{"id":26991,"date":"2025-11-27T23:12:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T21:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=26991"},"modified":"2025-11-27T23:12:52","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T21:12:52","slug":"gavin-newsom-the-new-political-threat-to-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=26991","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Newsom: The new political threat to Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is no coincidence that President Donald Trump systematically calls Gavin Newsom “scum”, while recently declaring with his characteristic free-spiritedness that “he should be arrested”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is so irritating to the leader of the MAGA movement by posting comments on X in his own style, writing only in capital letters, and carrying red hats with slogans, it’s not because he’s copying him, it’s because he seems to be practicing something that the US has been lacking since last year: effective opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to this, he’s capturing something that constitutes the political currency of our time, namely the public’s attention. Flexible, eloquent, bold, beloved in news and social media, Newsom is ahead in most polls (albeit by a small margin) of Vice President J. D. Vance in a potential showdown between them in the 2028 presidential election. Before he can get there, he must prove that he has two other key attributes: toughness and political substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gavin Newsom\u2019s background fits a familiar narrative of American life\u2014connections and adversity. His father, William Alfred Newsom III, was a judge and then legal counsel to Gordon Getty, son and heir to oil magnate J. Paul Getty. But he and his mother, Tessa Thomas, separated when Gavin was three, and she had to work three jobs\u2014an accountant, a secretary, and a waitress\u2014to raise him and his sister. Gavin got glimpses of the world of wealth through Billy Getty, Gordon\u2019s son and close friend \u2013 as a teenager he even went on a safari with him in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, to study at Santa Clara University, his baseball skills were required, with which he secured an athletic scholarship \u2013 the dyslexia from which he suffered negatively affected his academic performance. At the age of 25, together with Billy Getty, they created the PlumpJack Wine & Spirits winery in Napa Valley, and then opened a series of restaurants and bars in San Francisco. Newsom always makes sure to highlight his experience in the catering industry as a guarantee of understanding both the business world and that of work. Although he himself advertises it less, the success is also a sign of the connections he inherited from his father and then developed to such an extent that it is said today that he has more than 10,000 contacts stored on his phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knowing that an ambitious Californian must present an equally brilliant partner by his side, he also made his marital choices: first the then assistant attorney general, current US ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle, then the director and actress Jennifer Sibel, with whom he had four children. Networking, pragmatism, photogenicity brought him to the San Francisco city council in 1997, to the mayor’s office in 2004, to the office of governor of California in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n

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With his second wife Jennifer Sibel, and their four children in 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Flirting with the \u201cmanosphere\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A politician in the land of Hollywood can only seek publicity. It\u2019s no wonder that Newsom, in all his positions, has sought spectacular initiatives. As mayor, in 2004, he allowed same-sex marriage, when major figures in his own party, such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were still publicly opposing it and then-President George W. Bush was calling for its constitutional ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As governor, he defended the state’s so-called “golden geese,” the film industry and Silicon Valley, when they were attacked by enthusiastic reformers, but at the same time he raised the minimum wage and signed legislation that makes it easier for Uber and Lyft employees to form labor unions. He appreciates the (studyingly) unpredictable: last March he not only launched his own podcast (\u201cThis Is Gavin Newsom\u201d) with the later murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as his first guest (almost a week later it was Steve Bannon\u2019s turn to be invited), but he also stated during his talk that he considers the participation of transgender athletes in women\u2019s competitions to be a \u201cdeep injustice\u201d, both moves highly controversial for a representative of progressives, let alone for someone who, due to the 2004 decision, has been an emblem of liberals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such actions, as well as the campaign to troll the 45th and 47th presidents that he has been engaged in since last summer, make columnists such as Joshua Green and Eliyahu Kamischer believe that he is aiming to attract votes from the Trumpian public: \u201cIn a sense, Newsom seems to want to lead a Democratic version of the \u2018manosphere\u2019, in which Republicans excel,\u201d they wrote in the November issue of \u201cBloomberg Businessweek.\u201d He does not deny it. \u201cWe have to admit that we gave them this ground,\u201d he said in an interview with CNN in the middle of the month, \u201cwe ignored the crisis of men and boys.