Californians aren’t blind to Newsom’s ambitions

Gavin Newsom wants to be president of the United States. This has been apparent for some time now. What has also been apparent is that he’s been more distracted by these aspirations.

It now appears that a majority of Californians have come to perceive this, too.

A recent UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found that 54% of registered voters think the governor is “paying more attention to the things that might benefit his presidential ambitions than governing the state and helping to solve its problems.”  Just 26% didn’t see that and the rest had no opinion.

Indeed, the governor  of the largest state by population in the United States has made time for not one, but two podcasts. The first is “Politickin’” with former football player Marshawn Lynch and his newest is called, notably, “This is Gavin Newsom.”

On and off for the past several years, he’s also been quite the campaigner outside of California.

This has included a red-state tour in places like Alabama, because, you know, it makes total sense for the governor of California to be meeting with legislators in Alabama.

Newsom also made sure to repeatedly put himself out there as a booster for President Joe Biden even after his disastrous debate performance last year. Newsom then worked to campaign for fellow Californian Kamala Harris in other states. We saw how that went.

And while many of us have probably forgotten it, there was that strange debate between Newsom and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Fox News while DeSantis was still running for president.

Every so often, Newsom makes headlines for bucking his party in a way that seems designed to distinguish him.

A notable instance was his sudden departure from the standard Democratic position on his podcast in which he indicated he thought it was unfair for males to compete against females in sports. In that same podcast episode, he also indicated his disfavor for using terms like “Latinx,” despite the fact he previously used it several times.

Such instances have been rightly understood as part of his gradual effort to move toward the center and appeal to a broader set of Americans. Why might a governor suddenly do that?

And for the most part, Newsom has been able to get away with doing this.

One of his few publicly visible slip-ups was his absenteeism during the debate over Proposition 36 last year in which he half-heartedly floated a competing ballot measure, then pulled the idea and later said he didn’t have the time to campaign against Prop. 36. You know, with his new podcast and need to be a key figure in the presidential campaign. But Newsom didn’t seem to pay any penalty one way or another for this, besides irking the subset of progressives who really care about criminal justice reform. In fact, pulling out of the debate spared him from the biggest hits he could’ve taken.

Newsom has also been quite the website-maker lately, including boosting californiafacts.com to push back against critics of his policies and what’s going on in California.

Newsom, of course, isn’t the first ambitious governor of California. After all, Ronald Reagan made it to the White House and Jerry Brown certainly tried.  And it makes sense for someone to want to hop from governing the biggest state to wanting to govern the country.

But it should be cause for concern for Newsom that most Californians are not only aware of this, but are seeing that it’s distracting him from serving them. Newsom can be as ambitious as he’d like, but he needs to keep California front and center of his attention.