Gavin Newsom pitches ‘California dream’ for governor’s race
Democrat pushes back against Trump agenda
SALINAS, Calif. – The man who may be California’s next governor stands on a wooden box and grins.
He is 6-foot-3, so his head nearly hits the ceiling of a cramped room where supporters of local Democratic candidates from this agricultural region have gathered. He is sweating and hoarse, but his camera-ready looks, all pearly teeth and swept-back hair, beam.
Like a preacher facing his congregants, Gavin Newsom, 50 – San Francisco’s onetime mayor, the state’s lieutenant governor and opponent for Republican gubernatorial candidate John Cox – is hammering out his favorite secular homily.
“We rise and fall together; that’s the profound dream that is at risk not just in this country but as part of the California narrative,” Newsom booms.
“There’s no Florida dream, there’s no Texas dream, no New Hampshire dream. There’s only the American Dream and the California dream.”
Hoots and applause erupt. But outside in the hot sun, a dozen supporters of President Donald Trump cringe at Newsom’s liberal vision.
“This is a socialist state, and it’s going to be more socialist with Newsom as governor. The state will be bankrupt,” says Bill Harris, 78, who wears a USS Porterfield hat from his Vietnam War days and holds a Believe in America sign. “But I’m in the minority now.”
Whoever runs this state come next month – polls suggest it is Newsom’s race to lose, with RealClearPolitics giving him a 19 percent lead while a Probolsky Research poll has his margin at 5 percent — will have to deal with a divid- ed California that in many ways echoes the political chasm that has cracked open across this country. And there is much at stake. Ever since its gold rush-era founding as a state in 1850, California has exerted a gravitational force on the rest of the country.
California’s gross domestic product of $2.7 trillion, anchored to technology, real estate and Hollywood, just passed that of the United Kingdom. It has foreshadowed cultural changes from smoking bans to gay marriage, from gun control to immigration.
But serious problems abound. The state has a quarter of the nation’s homeless, about 134,000 people. Rising income inequality is forcing some middle-class residents to sleep in cars and RVs. A fight over precious water resources in the SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta pits proponents of salmon over thirsty farmers. And a once-vaunted public school system is failing its students due to underfunding that many blame on Proposition 13, which allows homeowners to keep property taxes low.
Newsom also is taking on the antiTrump administration mantle of outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown, who helped right the state’s fiscal ship.
“Trump is a real threat to democracy,” Newsom says in an interview with USA TODAY at SCN Strategies in San Francisco, a consulting firm that has helped elect politicians such as Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif. “It’s not a time to be benign – you have to push back.”
In the coming weeks, Newsom will ply the Golden State in his big, blue Gavin for Governor bus.
“The sun doesn’t set in the west, it actually rises in the west,” he says. “California is America’s coming attraction, and we have a responsibility not just to push back but to assert a positive alternative. We don’t tolerate our diversity, we celebrate our diversity. It’s what makes California, and America, great.”