When I lived in San Francisco during the turn of the century, I noticed a young, charismatic city council person (called “supervisor” in San Francisco) named Gavin Newsom and thought, “This is the kind of political animal that I can imagine navigating his way to the presidency someday.” (checks diary: I thought the same thing about Kamala, a local DA, in those days.)
He was chosen in 1997 by the mayor of San Francisco at the time, Willie Brown, who was never destined to become a national politician because he was too odd, to replace a city supervisor named Kevin Shelley, who moved on to the California State Assembly.
Brown and Newsom had a history. Newsom was a campaign volunteer during Brown’s election for mayor. Brown rewarded him with a seat on the city’s Parking and Traffic Commission in 1996, where he eventually became a commissioner.
As a city supervisor, Newsom represented the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, places like Pacific Heights, the Marina, Sea Cliff, and Laurel Heights. If you wanted to search for a Republican voter in San Francisco, these were the neighborhoods to begin and end your search.
Newsom has always had an instinct for politics.
When he ran for election to formally win the seat through voters, he paid $500 to appear on a local Republican Party endorsement slate that included George W. Bush for President.1
Immediately upon arrival to San Francisco politics, Newsom clasped hands with Republican power brokers like Gap founder Donald Fisher and John Bowes, who ran a multibillion-dollar toy company, Kransco, which made iconic toys like Frisbee, Hula Hoop, and Slip ‘n Slide. Unfortunately, Kransco was alleged to be making those toys in foreign sweatshops, along with almost every other big toy company on earth in those days.
He was also close friends with Gordon Getty, at the time one of the richest men in the world, whose family made their fortune pumping oil. Getty invested in several small companies with Newsom, but, unlike Newsom’s current nemesis, the casino bankrupter now occupying the Oval Office, his companies were successful, and he showed no predatory instincts. His companies remained small, but profitable, and that was about all there was to it.
As a city supervisor, Newsom billed himself as a “social liberal and a fiscal watchdog.”2
Thus began Newsom’s long journey through the gauntlet of progressive politics, a journey fraught with battles against progressive hardliners who were armed with litmus tests that Newsom seemed to shrug off with a charming smile and Brylcreemed hair.
Newsom has always ruffled the feathers of progressives and other denizens of the left, especially the hopelessly far left like me who’d like to see half the CEOs in America in ankle chains. I’m the kind of guy who, when I’m feeling especially surly about politicians, points out that Bernie Sanders was a successful mayor in Burlington, Vermont, because he kissed the rings of business leaders there to help build up the riverfront.3
I’d still rather have seen Bernie president than anyone else I’ve seen during the last 50 years or so. But he got hammered in the Southern primaries, and it was game over.
I learned a long time ago that my president will never take office. He or she is simply too far to the left of the average American voter, who is very centrist, even if they tend to favor the policies I do when polled on them individually.
I’ve been aware of my predicament since I was young, even when I was watching Gavin Newsom climb the California political ladder, often by making nice with people I wish he wouldn’t.
But I’m not going to go into a long, detailed account of Newsom’s political history here. There will be time for that as the 2028 presidential election draws near. I trust my readers to come to their own conclusions when the time comes, and as his political history is vetted on public forums.
Instead, I began this story with an anecdote about Newsom that has followed him throughout his career. And may lead him into the Oval Office. That anecdote goes to the core of his political being, and I’m saying to the world of my fellow candle-holding leftists, “It’s okay, just get over it so we can beat these Magats into the ground and get them back under the rocks where they belong.”4
Since those earliest days, Newsom has maintained close ties with elites, tech leaders, and even Republicans in ways that draw fury from the left. He’s still pals with the Getty family.
But he’s also been an unwavering supporter of the fight against climate change (with a few hiccups5) and gay rights.
It’s fair to say that his 2004 order, in violation of existing state law, directing the San Francisco county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, was the singular moment that swayed an entire country to support same sex marriage. The pendulum towards that support began to swing, and not even the rabid right-wing American Taliban has found a way to push it the other way.
The California Supreme Court shut down that effort,6 but a movement was born through the national attention it created. It wasn’t a political trick. His support of gay rights has been unyielding since then.
He’s done a lot of things right, and a few things wrong. This tracks with most successful politicians who need to dance with the American centrist voter. Few people know how to do that better than Gavin Newsom.
Newsom wins elections
There isn’t much to like about the current state of American politics. Most of the interesting progressive candidates are either too young to run for president or, in the case of AOC, probably face too many obstacles (in her case, her primary obstacle is her gender7). Even if Zohran Mamdani has a ridiculously fabulous two years, he can’t run because he was born in Uganda.
This is a common tale for me. I just never get my way. Cue the violins.
The problem has been considerably worsened by the Citizens United ruling that empowers corporations to run the country through political donations. Until the nation finds a way to overturn that, we’re going to be stuck with men (mostly) who know how to work the system. Men like Gavin Newsom.
But here’s the thing. The dude wins elections. And he wins difficult elections. He won in his first try as a San Francisco mayoral candidate in 2003, in a tough runoff against the progressive favorite, Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez (sorry, Gavin, I voted for Matt).
Newsom made enemies among progressives by attacking Gonzalez for his association with Ralph Nader, who centrist Democrats despised for his participation in the George W. Bush hanging chad election.
Newsom, meanwhile, was hammered by progressives for promoting a plan called Care Not Cash (Measure N), which replaced cash given to the homeless by the state’s general assistance program with various kinds of drug treatment plans, housing, and psychiatric treatment plans.8
A 2003 San Francisco Examiner profile of Newsom provides a snapshot of his problems with progressives:9
His ideas about development have made him a favorite among building, planning and real estate professionals. Unlike proposals championed by his top opponents, who emphasize development of nonprofit affordable housing, strong rent-control laws and innovations such as land trusts, Newsom’s current housing policy centers almost exclusively on creating “workforce housing” via incentives for developers of market-rate developments that cater mostly to the middle class, or what Newsom defines as up to 120 percent of median household income (about $95,000 annually, according to the current index published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development).
Newsom says criticisms that this proposal wouldn’t help residents who earn modest income residents are inaccurate. “My opponents will criticize my plan as only helping wealthy people, but what plans have they put forward beyond socialist rhetoric?” he wrote.
Still, he beat Gonzalez 53% to 47%. I shrugged and went on with my life, because it was the Before Times.
He hasn’t lost an election since.10
He won his mayoral re-election with 73.66% of the vote in 2007. His former opponent, Matt Gonzalez, didn’t even bother running, though he was tempted early on.
Newsom next ran for Lieutenant Governor in February 2010, easily winning a Democratic Party primary against Janice Hahn, 55.5% to 33.3%.
Next, he won the general election for Lieutenant Governor in 2010, beating a Republican incumbent, Abel Maldonado, 50.2% to 39%.
He ran for re-election in 2014 and beat Republican Ron Nehring 49.87% to 23.37%.
He next won the California gubernatorial primary election of 2018, where he beat John Fox and a field of 31 other candidates with 33.7% of the vote. California primary elections are not run along party lines, so they’re a little weird. His chief Democratic opponent was LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was only able to capture 13% of the vote.
This victory resulted in a runoff between Fox and Newsom later that year, which Newsom won 61.95% to 38.05%.
He then faced what the mainstream press called a tough recall election spun by Republican political witch doctors. He won that, too, with 61.88% of the voters saying “No” to the recall effort.
His most recent gubernatorial election, in 2022, was his easiest yet. He glided through the primary with 55.9% of the vote, leaving 27 other candidates in the dust, including the immortal Republican, Gurinder Bhangoo.
Then came the mother of all elections.
This one pitted him against Donald Trump.
Most of you know this story by now. Trump, always in “Steal this Election” mode, asked his Texas lapdog on Team Predator, Greg Abbott, to tear up congressional districts in Texas to help Republicans gain five more seats in Congress.
