He had a well-paying job as a child support officer for the city of San Francisco. Things took a turn for the father of two in 2015 when he needed foot surgery and was prescribed a 30-day supply of opioids.

“I started going out on the street to buy more because I couldn’t get anything from my doctor and I became completely addicted,” he told Washington Examiner. “At the height of my addiction, I was taking 560 milligrams of oxycodone every day.”

Wolf said the dike broke when his wife found out their house was in foreclosure because he stopped paying the mortgage to buy drugs.

“I quit my job so I was unemployed and she cut me off and when that happened I was in retirement and the only way I had was to go buy heroin on the street,” he said .

His wife kicked him out of the house and got a restraining order.

Wolf’s home became the Tenderloin, and he became a mule for drug dealers. He was arrested. many. But in California that meant just a slap on the wrist. People arrested on low-level drug charges were back on the streets, sometimes within an hour.

“I was arrested six times in a period of three months and finally after the sixth arrest they kept me in custody for three months,” he said.

He cleaned up in prison and went to a six-month residential treatment program at the Salvation Army.

“I found recovery and have been clean and sober for 6 1/2 years,” he said. “And I came back with my wife and children.”

These days, Wolf is trying to help those with addictions off the streets and told them Washington Examiner that it starts with a tough approach to crime and drugs that the state has lacked Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA).

Proposition 47: Complete Catastrophe

California suffered for a decade after the passage Proposition 47a referendum that critics say gave shoplifters and drug addicts a green light to commit crimes and steal merchandise as long as what they took was worth less than $950. This decision, along with selective enforcement that focused on more serious crimes, led to chaos.

Proposition 47 was widely seen as a disaster. It was endorsed by the state Democratic Party, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and passed by a wide margin in 2014.

By 2021, San Francisco Mayor London Breedwhich was just voted out of officedeclared a state of emergency in Muschi. Last year surpassed 2020 as the deadliest on record for overdose deaths in San Francisco, and 2024 is shaping up to be just as bad.

Voters rejected this year and passed Proposition 36which amended Proposition 47.

One person who tried to stop these changes was Newsom, who argued that a tougher approach to crime would overcrowd state prisons at taxpayer expense.

“And I don’t think it’s an improvement in public safety,” Newsom argued during a stop in Oakland.

Most Californians disagreed.

Trump’s victory brings Newsom’s political aspirations to life

Newsom has hit a sour note with voters lately.

A Public Policy Institute of California The June poll found that 62 percent of Californians think the state is headed in the wrong direction, and just 44 percent approve of Newsom’s performance. A summary of 30 POLLS FROM Hill found that number even lower, with a 27% favorability rating and a 49.2% disfavorability rating.

But with President-elect Donald Trump’s comeback win this week, Newsom quickly seized an opportunity to get a jump on his 2028 competition.

“Newsom will lead the resistance government for the next two years as governor, and then after that he’s a very prominent and nationally recognized party leader,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at the University of Southern California , Pepperdine. University and University of California, Berkeley. “There will be dozens of other plausible Democrats considering the 2028 race, but none of them are starting with the advantages that Newsom has built for himself.”

Newsom on Thursday announced a special session to the California legislature to “Trump protect” the state and make sure the attorney general’s office and other state agencies have the funding they need.

“We will not sit idle,” the governor said. “California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond.”

Laura Martinez, a ride-share driver in San Francisco, said Washington Examiner that life under the Newsom regime was not all it was cracked up to be.

Martinez and her boyfriend moved to California from North Carolina because she thought their quality of life would improve and she wanted to fulfill her childhood dream of opening a cupcake shop. He got a loan, but it wasn’t as big as he needed, and when he looked at the insurance, it came up empty.

“If I ever open a business, it won’t be here,” she said. “And we are too poor to return.”

Across the bay, Derreck Johnson, owner of Home of Chicken and Waffles in Oakland, said Washington Examiner that he had to move locations because crime had gotten worse. Car break-ins occurred regularly and customers were frequently robbed. And because there were almost no consequences attached, it happened again and again.

