Gavin Newsom bashes ‘belly-flopped’ Ron DeSantis

Gavin Newsom, Ron DeSantis. Image via AP.

The transcontinental feud continues between California’s Democratic Governor and his Republican counterpart in Florida.

“He’s belly-flopped. He’s belly-flopped,” Gov. Gavin Newsom told POLITICO regarding the Ron DeSantis presidential campaign.

“The best thing that could happen to DeSantis,” Newsom continued, “is tomorrow, he packs it in and keeps his money and fights another day.”

The latest barbs toward the Florida Governor come as the two are still formally considering a debate later this year, though Newsom and DeSantis can’t agree on logistics.

Whether the debate happens or not, Newsom continues to go on the attack against the Florida Republican, whom he called “functionally authoritarian” during an interview Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

Meanwhile, DeSantis is not gaining ground among Golden State Republicans, despite the well-publicized back-and-forth with the Democratic Governor.

In a survey released by Berkeley’s Institute of Government Studies, DeSantis trails Donald Trump, 55% to 16%. California’s delegate apportionment rules grant all of the state’s 169 delegates to a candidate above 50%. That means if Trump holds this level of support next year, the former President will take all the delegates unless changes are made at the GOP Convention, which is at the end of the month.

DeSantis’s gripes about the Golden State have been a recurring theme of his campaign up until now, including cautionary tales about San Francisco.

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t affect people’s lives. I was just in San Francisco. I saw — in 20 minutes on the ground — people defecating on the sidewalk. I saw people using fentanyl. I saw people smoking crack right there in the open, right there on the street. It was a civilization in decay,” the Governor said at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event in June.

Earlier this year, DeSantis offered a provocation to the Golden State when he sent a flight full of undocumented immigrants from Texas to California, which he bragged about during an event in neighboring Arizona.

“These sanctuary jurisdictions are part of the reason we have this problem because they have endorsed and agitated for these types of open border policies,” DeSantis said in June.

The Governor has also attacked California law mandating humane treatment for pregnant pigs (something Florida has in its Constitution). While at a Never Back Down bus tour stop in Atlantic, Iowa, he said his presidential administration would not “let California regulate how farmers in Iowa conduct their business on things like, you know, these pork producers have to follow California law to do this stuff.”

Meanwhile, though DeSantis is actively campaigning, Newsom is seen as a better bet to be the next President.

According to the aggregators at Election Betting Odds, Newsom has a 6.5% chance of winning, nearly 2 percentage points more than the active candidate from the Sunshine State.