Gavin Newsom has never been shy about reinventing himself when the political winds shift, and as he inches closer to a likely 2028 presidential bid, that talent for reinvention is on full display once again.
Over the past 21 months, California’s governor has cycled through several distinct political personas, each one seemingly calibrated to whatever version of the Democratic Party he believes can actually win back the White House.
In the months following Kamala Harris’ defeat to Donald Trump, Newsom leaned noticeably rightward. He warned that Democrats needed to conduct a real “autopsy” of the loss, arguing the party had lost touch with voters across the middle of the country and the South.
That shift became unmistakable when Newsom launched his podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” and chose conservative commentator Charlie Kirk as his very first guest. During that conversation, Newsom sided with Kirk on a contentious issue, agreeing that transgender women shouldn’t compete against biological women in athletics.
Newsom pointed to a Trump campaign ad that used footage of Harris expressing support for gender-transition surgery for prison inmates, calling it evidence that fairness concerns in sports were legitimate. “So I completely align with you,” he told Kirk. “And we’ve got to own that. We’ve got to acknowledge it.”
The comment infuriated transgender rights advocates but succeeded in nudging Newsom’s public image toward the center.
He doubled down on that message not long after, telling a crowd at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit that Democrats had grown too consumed with “woke culture” and needed to reconnect with everyday concerns like immigration and rising prices. “We have to be more culturally normal,” he said. “We have to be a little less judgmental.”
That was the Newsom of last year. This year looks different.
As progressive Democrats have notched a series of high-profile victories and tensions have flared between the party establishment and its more left-leaning base, Newsom appears to be recalibrating once more — this time swinging back toward the party’s activist wing.
Speaking in May at a conference hosted by the Center for American Progress, alongside other Democrats weighing their own presidential ambitions, Newsom effectively announced the pivot. “A year ago my sense was, in this country, that our path back as Democrats … was through the center,” he said. “Increasingly, I’d argue, it’s through the fight. And people want fighters. People want people with conviction and clarity.”
From there, Newsom laid out an economic vision that borrowed heavily from progressive critiques of corporate power and wealth inequality. “You cannot save democracy unless we democratize the economy,” he told the crowd. “The whole system has to be reimagined.” He floated the idea of a “universal basic capital” system that would use profits generated by artificial intelligence to help workers displaced by the technology.
There’s a wrinkle in this latest leftward turn, though. During his more centrist phase, Newsom actively opposed a ballot measure that would slap a 5% wealth tax on California’s billionaires, even lobbying the healthcare union backing the proposal to abandon it. That effort failed, and the measure will appear before voters in November as Proposition 40.
Unable to reverse course entirely, Newsom has instead tried to soften the political damage by pushing for new federal taxes targeting the wealthy — an attempt to appear aligned with the tax-the-rich sentiment without fully embracing the state measure he once fought.
Whether this is the final version of Newsom that voters will see on a national stage remains an open question. Recent developments have added new complications to his public narrative, including a tell-all article detailing an affair he had with a staffer — the wife of a close aide — during his tenure as San Francisco mayor, as well as the release of his personal tax returns. Both are likely to keep fueling speculation about who, exactly, Gavin Newsom is trying to be.
Original source: CalMatters
