The governor, who as mayor of San Francisco delighted progressives by authorizing same-sex marriage while driving them away by cutting welfare payments to the homeless, was crossing an ideological line this month in a way that has infuriated critics left and right throughout his career. He’s been on full display for the past year, as his national profile has risen to such a point that he’s emerged as a plausible presidential candidate.
Though often portrayed as a “socialist” on Fox News, the liberal Newsom has long been known for his pragmatism on economic issues. He regularly exchanges text messages with corporate executives, is known for telling his staff “you can’t be pro-work and anti-business” and has become a counterbalance to a legislature where Democrats have wide margins.
“Philosophically, he’s a moderate,” said Jim Wunderman, leader of the Bay Area Council, a business coalition that has known Newsom for decades.
In the space of several weeks this year, the governor secured an ambitious climate change package, despite formidable opposition from industry. He also shrugged off environmental concerns and worked with Republicans to keep older power plants running. And he vehemently opposed a proposed income tax increase for wealthy Californians to fund electric vehicle infrastructure, siding with Republicans rather than the California Democratic Party.
“It’s all too easy to mistakenly assume he’s a tax-spending Democrat, and clearly he’s not and never has been,” said political adviser Dan Newman.
Attacking the oil industry, along with a series of liberal actions over the years and antipathy from Republicans and the right-wing media, has helped bolster the governor’s reputation as a strong member of the Party’s progressive wing. Democrat.
The reality, however, is more nuanced. Newsom, despite the rhetoric, is pro-business and a centrist at heart, according to dozens of interviews with those who have followed his career and a review of his record. And that’s how he’s likely to rule for the next four years after winning re-election in a landslide last month.
The governor’s office declined to make him available for an interview for this story.
It will likely get a chance to prove its dovish credentials in the coming months, with the state facing the prospect of a budget deficit in July after several years of nearly uninterrupted surpluses that have allowed California to expand spending on schools and ambitious programs like the health one. insurance for all undocumented immigrants. Persistent problems like homelessness and the rising cost of living will also continue to test your financial vision.
Whether keeping the power grid running while the state moves away from fossil fuels or fighting a tax on the rich, Newsom has sought the middle ground in a career that has taken him from San Francisco City Hall to the state Capitol in Sacrament. , and many hope that one day it will lead to a run for the White House.
Like virtually all Democrats these days, Newsom is liberal on social issues like supporting abortion rights. However, he is not afraid of angering his allies, as he did this year by vetoing a bill to test supervised drug use sites that he deemed risky and ill-conceived. He has also rejected numerous bills as too expensive, something he is likely to do again next year as the state faces the prospect of a deficit after several years of surplus.
His vetoes have been a source of frustration for many Democrats in California, and part of the Newsom brand, say those who have watched him from the start of his career, as a wine and coffee business owner who was appointed to San Francisco. County Board of Supervisors, where his centrism made him an outlier in one of the most liberal parts of the country.
“Gavin was kind of the same,” said Nathan Nayman, who led the San Francisco Jobs Coalition when Newsom was mayor. “Fiscally conservative, always looking to the future, but at the same time, incredibly socially progressive.”
His economic pragmatism has led business groups to describe Newsom as a receptive figure. It counters a Legislature where Democrats wield huge margins.
“He is a very rational guy. He sees the madness in the environment around him,” said Wunderman, who supported Newsom’s run for mayor of San Francisco in 2002.
His critics, who include the state’s dwindling Republicans as well as abandoned Democratic allies, take a more reluctant view.
Newsom’s strict coronavirus countermeasures led conservative criticism of the governor as a socialist. A Fox News pundit declared him “more radical than Bernie Sanders.” A Wall Street Journal columnist recently said that Newsom embraces the “ultimate liberalism in state policymaking.” And California Republicans often complain that the policies he has adopted, particularly on the climate, have further raised the cost of living and the state’s poverty rate.
“The quality of life in California is not good despite being almost the fourth largest economy in the world,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher. “He can talk all he wants about being a small business owner and wanting to support small businesses, but he hasn’t.”
