In a Lesser Of 2 Evils Contest Between Newsom And DeSantis, Newsom Is Certainly Lesser

But What About Between Newsom & Mayo Pete?

In his preview of 2024 candidates for Politico, Bill Scher pretty much predicts a Biden-DeSantis contest, poo-poos Trump’s lock on the nomination and never mentions the idea that Trump has been teasing lately, of an independent spoiler run if the GOP shuns him. Scher also quickly dismissed— first paragraph— the most likely Democratic nominee if Biden doesn’t run: “[T]he Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, announced he would not run, regardless of President Joe Biden’s plans.” Towards the end of his endless piece, he added “Yet Newsom was the governor who attracted the most attention over the course of 2022, audaciously criticizing fellow governors DeSantis and Abbott in ads that ran in Florida and Texas. Now that Newsom is out of the running, the rest of the gubernatorial bench will have more opportunity to raise their profiles— whether for 2024 or later.” LOL.

“Attracted the most attention” is a tad passive compared to the way Newsom went about manipulating the media. In any case, I think Scher knows Newsom well enough to know he’s not to be counted out, no matter what bullshit he made up to serve a moment in time. The White House is Gavin Newsom’s goal… and not even this is a disqualification:

After Newsom won the nomination in 2018, but before the election, I wrote that a few years earlier-- the last time he had tried running for governor-- he called a meeting of Los Angeles political bloggers. He was slick and effective-- and he knew more about every topic that was brought up than anyone in the room. I would say that everyone in that room came away a Newsom supporter but one... me. To me he was an entitled corporate shill, a smart one by a venal one. A few day earlier, the L.A. Times had done an exhaustive follow-the-money piece on Newsom, How eight elite San Francisco families funded Gavin Newsom’s political ascent. They should have run it during the primary season, not now when we were already stuck with no choice but to vote for him (or not vote). "Gavin Newsom," wrote the Times' team, "wasn’t born rich, but he was born connected-- and those alliances have paid handsome dividends throughout his career. A coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families has backed him at every step of his political rise, which in November could lead next to his election as governor of California. San Francisco society’s 'first families'-- whose names grace museum galleries, charity ball invitations and hospital wards-- settled on Newsom, 50, as their favored candidate two decades ago, said Willie Brown, former state Assembly speaker and former mayor of the city. 'He came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,' said Brown, who is a mentor to Newsom. 'They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.'” Like, for example, the billionaire Getty family. "Newsom was at the center of the social scene led by the younger generation of San Francisco’s wealthy families. Those relationships would form the foundation of his life in politics. 'These kids had all grown up together, or played sports or gone to school together or later dated,' said Catherine Bigelow, a longtime San Francisco society writer."

A Times review of campaign finance records identified eight of San Francisco’s best-known families as being among Newsom’s most loyal and long-term contributors. Among those patrons are the Gettys, the Pritzkers and the Fishers, whose families made their respective fortunes in oil, hotels and fashion. They first backed him when he was a restaurateur and winery owner running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1998, and have continued their support through the governor’s race.

They are not Newsom’s largest donors: The families in total have given about $2 million of the $61 million that donors have contributed to his campaigns and independent committees backing those bids. But they gave while he was a relative unknown, providing crucial support to a political newcomer in the years before his campaign accounts piled high with cash from labor unions, Hollywood honchos, tech billionaires and donors up and down the state.

Now the families appear poised to see their investments pay off.

These donors are mostly liberal, inspired by Newsom’s history as an early supporter of progressive causes, including same-sex marriage as San Francisco mayor in 2004. But some are Republicans, including President Trump’s new ambassador to Austria, who are drawn by Newsom’s background as a small businessman.

...Gordon and Ann Getty viewed him as a son, according to interviews the couple gave to the San Francisco Chronicle and W Magazine, and they provided him with experiences his parents could not afford, including an African safari when he was a teen, Newsom said in an earlier interview with The Times.

“It all goes back to the Gettys as far as Gavin is concerned,” said Jerry Roberts, former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and an expert on Bay Area politics.

