Democratic strategist calls Newsom’s shift ‘PR desperation from a guy who wants to run for president’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) shocked his own party Thursday when he condemned biological men competing in women’s sports as “deeply unfair.” But Newsom, who is widely considered to be a potential 2028 presidential candidate, has an extensive record of embracing far-left policies on transgender issues.
That includes the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, a bill Newsom signed in 2020 that allowed prison inmates in California to be housed “in a manner consistent with their gender identity.” Newsom’s law had disastrous implications for some female prisoners in state care, enabling a 52-year-old male inmate with no prior history of identifying as an LGBT person to be transferred to a female facility in central California. From there, the male inmate allegedly raped and impregnated several incarcerated women.
The inmate, Tremaine Carroll, now faces two counts of rape, but prosecutors are having difficulties trying what they say should be an open-and-shut case. A county judge ruled in December that Carroll’s alleged victims must identify him with his preferred she/her pronouns when they take the stand to testify.
“It’s just absolutely insane that a victim would have to get on the stand and police their pronoun usage when trying to recite one of the scariest times of their lives,” Madera County supervising deputy district attorney Eric DuTemple told ABC 30.
The 2020 law is just one example of the far-left gender policies Newsom has championed during his two terms serving as California governor. But Newsom’s comments during an interview Thursday with conservative influencer Charlie Kirk suggest he now seeks to distance himself from the consequences of those same policies. The California governor said men competing in women’s sports is “an issue of fairness,” a statement that comes on the heels of public polling that shows the vast majority of the American electorate is souring on those sorts of extreme gender policies.
It’s a move that reeks of desperation, said one veteran Democratic political strategist who told the Washington Free Beacon that Newsom bears responsibility for making the party’s brand toxic to everyday Americans.
“His recent remarks on trans girls in sports is just PR desperation from a guy who wants to run for president,” said the Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “He’s implemented a far-left wacko agenda, and it shows you how completely out of touch Democrats are to tout him as a potential candidate. All of us living in swing or red states know his entire record, and California being a textbook case of failed liberal governance is why being a Democrat is now toxic in much of normal America.”
Newsom’s comments also landed the governor in hot water with the left-wing flank of the Democratic party, including Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson, who suggested Newsom betrayed “vulnerable communities” in a statement to Politico.
A spokesman for Newsom’s office rejected the notion that the governor is reversing course on transgender issues, saying in a lengthy statement to the Free Beacon that Newsom has “set the national standard for protecting and expanding LGBTQ rights.”
The spokesman cited Newsom’s efforts to make it easier to update gender markers on state documents, requiring public schools to provide gender-neutral bathrooms, and signing laws to enshrine access to sex-change procedures and treatments.
The Newsom spokesman said the governor does not treat transgender issues as a laughing matter and rejects the “right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids.” Newsom, the spokesman said, recognizes the reality that “transgender youth are three to four times more likely to attempt suicide.”
But the transgender suicide epidemic isn’t something Newsom considers serious enough to warrant informing the parents of those children. In July, the governor signed a bill into law allowing teachers to conceal from parents if their children ask to use a different name or pronouns that don’t align with their biological sex.
To Newsom, the immoral actors are the teachers who inform parents that their child may suffer from a condition that leads to a four-fold likelihood of committing suicide. Newsom told Kirk on Thursday his law provides teachers “the freedom not to snitch.”
