Dear Gavin... You got to be real! Love, Cheryl
The Chronicle — It’s about time Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hometown daily newspaper started fact-checking his campaign statements.
His campaign speeches and pronouncements are so littered with exaggerations that it’s not very hard to separate reality from fantasy.
After Calbuzz and others called out the Chronicle for overlooking the obvious, the daily newspaper finally “got real” about Gavin’s extravagant claims.
Here’s a summary of their fact-checks on Gavin:
Newsom has won praise from President Obama for the plan, but the mayor rarely mentions that then-Supervisor Tom Ammiano was its key catalyst; the mayor originally opposed employer mandates that are a major component.”
On education:
The mayor has no official role in the public schools except to appoint people to vacant school board seats. While he has been more involved in schools than previous mayors, he can’t claim credit for rising test scores and other academic achievements.”
On the environment:
San Francisco’s green credentials are strong, and Newsom has earned plaudits for championing them. But the specifics of some of his claims are hard to verify from third-party sources.”
On taxes and budget:
The no-new-taxes claim is technically true – for now – but just about everybody in the city will be dipping into their pockets more to pay for city services.”
Here’s my personal shout out to Gavin Newsom — watch what you say because now even your own lazy hometown daily newspaper is starting to pay attention to your speechifying in Fresno, Santa Barbara, Sacramento, or wherever else you might be, when you’re not governing San Francisco.
Hey! Seriously guys? I think you’re going a bit easy on the Chronicle here. They quote Eric Jaye on 5 different lines and Newsom almost as much. It was a huge puff piece with about as much substantive fact checking as a Bush administration inquiry into torture at Guantanamo.
Well at least it’s a start for the Chronicle to at least acknowledge that many of Newsom’s claims are rubbish and unsubstantiated. But that doesn’t make up for years of simply ignoring Newsom’s lack of follow-through.