One group of Californians is rooting hard for Gavin Newsom to survive Tuesday’s recall election: Criminals.
The embattled Democrat has been the lawbreakers’ best friend. This includes thousands of thugs who have benefited from Newsom’s peaceful, easy feeling toward violent, recidivist felons.
“Gavin Newsom as governor has made it extremely hard for me to do my job and extremely hard for law enforcement to do their job,” Kern County District Attorney Cynthia Zimmer complained at a September 2 pro-recall rally in Bakersfield.
“Gavin Newsom does not care about crime victims. He is soft on crime, and he cares more about criminals than he does about victims.”
Zimmer lamented that Newsom freed some 20,000 inmates, with even more early releases to come.
The deadly results should surprise no one.
“The crime rate has gone up all over California,” Zimmer added. “In Los Angeles, the homicide rate’s up over 40 percent in one year, and our crime rate has gone up here, too. Last year was the deadliest year that we had on record with 125 homicides in Kern County, and we’re on pace to have just as deadly a year this year…Newsom has no plan, except to release more criminals who can then, in turn, vote for him.”
One of Newsom’s most noisome clemencies was his August 6 parole of David Weidert, who was sentenced to life in prison for the 1980 killing of Michael Morganti, a mentally disabled man from the Fresno area. Weidert, then 17, targeted Morganti, 20, after he informed police about Weidert’s role in a $500 burglary.
“Weidert and a 16-year-old accomplice then lured Morganti into a car and took him to an isolated place and forced him to dig his own grave,” the Associated Press detailed. “They beat him with a baseball bat and a shovel, stabbed him with a knife, and choked him with a telephone wire.”
An autopsy revealed dirt in Morganti’s lungs, meaning that he was alive and gasping desperately for air after Weidert and his pal covered Morganti in soil. Newsom reckoned that this poor man's murderer was just the sort of fellow who should go free.
Newsom unleashed one of today’s biggest menaces to society: George Gascon. While he was San Francisco’s mayor, Newsom picked this destructive figure as police chief. He then appointed him district attorney.
In 2020, Gascon ran for Los Angeles County District Attorney and was elected last November 6. Since then, he has fallen more deeply in love with criminals by the day.
Gascon has barred his prosecutors from Parole Board hearings. So, as board members see an inmate and his lawyers at one table, and the opposing table totally devoid of prosecutors, they tend to side with those who bother to show up.
This explains why Sirhan Sirhan’s 16th parole bid finally went his way. Gavin Newsom’s hackolyte, Gascon, sent no lawmen to represent the people of Los Angeles County before the board.
So, with the scales of justice tilted that heavily toward Sirhan’s defense, the Parole Board on August 27 recommended clemency for the man who fatally shot RFK and wounded five other innocents in June 1968. Never mind that Sirhan is supposed to die in prison, as “life without parole” implies.
For his part, Sirhan still does not acknowledge his role in RFK’s assassination. He told the Parole Board that he was drunk and does not remember the murder of the then-presidential candidate, “if I did in fact do that.” So much for personal responsibility under Newsom.
The Golden State’s governor also supported Proposition 47, a ballot measure that lowered shoplifting offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, provided that the stolen goods do not exceed $950, per offense.
Facing state-sponsored wrist massages, at worst, hardened thieves now march into retail outlets, pack garbage bags with merchandise, and then waltz or even bike out the front door.
“The number one responsibility of the government is to protect people and property… to make sure bad guys do the time,” Larry Elder declared at that Bakersfield rally. The veteran conservative radio host and political commentor hopes to take Newsom out of California’s misery tomorrow and replace him in the governor’s mansion.
Elder has at least one such bad guy in mind: “Outrageous and frightening that @GavinNewsom’s handpicked LA DA @georgegascon was absent from #SirhanSirhan parole hearing. No concern for victims,” Elder wrote via Twitter on August 28. “As #CAGov I would deny Sirhan parole. Will Newsom?”
Elder cited two recent high-profile cases that confirm how widespread lawlessness has become on the Left Coast.
“Just recently, Barbara Boxer was mugged in Oakland, and her cell phone was taken,” Elder recalled. During this July 26 incident, the former U.S. senator, age 80, pleaded with the perp: “Why would you do this to a grandma?” — as if criminal sociopaths make such distinctions. The hoodlum remains at large.
Elder related that on June 17, also in Oakland, “a mentally ill homeless person attacked Gavin Newsom. Had Gavin Newsom not had his security detail with him, Lord knows what would have happened to him. How many of us have a security detail with us as we’re walking around the streets that are now more dangerous because convicted felons have been released early?”
Elder sees trouble ahead for the Golden State and recommends this wise way to avoid it:
“As many as 76,000 more felons will be eligible for early release over the next several months, the next several years, if this man [Newsom] remains in office. Let’s do something about that. Let’s recall him to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.