GOP candidates generally come to California for our money, not our votes. But it appears candidate Newt Gingrich came to Los Angeles on Monday for a little of both.
First, he followed the usual playbook of proving how conservative he is to more than 300 Tea Party activists in Pasadena by promising to drill oil in order to lower the price of gas. He said, "I want to campaign in California on jobs and $2 gasoline... versus food stamps and $4 gasoline," which, as the Pasadena Star News points out, is a reiteration of Gingrich's label on Obama as the "food stamp president."
He also took a shot at LAUSD, saying "As long as you have places like LA Unified where the teachers' union is more concerned about protecting bad teachers than they are about the students, you have a huge crisis," KTLA reports.
Gingrich took even stronger aim at the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for its recent ruling against a same-sex marriage ban in California, calling the court "consistently bigoted" and "anti-religious," the Los Angeles Times reports.
He also dismissed the National Review's recent editorial calling for him to drop out of the race and support rising candidate Rick Santorum. Newt called the article "silly," saying that the Review was wrong when it said that his campaign was over in June and that it is wrong now.
The candidate's second, very different, stop was a "Hispanic leadership event" at Cielito Lindo Restaurant in South El Monte. Gingrich is the only GOP candidate who supports a path to legal residency for some illegal immigrants, although only if they return to their home country or join the military. As KPCC points out, although Newt said in January that he'd like to win at least half of the Latino vote in 2012, polls currently show him only winning 22% of the Latino vote as compared to Obama's 70%. The GOP candidate discussed his immigration policy in detail with the OC Register, as seen in the video below.