Sanctuary ‘Poster Child’ Gavin Newsom: ‘Offensive’ to Politicize Kate Steinle Murder

California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday evening that it was “offensive” to politicize Kate Steinle’s murder even after Newsom said he was “proud” that he was the “poster child” for San Francisco’s sanctuary laws that were responsible for her murder.

At Tuesday evening’s gubernatorial debate in San Jose, Republican gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen said Steinle was murdered because of the sanctuary laws supported by “Gavin Newsom and California Democrats.” Allen said “one Kate Steinle is too many.”

Newsom responded by saying it was “offensive to politicize the tragic death of Kate Steine” and claimed her death was a “complicated issue” and, without irony, added that it was a “preventable tragedy.”

Steinle’s death may have been prevented had San Francisco not been a proud sanctuary city. The illegal immigrant who murdered Steinle told authorities that he came to San Francisco explicitly because it was a “sanctuary city.”

Allen said what is shameful is Steinle died after an illegal immigrant who was previously deported five times was not apprehended due to the sanctuary laws Newsom championed and added that “if it wasn’t for Gavin Newsom’s policies, [the Steinle family] would still be in tact today”

Earlier in the debate, Newsom, who has vowed to keep California a sanctuary state, bragged about San Francisco’s sanctuary laws for illegal immigrants.

“I was the poster child for Sanctuary Policy,” Newsom bragged, saying he was “very proud of the policy” because it is “fundamentally about public safety” and creating a level of trust with diverse communities.

As Breitbart’s Joel Pollak has noted, Steinle’s tragic death played a huge role in Trump’s rise. Trump was in seventh place in the RealClearPolitics average of the polls when Steinle was murdered in July of 2015. In the weeks after, Trump met with victims of illegal immigrant crime and made them and illegal immigration the centerpieces of his campaign. Three weeks after Steinle’s death, Trump rocketed from seventh to first in the RealClearPolitics average of the polls, and it was a lead that Trump would not relinquish.