Serial candidate, Newsom protégé, and resume fabulist Jessica Morse is another poster child for how California politicians fail up. In 2018, when she ran against longtime Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA 04), she was seen as a carpetbagger and someone who deceptively padded her resume. So essentially, Jessica Morse is the Democrat version of sitting Congressman George Santos (R-NY).
Even the homegrown team of the Sacramento Bee debunked Morse’s resume:
That gap in formal employment became a headache for Morse during her congressional run, as she struggled to come up with an acceptable professional description to appear on the ballot. California election law requires that a candidate’s ballot description represent the candidate’s “current principal professions, vocations, or occupations” or that of the previous year. After attempting to use the label “national security strategist,” Morse ended up running without a designation on the ballot in the primary, and as a “Candidate for Congress” in the general election.
That went over well. McClintock won by 8 percentage points and Morse continued to burnish her “credentials.”
After the November election, Morse volunteered to help survivors of the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. She also has continued to blast McClintock, a veteran Republican lawmaker, for denying humans’ role in climate change, linking the warming climate to the increasingly catastrophic fires California has endured in recent years. Morse, however, does not have any formal experience or training in forestry, conservation or environmental policy. Before running for Congress as a Democrat, she served in a variety of roles in the federal government, focused on international affairs. Her last job in public service was as a budget analyst for the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2012 to 2015. She then left Washington, D.C. to write a book and volunteer on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Due in large part to Morse’s spouting about climate change and her supposed volunteer work in Paradise, she landed a plum position in California Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration. In 2019, Morse took on the illustrious title of Deputy Secretary of Forest Resources Management at the California Natural Resources Agency. Mind you, Morse has absolutely no background in forestry or management, but that never seems to matter with California Democrats (or Democrats in general). Morse also raked in $165,000 annually.
According to the agency’s organizational chart, Morse will report to Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot. The post pays $165,000. That’s nearly as much as the $174,000 she would have made as a member of Congress. Morse made climate change and its impacts on California’s forests a key focus of her congressional campaign in a district that encompasses Sierra Nevada communities from Lake Tahoe south to Yosemite and Kings Canyon.
Here is the Democrat and Progressive problem. They don’t understand these districts and their needs. This is one of the many reasons why Paradise still has not recovered from the 2018 Wildfires. If the goal was to mitigate wildfires and manage the forests better, Morse has failed in this. Under Newsom’s two terms, forest management has been at an all-time low, and wildfires increased between 2019 and 2022 rather than decreased. Had it not been for the massive rains that occurred over the 2022-2023 California winter, the current year would also have been a hot mess.
In September, Morse stepped down from this very important cabinet position in order to make another run for public office. Morse thinks she will unseat Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA 03). It’s the usual California political shell game. Move random politicos and activists like checkers from appointment to appointment, and then prop them up to run against the Republicans they wish to get rid of. Rinse. Repeat.
In Kevin Kiley’s short stint in Congress, his record speaks for itself. As the powerful co-chair of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, Kiley has continued his fight for independent contractors and small business owners on a national level. Kiley championed Californians’ right to work in his opposition to AB5, and now he continues this impact nationwide with his campaign against the confirmation of Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su to Secretary of Labor and his work to see the PRO Act disposed. Kiley knows how to address the big picture while recognizing the details and nuances of his local district. Kiley has also done yeoman’s work in pointing out Newsom’s failures in California, while subsequently poking holes in Newsom’s shadow campaign for president. Kiley is a formidable representative and not to be taken lightly, which is why they are throwing everything at the wall to see him gone. To paraphrase a quote from the movie Jaws, they’re “gonna need a bigger boat.”
Morse’s announcement came with big fanfare. You can tell they spent lots of money on this campaign video.
Democrat Jessica Morse announced her candidacy to represent California Congressional District 3 in the U.S. House of Representatives.
District 3 is currently represented by freshman Republican Kevin Kiley.
