Gavin Newsom: A Constituency of Elites

The most charitable thing you could say about Gavin Newsom is that he’s not intelligent enough to be the cause of California’s troubles. The Golden State governor — born to a fabulously wealthy and politically well-connected family, establishing himself as a local power player with the funding of family friends, and entering Democratic Party politics as a political appointee — “inherited a state in decline,” Rich Lowry noted in 2021. But “Newsom is the governor by and for all the forces that created this debacle. . . . From San Francisco mayor to lieutenant governor to governor, he’s wedded his ambition to a progressive elitism that can seem out of touch even in liberal California.”

What he lacks in originality and competence, Newsom more than makes up for in his enthusiasm for his role as an avatar of gated-community Silicon Valley progressivism. His public-relations strategy is an instructive example: Of the last 24 tweets Newsom has posted — spanning the four-week timeline from Biden’s State of the Union address to now — nine were about California, while 14 were about Republicans in red states, usually zeroing in on MSNBC-style culture-war fodder such as guns, abortion, and, in today’s favored formulation, the threat to democracy. (The one other tweet was about Pennsylvania Democratic governor Josh Shapiro banning the death penalty.)

About the Author

Nate Hochman

Nate Hochman was a staff writer at National Review.

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The most charitable thing you could say about Gavin Newsom is that he’s not intelligent enough to be the cause of California’s troubles. The Golden State governor — born to a fabulously wealthy and politically well-connected family, establishing himself as a local power player with the funding of family friends, and entering Democratic Party politics as a political appointee — “inherited a state in decline,” Rich Lowry noted in 2021. But “Newsom is the governor by and for all the forces that created this debacle. . . . From San Francisco mayor to lieutenant governor to governor, he’s wedded his ambition to a progressive elitism that can seem out of touch even in liberal California.”

What he lacks in originality and competence, Newsom more than makes up for in his enthusiasm for his role as an avatar of gated-community Silicon Valley progressivism. His public-relations strategy is an instructive example: Of the last 24 tweets Newsom has posted — spanning the four-week timeline from Biden’s State of the Union address to now — nine were about California, while 14 were about Republicans in red states, usually zeroing in on MSNBC-style culture-war fodder such as guns, abortion, and, in today’s favored formulation, the threat to democracy. (The one other tweet was about Pennsylvania Democratic governor Josh Shapiro banning the death penalty.)