In addition to helping fund Newsom’s early business ventures, the family has been a mainstay as he pursued his political ambitions. Eighteen Gettys-- including Gordon, Ann and actor Balthazar Getty-- have collectively donated more than a half-million dollars to Newsom’s nine campaigns, starting with a total of $750 to his 1998 campaign for supervisor. Members of the family have spent more than $362,000 supporting his current gubernatorial bid.

Others who have bankrolled Newsom right from the beginning include Doris Fisher, the billionaire founder of the Gap, George Marcus, billionaire founder of Marcus & Millichap, one of the largest real estate companies in the country, the Pritzker family, descendants of the founders of the Hyatt Hotel chain and the Swig family, which owns the iconic Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill (now a worldwide chain).

Newsom defeated an actual progressive, Supervisor Matt Gonzalez, to win the mayoralty. Newsom grabbed onto safe, showy social issues to try to claim progressivism-- like backing marriage equality. It worked. But where it counts most— bread and butter issues— he’s never been progressive… “Newsom’s support among San Francisco’s elite crosses party lines,” continued the Times story. ‘We’re one of the few long-term, old-school Republican families in the city. This says a lot about Gavin, that he gets our votes, too, because we’re looking at 80 years of Republicanism,’ said filmmaker Todd Traina, son of the late shipping magnate John Traina and philanthropist Dede Buchanan Wilsey. His brother Trevor, also a Newsom donor, is Trump’s ambassador to Austria. Altogether, 10 members of the Traina family have given more than a quarter-million dollars to Newsom’s campaigns… [They] appreciated Newsom adding a businessman’s perspective to the county Board of Supervisors.”

Yesterday, Jeremy White did a puff piece on Newsom as the great moderate of the Democratic Party. Pieces like this get solicited by professional p.r. people. He painted Newsom the way Newsom likes being painted— “straddling an ideological line in a way that has infuriated critics on the left and right throughout his career. It’s been on full display over the past year as his national profile has risen to such a point that he has emerged as a plausible presidential contender. While often portrayed as a ‘socialist’ on Fox News, the liberal Newsom has long been known for pragmatism on economic matters. He regularly exchanges text messages with corporate executives, is known to tell his staff ‘you can’t be pro-job and anti-business’ and has become a counterbalance to a legislature where Democrats wield wide margins. ‘Philosophically, he’s a moderate,’ said Jim Wunderman, a leader of the Bay Area Council, a business coalition who has known Newsom for decades.”

Californians who follow state news carefully are aware that Newsom works with conservative Democrats and reactionary Republicans to thwart progressives in the legislature when they take up forbidden topics like taxing the rich or taking real action on Climate. White wrote that Newsom “is pro-business and a centrist at heart, according to dozens of interviews with those who have followed his career and a review of his record… Like virtually all Democrats these days, Newsom is liberal on social issues such as supporting the right to an abortion. He’s not afraid of angering his allies, though… [and] rejected numerous bills as too expensive, something he’s likely to do again next year as the state faces the prospects of a deficit after several years of surplus. His vetoes have been a source of frustration to many Democrats in California– and part of the Newsom brand, say those who have observed him from the start of his career, as the owner of a wine and cafe business who was appointed to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors, where his centrism made him an outlier in one of the most liberal parts of the country. ‘Gavin was pretty much the same,’ said Nathan Nayman, who ran San Francisco’s Coalition for Jobs when Newsom was mayor. ‘Fiscally conservative, always looking ahead, but at the same time, incredibly socially progressive.’” Socially progressive by standards set a couple decades ago— NOT “incredibly socially progressive.”

But the Greed and Selfishness wing of the GOP absolutely loves him. Echoing their bullshit, White wrote that what he called Newsom’s “pragmatism on economic matters” is the key to his alliance with business groups— and wealthy donors.

Newsom’s energy agenda poses the highest-stakes test of his economic vision. He wants to prove a state can prosper while abandoning fossil fuels.

