Gavin Newsom spent the year touring early primary states like a man measuring the drapes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But the folks back home in California watched him run the place for eight years, and a pollster just asked them for a grade.
And one number tucked inside that survey points to a problem Newsom can’t fix with a slick speech in South Carolina.
The Home-State Report Card Newsom Didn’t Want
California Governor Gavin Newsom prepares to leave Sacramento with a possible White House run on his mind. A fresh survey from NBCUniversal Local and Telemundo Station Group put his record in front of 625 registered California voters.
The verdict came back ugly. Just 45% approved of the job he’s done, and 46% disapproved.
That’s in California. The bluest big state in the country, where Democrats hold every lever of power.
Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy ran the survey, and the breakdown gets worse the further a reader digs. Roughly 93% of Republicans told the pollster Newsom has done a bad job. And 56% of Independents agreed with them.
Then comes the figure that ought to keep his consultants up at night. In largely rural Northern California, the stretch outside Sacramento and the Bay Area, only 28% of voters approved of Newsom. Sixty percent disapproved.
Sean Hannity’s website flagged more of the regional damage from the same poll. Sacramento and the Central Valley came in at 39% approval and 54% disapproval, and San Diego voters broke against him 55% to 42%.
Men disapproved. White Californians disapproved. Newsom kept majorities among women, Hispanics, and Asians, and about 74% of Democrats stuck with him. NBC Los Angeles reported Latino voters approved of him 54% to 38%.
Why 28% in Farm Country Follows Him to Iowa
Political consultant Matt Rexroad told the California Post that the regional split matters more than the topline.
“This does not impact his Presidential campaign directly, but it does indicate that he does not know how to communicate with rural voters,” Rexroad said.
Think about where presidential primaries start. Cornfields, mill towns, and church parking lots. Not Pacific Heights.
“The people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina will not be impressed with a politician from California who wants to talk about being from 1) California, 2) San Francisco and 3) now lives in Marin County,” Rexroad added.
Rexroad pointed to a new Republican Governors Association ad that ties a Democrat candidate for Governor in Kansas to California. The state’s name alone now works as an attack line more than a thousand miles from the Pacific. Newsom built that reputation one signature at a time.
But the trouble doesn’t stop with Republicans and rural voters. Morris Levy, an associate political science professor at the University of Southern California, said 74% among Democrats may fall short for anyone running a national campaign in a polarized country.
“Some Democrats are also lukewarm on Newsom, or dissatisfied with his performance, and this could become an issue if he seeks the nomination,” Levy said.
The poll did find 66% of California Democrats inclined to vote for Newsom as their party’s presidential nominee, against 15% who wouldn’t. But Levy noted the question never matched the Governor against other options. The California Post asked Newsom’s office for comment on the poll.
The Billionaire Tax Flip Tells the Real Story
Newsom’s answer to all this has been a costume change. Levy described the Governor “tacking toward the center on issues such as transgender athletes’ participation in female sports.”
Readers should treat that with a raised eyebrow. A self-described mainstream Democrat who ran one of the most left-wing state governments in America for two terms doesn’t turn into a centrist because a camera showed up. And the tax issue shows which direction he actually moves when the pressure comes.
For months, Newsom fought a California ballot measure that would slap a one-time 5% tax on the assets of the state’s billionaires. PBS News reported he warned the plan would push wealthy residents out and erode the state’s tax base. Bernie Sanders traveled to Los Angeles to rally for the measure, and the Associated Press described the two men clashing over it.
Then Newsom turned around and called for a national billionaires tax. “The fight to make the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes is not one we should be fighting state by state,” Newsom wrote, according to CNBC.
So a wealth tax wrecks California but works fine once the other 49 states have to live under it too? Governments don’t create wealth. They move it around, and every dollar Washington takes is a dollar that stops working in the private economy. Newsom grasped that well enough when his own state’s budget sat on the line.
Levy put a finger on why the flip happened. He said the Governor has tried to position himself as a mainstream Democrat, and then added the warning. “That probably masks the opposition Newsom or Harris would face from the surging younger portion of their base that has shifted far to the left on economic issues, Israel, and more,” he said.
Newsom has already traveled to early primary states like Michigan and South Carolina to test his appeal. The crowds there get the polished version. Californians got the governing version, and they split down the middle on it.
And there’s some history worth remembering. Jerry Brown used the California Governor’s office as a launching pad for three presidential campaigns, in 1976, 1980, and 1992. All three failed.
Levy called President Donald Trump’s approval breakdown a “mirror image” of Newsom’s and chalked much of the split up to partisanship. Maybe so. But Trump never asked San Francisco to love him. Newsom needs the whole country to forget where he comes from.
What comes next looks predictable. A Governor who can’t hold Independents at home and sits 32 points underwater in his own farm country will chase the socialist wing harder, because that’s where the primary energy lives. The national billionaire tax was the opening bid. And nobody in Redding or Fresno will be surprised when the next one arrives.
Sources:
California Post / New York Post, “Eye-opening Gavin Newsom poll reveals ticking time bomb in his presidential prospects”
NBC Los Angeles / Telemundo, “Poll: How California voters view Trump and Newsom’s performance”
Hannity.com, “Newsom Underwater Statewide, Craters in Rural California as 2028 Chatter Builds”
PBS News / Associated Press, “Newsom urges a national ‘billionaires’ tax’ while fighting one in California” and “Sanders and Newsom clash over proposed tax on California’s billionaires”
CNBC, “Gavin Newsom calls for national billionaires tax: ‘It’s time for an economic reset'”
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Jerry Brown”