Jonathan Martin @ Politico does a Q & A with the Democratic California Governor, who leads the parties 2028 Presidential nomination sweepstakes
It was one of those days in San Francisco: Sun shining, temperature just right, the city at peak charm. This was weather that makes you forget about the gloomier days, those that evoke the old chestnut attributed to Mark Twain: “The coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco.”
So it was understandable that when Gov. Gavin Newsom arrived at Sam’s Grill for our conversation, he lingered, jacket off, outside the 159-year-old restaurant for a few minutes. Newsom was catching up with his original political patron, Sam’s regular and San Francisco mayor-for-life Willie Brown.
I didn’t want to disrupt the reconvening of two mayors, but Dungeness crab awaited.
I won’t bury the lede: Newsom, eventually, took a few bites of the glorious array of seafood, sourdough and avocado that Sam’s brought to our table.
It was the last of these that tempted the governor, because the avocado evoked a memory from his otherwise forgettable tenure as lieutenant governor, when he was Gov. Jerry Brown’s understudy for eight years in Sacramento. One of the only happy political memories from that period was when Newsom, in an Al Haig-like seizure of executive power, took advantage of Brown being out of state one day to use his powers as acting governor to declare the avocado California’s state fruit. Not a joke, folks.
Newsom can laugh about it now. He’s the de facto leader of the opposition to President Donald Trump, his party’s early frontrunner for 2028 and author of the best selling memoir Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.
For Newsom, Sam’s is home. The governor’s father and grandfather, both backstage political fixers, supped at the private booths behind curtains here. Politics is what ruined his parents’ marriage — and also ultimately helped him repair his relationship with his father when Newsom did what his dad failed at twice, winning elected office. Newsom tells me that history is central now as the governor considers his own family, his wife and their four children, and the veto they have over his presidential ambitions.
In our discussion, which ran over an hour, Newsom discussed his party always “trying to be right” rather than fighting with fire and why he’s doing so now with Trumpian tactics, even if that means being “a Democratic Trump,” as one of his potential 2028 intra-party rivals seemed to imply.
And, of course, there’s plenty on his relationship with Trump, including their conversation earlier this year at Davos.
Partial excerpts of my discussion with Gov. Newsom — and a surprise cameo from Brown — are below.
For more on Newsom’s views on the politics of AI, how Kamala Harris’s loss could shape his prospects and how he could grow up in 1970s San Francisco and not smoke weed, watch the entire conversation on YouTube or listen to it as a podcast here….
image…The Hill
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