In his State of the State address Tuesday night, Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted the state’s progress in recovering from the pandemic “hasn’t always felt fast enough.”
“Look, we’ve made mistakes – I’ve made mistakes. But we own them, we learn from them, and we never stop trying,” he said, in a subtle recognition of the growing recall movement.
Newsom told his critics “who are promoting partisan power grabs and outdated prejudices, and rejecting everything that makes California great” that he “will not be distracted from getting shots in arms and our economy booming again.”
The governor also saluted the work of agriculture and farmworkers for continuing to feed the nation during the crisis – a message that has become a staple of his press conferences.
The speech drew immediate criticism from Republican Senator Shannon Grove of Bakersfield over how the governor's ambitious environmental policies have had regulatory impacts on farmers.
“The governor failed to point out how his policies are taking nearly a million acres of the world’s richest farmland out of production, shuttering entire industries, and leaving workers without a way to put food on the table,” said Grove in a statement.
The fallowing would actually be due to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which the Legislature passed five years before Newsom took office.
Top photo: Newsom delivered his speech at Dodgers Stadium. The 54,000 empty seats symbolized the number of Californians who have died from the pandemic.