Despite such criticisms, Newsom’s energy agenda poses the most important test of his economic vision. He wants to show that a state can prosper by ditching fossil fuels.
California, under his leadership, has committed to phase out sales of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035 and achieve carbon neutrality a decade later. He signed legislation to ban new oil wells near homes and schools.
But the state still has to pay for those goals while it makes a difficult transition to a fully renewable power grid.
“We see everything he does on his economic agenda through energy policy,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, “because he just drives everything.”
One idea, offered to voters in November as Proposition 30, was to raise income taxes by more than $2 million a year and use the proceeds to develop charging infrastructure and lower the cost of zero-emission vehicles. But Newsom strongly opposed it, running television ads opposing the measure, which he has been widely blamed for sinking, even when he was barely campaigning for his own re-election. He angered the allies, but still won a second term by a landslide.
Similarly, his administration pushed for extensions to gas-fired power plans and the state’s latest nuclear plant when a heat wave strained the power grid, raising the possibility of blackouts and raising new concerns about the state’s ability to stop using fossil fuels. .
While some accused the governor of breaking previous promises and undermining his own climate goals by pushing for the power plant extension, others saw the decision as unrealistic.
“It’s always a little hard to do something that’s the right thing to do when you have a political base that vehemently disagrees with it,” said former Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, a Republican lawmaker Newsom enlisted to introduce a point on the bill. of the nuclear power plant, “but I think it was the practical and pragmatic decision.”
Business executives and political operatives who have known Newsom for years say his basic orientation hasn’t changed. He entered politics as a self-described “dogmatic fiscal conservative and social liberal” who represented the wealthier portion of San Francisco on the board of supervisors. He built his burgeoning hotel business on investment from the Getty family, heirs to an oil fortune that would later gift him with a six-figure wedding.
Newsom was a left-wing villain when he ran for mayor of San Francisco in 2002 with his signature “Care not Cash” initiative—to reduce welfare payments to San Francisco’s homeless and divert money to services—until the point that his effigy was burned. But that solidified his support from business groups and voters considered conservative by Bay Area standards. When supervisors pushed to offer universal health insurance, Newsom worked to assuage business concerns by delaying the proposal and unsuccessfully fighting to make employer contributions voluntary.
That trend of both advancing and quietly toning down a labor-aligned economic agenda has continued in Sacramento. Newsom has achieved important labor victories in areas such as wages, worker classification and paid leave. But it has also tried to cushion the impact on companies.
When the California Chamber of Commerce fought a bill this year that would have required companies to publicly disclose how much their employees are paid, Newsom did not step in to protect the disclosure provision, which was struck down. And while Newsom signed a major fast food labor bill that could raise wages to $22 an hour, his administration worked to remove a liability-related portion of the fast food bill that was opposed by labor groups. the franchise industry.
The governor antagonized organized labor this year by declaring his opposition to a farmworker unionization bill, which he ultimately supported under pressure from President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who publicly endorsed it. .
His close relationship with Silicon Valley has also divided allies and reinforced views that he sympathizes with a major corporate sector, even as those companies face mounting pushback over employment practices and privacy concerns. And it has done little to shift California to a government-run health care system despite running on the progressive Lodestar.
“I think he has a business mind. I think her mind goes to business, but her heart goes to hard-working people and vulnerable people,” said Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California workforce powerhouse. “There are always some changes we have to make to account for unintended consequences.”
Some longtime Newsom watchers believe he has undergone a fundamental change. Former aide Eric Jaye, who parted ways with Newsom during his mayoral tenure and went to work for a rival governor, said Newsom had for years supported “social policies that don’t threaten economic privilege.”
But Newsom has moved to the left along with the broader Democratic Party, Jaye argued, as evidenced by his positions on oil companies and wage regulation in the fast-food industry.
“You wouldn’t have recognized the Gavin Newsom of 20 years ago when he went on TV and accused oil companies of jacking up prices,” Jaye said. “He wouldn’t have done that 20 years ago. But we don’t live in the world of 20 years ago.”