Newsom slammed for ‘hypocritical’ resistance to California cities rejecting his policies

A California lawmaker attacked Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA)  for pursuing what he described as “hypocritical” plans to fight the incoming Trump administration. 

Republican state Assemblyman Bill Essayli is far from offering grateful platitudes to the Democratic governor ahead of Thanksgiving. Speaking about Newsom’s recently announced plans to “Trump proof” California and prevent a GOP agenda from touching the Golden State, Essayli said the governor’s move rang insincerely. 

“It’s frankly hypocritical that Newsom wants to say: ‘As a state, we want to exempt ourselves from Trump’s policies,’ but Newsom would never tolerate the same from local jurisdictions exempting themselves from his policies,” the lawmaker told Fox News Digital. 

Essayli represents California’s 63rd District in Riverside County, one of California’s most populous counties, which is also a majority Hispanic. Essayli won his first election in 2022 with a victory that flipped the district red. 

While Newsom has experienced a decline in popularity, Republicans have seen further gains in the southern California enclave since Essayli rose to power. President-elect Donald Trump made significant inroads in Riverside this election cycle, outperforming his 2020 showing by more than 4 percentage points. Trump’s gains in Riverside echo inroads he made in multiple other majority-Latino districts across California.

Essayli earlier this week added that Republican state assembly candidate Leticia Castillo’s win this election cycle represented “the first time in 30 years, Republicans have defeated two democrats in the state assembly in a presidential election.”

“It’s no coincidence that both these seats are from Riverside County,” Essayli said in a post to X before noting: “This is a testament to the hard work of our candidates and our appeal to Latino voters.”

However, Essayli pointed to a string of state lawsuits against neighboring Orange County, where Trump also made gains, to argue Newsom isn’t hearing the voices of right-leaning residents in the Golden State. 

In March of 2023, California sued Orange County’s Huntington Beach after the city argued that laws requiring cities to fulfill state quotas on building more housing were unconstitutional.

The state garnered a legal victory over the city of Huntington Beach last month, with Newsom celebrating that “the federal court of appeals just shut down Huntington Beach’s attempt to evade compliance.” 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is a Newsom appointee, also fought Huntington Beach after the city’s residents approved a measure requiring voters to provide proof of identification.

After the courts handed her city a win, Huntington Beach Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, a Trump supporter, touted the news, saying “the rights of our residents from attacks by Governor Newsom and the State” had been defended.

However, Bonta lamented the legal defeat in a press release, saying, “We disagree with the court’s decision.”

Speaking about the lawsuits, Essayli concluded that state Democrats “don’t tolerate any dissent to any of their policies at all.”

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His home district of Riverside, as well as Huntington Beach, aren’t the only areas in California that have drifted toward the Right. The Golden State saw an overall shift to Republicans by roughly 5 percentage points during the 2024 presidential election, pushing some political experts to question the wisdom of Newsom’s subsequent move to put Trump on legal notice. 

“Is firing up the Trump resistance really the right move given what has just happened?” Sarah Anzia, a political scientist and public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said during an interview with the Los Angeles Times.  “I would think this would call for some introspection and consideration of why Trump has grown in popularity in a state like this.”