Republican John Cox has focused on pocketbook issues that are narrow in scope but emotionally charged — repealing California’s increased gas tax, and problems at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

And that's supported by a look at the candidates' website. Take a look at a few of screenshots from the two candidates' campaigns:

So here we have Gavin Newsom bloviating about being the 'resistence,' running comical little movies depicting Donald Trump and making all kinds of statements about on broad national topics such as global warming, free education, free health care, immigration, defending 'reproductive rights', ending the war on drugs. and taking on the Trump administration, claiming California will be the global leader. It just sounds so grand.

Then we have John Cox talking about real problems that affect normal people, such as the long wait times and utter incompetence of the California DMV,  the detested gas tax which hasn't brought us any new highways, the high cost of California housing compared to other places, the fact that people are living out of their cars because they have been priced out the market, the lousy standard of living in San Francisco where the poop police walk around with cleanup shovels, and the other real stuff.

Newsom isn't talking about that at all. Like Don Quixote, he vows to lead the charge against Trump. Like that's a governor's job. Like California has no problems (it doesn't to him since his party created all of them). It all sounds so grand. Sounds like he wants to run against Trump in 2020 and the governor gig is just a stepping stone. Maybe he's trying to get back at his ex, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who's lately been an item with Trump's son.

Then there's Cox, businessman with real world experience and a dogged determination to get rid of the problems none of us can stand in this fair state, focused carefully on practical issues.

Who, seriously, is going to win? The LAT columnist made a damning observation about Newsom, and now it's out.

What Cox is doing is following the exact same political playbook that got Democrat Doug Jones elected in deep-red Alabama, and it's also a strategy we see around the country as most Democrats win victories. Most Dems are not far-left idiots like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won her primary against not a Republican, but a complacent Democrat dinosaur. The ones who are winning are like Jones, and Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, who beat a GOP candidate in an area won by Trump by 20 points, simply by being practical and locally minded, not national bloviators.

Cox is doing well in the polls these days, and seems to be getting closer and closer to the governorship. In a state with a massive voter registration advantage in favor of Democrats, that's something. This is one race well worth expecting surprises from.