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His greatest success to date seemed equally populist in its origins. Last summer, Texas enacted a law that would give Republicans five more seats in the House of Representatives. With the party\u2019s majority at its smallest since 1930 (219 to 215), and with the 2026 midterm elections looming, the move was criticized as a thinly veiled attempt to secure control of the House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quickly intervening, Gavin Newsom announced in mid-August that California would hold its own redistricting referendum to offset the lost Texas seats with Democratic ones. The announcement seemed rushed at the time, and its initial reception was lukewarm. However, it turned out to be a hit: on October 15, the San Francisco Examiner noted that the campaign had raised more than $200 million; on October 28, Newsom called on the public to stop donating; on November 4, Proposition 50 was passed by 64.35%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the election of Zoran Mamdani in New York, as well as Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sherrill as governors in Virginia and New Jersey, \u201cProp 50\u201d completed, for the first time since Kamala Harris\u2019s defeat, the image of an opposition capable of reacting effectively. \u201cDon\u2019t provoke the bear,\u201d Gavin Newsom would triumphantly declare on November 8 in a speech in Texas, recalling the wild emblem of the California flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cthorns\u201d for the 2028 election<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For anyone looking for counterarguments, however, Newsom\u2019s political life offers quite a bit. His outwardly good reputation was tarnished in 2007, when it was revealed that he had had an affair with the secretary of Ruby Ripley, the wife of his friend and campaign manager Alex Turk. His sobriety in 2020, when, at the height of the coronavirus lockdown, he was spotted without a mask at a lobbyist\u2019s birthday dinner at The French Laundry, one of the world\u2019s most famous (and most expensive) restaurants, with three Michelin stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His confidence in his abilities in January 2025, when devastating fires burned for three weeks in Pacific Palisades, in the heart of Los Angeles, and the ashes of ruined buildings lay on both sides of Sunset Boulevard. His credibility as a consistent progressive in May 2025, when he declared \u201cwe have to reclaim our streets and sidewalks,\u201d announcing the removal of homeless encampments from various parts of the City of Angels. Such baggage makes even an old caravan like David Axelrod, Barack Obama\u2019s campaign planner in 2008 and 2012, praise the governor\u2019s achievements, but wonder in \u201cBloomberg Businessweek\u201d whether he can be the idea of \u200b\u200ba president that the average American has in mind in states where glamour counts less than in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, his current practices are not acceptable to everyone. Many in the Democratic Party have always favored a counter-model to Donald Trump \u2013 the ideal moderate politician who would exude self-control, superiority and high-flying rhetoric. For this wing that sees Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) as capable only of exciting the base, Zoran Mamdani as an extreme radical (despite the fact that he, as a foreign-born person, is not eligible to run for president) and Gavin Newsom as a vocal populist, Illinois Governor Jay Robert Pritzker or his Pennsylvania counterpart Josh Shapiro would be better standard-bearers for the party. Theoretically, the argument is not untenable: Trump is constitutionally barred from running for a third term, and his successor will have neither the style nor the directness of his speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, on the one hand, the impact of the above in the polls is minimal, and on the other hand, the heir to Trumpism, J. D. Vance or whoever he is, will maintain the repertoire of success unchanged \u2013 the high tones, the polarization, the denunciations of opponents. Such a manual of political behavior needs a corresponding counter-argument. Joe Biden\u2019s most popular moment was in the 2020 presidential debates when he addressed Trump, who constantly interrupted him, saying to him: \u201cAre you going to shut up, my man?\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Gavin Newsom’s greatest asset over all his predecessors is his ability to slip away. A no-nonsense political gift that has allowed him to change the terms of the debate and survive for twenty years. Sometimes he uses honesty, as in the case of the extramarital affair in 2007, when he boldly declared at a town hall press conference: “Everything you’ve heard and read is true.” Other times he uses direct counterattacks, as in the middle of this month, when the federal Justice Department announced that it had filed a lawsuit against California over the issue of redistricting: “The losers lost at the ballot box and they will lose in court,” was the response. Other times he simply distances himself from the problem, as 10 days ago, when his former chief of staff Dana Williamson was arrested for fraud and embezzlement, while at the UN Climate Conference (COP30) in the city of Belem, Brazil, he denounced Donald Trump’s environmental policy as a “return to the 19th century” and called him an “invasive species.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His term in office ends in 2026, he cannot run for a third term, so he will have plenty of time to lobby, while the money will flow from the tech moguls. Thanks to Proposition 50, he has the resistance narrative that excites the \u201cblue states\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether his maneuvers, shifts and repositionings in relation to the axes of the political spectrum are based on foundations capable of supporting a new, broader alliance remains to be seen. And three years of warm-up for 2028 are more than enough to burn in the heat. But there is undoubtedly plenty of fuel, and it is called \u201cambition\u201d. His predecessor as mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, who witnessed Gavin Newsom’s 30th birthday party back in 1997, shared it with “Bloomberg Businessweek”: “Until we meet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” \u2013 in other words, at the White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is no coincidence that President Donald Trump systematically calls Gavin Newsom “scum”, while recently declaring with his characteristic free-spiritedness that “he should be…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[390,819],"tags":[1897,678,655,5077,973,70],"class_list":["post-26991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-usa","tag-american-elections","tag-democrats","tag-donald-trump","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-politics","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26994,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26991\/revisions\/26994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}