Newsom must figure out his talk on Trump
Resistance leader Gavin Newsom has a relationship to re-evaluate now that he’s Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom: How should he deal with President Trump?
As with any relationship assessment, analysts say Newsom needs to figure out when to respond to what his antagonist says and when to ignore it. In other words, the former San Francisco mayor, who called the
president a “small, scared bully” during his campaign, needs a Trump Engagement Policy — one in which Newsom dukes it out with Trump on issues that matter most to California, like immigration and the environment, and ignores Trump’s tweetstorm du jour.
Twitter wars are just not worth his energy as governor — or his constituents’ time.
“I know the difference between Gavin in campaign mode and Gavin who is in governing mode,” said former East Bay Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who founded the Fight Back California super PAC devoted to electing Democratic House candidates and has known Newsom since 1996. “It was right for Gavin to put the president on notice, as we are the free state of California.”
But now, Tauscher said, “I would rhetorically ignore him. Don’t get into a conversation or a battle with him. It doesn’t get you anywhere. Nobody can change that dim, dark mind of his. You end up eating up time when you could have been getting things done.”
There was zero love lost between the leader of the free world and the leader-elect of the world’s fifth largest economy during the gubernatorial campaign. Trump called Newsom a “clown” and regularly mocked the Democrat during campaign stops in red states for a cheap look-atcrazy-California laugh.
“That’s (Trump’s) personality,” Tauscher said. “He has to be in a fight. He has to be the antagonist.”
Newsom reliably returned fire, calling Trump “a pathetic disgrace” on Twitter and saying Trump was “insane” for suggesting that border patrol officers fire on unarmed migrants approaching the U.S. if they threw rocks. One Newsom campaign commercial featured an image of Trump on TV and vowed, “We’re not backing down.”
There is little downside to mocking Trump in California, where two-thirds of likely voters don’t like him, according to polls. As Newsom said during a campaign stop in San Francisco last week, California is “proudly the most un-Trump state in America.”
That adversarial tone was mutually beneficial during campaign season. Trump and Newsom needed each other as foils. But as governor, Newsom must craft an image that he is more than just the leader of the anti-Trump resistance. He needs to focus on California, not Washington.
“As a candidate you can rely on rhetoric,” said Katie Merrill, a veteran California political strategist. “When you’re running for office, your goals are different than when you’re the steward of a state that has a lot of challenges and a lot of needs.
“That’s the difference when you’re governor,” Merrill said. “It’s not about rhetoric. It’s about implementing policy.”
Top Newsom political strategist Ace Smith said the governor-elect’s philosophy about engaging Trump “should be exactly what Jerry Brown’s was. When the president was being unreasonable, you need to stand up to him.
“It’s not allowing yourself to be bullied by the bully-inchief,” Smith said Wednesday. “California is big enough that it doesn’t have to be.”
Newsom referred to Brown’s handling of Trump often while he was on the campaign trail. Newsom frequently told a story of how Brown reacted after Trump pulled out of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.
“Five days after the president announces his intention,” Newsom told a campaign rally Monday in San Francisco, “Gov. Brown pulls out of his driveway, he makes his way to the airport. He flies to Beijing. He sits down with (Chinese) President Xi (Jinping) in the presidential palace. Signs a memorandum of understanding basically doubling down on the Paris accords, not as a head of state but a head of a state — the state of California.
“That’s leadership,” Newsom said as the audience of 200 roared. “That’s California.”
Unlike Newsom, Brown often shrugged at engaging Trump on Twitter. But the governor did not pull rhetorical punches in real life, especially when it came to defending his pet issues. On climate change, Brown said Trump would be remembered as a “liar, criminal, fool — pick your choice” at the September Global Climate Action Summit that Brown co-hosted in San Francisco.
Newsom previewed his Trump Engagement Policy during his victory speech Tuesday night in Los Angeles. Although Newsom did not mention Trump by name, his remarks were clearly aimed at the president when he said Tuesday’s election results across California showed that “we are saying — unmistakably and in unison — that it’s time to roll credits on the politics of chaos and cruelty.
“There’s a reason why California’s dream is America’s leading brand,” Newsom said. “Because California’s dream has always been and always will be too big to fail and too powerful to bully.”
Online, Newsom will need to recast his Twitter interactions with Trump, said John Parmalee, a professor of political communication at the University of North Florida and author of “Politics
“He can either be the fiery partisan person, or he can decide to reach out to other people in red areas of the country or in California and be appealing to them.” Karen North, University of Southern California communications professor, on Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom and his political aspirations beyond California
and the Twitter Revolution.”
“He shouldn’t be spending so much of his time to think of ways to interact with Trump,” Parmalee said. “It’s like that old saying: ‘Don’t wrestle with a pig. You both get muddy and the pig will like it.’ ”
Instead, Parmalee said, Newsom should focus on ways to interact more with his 1.4 million Twitter followers and grow his brand with them. Then Newsom’s followers can fight Trump on his behalf, he said.
If Newsom has political aspirations beyond California, he has to decide what image he wants to portray online, said Karen North, a social media expert and professor of communication at the University of Southern California.
“He can either be the fiery partisan person,” she said, “or he can decide to reach out to other people in red areas of the country or in California and be appealing to them.”
As for Trump, he may soon be done trolling Newsom. That’s because he will soon have other California Democrats to worry about, like Sen. Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, billionaire San Francisco activist and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, attorney Michael Avenatti and the rest of the conga line possibly running for president in 2020.
And they will have to figure out their own Trump Engagement Policy.