Shifting political landscape makes Newsom’s bid trickier
After his exhilarating and largerthan-life star turn in the hit movie “La La Land,” many thought Gavin Newsom was treated unfairly at the Academy Awards last weekend by not being given an Oscar for his performance.
Oh, wait. That wasn’t Gavin Newsom. It was Ryan Gosling. My apologies for the mistake, but the broader point still holds. Newsom and Gosling are both talented, successful and dedicated figures in their respective fields of politics and entertainment. Both men are capable of accomplishing difficult things without appearing as if they’re trying that hard, so both of them tend to get unfairly dismissed for not being as substantive in their work as less seamless performers.
That’s not such a big problem in the movie business. Bradley Cooper, Charlize Theron and Matthew McConaughey, just to name a few, have proved that an attractive actor can play an unattractive role and still be rewarded with an Oscar. If Gosling’s next character has bad teeth and bad hair, then he should go home with a statue.
But as Newsom has learned over the course of his career, that’s a bigger challenge in politics. There’s an old saying: We want our presidents to be just like us, only better. Successful political leaders of both parties have learned that the best way to bridge this gap is to demonstrate an ability to overcome adversity. Americans root for the underdog, and we want to see our leaders struggle before they succeed. We like jagged edges. Newsom, like Gosling, doesn’t seem to have any.
Of course, that is not just an overly superficial but also completely unfair dismissal of a dedicated public servant. Newsom took on the homeless issue in San Francisco in the face of considerable political headwinds. He advocated for marriage equality at a time when most leading Democrats were hiding from the issue. He has used his platform on the UC Board of Regents to fight against tuition increases and to protect students in the country without legal permission. Newsom is smooth, but he’s not sheer.
To be clear, this is not an endorsement of his candidacy for governor. There are other capable and qualified candidates, both declared and still considering the race. His personal life has had more than its share of messes. But while there are substantive reasons not to vote for Newsom, a broader perceptual challenge is emerging that Newsom will be forced to overcome if he is going to become California’s next governor. Gavin Newsom is a white male. The likely field of Democratic candidates currently includes a Latino male, an Asian American male and a white woman. In a party that has been hemorrhaging the support of heterosexual white men for the past several election cycles, Democrats have become increasingly reliant on what they call the “coalition of the ascendant,” a rapidly growing number of women, minority, LGBTQ and younger voters. Even in California, where white men tend to be less conservative than their counterparts in other states, the Democratic base has become tremendously demographically pluralistic.
Newsom can certainly attract votes from these communities: He has a record on any number of issues that should gain him support even in the absence of shared ethnic and gender identity. In addition, the state’s top-two primary system will allow him to reach out to voters from outside his party. But the presence of Donald Trump in the Oval Office makes a demographically diverse electorate more resistant to a white male candidate, even a progressive like Newsom.
The entertainment community turned away this year from the heavily favored “La La Land” to embrace grittier and more challenging stories in its Oscar decisions. It chose a Muslim American actor to receive an Academy Award for the first time and gave a statue to an Iranian filmmaker as well. The landscape on which stories like “Hidden Figures,” “Manchester by the Sea” and most notably “Moonlight” were told presented an understated but powerful rebuke to the new president. It’s not difficult to see like-minded primary election voters coming to similar decisions next year.
It’s worth assuming that we will not see a #governorsowhite” hashtag in 2018. But for a demographically diverse and ideologically left-leaning electorate, the selection of a minority or female governor would be a tempting way to send a message back to Washington. Newsom can certainly overcome this obstacle, but it represents an added challenge to him in an already challenging race.
Is Gavin Newsom too white to be governor? We’re about to find out.