In the race to succeed Jerry Brown as California governor, Gavin Newsom is miles ahead — at least, on paper.
Not only has he led handily in early polls, but campaign finance disclosure reports released this week show he has raised more money this year than his top two Democratic rivals, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Treasurer John Chiang — combined. And behind him is the same political consultant who in 2005 propelled Villaraigosa to victory against an incumbent to become Los Angeles’s first Latino mayor.
Is California’s lieutenant governor and former San Francisco mayor unstoppable?
“I think it’s Gavin Newsom’s race to lose,” said Steve Maviglio, a veteran Democratic strategist in Sacramento. “He is a heartbeat from the governor’s office, and he has the most money, name recognition and top talent working on his campaign.”
But there is a giant caveat: California’s open primary system — in which voters next June will pick their top two candidates from either party — could mean that Newsom faces another Democrat, rather than a Republican, in the November 2018 general election. And that could put the front-runner in a challenging position, Maviglio and others note, especially if his opponent manages to convince voters that Newsom — a millionaire who lives in scenic Marin County with his wife and four children — is a free-spending liberal who can’t see outside the Bay Area’s tech bubble.
Villaraigosa — who is counting on votes from poor and working class voters as well as Latinos — has repeatedly called his opponent a “Davos Democrat,” a reference to an economic summit of CEOs, intellectuals and politicians from around the world in the Swiss Alps. His campaign’s spin on the news that Newsom had more than three times as much money as Villaraigosa? That he needs every penny.
“Gavin Newsom is the Meg Whitman of Democratic politics and represents the Bay Area elite,” Villaraigosa’s campaign spokeswoman Michelle Jeung said in a statement Wednesday. “Although Whitman was from Atherton and Newsom lives in Marin, it is the same narrow demographic that has a lot of money, but doesn’t represent a lot of voters.”
Newsom — reached by phone in Reno, where he had just made a speech to prison guards about job growth and the economy — laughed at the comparison. “They can attack me,” he said. “I’ll attack the issues.”
Politicians often make reference to the “two Californias,” and the state’s socioeconomic divisions surfaced in a June poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies. It found that wealthier, white and black voters leaned heavily toward Newsom, while Latinos and those from low-income households showed a strong preference for Villaraigosa.
Chiang’s campaign spokeswoman, Kate Chapek, argues the state treasurer — who is not as well-known as his two rivals — “is particularly well positioned to appeal to voters across the ideological spectrum,” particularly in a contest between two Democrats. As yet, there are no big-name Republican contenders.
Nathan Ballard, a Democratic strategist, former Newsom aide and close friend of the candidate’s, says he thinks Newsom has broad appeal. He “looks like the future of California. He’s tech savvy, he’s energetic, he’s not afraid to lead the way on controversial issues like he did on marriage equality,” he said. “He’s got a star quality — which only a handful of politicians in the U.S. currently have.”
The tall, handsome and impeccably dressed 49-year-old candidate does have something of a movie-star aura, as does his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker with a strong following in feminist circles.
Newsom rode into office in 2003 as a business-friendly moderate, becoming San Francisco’s youngest mayor in over a century, but he quickly gained national fame for instructing the clerk’s office to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in violation of state law at the time. He has since championed successful ballot measures on a slate of progressive issues, such as gun control, criminal justice reform and marijuana legalization.
He calls himself a “pragmatic progressive” committed to addressing the state’s economic divide and points to his business background as the founder of PlumpJack, which started as a wine shop in San Francisco and has since expanded to include two dozen wineries and restaurants. The venture is now run by his sister, Hilary Newsom.
While people outside of San Francisco may associate him with liberal social issues, he said, “I’m a small business entrepreneur who is passionate about free enterprise, who is passionate about growth.”
He also has cultivated a friend in the powerful California Nurses Association, from the party’s activist wing, which is pushing a universal, single-payer health care proposal for California. At a May rally during the California Democratic Convention, the union’s fiery executive director, RoseAnn Demoro, brought the well-dressed politician on stage and called him “a radical in disguise.”
At the same rally, put on the spot about his position on a pending single-payer proposal, Senate Bill 562, Newsom rhymed back to the nurses, “I’m with you,” to applause. But Newsom said in an interview Thursday that while he is running on a single-payer platform and will release his own plan, he hasn’t endorsed SB 562.
“I’ve been leaning in with our own proposal, and I have not leaned in on 562,” Newsom said. “I supported the debate, I supported the effort, I supported the conversation. … I hope as governor to achieve it, and the question is how.”
Newsom is often described by detractors as a political chameleon, telling people what they want to hear. He famously endorsed Eric Bauman for chairman of the state Democratic party — and then, when the race heated up, announced he would also back Bauman’s opponent, Kimberly Ellis, who was favored by the self-described “Berniecrats.”
“He’s all things to all people,” said Tom Ammiano, a legendary gay-rights advocate and former state legislator who served with Newsom on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and authored the Healthy San Francisco program, a local health coverage guarantee that Newsom is touting. Ammiano ran against Newsom for mayor and lost in a crowded primary.
“What is his core?” Ammiano said. “Mostly, it’s opportunistic.”
Newsom’s supporters point out that he took a stand on marriage equality in 2004, before it was politically popular among mainstream Democrats. In fact, said Ballard — who at the time was working in California for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign — it “left all of the Democratic candidates in an uncomfortable position.”
Newsom says he is bewildered by the notion that he is hard to pin down. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “The one thing I am is crystal clear on my convictions.”
But despite his fundraising success, Newsom said he is “unequivocally, absolutely not” taking anything for granted. “I am running quite literally, as if I were 20 points behind,” he said. “It is not lost on me, nor it should be lost on anybody, that often it is the case where people perceived as the front-runner end up on the unemployment rolls.”
