California Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a Golden State floor assault in Florida on Monday, releasing an advert urging Sunshine State residents fed up with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to pack their flip-flops and head west.

Newsom purchased $105,000 value of spots that started airing on Fox Information in Florida, spurring chatter a couple of potential 2024 presidential run — particularly if Joe Biden opts to not search a second time period.

The adverts additionally cranked up the temperature on the nation’s fiercest gubernatorial rivalry.

Whereas the 30-second spot doesn’t point out DeSantis by identify, Newsom takes goal at a number of of the Florida conservative’s signature legislative accomplishments.

“It’s Independence Day,” Newsom tells the digital camera whereas clad in a white costume shirt and standing in a lushly landscaped yard. “So let’s speak about what’s happening in America.”

The advert then cuts to an ominously distorted picture of DeSantis — himself a possible 2024 White Home contender — and former President Donald Trump.

“Freedom is beneath assault in your state,” Newsom says. “Republican leaders — they’re banning books. Making it more durable to vote. Proscribing speech in lecture rooms. Even criminalizing girls and docs.”

The California governor was referring to Florida’s ban on essential race concept in lecture rooms, prohibition of instruction associated to sexual orientation and gender id for youths in kindergarten by way of the fourth grade and the state’s 15-week abortion ban.

Over a picture of a pristine California seashore, Newsom encourages Floridians to assist him fight the GOP — and even take into account shifting to his state.

“I urge all of you dwelling in Florida to affix the struggle,” Newsom states. “Or be a part of us in California the place we nonetheless consider in freedom.”

DeSantis’ aides wasted little time in returning hearth.

Florida Division of Well being spokesman Jeremy Redfern tweeted out a squalid quartet of images exhibiting varied California homeless encampments and a trash-strewn seashore.

“Shouldn’t you be frightened about California?” he wrote.

DeSantis’s reelection marketing campaign additionally mocked Newsom’s tried relocation drive.

“Gavin Newsom would possibly as nicely gentle a pile of money on hearth,” stated marketing campaign spokesman Dave Abrams in a press release. “Move the popcorn for his determined try and win again the California refugees who fled the hellhole he created in his state to come back to Florida.”

Newsom has intensified his assaults on DeSantis and the GOP in latest months, positioning himself as a tradition struggle discipline normal.

“I don’t search for inspiration from that individual governor,” Newsom stated of his Florida counterpart in March whereas belittling his outspoken method as theater.

DeSantis has been equally vigorous in denouncing Newsom and his stewardship of California.

“Sure, there’s quite a lot of Californians who like what we’re doing who’re coming, however even those that posture towards Florida sometimes discover their approach right here,” DeSantis stated on Fox Information in March.

Each males face gubernatorial re-election votes in November and have dismissed hypothesis about their presidential aspirations.

California’s Division of Finance reported in Might that the state’s inhabitants shrank by 117,552 in 2021 following a bigger decline by 182,083 in 2020. In the meantime, census knowledge exhibits that Florida’s inhabitants grew by 211,000 between July 2020 and July 2021.