California, under his leadership, has committed to eliminating sales of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 and achieving carbon neutrality a decade later. He signed legislation to ban new oil wells near homes and schools.

But the state still has to pay for those goals while pulling off a tricky transition to an all-renewable electricity grid.

“We see everything he does on his economic agenda through energy policy,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, “because it just drives everything.”

One idea, offered to voters in November as Proposition 30, was to increase taxes on income over $2 million a year and use the proceeds to develop charging infrastructure and bring down the cost of zero-emission vehicles. But Newsom came out hard against it, putting out TV ads opposing the measure — which he has been widely credited for sinking — even when he was barely campaigning for his own reelection. He angered allies but still won a second term by an overwhelming margin.

In a similar vein, his administration pushed through extensions for gas-powered power plans and the state’s last nuclear plant as a heat wave strained the power grid, raising the prospect of blackouts and producing fresh worries about the state’s ability to wean itself off fossil fuels.

Where some accused the governor of reneging on earlier promises and undercutting his own climate goals by pushing for the power plant’s extension, others viewed the decision as realistic.

“It’s always kind of hard to do something that’s the right thing when you’ve got your political base that vehemently disagrees with that,” said former Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham, a Republican lawmaker Newsom enlisted to run point on the nuclear power plant bill, “but I think I it was the practical and pragmatic decision.”

Business executives and political operatives who have known Newsom for years say his basic orientation has not changed. He entered politics as a self-described “dogmatic fiscal conservative and a social liberal” representing the wealthiest slice of San Francisco on the board of supervisors. He built his burgeoning hospitality business with investment from the Getty family, heirs to an oil fortune who would later throw him a six-figure wedding.

Newsom was a villain to the left when he ran for San Francisco mayor in 2002 on his signature “Care not Cash” initiative— to reduce welfare payments to homeless San Franciscans and reroute the money to services— to the point that he was burned in effigy. But that solidified his support from business groups and voters considered conservative by Bay Area standards. When supervisors pushed to offer universal health insurance, Newsom worked to assuage business concerns by delaying the proposal and fighting unsuccessfully to make employer contributions voluntary.

That tendency to both advance and quietly temper a labor-aligned economic agenda has continued in Sacramento. Newsom has handed labor major victories in areas like wages, worker classification, and paid leave. But he has also sought to dull the impact on businesses.

When the California Chamber of Commerce fought a bill this year that would have compelled companies to publicly reveal how much they pay their employees, Newsom did not intervene to protect the disclosure provision, which was stripped out. And while Newsom signed a major fast food labor bill that could push wages to $22 an hour, his administration worked to remove a liability-related piece of the fast-food bill that franchise industry groups opposed.

The governor antagonized organized labor this year by declaring his opposition to a farmworker unionization bill, which he ultimately supported under pressure from President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who publicly endorsed it.

His close relationship with Silicon Valley has also divided allies and reinforced the view that he is sympathetic to a major business sector, even as those companies face intensifying blowback over labor practices and privacy issues. And he has done little to shift California to a government-run health care system despite running on the progressive lodestar.

“I do believe he has a business mind. I think his mind leans business, but his heart leans working people and people who are the most vulnerable,” said Tia Orr, executive director of the labor powerhouse SEIU California. “There always are some changes we have to make to be mindful of unintended consequences.”

Some longtime Newsom observers believe he has undergone a fundamental shift. Former adviser Eric Jaye, who broke from Newsom during his mayorship and went on to work for a gubernatorial rival, said Newsom had for years supported “social policies that don’t threaten economic privilege.”

But Newsom has moved left along with the Democratic Party writ large, Jaye argued, as shown by his positions on oil companies and regulating wages in the fast food sector.

“You would not have recognized the Gavin Newsom of 20 years ago when he went on television and accused the oil companies of price gouging,” Jaye said. “He would not have done that 20 years ago. But we don’t live in the world of 20 years ago.”

I guess, sooner or later, he’ll be headed for a duel to the death with Mayo Pete over who’s less progressive. That should be a stake right through the heart of the Democratic Party.