactly at the same level, only 15.72 million voters cast ballots, 8 percent fewer. Donald Trump’s vote totals in California didn’t change much, steady at just above 6 million. This was far less a Republican surge than a Democratic plunge.

 

Democrat Kamala Harris won California in the presidential vote, but with 9.6 million votes, about 1.6 million fewer than Joe Biden rang up four years earlier.

 

Newsom was not on the ballot this year, so no one could directly express displeasure with his performance. Instead, well over a million Democrats made their point by not voting.

 

Just as California gave Democrats the margin needed to create national popular vote victories over Trump for both Biden and Hillary Clinton, this time their absence allowed Trump his first-ever national popular vote win, which he claims as a mandate for his entire agenda.

 

The last time California saw something similar came in 2002, when then-Gov. Gray Davis drew 1 million fewer votes than four years earlier, but still won. The voters’ clear displeasure set up the 2003 recall election that made muscleman actor Arnold Schwarzenegger governor for the next seven years.

 

Schwarzenegger remains the only California Republican since 1998 to win statewide office. Democratic margins are so strong here that even with 1.6 million of their previous voters staying out, their presidential candidate still carried the state by about 3.5 million votes.

 

Similarly, there has been a lot of talk, and reams of newspaper and Internet coverage, about Latinos supposedly turning more Republican. That’s not exactly what happened. The raw numbers suggest droves of Latinos who voted against Trump in 2000 (no one knows the precise number) did not bother last year, wanting neither candidate.

 

Just as Democrats needed a strong Latino voter turnout to stage their anti-Trump comeback during the 2018 mid-term elections that gave them congressional majorities, they now must draw back the Latino no-shows of 2024.

 

This may not be easy; once voters begin behaving a certain way, it can be difficult to get them to do something different.

 

But by 2026, at least in California, there will be fresh faces and names on the midterm ballot; some of them are bound to be Latinos. It’s highly possible a Latino like former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a proven California vote-getter who was Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services through four scandal-free years, might be one of the two November finalists for governor. 

 

That may be what it takes for Democrats to draw many 2024 non-voters back to the polls and mailboxes.

  

-30-
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

NEW INSURANCE LAW WILL WORK – FOR THE COMPANIES

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEW INSURANCE LAW WILL WORK – FOR THE COMPANIES”

 

The newspaper headline asked the proper question, but the story that followed missed the point. It read, “California’s plan to stabilize its home insurance market is now law. Will it work?”

The headline writer clearly wondered whether this new law, promulgated by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and not by the usual set of state legislators, would work for homeowners, many of whom have seen their insurance policies cancelled over the threat of fires, both wild brush and forest fires and blazes within neighborhoods made up of decades-old wood homes.

 

The insurance industry’s version of the answer was given pretty quickly. The companies believe it will work just fine for them. The new law contains elements they’ve sought for decades, but were consistently denied by California’s 1988 Proposition 103, which specifically forbade basing rates on industry risk forecasting formulae, but rather only on past events in the many locales where California’s homes have been built.

 

Under those rules, the more fires an area has experienced, the higher rates could go in that place and others nearby.

 

Lara intended his new rules to stabilize the state’s property insurance market, affecting not only homes but also other types of structures, from barns to body shops.

 

From now on, the industry will be able to base rates on secret “black box” alogorithms drawing on a wide range of information, including weather patterns, topography and other data, rather than relying mostly on historical losses in particular areas.

 

In exchange, the companies committed to cover more homeowners in wildfire areas. But this commitment is not compulsory in the actual new rules. In short, the companies got the rule change they have wanted since the early 1990s, while making only paper promises in return.

 

The stated commitment from the insurance industry is that companies will cover 85 percent of homes in known wildfire areas. Seeming to demonstrate they mean to keep this commitment, Farmers Insurance quickly announced it plans to write 9,500 new property policies per month here for the foreseeable future, up from the 7,000 it accepted in 2023.

 

But this move is purely voluntary, unforced by any law or regulation and Farmers or any other companies making similar commitments can change their minds anytime.

 

So consumers lose the protection of knowing their rates are based on real events, while getting unenforceable promises in return. That’s basically because Lara gave in to industry blackmail, as the companies virtually ceased writing new policies in California until they got rules they liked.

