The choice of California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, to be the state’s new attorney general, once sponsored a bill to allow communists to serve in the state government.
Newsom chose Congressman Rob Bonta, a Democrat from Oakland, to serve as a Golden State police officer after Xavier Becerra joined President Biden’s government as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Newsom’s choice to replace Becerra has a controversial history in his tenure in the government.
In 2017, Bonta introduced legislation to lift the ban on Communist Party members serving in the state government. AB 22 passed through the State Chamber with strong bipartisan opposition.
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Republicans at the state assembly fought openly against the bill, saying the move was offensive to refugees from communist and veteran nations.
The measure was shelved by Bonta more than a week later. He apologized for the legislation, saying he had heard “compelling stories” from veterans and members of the Vietnamese-American community about how his project caused them “real suffering”.
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“Through my conversations with veterans and members of the Vietnamese-American community, I heard compelling stories of how AB 22 caused real distress and hurt for proud and honorable people,” said Bonta in 2017. “So, I’m sorry.”
Bonta said his project was to “clean up” the legal language that he said was in conflict with an individual’s constitutional right of freedom of association.
Bonta “is an activist,” Harmeet Dhillion, a Republican lawyer in California, told Fox News.
“The Left would call you progressive, but I don’t know how progressive it is to have Asian Americans being attacked, and not by Trump supporters, and you have an attorney general who is soft on crime along the lines of [San Francisco District Attorney] Chesa Boudin and [Los Angeles District Attorney] George Gascon, “added Dhillon.
“This is not good for law and order, but it is a great day for criminals.”
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Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News’s request for comment.
Newsom is facing a major statewide recall effort in California, which recently broke more than two million subscriptions.