Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) focus on crime is purely political, which is made even more clear by his efforts to push Proposition 47 repeal off the ballot.

California Democrats have been trying to bribe retailers with specialized protections in order to get them to pull their support from repealing Prop 47. Prop 47 lessened criminal sentences for repeat criminals, helping lead to California’s organized retail theft crisis, among other problems.

But local Sacramento news outlet KCRA 3 has “obtained and verified the authenticity” of leaked emails between one of the leaders of the Prop 47 repeal efforts and Newsom’s chief of staff, Dana Williamson. In the email from Saturday, Williamson wrote “As far as an initiative, we are open to something in 2026 as well as providing all of the necessary bells and whistles to make sure the deal is rock solid.”

In other words, Newsom and his team are open to Prop 47 repeal, or at least reform, but only if Californians are forced to deal with the disastrous effects of the law for another two years. Conveniently for Newsom, this would also mean he could put off dealing with crime until his final year in office, making him a lame-duck governor trying to fight the pro-criminal California legislature on his way out the door.

KCRA 3 also spoke to a professor at Loyola Law School who theorized that Newsom could also be pushing to get Prop 47 repeal off the ballot this year because it could hurt Democrats in congressional races. As the theory goes, a tough-on-crime ballot proposition could turn out more conservative voters with more enthusiasm, which would hurt House Democrats in a number of competitive races throughout the state.

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So Newsom not only wants to put off addressing crime until his last year in office in the ultimate act of procrastination, but he also wants to do it because having a handful more Democratic politicians in the House of Representatives is a higher priority for him than the safety of residents of the state he governs.

Crime is all a game for Newsom and his fellow California Democrats. He and they do not want to actually combat crime and lock up career criminals; they simply want to pretend that they care to get political heat off of them as much as possible. That kind of attitude perfectly explains why California is in the state of decay it currently sits, and there is no way Newsom or California Democrats can reverse that decay when their partisan politics are the only thing on their minds.