Former SF Mayor, now California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom has been busy this month, what with hanging out with the French President, pulling his support from CA's high-speed rail project, and encouraging everybody to pin stuff to his Pinterest board. Now he might need to add "campaigning" to his jam packed schedule, as a high profile Republican has announced plans to run for Newsom's seat this June.

San Diego-based Ron Nehring, a Schwarzenegger appointee to the CA Board of Forestry and Fire Protection who has chaired both the San Diego County Republican Party and the statewide GOP, is ready to take over the job that Newsom famously said it’s time to “get rid of."

On his campaign site, Nehring, (age 43 to Newsom's 47, but age is just a number!) says that Newsom has made the Lt. Gov. position "a taxpayer funded gubernatorial exploratory committee," apparently forgetting that it was also a comfy place from which to pen Citizenville, Newsom's 2013 book on how "ordinary citizens can use new digital tools to dissolve political gridlock and transform American democracy." Sure!

It's hard to tell what Nehring's plans for California are as of yet. As KQED notes, Nehring's campaign statement says "reform" nine times, but doesn't offer much in the way of specifics.

The Chron reports that the incumbent's camp doesn't appear too worried about the competition, with a Newsom advisor saying "Ron Nehring has a curious resume for statewide office. He won zero statewide elections as Republican Chair while steering his party to the outer margins of irrelevancy with out-of-step positions on issues like marriage equality."

Nehring filed his intention to run in the June 3 election last week. An email sent to Nehring via his website asking if he thinks Sacramento is "I just, ugh, God," and/or a place he could bear to visit more than once a week had not been responded to at publication time.

[Ron Nehring]
[Chron]