Last week San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom launched a committee to explore a run for governor in 2010. Simultaneously, San Bernardino County officials announced that they may sue San Francisco because, under Newsom’s leadership, it has dumped illegal alien cocaine dealers from Honduras on group homes in Yucaipa. Worse still, eight of these illegal aliens recently walked away from the homes, with seven still at large.

Thus, events have conspired against Newsom to demonstrate statewide why he is unfit to be governor.

Newsom will likely vie with at least five others for the Democratic nomination. Setting up an exploratory committee now enables him to begin soliciting donations in $24,100 increments, stealing a march on the other potential candidates, including Attorney General Jerry Brown, Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and former state controller Steve Westly.

By opening his exploratory account on July 1, Newsom will not have to disclose how much money he has raised until 2009.

Strategically, this is smart. But it does not matter. His “testing the waters” campaign is already in disarray because he is being forced to defend what cannot be defended.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Newsom has been protecting from federal law enforcement juvenile offenders who are illegal aliens. Newsom was forced to admit last week that his city has spent $2.3 million to house 162 illegal alien youths over the past three years and that it has spent $38,995 to fly others to Honduras and Mexico to escape federal prosecution.

Newsom has run San Francisco as a “sanctuary city,” claiming that treatment and deportation of illegal aliens is a federal function, not a local one. Yet it is now apparent that in paying airfares for criminal illegal aliens to return to their home countries, Newsom has assumed deportation functions that reside exclusively with federal agencies. For that, he has been exposed as a hypocrite.

San Bernardino County officials are understandably angry with him.

“This lunacy needs to stop,” declared San Bernardino County Supervisor Gary Ovitt.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael A. Ramos complained that San Francisco is “dumping people here without telling us who, what, when and where.”

The extent of this lunacy is stunning. San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Captain Bart Gray told the Times that from Jan.1 to June 30 his station received 229 calls for service at the nine group homes in Yucaipa where Newsom has deposited his illegal aliens. Issues ranged from arson and escape to a carjacking and a kidnapping.

Last week, California Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, demanded that Newsom turn over all convicted illegal alien drug dealers to federal authorities rather than sending them “out to San Bernardino County, where they can escape and victimize the neighborhoods in my district.”

No stranger to controversy, the 40-year-old Newsom last year confessed to betraying his deputy chief of staff by having an affair with his wife. A week later, he admitted to being an alcoholic and sought “treatment.”

Disclosure of these character flaws alone are enough to turn off many Californians to Newsom as governor. But this latest revelation – that he was coddling illegal aliens while secreting others in Southern California communities – makes him a long shot for any statewide office.

It turns out that, unlike Las Vegas, what happens in San Francisco doesn’t stay there. It infects the rest of the state.