Campaign Commercial - Gavin Newsom's report card

Before I analyze this misleading campaign commercial, I want to quote the brilliant Robin Abcarian from a piece she wrote about Larry Elder for the Los Angeles Times.

"It’s too bad you can hardly believe anything he spouts. Elder has a special talent for dredging up headlines, news stories and studies he claims prove his talking points. Yet, more often than not, if you scratch the surface by, say, actually reading the stories and polls he cites, his disingenuous arguments crumble."

Now for the claims in his report card commercial:

"Education - 41st in the nation

In this measure I suspect that Elder's team is relying on a Cato Institute study. That study draws on data from another study done by the National Educational Association.

There is no denying that our state's educational system has issues. But which of them can be blamed solely or even mostly on Gavin Newsom? California has the 3rd highest ratio of students per teacher in public schools at 21.7 students per teacher. Only Utah (22.8) and Nevada (22.1) are worse. Also not the fault of Newsom, California's average teacher salaries are 2nd highest in the nation. New York is #1 in this category. The same is true when measuring average salaries of instructional staff overall.

Spending per student is another story. The NEA data shows that California ranks only 21st in public school revenue receipts per student. In public school expenditures per student, we rank 20th. Why? This can be traced back to actions by a different administration in Sacramento. It was the Gubinator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) who signed CA Assembly Bill 142 into law in 2010. That law eliminated the requirement that 34% of CA lottery revenues go directly in educational spending. As I wrote in early 2019, the 2017 percentage of lottery sales that went to educational funding had dropped from 34% to only 24.05%

Grading Gavin Newsom on the mess that is our state's education system and the funding mechanism that pays for it isn't just disingenuous. It is dishonest.

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"Gasoline prices - highest in the nation"

Why are California's gas prices highest in the nation? What did Gavin Newsom do to make this the case? When SB 1 passed in 2017, it made our state's gas taxes the highest in the nation. It raised gas taxes by 12 cents per gallon, making CA's state tax on gas a whopping 51.1 cents. That is part of the problem. So is the "summer fuel" system in place. So is supply and demand. But nothing that Gavin Newsom has done as governor can be specifically blamed for higher gas prices.

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Sales taxes - highest in the nation

This is accurate in terms of the state sales tax rate. But there is a lot more to this story but we need to add in another claim in the commercial before looking into this one.

Income taxes - highest in the nation

This is accurate in terms of the fact that CA has the highest individual tax rate in the nation, a whopping 12.3%. But that rate only applies to taxable income of more than $599,012 (single) and $1,198,025 (married filing jointly). Those rates do not include a 1% surtax applied to all incomes of more than $1 million.

A much better measure is the individual's overall tax burden by state as examined by Nerd Wallet. This is a measure of how much of a taxpayer's personal income goes to state and local taxes.

In terms of overall tax burden, California actually ranks 10th at 9.48%.

In terms of income tax burden, CA ranks 4th. In terms of sales tax burden (state and local), CA ranks a surprising 34th. And in terms of property tax burden, CA ranks 32nd.

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I give a grade of C- to Elder for his so-called report card.