#GOVERNOR RACE ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS FULL#
#GOVERNOR RACE ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS SERIES#

“It’s been a long two years, but tonight America’s biggest state is making America’s biggest statement,” he said.

He didn’t reference Trump by name on Tuesday, only by reputation. “I would rather focus on the creativity and the unique opportunities and needs of California, as opposed to defining everything in relationship to the president.” “We can follow our own trajectory,” he told reporters Wednesday. The president has largely ignored the state, although his administration unsuccessfully asked the courts to block the “sanctuary state” immigration enforcement law enacted this year.īrown has only occasionally criticized the president, often sounding a note of indifference to any taunt from Trump about the state’s actions.

#GOVERNOR RACE ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS SERIES#

That effort remains largely intact, thanks to Brown’s signature on a series of environmental and immigration laws. In Sacramento, they will join a California Legislature where Democratic leaders have spent two years pushing forward an agenda that has become the nation’s most persistent repudiation of Trump. Most of them, like Newsom, will be new to the job. The new governor also may have to contend with the other Democrats elected to statewide office Tuesday, each seeking a platform to demand change.

Newsom’s platform was hardly one of a centrist, even though the state’s electorate has rarely been as liberal as its national reputation - choosing instead to be socially moderate but fiscally stingy, environmentally progressive but solidly behind get-tough-on-crime efforts. The majority of the state’s modern-era governors have been Republicans. With his resounding victory over Republican challenger John Cox, the 51-year-old Democrat not only will preside over the nation’s largest economy, but as leader of America’s most fierce resistance to Trump and the nationalist shift of mainstream GOP politics.īut the history of how Democrats came to dominate California politics over the last quarter-century is a story less about provocation than pragmatism. No one will face that task more directly than Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom.

#GOVERNOR RACE ISSUES DOMINATE AD WARS FULL#

Less clear, though, is what those marching orders should be - and whether voters will embrace the full panoply of demands that have lurched the state’s dominant party leftward since the election of President Trump. Few can argue with California Democrats that their sweeping victories Tuesday are a clear mandate to set in place an agenda for the state that will last well into the next decade.

Governor race issues dominate ad wars