Time is up for Gov. Gavin Newsom in California. Here’s why he deserves to be recalled

In 2018, I voted for Gavin Newsom for governor.

As a Mexican-American centrist born and raised in the farmland of California’s Central Valley, I have conservative tendencies. But I was repulsed by Republican John Cox’s anti-immigrant pandering. It’s boneheaded to alienate Latinos, who make up 40% of the state’s population.

Why not anger the Irish and run for mayor of Boston?

Nevertheless, when I think of Newsom and the reasons why the Democrat deserves to be recalled on Sept. 14, I think of my father.

My dad was a law enforcement officer in Fresno County for 37 years, and he would often tell me how, as a civil servant, this was not a job he could lose easily.

In 30 years of writing for newspapers, offering TV commentary and hosting podcasts and radio shows, I’ve been fired, laid off or escorted from the building by security eight times. I was being canceled before being canceled was cool.

Newsom needs to be “canceled” because he is not a civil servant. He serves at the pleasure of the citizenry. Voters put him in office, and they can take him out. And now he needs to be taken out in the name of accountability.

According to polls, even in this deep blue state, nearly half of California voters agree that it’s time for Newsom to leave. In July, a poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies — co-sponsored by the ultra-liberal Los Angeles Times — found that 47% of likely California voters supported recalling Newsom. Only 50% opposed removing Newsom.

It’s not that Newsom did anything wrong; it’s that he’s the wrong person for the job.

Governing the most populous state in the country would be a tall order for anyone, but the task towers far above Newsom and his limited capabilities.

Newsom’s grand plan consists of beating back the recall, winning re-election in 2022 and launching a White House bid in 2024. Despite being in politics for the last 24 years — literally almost half his life at 53 years old — Newsom forgot the first rule: Focus on doing one job at a time.

Newsom doesn’t get that because he has an ego the size of Yosemite. Gavin loves himself some Gavin. Incompetence and arrogance is a bad combination, and Newsom is saddled with both.

The governor’s incompetence was on full display in 2020. He was outmatched by the coronavirus pandemic, and he bungled the adjoining challenges. There was the on-again/off-again economic lockdown; the lax vaccine distribution and the total shutdown of public schools on orders from the dark force that runs California public education: the California Teachers Association.

You name it, Newsom fouled it up. Republicans — aka the gang that couldn’t shoot straight — could never lay a glove on him. But COVID-19 sent him to the mat with one punch.

Make that three punches. Newsom decimated the state’s restaurant industry; something he seemed unconcerned about while dining with lobbyists at Napa Valley’s French Laundry in November. He failed to overhaul the state’s pathetic Employment Development Department, overwhelmed with claims from jobless Californians who are still waiting for checks to pay their rent and buy groceries. And he never bonded with Latinos, taking for granted the support of the largest and most important ethnic group in the state.

Newsom’s argument for saving the only job he seems to care about — his own — boils down to this: “I may be incompetent, but at least I’m not a Republican.”

That line only gets you so far. And Newsom has reached the end of the road.

This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 5:00 AM.