Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom showed some “love” to his home state before Thursday’s debate against Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the 56-year-old blasted ’90s hip-hop in his green room before the show, according to attendees who overheard.
Newsom’s team blared the legendary rapper Tupac Shakur’s “California Love” ahead of “The Great Red State vs. Blue State” debate with the Florida governor hosted by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, DeSantis campaign officials who were at the Alpharetta, Georgia, event told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The campaign officials, who said they “shared a green room wall,” said the pre-debate music coming from Newsom’s camp “sounded like a bad wedding reception DJ.”
“The Newsom team tried to pump up their candidate by playing loud rap music and it sounded like a club,” the DeSantis campaign officials told the DCNF.
The song, a Golden State party anthem, begins with “California knows how to party,” and includes lyrics like, “and pimps be on a mission for them greens. Lean mean money-making-machines servin’ fiends.”
DeSantis’ campaign officials drew a sharp contrast to Newsom’s pre-debate activities, telling the DCNF their team was “very even keeled and business-like.”
“A pastor came in to pray with the governor and his wife while rap music was coming through the wall. That’s when we knew for sure we had them,” the officials said.
The two governors debated over their respective states’ policies, including on the economy, crime and contentious social issues. Reports emerged Friday that Newsom’s wife stepped in to stop the debate from continuing past its allotted 90-minute duration, which aides for the DeSantis campaign confirmed but Newsom’s denied.
Newsom denied that California has a violent crime problem, despite Hannity presenting him with data that showed otherwise. California’s violent crime rate in 2022, which included offenses for homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, exceeded the national average and Florida’s, according to the data from the FBI.
“We’re near 50-year lows, down 55% violent crimes in the state of California from the 1990s,” said Newsom.
DeSantis pushed back, slamming Newsom for being a “slick politician” who tried to “spin” the data. The Florida governor also displayed a human feces map from San Francisco, the city of which Newsom used to be mayor.
“There’s a lot of plots on that, you may be asking, ‘What is that plotting?’ Well, this is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco, and you see how almost the whole thing is covered,” DeSantis said.
Newsom’s team did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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