All right, the results for Prop One are in Scott
and Laurel,
We finally know that it has passed the sigh of
relief for the governor you have to imagine right now.
But Laurel, not the resounding win he was hoping for,
right?
Not at all. In fact,
this vote was so close that just last week he
was sending an e-mail to his supporters asking for volunteers
to come learn how to get trained to help,
you know, collect ballots if they were rejected by local
officials and do the paperwork necessary to get them validated
and counted.
So this one was really close and in the end,
you know, if it passes,
it passes. There's no like middle ground for it only
going into effect a little bit.
But it's got to be humbling to the governor to
know that he barely eked it out and that his
support from,
you know, from residents of the state is,
is that much on the on the brink?
Yeah. He's not used to voters sort of checking him
in a way like this.
Scott, you had him on your podcast recently right before
Election Day.
And. And he described this as a passion project and
and said he brought together a broad coalition and that
the state was doing something it has never done before.
And he also pointed out the fact that there wasn't
any homeless policy when he took office a few years
ago.
Well, I mean, it is true.
Jerry Brown didn't really think it was the role of
state government to build affordable housing.
But I think it's a little unfair.
But, you know, I think there is a competition between
those two guys.
But, you know, yeah, I think Gavin Newsom probably had
his running shoes on ready for that victory lap on
election night.
And here we are two weeks later,
plus a couple days just now finding out the the
result.
I do think, you know,
it passed. I mean, that's the important thing,
ultimately, that's what history will remember.
But you do have to wonder if he should have
been out in front so much.
You know, he's at a time now where his popularity,
his approval ratings are going down.
And I think a lot of in this climate we're
in a lot of voters at Newsom's for it.
I'm against it, especially when you have more conservative electorate
as we did.
But the real challenge now is like making this thing
work.
You know, it's a complicated set of things involving counties
and a lot of services and construction of you know,
places for people with mental illness to go.
So I think many would say it's long overdue.
It's sailed through the legislature.
But now the hard work begins of getting it done.
Yeah. And he doesn't have that much time Scott to
really,
I mean this is a big issue to tackle and
he doesn't have a lot of time in office and
he also has national aspirations.
He does And I think you know he can say
this is what I did in California.
I got this bond measure passed and spent all this
money on homelessness and you know getting people off the
street.
So he can do that.
I think it could be years.
I mean these things don't happen overnight.
You know, just the, the construction part of it takes
a while getting the permits you although that can be
expedited as part of this.
But you know we've seen with care courts it hasn't
moved along as quickly as some had hoped.
And so we'll see. You know,
the proof will be in the pudding as they say,
but I don't know that he'll be around necessarily as
governor to take credit and cut a lot of ribbits.
All right. So let's talk about another big headline coming
out of Sacramento this week,
Laurel, and that is the budget.
So just to sort of revisit the numbers a little
bit here,
$73 billion projected by the Lao Newsom administration says it's
less around $38 billion.
And there was some back and forth that,
you know, the governor was seen in the Capitol building
a couple of days this past week saying he was
working with leadership to sort of negotiate and start early.
They announced a deal and then sort of came back
and said,
well, it it's, it's a partial deal from what I
understand.
Yeah. I mean, I would personally,
I would not call it a deal because to me
a deal means that the,
like all of the critical players have reached an agreement.
And what this was was
more like they agreed to make an agreement,
which is what we expect of our leaders of our
state.
So I don't think that this
was a deal. They're working on it and they wanted
to show that they're working on it.
But it was an unusual announcement because it did not
say exactly how much they plan to close the budget
deficit by with this early action.
They gave a range between 12 billion to $18 billion.
And they also critically did not explain how they would
do that.
You know what they might cut,
what other kind of accounting maneuvers they were considering.
So
we're dealing with a new set of players negotiating the
budget this year.
Obviously, Newsom has negotiated several budgets since he's been in
office.
But we have a new speaker and we have a
new Senate leader.
