There are plenty of reasons Caitlyn Jenner should not be California’s next governor
Caitlyn Jenner made it official: She’s running for governor of California.
As such, Jenner plans to be one of the candidates on the ballot to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, should the effort to recall him qualify for the ballot.
In the announcement of her candidacy, Jenner slammed Newsom for allegedly wreaking havoc on California during the COVID pandemic in which businesses and schools have been shuttered for most of the past year over public health concerns.
“This isn’t the California we know, this is Gavin Newsom’s California, where he orders us to stay home but goes out to dinner with his lobbyist friends,” Jenner said, referring to Newsom’s ill-conceived night out at an expensive Napa Valley restaurant after telling Californians for months to stay sheltered at home.
Newsom admitted that was a giant mistake, and he has a year’s worth of other questionable decisions that have fueled the recall effort.
But Jenner will face tough scrutiny of her own now as a candidate.
Jenner voting record
For starters, she has shown little interest in one of the most basic duties of democracy — voting.
Politico’s Carla Marinucci broke a story this past week about how Jenner sat out two-thirds of the elections she could have voted in since 2000.
When Newsom won the governor’s seat by a landslide in 2018, Jenner did not bother to vote. Nor did she take part in the 2003 recall election of then-Gov. Gray Davis and the man who replaced him, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Total it up, and Jenner voted just nine times out of 26 statewide elections held since 2000, Marinucci reported.
Jenner is a Republican, and she would join two other high-profile Republicans who attempted statewide office despite not voting much themselves — former eBay CEO Meg Whitman who ran for governor in 2010, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who ran for the U.S. Senate that year. Neither was successful.
Other issues
Then there is the question of whether Jenner is qualified to lead the state. She’s not held elected office nor managed a major business.
A former Olympic gold medal winner, Jenner is more famous for being a reality TV star and a transgender advocate.
As a television personality, she follows the path taken by Donald Trump en route to the presidency. That worked nationally for him. But he is anathema in blue-state California, and so any such similarity might prove a problem for Jenner.
She also praised then-candidate Trump as good for women and LGBT people. But the GOP has gone on the attack against the transgender community, and Newsom has strong credentials, having played a key role in legalizing marriage equality as San Francisco’s mayor.
California faces major problems. It still must prove it can truly reopen from the pandemic. A new drought is developing that will stress water systems as well as Central Valley agriculture, not to mention add to wildfire danger. The social divides between urban and rural, coast and inland, and those with stable housing vs. those challenged to find decent housing, are all real.
Then there is having the political skill and savvy to move the Legislature toward a governor’s agenda.
Republicans Kevin Faulconer, San Diego’s former mayor, businessman John Cox, and former Rep. Doug Ose have said they are running. They can argue they have much better experience in government and enterprise than Jenner.
The promise of democracy is that any citizen can run for office. But lacking any political experience, and with the record showing that she has barely even been interested in voting, it’s not clear why Jenner thinks she has what it takes to govern the nation’s most populous state during these challenging times.