Imagine fleeing a state based on its high crime, high taxes, wretched infrastructure, wokester failing schools, and general unliveability -- and then seeing its governor follow you to your new state, and wherever else you go.

That brings us to Gavin Newsom, the swell-headed governor of California, who's been making an ass of himself lately. It's like he's obsessed with the people who want nothing to do with him.

Start with his latest stunt:

SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 22 (Reuters) - California Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a law that would allow private citizens to sue people who sell, manufacture or distribute assault weapons and guns made at home to avoid tracing.

The law is a swipe at a Texas law that allows individuals to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an illegal abortion in the state.

Newsom, a Democrat who has been mentioned as a possible presidential contender, signed the legislation on the same day he released an ad in Texas criticizing the state's reproductive rights policies.

Hear that? He's running ads in Texas, criticizing the citizens' elected state legislature, as if people who fled that state want to hear another word from him, and grosser still, is mocking the Texas law with a law of his own for California around the issue of gun control. He can't seem to write laws of his own, so he 'borrows' from others. Seems that California's Brokeback Mountain Cowboy just can't quit Texas.

This is far from his only effort to make a jackass of himself to the rest of the country. His earlier target for these kinds of lousy tactics had been Florida. There, he ran ads criticizing Florida's law against throwing sex education of any kind at children under the age of eight, who had become targets of groomers. He made common cause with Disney, a California wokester company that had a major operation in Orlando, calling on states to end that particular law, which was largely supported by voters. After that, he urged companies to come back to the California they had fled, in order to live their "values." Apparently, no one took him up on it.

Then we move on to Montana, a state that California's legislators had banned official travel to, owing to their own objections to the state's transgender youth laws, which was a law Newsom signed off on. Newsom was part of an attempt to prevent travel dollars from coming into Montana in a nasty boycott bid against the state's internal affairs. Instead of running ads, though, he went and vacationed there himself, despite the ban, claiming that he was spending his own money. His state security detail might not have come under that classification, though -- and it was undoubtedly big, meaning that if they went to Montana with the guards, that would be a blatant violation of the law meant for the little people, as well as some flamin' hot hypocrisy about the supposed undesirability of Montana. Recall that Newsom's closest political ally, Kamala Harris, when she was a California state official, had a great big security detail, too, illegally copped from the Los Angeles Police Department for $50,000, so she could go to parties. You can bet that Newsom operates about the same way, given the pair's closeness, and given Newsom's history of ignoring prohibitions on various things. He's not known as Gov. French Laundry for nothing. 

It all goes to show that Newsom is bitter about America's successful red states that thousands of Californians are fleeing, and can't get them out of his head. He obsesses. He runs ads. Other governors run ads in different states about coming to visit their state on vacation or invest in the state because of its attractive investment incentives. Newsom just runs ads telling other states what to do. We all know of laws we don't approve of in many states, but only Newsom runs obnoxious ads against them. We don't see anyone on our side running ads in California against the policies of California. We conservatives from non-California states are decent, We know that what the California state legislature enacts is presumably what the California citizens who elected them want and not our circus, not our monkey. Newsom is different. 

Newsom violates the basic premise of federalism and states' rights by horning in on other states' affairs, presumably to end state choices, and ultimately make all states exactly like California under a centralized model, under his "leadership." 

He is known for his presidential ambitions, and that might be exactly what he has in mind. On the one hand, he is obviously trying to rally his leftist base with these ads and stupid stunts as he prepares for his expected bid to challenge Joe Biden for the presidency in 2024. There's nothing like constantly keeping one's name in the news, which is what he is doing with this political towel-snapping. His presidential ambitions, meanwhile, were obvious enough when Newsom made an ass of himself yet again, this time not to the red states, but to Joe Biden's White House, having recently visited the place when Joe was out of town (which is not hard to do), presumably to appear presidential, and as wags stated, "measure the drapes." 

What's contemptible is that he's such a failure as governor and none of his ads are going to change anyone's minds. He's a loser, he escaped a recall last year, and thinks that's a sign of political health. So now he is taking his show on the road, jealously shilling for his loser causes, reminding ex-pats why they fled California and making everyone else sick of him. Tricks like keeping one's name in the news only work if one has either no record, or else a good record. Newsom has neither.

Photo illustration by Monica Showalter, with use of screen shots from two YouTube videos.