(LifeSiteNews) — President-elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party had a very good election on November 5, even in California.
Vice President Kamala Harris won her home state, but Trump received nearly 40 percent of the vote. He got 31.6 percent against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 34.4 percent against Joe Biden in 2020. Of the state’s 58 counties, 10 that had voted for Biden flipped for Trump last week.
The GOP will likely retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, in addition to winning the White House and the U.S. Senate, thanks partly to a Golden State electorate that moved toward the political center.
The shift is apparent in the results of the state’s ballot propositions. Voters rejected a rent control initiative and a measure to increase California’s minimum wage from $16 to $18 an hour. Fast-food workers began making $20 an hour earlier this year under a state law that has produced layoffs for employees and higher prices for customers.
Prop. 6 would have prohibited “involuntary servitude” by persons incarcerated in jails and prisons, but it failed too. While the state’s voter information guide said the initiative “ends slavery in California and upholds human rights and dignity for everyone,” voters were fine with forcing inmates to work.
The measure originated in a package of reparations proposals introduced earlier this year by black lawmakers in Sacramento.
The biggest winner on election day was Prop. 36, approved by some 70 percent of voters. It will “make crime illegal again,” according to proponents. CalMatters described the result as “capping a chaotic 10 months of bargaining and wrangling at the state Capitol where Democratic leaders unsuccessfully sought to preserve a decade of criminal justice reform.”
Prop. 36 increases penalties for shoplifting and repeated convictions for drug possession, essentially reversing an initiative passed in 2014 that has contributed to rampant homelessness, surging property crime, and decimated downtowns. It also creates a new category of drug crime known as a “treatment-mandated felony.”
That 2014 measure, Prop. 47, was backed by George Soros and deceptively titled the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act” by then Attorney General Kamala Harris. It decriminalized drug possession and thefts under $950 from felonies to misdemeanors.
Shoplifting became normalized in the absence of legal consequences, resulting in the plexiglass barriers that now protect products on retail store shelves. Police mostly stopped arresting thieves and druggies, knowing they would not be charged by district attorneys.
Governor Gavin Newsom opposed Prop. 36, warning it would lead to a new “war on drugs.” The law will certainly impede California’s “decarceration” policies that have downsized prison populations by tens of thousands of inmates. Reducing prison numbers was a central goal of Prop. 47, and Newsom has pushed to close prisons altogether.
Los Angeles County’s district attorney, a coauthor of Prop. 47, was defeated in a landslide on November 5, while the progressive DA in Alameda County was recalled. Both supported soft-on-crime policies such as no-cash bail.
Also recalled was the mayor of Oakland, the violent crime-ridden city to which Newsom last week extended an emergency deployment of the California Highway Patrol to maintain public safety. The Oakland branch of the NAACP civil rights group has blamed the city’s lawlessness on “defund the police” efforts.
San Francisco voters replaced their mayor with another liberal Democrat, a political newcomer who promised to crack down on open-air drug markets and deliver cleaner, safer streets. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled in 2022, previewing Californians’ prioritization of law and order over “criminal justice reform.”
The passage of Prop. 3, titled “Constitutional Right To Marriage,” was the biggest disappointment of the statewide election.
Prop. 3 removes from the California Constitution language recognizing marriage as being between one man and one woman and adds a so-called “fundamental right to marry, regardless of sex or race.” Voters in Colorado and Hawaii removed similar definitions from their state constitutions last week.
Californians added the previous pro-marriage language with the passage in 2008 of Prop. 8, which was later overturned in court. The provision became inoperative in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized homosexual “marriage” nationwide in its Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
State Senator Scott Wiener, one of Prop. 3’s authors, is a homosexual and leading promoter of LGBTQ causes. The San Francisco Democrat wrote a 2022 bill, signed into law by Newsom, that decriminalized loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution but has dramatically increased sex trafficking.
State Assemblymember Evan Low, also a homosexual and the other author of Prop. 3, lost his contest for a Silicon Valley congressional seat last week despite an endorsement from Newsom late in the race.
Prop. 3 passed with over 62 percent of the vote, despite polls claiming that support for homosexual “marriage” in California is higher.
The argument against Prop. 3 in the state’s voter information guide was submitted by the California Family Council. The website of the Christian advocacy organization described the measure’s harmful impacts.
“Proposition 3 removes all rules for marriage, opening the door to child marriages, incest, and polygamy,” according to CFC’s statement in the voter guide. “It changes California’s constitution even though [so-called] same-sex marriage is already legal. By making moms and dads optional, it puts children at risk. This careless measure harms families and society. Vote No on Proposition 3.”
Apart from the well-documented advantages for children of being raised in authentic families, numerous cases of child pornography and sexual abuse have been linked to “married” homosexuals.
Last March, a well-known Illinois veterinarian and dog show judge who is “married” to another man was arrested days before he could travel to California to take custody of a newborn baby boy whom he had purchased via surrogacy and allegedly planned to sexually assault. He was initially charged with possession of child pornography.
Last February, a Wisconsin county official in a homosexual “marriage” was arrested on child pornography charges believed to involve the man’s adopted prepubescent son. The man also performed as a drag queen with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an anti-Catholic hate group founded in San Francisco.
In an especially disturbing Georgia case, two “married” men were arrested in 2022 for sexually abusing and prostituting their adopted special-needs sons, who were ages six and eight when the years-long crimes allegedly began. The men were activists for homosexual “rights” and other woke causes.
Newsom was likely not displeased with Harris’s defeat on November 5. He will be unable to run again for California’s governorship in 2026 due to term limits and will almost certainly run for president in 2028. If Harris had won, Democratic Party pressure would have forced him to wait until 2032.
Two days after the election, Newsom called for a special legislative session in early December to strategize how to “Trump-proof” the state’s liberal programs. He boasted in a Zoom call with 50,000 supporters on November 8 that California filed more than 120 lawsuits against the federal government during Trump’s first term.
However, Newsom has taken a very different approach to local control within the state. Last year, his administration threatened to levy massive fines against the Temecula Valley Unified School District, whose elected board voted to reject an elementary-level social studies textbook featuring homosexual activist and alleged child sexual predator Harvey Milk. The school district was forced to back down and adopt the textbook.
In a frontal attack on parental rights, Newsom last July signed a first-in-the-nation law that prohibits school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of changes in their child’s gender identification or pronouns. The Chino Valley Unified School District, which had previously been sued by the state over its pro-parent policy, reacted to the new law by suing Newsom.
Hundreds of thousands of Californians have departed for other states in recent years, driven away by crime, high taxes, and Democratic wokeness. Many relocated to red states and contributed to Republican electoral successes last week, though the GOP would have performed even better in California if not for out-migration by conservatives.
“This is the final straw,” billionaire businessman Elon Musk wrote on X the day after Newsom approved the transgender schoolchild secrecy measure, announcing he would move the headquarters of his X and SpaceX companies from California to Texas. Musk said he had previously warned Newsom “that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”
Musk went on to play a major role in the reelection of Donald Trump, who should consider sending Gavin Newsom a thank-you note.
Robert Jenkins is a pseudonym for a Catholic writer living in Sacramento, California.