🍊 🇺🇸 OC Conservative Brief - 3.10.23

Good morning and happy Friday!

This is your weekly edition of the OC Conservative Brief, your run down of Orange County's local politics from a conservative perspective. If you like what you read, please make sure to subscribe and forward to your friends.

This week, we have details on the new lawsuit duel between Huntington Beach and Sacramento over housing. We also have a rundown of Ron DeSantis' swing through Orange County and his blockbuster speech at the Reagan Library (DeSantis has three reasons why so many Californians are moving to Florida. Keep reading to find out...)

But first, even though it doesn't specifically have to do with Orange County, we need to talk about Gavin Newsom and his new war on Walgreens...

NEWSOM'S WAR ON WALGREENS... Governor Gavin Newsom made Walgreens the star of his latest liberal political show this week, announcing that the state would be terminating all business with the company, starting with a $54 million contract to provide prescriptions to prison inmates. This move came in response to the retail pharmacy's announcement that it would not sell the controversial abortion drug Mifepristone in nearly two dozen red states after they received legal warnings from their Attorneys General.

• "California won't be doing business with Walgreens or any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women's lives at risk," Newsom tweeted. "We're done."

Is Walgreens actually 'cowering to extremists?' Or is Newsom looking to create a new political spectacle to boost his liberal bonafides and presidential ambitions, as he has repeatedly done before?

The context matters, so let's look at the facts. Last month, Attorneys General from 20 Republican-led states, where abortion access either is or soon will be illegal or limited, sent a letter to Walgreens threatening legal action if it sold Mifepristone in those states.

As much as Newsom would like to conjure up an image of abortion pills being yanked off shelves, it's important to note that Walgreens does not currently distribute Mifepristone anywhere, including California, because the FDA currently only allows it to be distributed by clinics and doctors. However, the FDA announced in January that retail pharmacies like Walgreens could soon become certified to offer the pill in their stores.

Walgreens said that it plans to become certified to offer Mifepristone...which is what prompted the letter from the Attorneys General cautioning that doing so in their states would be against the law post-Roe v Wade.

So for Walgreens, it's not so much a question of their stance on abortion as it is of complying with the law in thousands of stores in 20 states. Even California's Attorney General Rob Bonta admitted the legal ground for Walgreens would be "uncertain." But Bonta said Walgreens should sell the drug anyway, get sued, and let a judge decide.

In other words, Newsom and Bonta are demanding Walgreens become an ideological warrior for abortion access, knowingly break the law, and wage a costly and high-profile war in court over abortion rights against 20 Republican states - a war there's little guarantee they would win, given the recent Supreme Court ruling. If they don't, they'll lose their business with California.

Given those two options, Walgreens is choosing to lose their business with California - at least for now.

In my opinion... Given the heated passion on this topic, Walgreens is caught between a rock (Newsom's crusade for abortion rights) and a hard place (the law in 20 other states). Looked at another way, Walgreens is actually expanding abortion access by participating in the FDA's program to distribute Mifepristone in their stores in the 30 other states where it's legal to do so. Unfortunately, Walgreens is too easy a target for Newsom and his presidential ambitions. He's taking the shot, turning California state contracts into collateral damage.

DESANTIS' OC SWING... In a prelude to a potential presidential run, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis swung through southern California this past weekend to make his case to some of the region's biggest Republican leaders, donors and activists (officially, it was just a stop on the tour for his new book 😉).

His itinerary included a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley (you can watch the full speech here), followed by a private fundraiser for the Orange County GOP in Anaheim that OC GOP Chairman Fred Whitaker said was the biggest fundraiser in the party's history.

Unfortunately, his OC fundraiser was closed door, but in his speech at the Reagan Library (which was likely similar), DeSantis used his 40-minute remarks to run through his conservative policy record and rattle off a list of impressive statistics about Florida. It wasn't wonky. He started off by noting that Florida has experienced a boom in migration from California (obviously topical to his audience), then spent the remainder of his speech focusing on three specific issues that explain why:

1. Florida's successful approach to the pandemic that kept the state open and free from the corruptive influence of public health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci who wanted to shut down businesses, close schools, and mandate masks and vaccines (California did the opposite).

