On Friday Gavin Newsom texted his mentor, Willie Brown.
“I signed the bill, write the damn column!,’’ Newsom wrote to Brown in a text message that Brown shared with POLITICO.
With Labor Day approaching, Willie had a problem: he lost his job. As reported by Politico, “Willie Brown, the former San Francisco mayor and Assembly speaker who has written a popular San Francisco Chronicle column for more than a decade, was the latest ensnared by California’s new gig-economy law limiting freelancers” – that is, “until onetime protege Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill Friday.”
The paper further reports: “Earlier in the day, some of Brown’s powerful friends in politics contacted Newsom in an effort to get him to move quickly on the bill to get Brown’s Sunday column back in the paper as soon as possible.”
That’s right: Newsom created the “Willie Brown Exception” to AB 5, while leaving tens of thousands of Californians needlessly out of work on Labor Day.
But Willie still gave Newsom and the Legislature a piece of his mind for being puppets of special interests by passing this corrupt law in the first place.
“Those bastards,” he said. “If there was a place to picket organized labor, I’d do it today. If there was a place to picket a legislator, I’d do it.” As Assembly speaker, “I made sure that special interests, no matter who they were — labor or non labor — did not take advantage of the Legislature.”
I have personally given Gavin Newsom books full of heartbreaking testimonials from people who have lost their livelihood to this vicious law, which bans hundreds of professions and will shut down Uber and Lyft. His response was one of the most astonishing statements in California political history: “I’m not sure those jobs were killed.”
Last week, I tried again to fully repeal the law instead of creating narrow exceptions for the likes of Willie Brown. Not only did the Assembly refuse, but the law’s author picked up and threw off the desk a list I’d provided of nearly 10,000 Californians whose jobs have in fact been killed.
Earlier this year, that same author and the chair of the corrupt Labor Committee personally attacked me in the speeches on the Assembly Floor for trying to repeal the law. In my own speech, I said I would not respond in kind because they are personally irrelevant, simply doing whatever they’re told by special interest lobbyists.
So that’s where we stand on Labor Day: Businesses are forced closed. Classrooms are empty. AB 5 is still law. The Legislature is taking 4 Months paid recess. But Willie Brown has his column back.
TAKE ACTION: