Gavin Newsom rallied Democrats in Texas after the landslide victory of Proposition 50, California's gerrymandering ballot measure.
California’s Governor is often referred to as Pretty Boy Gavin Newsom, and cameras do serve him well. What else do we know about him?
The nationwide gerrymandering race is on with California Governor Gavin Newsom out in front for the Democrats. Media outlets and institutes are already reporting and speculating about who’s got the best chances, who’s pulling ahead, and who’s falling behind as the duopoly make their moves. The ballot box, state legislatures, and the courts are all sites of struggle for a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.
On November 6, CalMatters proclaimed Newsom “light years ahead” in the 2028 Democratic presidential field after his Prop 50 gerrymandering won by a margin of 64% to 36%, and national and international press were quick to agree.
Prop 50, the only measure on the ballot in a special statewide election, amended California’s constitution to redraw its congressional districts, guaranteeing five more seats for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. The state legislature put it on the ballot at Newsom’s urging on September 9, three weeks after the Texas State Senate approved a redistricting map that gives five more seats to Republicans.
During the two-month run-up to the election I received daily phone calls, text messages, email, and/or snail mail urging me to vote yes. Neither state nor county could make recommendations but both urged us over and over to vote, vote, vote. Groups including Bay Resistance, a network created after Trump’s second election, organized canvassing, lit drops, and phone banks. I told a woman who called me that I despise Democrats, and she said, “I do too, but I’m desperate.” Trump is having that effect.
Newsom took off to Texas for a victory lap two days after the election, where he rallied crowds who chanted “2028” and Congressman Al Green introduced him as the future president of the United States. Green himself announced he’s switching to run in another district because a Republican gerrymander assures he’ll lose the seat he holds.
Newsom is now the biggest star at COP30, this year’s UN Climate Conference in Belém, Brazil, where he’s surrounded by press and barraged with interview requests. He’s also in demand for meetings with the global elite, many of whom arrived for the Milken Institute Global Investors’ Symposium in Sao Paulo ahead of the COP. We can no doubt count on him to merge sustainability and profitability.
To be fair, he has had at least one good moment there, expressing outrage about Trump blowing up small boats of alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean. “What happened to due process?” he rightly asked. “What happened to the rule of law?”
He has, however, never objected to illegal US wars. On September 11, 2023, he issued a proclamation that the date would from then on be Patriot Day in California, with flags flown at half-mast for all those who died on September 11, 2001 and the 7000 US soldiers who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader War on Terror.
As I wrote last year, when Biden faltered and Newsom seemed like a possible replacement, he’s a loyal, unrepentant Zionist in waiting. The day after the Al Aqsa Flood, he had the colors of the Israel flag projected on the state capitol building, then flew off to meet with Israeli officials in solidarity.
Newsom on the record
So what more do we know about the 40th Governor of California, who seems all but certain to be a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028?
He was born to San Francisco’s elite, the son of state court appellate judge William Alfred Newsom III, and a nephew to Barbara Newsom, who was married to Ron Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law. That makes him a cousin by marriage to real estate executive Laurence Pelosi.
After graduating from Santa Clara University in 1989, he founded the boutique winery PlumpJack Group in Oakville, California, with billionaire heir and family friend Gordon Getty as investor. PlumpJack grew to include 23 businesses, including wineries, restaurants, and hotels.
His political career began in January 1996 when California kingmaker Willie Brown appointed him to San Francisco’s Parking and Traffic Commission. A year later, Brown appointed him to the District 2 vacancy on the Board of Supervisors, which also serves as a city council since San Francisco is both a city and a county. District 2, which borders the city’s northern shoreline, is home to its elite, including Nancy Pelosi and the late Senator Dianne Feinstein.
He was elected to his seat in 1998 and elected mayor in 2004 in a tight race that attracted national attention because Green Party candidate Matt Gonzalez came close to winning. A hugely motivated movement mobilized behind Gonzalez, and the Democratic Party was so alarmed that they sent Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and more to stump for Newson, who outspent Gonzalez by $4 million to $400,000.
Newsom won by 11,000 votes, but the results have never been fully trusted. The race moved and mobilized so many that the Green Party celebrated the 20th anniversary of the “Matt for Mayor” campaign in 2023.
Newsom’s seven years as mayor were noted particularly for his favor to real estate development interests, including those of the Lennar Corporation. Laurence Pelosi, Newsom’s cousin-by-marriage, left his job as Lennar’s President of Southwest Acquisitions to become Newsom’s campaign treasurer during his first run for mayor.
Pacific Gas and Electric has made substantial contributions to Newsom’s campaigns, beginning with his runs for mayor, and in 2022, he asked the legislature for a $1.4 billion state loan to keep its Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant open, despite longstanding concerns about its safety, given that it sits near multiple earthquake faults. The money was supposed to be a stopgap to be repaid by a federal grant, but in 2025, CalMatters reported that the state may be required to forgive as much as $588 million, about 42% of the loan.
Newsom left San Francisco to become Lieutenant Governor in 2011, vacating the mayor’s office with a year left in his term.
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, writing in the late Fog City Journal, told the tale of his undemocratic departure in Thanks Gavin, Willie and Rose For Saving Us From Democracy:
Not pleased with who the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was about to appoint as interim mayor, Gavin Newsom, Willie Brown and Rose Pak donned tights and capes and flew in at the eleventh hour to save the good citizens of Gotham City by convincing our elected representatives that City Administrator Ed Lee was the better man for the job.
In short, a political deal was struck, rewards were duly distributed, and the mayor’s office remained in the hands of the city’s elite.
Ed Lee promised to be a “caretaker mayor,” just serving out Newsom’s final year, but Willie Brown then insisted he run, with the unfair advantage of unelected incumbency. Brown even persuaded MC Hammer to make the case in a celebrity music video “He’s 2 Legit 2 Quit,” and Lee was elected.
Newsom’s current claim to be saving democracy should be colored by this history, by the $4-million-to-$400,000 mayoral victory, and by the fact that he was appointed, not elected, to his first public office.
Health care
Newsom railed at the seven Democrats and one Independent who just caved to Republicans in the budget deal celebrated by Donald Trump, but his record on the central issue, health care, is well worth a look.
In a 2018 campaign appearance, he promised State Medicare-for-All to the California Nurses Association, but then never brought the proposal, which has been on the table for decades, to a vote in the state legislature.
Laura Wells, former Green Party candidate for California’s State Controller and 12th Congressional District, summarizes Newsom and the Dems failings on the issue:
California could have led the nation on health care.
The State Democratic Party has what’s called a "super-trifecta" in California, the governorship and super-majorities in both houses of the legislature, so its leadership cannot blame Republicans or any other party for anything!
What did they do with a state Medicare for All system, which would save both money and lives as it does in other industrialized countries? Well, they had all the elements going for them: a super-trifecta, campaign promises, budget surplus, pandemic, a bill to implement and a bill to fund. In 2021 they said they’d do it next year. And yet, in early 2022 they would not even let it come to a vote, so no one knew how their representatives would have voted.
Yet during the seven years of our action hero Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Democratic legislature put the bill on his desk twice. In the 12 years of Democrats Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom? Zero. Never. Not once.
Will anyone hold him to task for that in 2028?
Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann@anngarrison.com. You can help support her work on Patreon.
Voter support for the Democratic Party in the government shutdown showdown was irrelevant. The Senate capitulation was a cynical and inevitable endgame for a party devoted to the austerity race to…
“Thus it can be said that British colonialism is mainly responsible for the Southern Sudan problem…”
"Tuesday night’s tiny glimpse of what The People really want" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
In this series, we ask acclaimed writers about their work. This week’s featured author is Tapji Garba. Garba is a graduate student based in Toronto, focusing on Critical Black studies and political…
The Popular Steering Committee for the Zone of Peace in Our Americas calls on the masses of the peoples of Our America to unify struggles against the common enemy.