And the Speaker in particular
gained his position by telling his caucus members that he
was going to be very inclusive of them and and
take their input along the way.
So I think that, like,
it's understandable that when you have
so many Democrats in the Capitol,
they have basically about 3/4 of the seats in the
legislature.
It takes time to get agreement If if they're going
to do a process where they're getting input from so
many people.
But right now, you know,
they're basically agreeing to agree.
They're planning to have a plan.
They will come back in April and let us know
what it is.
You know, we, we talk about this often.
Politicians go through peaks and valleys.
And Scott, you know, Newsomer's riding high.
For a while, he was raising his national profile.
He was debating Ron DeSantis.
He was, you know, been out there as a surrogate
for the Biden administration.
And then really over the last month,
he has faced issues here at home like every governor
does.
You know, obviously with with
the delay in learning the results of Prop One,
the budget deficit, the back and forth over that,
it seems to be like he's hitting a little bit
of a rough patch.
Absolutely. You know, Nikki, it reminds me a little bit
of Jerry Brown around 1980.
He had run for president a couple times and,
you know, people were getting a little tired of him.
And that happens with all politicians.
You know, I do wonder if,
you know, the vote being so close on Prop One
was a little bit of a comeuppance.
You know, voters wanting to tell him,
hey, you need to pay attention to what's happening here
in this state right now because we have a lot
of problems and not be off,
you know, in Georgia debating somebody who's running for president.
You know, these things are always up.
They're always ups and downs.
I mean, you know, Newsom has been fairly popular,
but it has been drifting downward.
He's not going to face re election,
but there is that talk of a recall.
I don't know that that'll really get wings and take
off.
But, you know, it's a different environment now than it
was a few years ago when he faced a recall.
And I, you know, I would think he's going to
put his,
you know, maybe do a few few fewer of those
national shows and maybe spend a little more time with
his,
you know, sleeves rolled up working at the Capitol and,
you know, on things that really matter to Californians.
All right. So I'm going to close by
discussing the person known as the Ayatollah of the Assembly,
Willie Brown, turning 90 this week.
Scott, I know that you
attended one of the many events that was held
in the Bay Area honoring him.
And, you know, I know that there were political folks
from all different eras.
There there were, I mean,
this was organized by staff and,
you know, former staffers from Sacramento as well as San
Francisco.
When he was mayor, he joked that when he walked
in like half of Sacramento was here
because there were so many former,
you know, lobbyists and one of the more interesting folks
who was there with Rusty Reyes,
the former assemblyman now does a political consulting firm,
public affairs firm. But he was one of the Gang
of Five that tried to depose Brown in
1988. And I think his being there and speaking so
fondly of
of Willie Brown says a lot about Willie.
He never had permanent political enemies.
He might have had disagreements with people,
whether they were Republicans or Democrats,
but he knew that you might need them on the
next issue or the next vote.
And so he he that's how he lived his life.
That's how he lived his life in politics.
And I think it was one of the secrets to
his
maintaining power and influence as long as he did in
Sacramento in particular.
Such a different time, Laurel.
I know that veteran columnist George Skelton has a piece
in your paper to just sort of looking back
at the life and legacy of Willie Brown because he
had a front row seat to that.
Yeah, George Skelton. We just celebrated his 50th anniversary with
the LA Times.
He's been covering California politics for more than 60 years.
And he wrote this incredible column today about Willie Brown,
reminiscing about the first time he saw Willie Brown on
the Assembly floor in
1965. George Skelton was there,
he remembers what Willie Brown was wearing.
And he wrote a a really great column just reminiscing
and chronicling that idea that that Scott just talked about,
about how Willie Brown really gained power over time by
turning his enemies into his friends.
So check it out at
latimes.com. All right, we will leave it there.
Laurel Rosenhall, Scott Schaefer. We appreciate your analysis and expertise
here on Inside California Politics.
Thanks so much. Good to see you.