“I feel like the city owes small businesses like me some kind of payback,” he said. “You can’t call the police. It’s a waste of time. You can’t file a police report because it’s a waste of time. I guess some people do it for their insurance, but then it just makes your rates go up or you lose your insurance.”

Johnson said that while he loves his city, it’s hard to shake the perception that it’s dangerous when everyone is being robbed.

“For him it’s just politics”

Wolf told him Washington Examiner that Newsom has played politics with people’s lives, and that the destructive policies the governor has pushed to save his political skin have turned parts of California into an unrecognizable place.

“Look, I’m a Democrat, but Newsom shows his arrogance whenever he talks about (crime and drugs),” Wolf said. “For him it’s just politics. By the time he gets to the governorship, it’s all politics and optics. He has to make do with the progressive base of the Democratic Party, which currently has a supermajority of the electoral bloc in California, the state Senate, the state Assembly. They are the progressive majority Democrats, and obviously he has to settle for them. He believes in criminal justice reform, and so do I, but you have to look at it and say, “You had your chance. you were 10 years old.”

It’s not just drugs and crime that have voters upset. Homelessness has been Newsom’s signature issue since he was elected mayor of San Francisco in 2004. As governor, he pushed various schemes, such as placing the growing homeless population in taxpayer-funded hotels and buying brand new caravans.

According to the Hoover Institution, the state spent $24 billion on homelessness in 2019. The number of homeless people increased by 30,000 in that time to more than 181,000.

“Put another way, California has spent the equivalent of about $160,000 per person over the past five years,” said Lee Ohanian, senior deputy fellow. “Newsom vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have required his administration to conduct an annual review of homelessness spending. Without these changes, California will continue to spend enormous amounts on homelessness, while the number of homeless people remains very high.”

During the primary election, Newsom went all-in on Proposition 1, a $6.4 billion bond measure that addressed homelessness by restructuring the state’s mental health services. Newsom, by his own design, became the face of Proposition 1, starring in commercials to support it and even going on a statewide tour to promote it. His “Yes on 1” committee outspent the opposition by more than 13,000 to 1. The problem was that Proposition 1 barely passed by less than 30,000 votes in a state of 40 million.

“When you’re in a heavily blue state and you put an obligation on the ballot to fix issue No. 1 voter turnout and barely passing, I think it says more about (his) political strategy and less about the real issue,” Michael Trujillo, Los Angeles Democratic strategist said Political.

Legislative rejection

Signs of frustration with Newsom were on display during the closing hours of the 2024 legislative session. His last-minute demands to force gasoline refiners to hold higher reserves and provide “symbolic refunds” to electricity ratepayers were not met. they finished well in August. In fact, he was rejected by MPs in his own party, who were ticked off by his 11th hour owls.

Newsom ended up calling a special session, dragging lawmakers back to Sacramento. His power move also came at the expense of unions, which argued it would jeopardize worker safety and warned that if storage requirements were unsustainable for refiners, it would lead to massive shutdowns and job losses.

Newsom also rejected a bill that would have created the most comprehensive regulatory framework for artificial intelligence in the country. He described his decision as saying that while the bill was “well-intentioned,” it was a mistake because it would apply “strict standards” to core functions. Proponents have touted it as a game changer in improving AI safety.

Some of the measures Newsom endorsed included labor bills to protect the incomes of child influencers and the likeness of Hollywood stars, banning all plastic bags from retail stores, and legislation to name the Dungeness crab as the state’s official shellfish. He also approved a measure that would require health insurers to cover the costs of infertility treatment, including in vitro fertilization.

Newsom has just two years left before he’s out of office, and in that time he needs to change the feeling that his state isn’t sinking under his tutelage.

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On Sunday, he released a list of 73 things he wants to do, including preparing the state for bird flu outbreaks and building enough electric vehicle charging stations to support his goal of banning the sale of any new cars on gasoline until 2035.

“I guess we’re just along for the ride whether we like it or not,” Martinez said.