Newsom ignoring California crises to promote himself in pro-abortion campaign, GOP lawmakers say

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Republican lawmakers torched Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom for his national pro-abortion campaign on Monday while California faces several crises they say demand his attention.

"It's certainly frustrating that Gov. Newsom is focusing all his attention on other states besides California," Assemblyman Vince Fong, vice chair of the state's budget committee, told Fox News Digital. "California is in crisis."

Fong, who has been sounding the alarm on the state's $73 billion budget deficit for years, said the legislature and Newsom refuse to "address the structural problems of our deficits," citing "overspending" and a swath of small businesses fleeing the state.

"Then you add in our insurance crisis in California, we have an affordability crisis, Californians are leaving our state because they can't afford to live and work in California, and we have crime on the rise, we have wildfire risks, we have the need to invest in more infrastructure, we have a supply chain crisis," Fong said. "I mean, the list goes on and on. And I wish that he would spend the same amount of attention to show us as much urgency for those crises that's facing Californians."

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Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference on Oct. 6, 2022, in San Francisco. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Newsom launched a new ad in Alabama on Monday targeting Republican lawmakers in the state who are fighting against a bill that would allow women to travel out of state to seek abortions. The ad, which shows a police officer pulling over a woman and handing her a pregnancy test, states, "Trump Republicans want to criminalize young Alabama women who travel for reproductive care."

Over the weekend, Newsom also announced lawmakers would introduce legislation that would allow Arizona abortionists to travel to California to conduct abortions for Arizonans. Arizona upheld a near-total abortion ban in the Supreme Court earlier this month. 

"If the spotlight isn't on this governor, he'll do everything he possibly can to ensure that it is," California Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle told Fox News Digital on Monday. "This latest media blitz is another example of ego getting in the way of good leadership and good governance."

"Critical issues that truly matter to Californians are not taken seriously – such as crime, skyrocketing electricity rates, cost of living, homelessness and education," Dahle said. "And if he does place them on his radar, Gov. Newsom’s idea of a solution is to throw money at the problem."

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Gov. Gavin Newsom discussed cleaning up San Francisco's streets in advance of a summit this week. (Getty Images/Fox News Digital)

The California state auditor found that several agencies spent $24 billion in state funding over the past five years administering at least 30 programs dedicated to tackling the homelessness crisis, but failed to accurately track how the money was spent or whether it was successful. The report, released this month, said the state also failed to collect and evaluate outcome data for these programs due to the lack of a consistent method.

The audit's findings "highlight the significant progress made in recent years to address homelessness at the state level, including the completion of a statewide assessment of homelessness programs," a senior spokesperson for the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (CICH), which coordinates homeless programs across the state, told Fox News Digital, noting that the responsibility for collecting the data falls on local governments.

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Homeless encampments line the streets of Oakland, California, on March 15, 2024. (DWS for Fox News Digital)

California was one of several blue states that expanded abortion access following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in summer 2022. In an interview with MSNBC host Jen Psaki on Sunday, Newsom cited efforts in Tennessee, Idaho and Oklahoma to restrict abortion as attacks "happening in real time," and stated the "response must be in real time to be more assertive and proactive."

"Not enough attention has been placed on the fact that we're not just criminalizing women's access to reproductive care in certain states, now we're criminalizing their travel," Newsom said.