Morse has worked in a number of wildfire prevention positions including Deputy Secretary for Forest and Wildland Resilience at the California Natural Resources Agency and last year was appointed to the U.S. Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission.
“For the last four years, I have worked on the frontline of California’s wildfire crisis, helping build a wildfire resilience program to protect communities,” said Morse. “But, given the scale of federal land in this district, we won’t make progress without increasing and expediting federal resources.”
Kiley can destroy Morse on that point alone. A Capitol Public Radio Investigation exposed just how fragile wildfire resilience turned out to be. Less fragile, and more like barely existent.
The Capitol Public Radio investigation “found Newsom overstated, by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities. Newsom has claimed that 35 ‘priority projects’ carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres. But the state’s own data show the actual number is 11,399.
“Overall, California’s response has faltered under Newsom,” the report continued. “After an initial jump during his first year in office, data…show CalFire’s fuel reduction output dropped by half in 2020, to levels below Gov. Jerry Brown’s final year in office. At the same time, Newsom slashed roughly $150 million from CalFire’s wildfire prevention budget.”
If you are going to so brazenly use this experience as your calling card, it would be wise to have had some measurable success in this area. Clearly, Newsom and Nancy Pelosi just needed someone who could look presentable, pretend at non-partisan moderation, and tell lies. Par for the course with the California Democrat apparatus, and sadly it works. See, Congressman, Schiff, Adam.
But with the Israel-Hamas conflict boiling over, and the hateful speech and rhetoric from pro-Palestinian allies against Jews, it appears that a piece of Morse’s past that can actually be verified has been exposed. On a 2016 radio program, Morse made a statement where she appeared to praise Hezbollah and Hamas for “offering people security.” This is not a good look and does not speak well of Morse’s supposed work as a security strategist. On July 1, 2016, Morse sat in with Billy Fried of KXFM Radio, for “Laguna Talks With True Crime Novelist Jessica Morse.” So, after being a national security strategist, Morse became a true crime novelist?
You cannot make this stuff up.
Part of the transcript of that conversation:
BILLY FRIED: We demonize these groups , Hezbollah, we paint them one-dimensionally, but we forget that they’re very much populists in Lebanon in the sense that they do good things for the community. They build highways, they gain popularity, and so we see it one way, but it’s hard to convince a nation that they’re the bad guys.
JESSICA MORSE: No, absolutely. A lot of these groups that are used – have foreign aid tactics. They use microcredit, they offer people jobs, they offer people security. And so they come in as a stabilizing influence in these communities. And this is a model we’re seeing used over and over again. It’s just the concept that they have a microlending branch in Hezbollah, or Hamas, sorry, has that, is astounding to me.
If Morse still holds these views, she must be none too happy that the newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said his first act as Speaker will be putting forth a resolution of support to Israel and condemnation of Hamas for their role in starting the current war in the Middle East. Morse already expressed her displeasure of Kiley’s vote to ensure Johnson’s victory.
Kevin Kiley, you just voted for Rep Mike Johnson to be the speaker of the house and second in line for the presidency. Does that mean you support:
— Jessica Morse (@Morse4America) October 25, 2023
– National abortion ban
– Climate denialism
– Denying the results of the 2020 election
– Anti LGBTQ rights? https://t.co/frT2Y1QQmw
This same form of an X post about House Speaker Johnson came from her former boss himself, Governor Gavin Newsom. These people are in lockstep with their fixations.
Here's the new Speaker of the House arguing that if women were forced to give birth there would be more “able-bodied workers" and the @GOP wouldn't cut Social Security.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 25, 2023
Mike Johnson wants to criminalize abortions with prison sentences. pic.twitter.com/N5EFggVgBZ
It is becoming pretty clear, should Morse succeed in gaining the congressional seat, whose parrot she would be. America does not need more California Democrats failing up or any more pro-Hamas, apologists in Congress.