Newsom responded by mirroring that effort in California, but to increase the chances of it surviving a Supreme Court test, he took the issue to the voters in a special election called California Proposition 50 — Congressional Redistricting. The proposition was extremely clever. It included a provision that if Texas didn’t follow through on its gerrymandering, California would not follow through on theirs.
The redistricting plan won by a typical Newsom margin, 64.4% to 35.6%. This countered Texas’s five new ill-gotten Republican seats (so says the mainstream media11) with five new Democratic seats from California.
Yesterday (February 4), the Supreme Court gave the okay on the California redistricting effort. Even more fun is this: The recent Texas special election demonstrated that the five new Texas districts may not all go Trump’s way, especially given the insane behavior of Stephen Miller’s Gestapo state.
So, yeah. This is the case I’m making, for now, for Newsom as the Democratic nominee for President.
He wins elections. He’s never lost one.
Neither of course, has billionaire JB Pritzker, who is much more aligned with my politics and has quietly transformed Illinois into one of the most progressive states in the nation.
I therefore reserve the right to change my mind.
My litmus test is not a leftist one. Not this time. My litmus test is something along the lines of a pledge to nominate Jack Smith as attorney general.
Newsom is definitely not my presidential candidate. But these times demand someone who will focus on making sure what has transpired during the last decade never happens again. Few people have displayed the willingness to take on these monsters to the degree Newsom has.
He’s doing it effectively. His memes make the news, but he’s done a lot under the hood that is driving Magats insane.
So, no. He’s not my candidate. But he’s probably the candidate we need.
The dude wins elections. He’ll win the presidency if given the opportunity.
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
Beyond Chron. “Newsom’s Expensive Silence - beyond Chron,” October 2007. https://beyondchron.org/newsoms-expensive-silence/.
Gordon, Rachel. “Newsom Gets His Political Feet Wet.” SFGATE, February 14, 1997. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Newsom-gets-his-political-feet-wet-3134324.php.
It’s not as simple as that. This 1983 report from In These Times takes a deep dive into Bernie’s tenure as mayor of Burlington:
In These Times. “How Bernie Sanders Put Socialism to Work in Burlington: A Profile from 1983.” in-these-times, January 29, 2016. https://inthesetimes.com/article/this-1983-profile-of-bernie-sanders-shows-how-his-success-in-burlington-mir.
Leftists who want a leftist presidential candidate will need to do the hard work to get them elected to the more inconsequential offices that eventually lead to higher things. More Mamdamis will go a long way to achieving that goal.
Wikipedia.org. “Gavin Newsom - Wikipedia,” 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Newsom#Energy_and_environment.
Dolan, Maura. “California Gay Marriage: California Supreme Court Overturns Ban - Los Angeles Times.” Archive.org, 2025. https://web.archive.org/web/20080519180433/http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage16-2008may16,0,3999077,full.story.
Being an attractive woman is also a sure way to launch Magats into foaming fury unless it’s one of their own, who they can control.
I always had the feeling that Newsom’s attitude about the homeless was like that of many San Francisco wealthy residents: “Get rid of them!”
Lloyd, Carol. “From Pacific Heights, Newsom Is Pro-Development and Anti-Handout.” SFGATE (nee San Francisco Examiner), October 29, 2003. https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/From-Pacific-Heights-Newsom-Is-Pro-Development-2580441.php.
Lloyd, Carol, SFGATE, ibid
Contributors. “List of Elections Featuring Gavin Newsom as a Candidate.” Wikipedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., November 17, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Gavin_Newsom#Electoral_history.
Republicans will probably lose at least one of those seats thanks to ICE
“We live in Trumps world now which means I can be bought”! 🤣🤣🤣. Just a great piece. Thanks for all the good information. 👍🏻
Just as I didn’t vote for Biden in the 2020 election primaries, but did in the general, I won’t vote for Newsom in the 2028 primaries, but if he’s the candidate of choice, I will in the general.