 

Instead, Lara could have stood up to them by saying something like, “You will sell property insurance in California, or you won’t sell any other type of coverage, including auto or life.” Under that scenario, the companies pretty soon would have had to choose between losing their largest American market or selling new property policies under the old rules.

 

It's almost Biblical, but California’s insurance boss gave away new and much higher rates but didn’t even get a mess of pottage like Esau did when trading his birthright for lentil soup (pottage). 

 

Here’s the new insurance reality, as outlined by analysts for the Consumer Watchdog customer-interest group: Insurance companies won’t have to sell anything more than a bare bones policy similar to those consumers get today if they’re on the state-run FAIR Plan. Rate increases are already starting, but insurance companies won’t have to report on improvements they’ve made to the overall market for two years, at the beginning of 2027. And after those two years, any insurer may put off indefinitely its supposed commitment to sell more policies in high-risk areas, so long as it claims to be making a “reasonable effort.”

 

At the same time, companies are allowed to violate Proposition 103’s requirement for public disclosure of mathematical price-making formulae. Nor must wildfire models used in rate-making be proven reliable and unbiased.

 

It’s essentially a license for the insurance industry to take more money from every property owner in California, and it now appears those insurance consumers will have no legal defense against it, even though the new regulations were never approved by the state’s Office of Administrative Law, which usually reviews all rule changes.

 

Lara calls this a victory, but it’s actually abject surrender.

30-
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

WILL TRUMP DEPORTATIONS SEE TROOPS IN CALIFORNIA STREETS?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “WILL TRUMP DEPORTATIONS SEE TROOPS IN CALIFORNIA STREETS?”

 

Later this month, the man who promised to be “a dictator on Day 1” will take the presidential oath of office for the second time.

 

He’s likely spent much of his time during the two month-plus transition period since the Nov. 5 election drafting executive orders and other measures to act immediately on that promise.

 

About the least surprising order will likely be one declaring a national state of emergency on immigration. Trump has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, with about one-third of the nation’s 11 million now living in California.

 

What realities might this produce? For one thing, don’t expect open conflicts between federal and local authorities, even though Los Angeles and other cities here have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for immigrants lacking legal status.

 

No, most police won’t cooperate with the Border Patrol and whatever other federal agents Trump may press into service to help enforce a wide-ranging deportation order. He promised he would start by going after criminals who snuck into this country, but that doesn’t mean he won’t target anyone else, including hard-working field hands, restaurant dishwashers, roofers, car wash workers, hotel cleaners and others in jobs most Americans don’t want.

 

Even as he deploys thousands of federal agents, Trump divulged soon after his election, he plans to use the military to roust many immigrants from their quarters.

 

So, yes, there’s a strong possibility of seeing troops and military hardware in city streets or cruising along in freeway convoys.

 

This would be unprecedented since the Civil War, when federal troops occupied almost the entire Confederacy, whose states voted almost unanimously for Trump in 2024 (Virginia was a narrow exception).

 

Will Americans be docile bystanders when individuals and families they have come to know – without realizing some were here illegally – are taken away, many being sent to countries they have never known as sentient adults?  Or will they shelter people who have cleaned their homes and mowed their lawns for decades?

 

These are open questions. To preclude some conflicts, Trump adviser Stephen Miller (a Santa Monica High School graduate) sent warning letters to hundreds of state and local officials here warning them of possible prosecution if they don’t keep hands off deportation efforts. These went both to political unknowns and to prominent figures like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who pronounced the letters a mere “scare tactic.”

 

It's unquestionable that mass deportations like Trump promises will cost many American jobs. Thousands of businesses sell supplies from lumber to furniture polish for use by businesses employing the undocumented. If those workers disappear, so will the jobs of many who supply them.

 

This happened in previous roundups during the 1920s, 1960s and the years between 2006 and 2009, when the George W. Bush administration conducted numerous raids.

 

Yes, there will be lawsuits from outfits like the American Civil Liberties Union to get Trump’s declaration of emergency cancelled. With the ultimate decision up to the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, bet on such a Trump order surviving.

 

Plus, Congress has never so much as voted on cancelling a presidential emergency declaration, not even Franklin Roosevelt’s order that started the roundup and imprisonment of almost all Japanese-Americans just after Pearl Harbor.

