Independent activist Michael Shellenberger, known for backing nuclear power and policies to fight homelessness, announced Thursday that he intends to challenge incumbent Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is running for re-election this year.
The Sacramento Bee reported:
Michael Shellenberger announced his bid to run as a no-party-preference candidate on Fox40 Thursday, joining a small field that so far includes the incumbent Democrat and Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle.
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“I’m running because I’m absolutely heartbroken by the humanitarian homeless disaster occurring on our streets,” Shellenberger told KTXL-TV. “I’m also really angry that the politicians won’t do what everybody knows must be done to deal with that problem. I think the third reason is I’m really inspired by the potential to create a statewide psychiatric and addiction care system to finally solve this problem after 30 years.”
The Berkeley resident has written several books on the environment and on his website he notes others have described him as an “environmental guru” and “high priest” of the environmental humanist movement. Most recently, he published “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.” In 2020, he published “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.”
Shellenberger recently inspired San Francisco to take crime in the Tenderloin district more seriously — but was disappointed when the city opted to provide drug addicts with an open space in which they could abuse drugs under supervision, rather than taking them off the streets.
He has warned that California is hampering its future economic growth, as well as its ability to deal with climate change, by shuttering nuclear power plants and moving too quickly to green energy sources that are too expensive and cannot deliver.
Other former opponents of Newsom, such as Larry Elder, who led Republican efforts in last year’s recall election; and former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who announced Thursday he would not challenge Newsom; have opted out of the race.
Newsom looked vulnerable as late as August 2021, but rallied to win the recall in September by the same margin by which he won his original race for governor in 2018, drawing on the state’s lopsided Democratic Party voter registration to prevail.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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