Editor’s note: Chuck DeVore’s essay, “Gavin Newsom: Nepo Baby,” was published in Newsmax’s print-only magazine. Here are some excerpts.
California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, 57, is going to run for president.
Newsom’s unique attribute is his ability to lie. Not just lie, but lie earnestly. Newsom’s lies are so bold, they’re the political equivalent of a Hollywood illusion—a synthetic truth.
Among many, there are two examples of Newsom’s aggressive prevarication and casual association with the truth.
In late November 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Newsom debated each other for 100 minutes. DeSantis aimed to promote his own bid for president while contrasting and comparing Florida’s success with California’s failure. Newsom, his own presidential ambitions dependent on whether Biden was really going to run again, leaned hard into the role of being the only high-profile Democrat on the left able to coherently string paragraphs together.
But DeSantis’s attacks on California’s failings or his insults of Newsom, left the Californian unfazed. It was as if Newsom viewed the encounter as would a lying, corrupt billionaire arguing with the pool boy—it didn’t matter if the pool boy was right; it wasn’t his place to point out the pool owner’s errors.
Nepo Baby
The question is, how did Newsom learn to lie this way? How did he gain this political superpower?
Newsom grew up surrounded by those who traded in lies but were too powerful to be held to account—or even care—after all, the bourgeois sensibilities of common folk matter not at all.
Today’s Democratic Party is overrun with nepotism babies (“nepo babies” for short) privileged offspring who ride family connections to fame and fortune while pretending it’s all merit. Zohran Mamdani and Nancy Pelosi are new and old examples who benefited from their wealthy and well-connected parents.
Democrats in the House and Senate are more than twice as likely as Republicans to have parents who also served in Congress—18% to 7%.
Follow the Money
When Newsom made his start in politics and was first required to file a financial disclosure report, he reported assets of at least $950,000—not bad for a 28-year-old son of a “single mother” as he likes to remind everyone. At $25 million today, that’s a 26-fold increase for an annualized rate of return of 11.8%—almost up there with cousin Pelosi’s stock picks.
During Newsom’s tenure in California’s governor’s office, he’s been the nation’s leading proponent of green energy and the need for the West to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions even as China, India, and a rising Africa more than erase any illusory gains. Concurrently, California has gone from having the nation’s eighth-highest electricity prices in 2005 to the second highest today, only behind Hawaii, with industrial rates about three times that of Texas.
This green Über alles, anti-human policy approach has a direct bearing on California’s high cost of living and the decades-long domestic outmigration to Texas, Florida, and other freedom-loving (and affordable) states.
