Crime, homelessness lead to Newsom’s approval – Orange County Register

Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration is cautiously lifting personal conduct restrictions that have been put in place to combat the omicron rise of COVID-19 – particularly the requirement to wear face masks in public places. .

It’s the latest wrinkle in two years of Newsom ordinances replacing tightening and then loosening behavioral controls in response to the pandemic and comes as the governor focuses on getting re-elected to a second term. in this year.

His re-election prospects are high, so far lacking a viable Republican opponent, the state’s very green political orientation and his easy defeat to last year’s recall attempt.

That said, Newsom’s overall popularity is less than impressive, according to two recent statewide polls, with crime and homelessness eroding its public position. he is the most.

The first poll, conducted by California’s Public Policy Institute in January, gave Newsom an approval rating of 56% for all adults, markedly below his peak of 56%. 65% in May 2020 but also markedly higher than his low of 44% in September 2019.

The second, conducted in February and announced Tuesday by the Institute for Government Studies at UC-Berkeley, puts Newsom’s approval rating among registered voters at 48 percent, just above slightly more than his lowest rating of 46% a year ago. Notably, 47% of voters disapproved of the way he had performed as governor.

“Contributing to voters’ more mixed assessment of the governor is raising concerns about how Newsom is handling some of the nastiest issues,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley-IGS poll. such as homelessness and crime, currently rife in the state. an analysis.

“For example, two out of three voters (66%) rate Newsom as doing a ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’ job at handling homelessness. This is up 12 percentage points from 2020, the last time the poll gave a rating. Additionally, 51% of voters also underestimated the Governor’s performance on crime and public safety issues, up 16 percentage points from 2020.”

The poll confirms that Californians are increasingly worried about the recent rise in crime, both violent and property crimes, and increasingly fed up with the inability of Newsom and other politicians to effectively deal with homelessness that has manifested itself in squalid prisons across the state.

Two recent crimes in the Sacramento area even point to two issues that may be on the minds of voters. A young woman has been kidnapped in suburban Sacramento and brutally murdered, allegedly by a homeless man living in the American River Parkway. A young mother was putting her two children in the car after they visited a park in East Sacramento when she was attacked and beaten, allegedly by a man who lived in a nearby homeless shelter .