The Double Life Of Governor Gavin Newsom

If a caped and cowled vigilante crime fighter had been spotted skittering across San Francisco rooftops any time in the late aughts, you could be forgiven for wondering if then-Golden Gate City Mayor Gavin Newsom was, in fact, Batman. As the old saying goes, Republicans fall in line, and Democrats fall in love, and the latter were certainly in full-on swoon mode for this young Bruce Wayne-level dashing city leader.

But of course, Newsom is not a superhero. There isn't actually a secret identity. Well-coiffed though he is, he's just a politician who was later elected aa Governor of California in 2018. Along with that high office — leading America's most populous and perhaps culturally influential state — came a whole new level of scrutiny. Almost as soon as Newsom took the oath to uphold CA's constitution, his conservative constituents began using that same document for a proposal to oust him. As things stand in 2021, he might not end the year in office. His enemies have some ammo, too: There's been boozy nights, a juicy sex scandal, and a case of COVID lockdown hypocrisy, meaning Newsom's presidential ambitions might also be all but snuffed out ... or maybe not. Politics isn't exactly a simple game to predict.

Still, Gavin Newsom might not be the metaphorical masked hero his early supporters had hoped, and as this pretty pol's poll numbers slip, his tenuous grasp over a state bitterly divided is genuinely in question.

Nothing says double life like two-timing the people you trust most. Back in 2007, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom began an affair with his chief campaign advisor's wife, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, according to Politico. Newsom was separated from his first wife at the time, future Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, so there was no infidelity on his part, but the scandal did wreck the marriage of his top aide, Alex Tourk, who promptly resigned from the campaign when the news broke.

The other problem? Rippey-Tourk (now Rippey-Gibney) was Newsom's appointment secretary at the time. She later said the affair "destroyed her home life," as the Los Angeles Times put it, but didn't consider it a #MeToo incident. "I fully support the #metoo movement. In this particular instance, however, I am doubtful that it applies," she wrote on Facebook in 2018. "Yes, I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-yr old adult married woman & mother. (I also happened to have an unfortunate inclination towards drinking-to-excess & self-destruction." 

Alex Tourk has also moved on and is still an influential San Francisco wheeler and dealer. When asked for his thoughts on Newsom following the affair, the strategist simply told SFGate, "My resignation speaks for itself." For his part, Newsom reflected on the scandal over a decade later, saying in part (via Politico), "I acknowledged it. I apologized for it. I learned an enormous amount from it."

California is the bluest of blue states — and we don't mean just the Pacific. It's also a state with internal political divisions that mirror the rest of America: progressive urban centers pitted against solidly conservative rural ones. Gavin Newsom has long been considered a rising star in the Democratic party, but Golden State conservatives positively loathe the guy and have made six attempts to recall his election in his short time in office, which began in 2018.

The first five efforts failed, but Newsom's strict COVID lockdown measures were so unpopular that the recall vote appeared to be a real threat by March 2021, according to USA Today. Newsom, not one to roll over, vowed, "Well, the reality is it looks like it's going on the ballot, and so we're ready to go. We will fight it. We will defeat it."

Polling at this time suggested this could be a close call for the well-quaffed governor. According to The Hill, 86 percent of Republicans in the state wanted him out, and his support among registered Democrats wasn't super strong either, landing at just 66 percent. He did have one ace up his sleeve though: Getty money. The legendary California oil dynasty donated at least $500,000 to his various campaigns and was just one among Newsom's big-money backers who liked the cut of his jib, according to the Daily Mail. Politics is an expensive business, and Newsom has friends in high places, so we wouldn't count him out yet.

One of Gavin Newsom's strongest political moments might have been his frankness surrounding the California wildfires of 2020. If you don't recall this particular apocalyptic horror of that year, the state was ablaze to the tune of $13 billion in damages, according to Reuters. Newsom took responsibility for the issue, but also stuck to his guns on climate change, defying some critics who would've rather seen him blast then-President Donald Trump.

Newsom and Trump's relationship started off rocky. The governor slammed the then-POTUS in 2018, calling him "a pathetic disgrace" via Twitter over The Donald's decision to take the White House flag to full-staff 48 hours after rival John McCain's death. But when Newsom's state was in trouble, he took a more pragmatic attitude. In a face-to-masked-face meeting, the governor "blasted" Trump for his failure to act on climate change, per the Los Angeles Times, but also acknowledged California's serious failures of forest management and thanked the then-president for "record" federal support. 

"We can agree to disagree," Newsom said, adding (via The Hill), "I want to thank you and acknowledge the work that you've done." Newsom summarized this refreshingly statesmanlike view to The San Diego Tribune in 2018: "Issue by issue, I don't wake up every day thinking about Donald Trump, but he seems to think about this state as a punching bag ... you can capitulate or you can push back. I prefer the pushback, but when he's right, he's right."

Representative Democracy is a funny thing. It has the word democracy right there — but that little modifier can create a lot of tension. That's especially true in California, where government has a heavy hand, but also often utilizes a referendum system, putting laws on the ballot like in a direct democracy.

This tension has played out most clearly in CA over the state's death penalty debate. Denizens of the state have twice voted to keep capital punishment on the books, and pulled the lever "in 2016 to expedite executions," according to the Los Angeles Times. However, in 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom seemingly ignored the will of his constituents and declared, via executive fiat, a "moratorium" on executions — also going back on an election promise. 

The Los Angeles Times described Newsom's alleged overreach as a kind of slippery slope that could shatter faith in government, writing, "If a powerful elected official were perceived as two-faced with his word and dismissive of the voters' desires, he'd be headed for the political cliff." The state capital's paper of record, The Sacramento Bee (via the Los Angeles Times) put an even finer stinger on it: "The governor's lack of principle and failure to keep his promise is a slap in the face to survivors of heinous murders ... There is no excuse for governing by edict just because a leader doesn't like what voters have said."