 

Trump, of course, has deported immigrants before – about 1.5 million during his first four-year term. Right now, about that many immigrants await hearings on asylum cases around the nation, and those persons are not supposed to be touched until and unless their applications are rejected.

 

Then there are the twin facts that there is no registry of immigrant addresses and that no one knows whether federal troops would need search warrants to look in places they may want to check out.

 

Trump’s so-called “immigration czar,” Tom Homan, has said he will first go after anyone here who has been given final removal orders by immigration judges. In 2023, federal agents deported more than 140,000 such persons.

 

Going after others like them could make Trump’s effort seem effective, even if it’s not really removing any more targeted folks than soon-to-be ex-President Biden ever did.

 

Which makes this all far more complex than campaign rhetoric ever implied.

 

    -30-

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

 

EXPECT NEWSOM TO START HIS WISHED-FOR RUN FOR PREZ

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“EXPECT NEWSOM TO START HIS WISHED-FOR RUN FOR PREZ”

 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has steadfastly denied any interest in becoming president for as long as he’s been in office. But any California governor becomes a presidential possibility from the moment of being elected, like it or not.

 

That’s what an almost automatic 54 electoral votes will do for (or to) you when you’re in the top office of this almost nation-state, one that’s used to making its own policies on energy and the environment, abortion and just about anything else you can mention. Even foreign policy, where California has signed no treaties with other countries and large foreign provinces, but has plenty of “memoranda of understanding.”

 

Now, for the first time in his almost 30 years in politics, Newsom might have a clear path to seek national office without having to contest against a stablemate. That’s what he and outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris have been since both began as proteges of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with Newsom usually making way for Harris.

 

But those days are done. The national electorate has told Harris it won’t elect her president, even when her party’s nomination is handed to her without so much as winning a single primary election or caucus.

 

For some, Newsom was already leading the opposition to President-elect Donald Trump many months before Trump assumes office.

 

That was one reason for his calling a special November and December session of the Legislature to push through methods and funding to counter Trump’s outspoken threats against California.

 

These include withholding federal relief funds after wildfires and earthquakes, trying to restrict or countermand California’s abortion availability, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants (without many of whom California’s economy would likely be in shambles due to labor shortages) and countermanding California climate policies that have steadily improved the state’s air quality since the 1970s.

 

Unlike any other potential 2028 presidential contender, Newsom long ago made himself into a bit of a national Democratic spokesman. He campaigned in more states than anyone else for outgoing President Joe Biden, before Biden handed the nomination over to Harris. He debated California-baiting governor of Florida on network television. He set pandemic policies for California that were widely copied elsewhere. No other Democratic prospect today has his prominence.

 

Trump tacitly acknowledges this by making Newsom the only Democratic governor to whom he applies one of his trademark derogatory nicknames: “New-scum.”

 

All this sets up Newsom for a 2028 run of his own, even though that future is a bit cloudy, since Trump during his campaign steadfastly evaded answering when asked if he would cede power peacefully when his second term ends in early 2029. His vigorous efforts to stay on after being voted out in 2000 resulted in a recently abandoned prosecution, and no one knows how the nation would respond to a second effort to stay on beyond his time limit.

 

Had Harris won last fall, Newsom would now face a political dead end, with California’s two Senate seats fully occupied until at least 2028 and no possibility of seeking a third term as governor. The soonest he could have run for president would have been 2032, and even then, it’s doubtful America would elect two consecutive San Francisco liberals.

 

But now Newsom gets to move on while Harris is likely sidelined. Rejected last November, she could not assert any supposed right to insist that Newsom step aside for her.

 

He will never say so, but in a way, all this makes the 2024 election outcome almost ideal for Newsom. He scores points with Democrats nationally every time Trump insults him. He will have the last two years of his term to establish a record of resisting Trump at every turn, successful or not. He will also have an opportunity to address state Democratic Party conventions all over the country, if he likes.

 

Once his term in Sacramento ends, he can campaign for two years without interruption or other duties. It’s almost a perfect script for a would-be president, very similar to what fellow Californian Ronald Reagan experienced between 1976 and 1980, when he was first elected to the top national office.

 

-30-

 

Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net