2. Florida's fight to keep schools competitive and free from indoctrination from teachers unions and other left-wing groups (California does the opposite).

3. Florida's approach to law and order and commitment to public safety and funding police departments (California does the opposite).

DeSantis spent the final minutes criticizing the federal government, echoing the standard Republican line on issues like inflationary spending, pandemic restrictions, immigration, and energy.

• Notably, he never called out any of his rivals by name. He never mentioned Gavin Newsom (although he did joke in the beginning that the "governor" seems to be obsessed with talking about Florida), nor did he mention President Trump in any context.

The speech was a clear preview of what DeSantis will talk about on the campaign trail if he runs: his fight against the woke mob ("our state is where woke goes to die"), his record in Florida, and his big re-election win in 2022 ("boldness is something voters reward") which vindicated it all.

Some polling context... If DeSantis runs, he'd start with a bulkhead of support in the California primary. A recent poll found DeSantis beating Trump 37% to 29% among California Republicans, almost an exact reversal from another poll last summer.

• The poll credits the shift to two demographics: voters who describe themselves as just "somewhat conservative," who are now gravitating towards DeSantis, and Republican men, who seismically flipped from Trump to DeSantis over the past six months.

HUNTINGTON HOUSING DUEL... It's official. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) filed a lawsuit Thursday morning against the city of Huntington Beach after the city voted to block Sacramento's housing law on Tuesday. The city isn't taking it lying down and filed a lawsuit of their own against the state in federal court hours later.

As regular readers will recall, this legal fight has been building up for weeks. The state's lawsuit, which you can read here, accuses Huntington Beach of violating state housing law on two fronts:

1. The city voted last month to completely stop permitting for "accessory dwelling units" (i.e. a separate apartment on a lot with an existing home), and;

2. The city voted this week to block the "Builder's Remedy" provision of state law, which requires cities to let developers move ahead with housing projects on their own in the event a city doesn't approve a legally-compliant housing plan.

The crux of the issue is Sacramento's "Regional Housing Needs Allocation" to Huntington Beach, which mandates the city zone for over 13,000 new units by 2028. The state issues these mandates to hundreds of cities across the state as part of its plan to address the housing crisis and (they say) reduce homelessness, but Huntington Beach says Sacramento has no such authority and is trying to urbanize a distinctly suburban community.

• Huntington Beach isn't alone. Hundreds of cities have failed or refused to approve new Sacramento-compliant housing plans. But Huntington is taking things a step further by also blocking the "Builder's Remedy" provision, removing the teeth from the law and directly challenging the state's authority.

Huntington's lawsuit, for its part, argues that it's housing allocation is far larger than other cities of similar size, and that because it is a charter city, it isn't subject to Sacramento's housing laws.

The city's actions are clearly irking Gavin Newsom. He tweeted this week about Huntington's "selfish" actions, called out the city by name last month, and appeared alongside Bonta in the news conference announcing the lawsuit, suggesting that he intends to publicly go after the city to set an example for other cities that may be considering similar actions.

Stay tuned for updates on the dueling lawsuits...

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🇨🇳 OC Rep. Michelle Steel wrote a Fox News op-ed with House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik on their new bill that would block bad foreign actors, like the Chinese Communist Party's Confucius Institute, from infiltrating America's higher education institutions.

🪖 OC Sheriff Don Barnes is supporting a bill in Congress to authorize military force against drug cartels, writing a letter to the two Republican Congressmen sponsoring the bill that the quantity of fentanyl seized by his office had quadrupled from 2021 to 2022.

🏘️ Costa Mesa activists pushed the city council again this week to adopt a rent-control law similar to the unprecedented rent controls passed in Santa Ana in 2021, but so far there is no sign the council intends to move on it.

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Have a tip on a news item in Orange County conservatives should know about? Drop me a line at [email protected]