Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attacks on Republican states for their murder rates ignore a wealth of data on how violent crime plagues left-leaning parts of the country.
Newsom boasted in X posts throughout June that Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri had higher murder rates than California after Republican lawmakers from those states criticized him over the anti-deportation riots that rocked Los Angeles. However, statistics show California ranks above most states in overall violent crime, one of several statistics that do not fit Newsom’s narrative of conservatives failing to crack down on criminals.
The governor’s argument “lacks context and paints an inaccurate picture of crime in California,” Steve Smith, a crime expert for the Pacific Research Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Most states have lower overall felony crime rates than California,” Smith said. A study by Paper Prisons Initiative in 2020 put California’s felony rate among the top 15 in the country.
Your state’s homicide rate is 117% higher than California’s. https://t.co/3cJB702klb
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 16, 2025
If you want to discuss violence, let’s start with your state’s murder rate — which is 40% higher than California’s. https://t.co/JIoseRPxkV
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 10, 2025
Republicans’ comments toward Newsom came in response to riots in Los Angeles against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that led to days of alleged vandalism, assaults on law enforcement, cars being set on fire and other chaos. The violent anti-ICE uprising quickly spread to other states in mostly Democrat-led cities after the Los Angeles riots began June 6.
Even on violent crime specifically, Newsom’s claims were questioned. The left-leaning Politifact acknowledged that California’s overall violent crime rate ranked sixth in the country in 2023, higher than that of Oklahoma and Alabama, according to FBI data.
“The Governor’s point is simple: Republican leaders talk tough on serious crime, but the facts tell a different story. You’re more likely to be murdered, sexually assaulted, or shot in a red state than in California,” a Newsom spokesperson told the DCNF. “Since taking office, Governor Newsom has invested over $1.1 billion to improve public safety, fund the police, and crack down on organized crime. That’s why California is seeing results — and the Governor is committed to building on that progress.”
Smith noted another inconvenient fact for California stemming from Proposition 47, a measure passed in 2014 that reduced penalties for crimes such as shoplifting and grand theft.
“The theft undercount in California was huge due to the fact that crime victims stopped reporting due to Prop 47,” Smith told the DCNF. A bipartisan state commission found in July 2024 that theft reporting decreased by more than 7% from 2010 to 2022 while many violent crimes were reported to be spiking. Voters overturned most of Proposition 47 in November.
Newsom also highlighted Republican states’ murder rates in 2022, suggesting Democrats should use the data to push back on accusations that their party is soft on crime. Experts previously told the DCNF that Newsom’s fixation on statewide statistics ignores the fact that liberal cities are often catalysts for violent crime around the country.
Nine of the ten cities with the highest murder rates in 2024 all had mayors who were Democrats or left-leaning nonpartisan candidates, according to data from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Two cities were in California, the only state to have more than one city on the top ten list.
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