Gavin Newsom is ready for his close-up

NORMALLY, GAVIN NEWSOM is loose. The Democratic governor of California talks with a staccato cadence, often flitting from one incomplete thought to the next. When he talks to journalists or asks a guest on his podcast a meandering question, he tends to use a lot of meaningless filler words: “in the context of” is a frequent Newsomism. But on June 10th he was clear and direct. “This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation,” he said during a televised address after President Donald Trump deployed nearly 5,000 troops to Los Angeles to quell protests over immigration raids. “We do not want our streets militarised by our own armed forces. Not in LA. Not in California. Not anywhere.”

Mr Newsom was a national figure before the unrest in Los Angeles. He runs America’s most populous state, which boasts an economy larger than most countries’. He is used to prime time. But it has got America talking more about Mr Newsom, his beef with Mr Trump and his future ambitions. The governor is term-limited and will leave office in 2027. He has long been touted as a putative Democratic presidential candidate. The protests in the country’s second-biggest city, and the tumult over Mr Trump’s use of troops, give him the chance to establish—or damage—his credentials.

Born in 1967, Mr Newsom is a fourth-generation San Franciscan. His father was a lawyer for J. Paul Getty, an oil magnate and art collector, before becoming a judge. His parents divorced when he was young and Mr Newsom often talks about his mother working at several jobs to raise him and his younger sister. Dyslexia meant that he struggled in school; he went to university on a partial baseball scholarship. His communication style is shaped, in part, by his learning disability. The governor likes to rattle off facts about California’s economic heft, as if he had memorised them the night before.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s he rose through San Francisco’s cut-throat, Democrat-dominated politics. Both Mr Newsom and Kamala Harris were disciples of Willie Brown, a gregarious former speaker of California’s state assembly and two-term mayor of the city. It was Mr Brown who appointed Mr Newsom to his first political post, on San Francisco’s Parking and Traffic Commission, and, when a seat opened up, to the board of supervisors, the city’s powerful legislative body.

Republicans now paint Mr Newsom as a bleeding-heart liberal, but in true blue San Francisco he was considered a moderate, pro-business Democrat. Progressive groups ran candidates against him. But he was still provocative. Soon after he was elected mayor in 2003, succeeding Mr Brown, Mr Newsom issued marriage licences to same-sex couples at City Hall even though state law defined marriage as a contract between a man and a woman. Republicans used the episode to convince social conservatives to vote against John Kerry, the Democratic candidate in the 2004 presidential race. Mr Newsom turned out to have history on his side, but some at City Hall whisper that Mr Kerry still blames Mr Newsom for his defeat.

After eight years as lieutenant-governor, in 2018 he was elected to California’s top job. He breezed past a recall effort in 2021 (which tried to capitalise on Mr Newsom’s visit to the French Laundry, a posh restaurant in Napa Valley, during covid lockdowns) and won re-election in 2022.

Californians can be tetchy about Mr Newsom’s extracurricular activity: he launched a political-action committee (PAC) in 2023 that buys ads in red states attacking Republican policy positions. He seems to take particular pleasure in trolling Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida. One of the PAC’s more effective ads (that Democrats could learn from) told Floridians that their “freedom is under attack” by politicians who want to ban certain books and restrict abortions. The same year he debated Mr DeSantis on Fox News; both men, it seemed plain, were weighing up a future presidential run. When The Economist asked Mr Newsom back then why Americans should tune in, he replied, with a grin: “I don’t know they should.” (Mr DeSantis, unlike Mr Newsom, tried his luck in 2024, and fell ignominously on his face.)

More recently it is the governor’s podcast “This is Gavin Newsom”, first aired only in March, that has Californians wondering how he has so much free time. In it he asks right-wingers (Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Newt Gingrich) and Democrats (Tim Walz and Amy Klobuchar) alike where his party went wrong in 2024. Progressives are suspicious that Mr Newsom’s chummy conversations with MAGA leaders are a bald attempt to try to win back the bro vote, and presage a move to the centre ahead of a possible presidential run in 2028.

Would that be so bad? Mr Newsom’s political upbringing should be an asset. Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein and Ms Harris all sharpened their elbows in San Francisco before rising to national prominence. And Mr Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles—which one federal judge on June 12th ruled is illegal—offers him a political opportunity. Compared with the president’s recklessness, the governor looks like a responsible adult. By forcefully condemning violence and trying to safe-guard Californians’ right to protest, he is striking a balance that could resonate with Americans beyond the Golden State, and perhaps help unite a Democratic Party that has seemed fractured and aimless since 2024.

Against that, California Democrats have often struggled to win national office: their state may be the most populous, but there are plenty of more moderate voters elsewhere. The risk for Mr Newsom in the days ahead is that Mr Trump will try to convince Americans that the governor is protecting dangerous illegal immigrants from deportation (even though the president is arresting ever-more people without criminal records). Scenes of disorder and burning cars in LA fit a narrative some Republicans, and right-wing news outlets such as Fox News, have been pushing for years: that Democratic-run cities are lawless, and their leaders irresponsible. Mr Newsom is concentrating on his home state now, but 2028 isn’t that far away.■