Gavin Newsom said Kevin McCarthy’s district is the ‘murder capital’ of California. That a fact?

Andrew Sheeler
·2 min read

California Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t pass up an opportunity to taunt House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at Tuesday’s Q&A hosted by Politico California.

Asked if he thought McCarthy will follow through on attempting to impeach President Joe Biden, Newsom responded by calling him “my Kevin” — the not-so-admiring nickname former President Donald Trump once used for the speaker.

“My Kevin will do what he needs to do — or what he’s told to do,” he said.

The governor then segued into discussing the murder rate in McCarthy’s congressional district, which includes most of Kern County but also parts of Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties.

“It’s an interesting fact, the murder capital of California is Kevin McCarthy’s district. It’s the murder capital of California consistently, year in, year out. I just think that’s interesting. Two-and-a-half times the murder rate of Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco,” Newsom said.

While we rate Newsom’s statement as true, it’s worth providing some context to the “murder capital” label.

A spokeswoman for Newsom’s office said that the governor’ source was the 2020 Congressional Health Dashboard, which has public health data broken out by congressional district.

It shows that McCarthy’s district, CA-20, had a firearm homicide rate of 9.4 per 100,000 people that year, while CA-11, Pelosi’s district, was at 3.4. California overall had 4.4 firearm homicides per 100,000.

The dashboard shows a cluster of higher rates in the Central Valley, with CA-22, represented by Republican Rep. David Valadao, sitting at 9.2 per 100,000, and CA-21, represented by Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, at 8.3.

According to the California Department of Justice, Merced County — which is not in McCarthy’s district — had the state’s highest homicide rate in 2022, 12.3 per 100,000.

In 2022, Kern County, which takes in McCarthy’s hometown of Bakersfield, had 11.1 homicides per 100,000. Fresno had 8.2, Kings had 10.6 and Tulare had 9.3.

That year, San Francisco had a homicide rate of 6.7.

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