Gavin Newsom spent most of 2025 acting like he already had a presidential campaign to run.
California kept burning, going broke, and filling up with tent cities — and Newsom launched a podcast.
Now the walls are closing in, and the whole country is watching to see if California’s self-appointed national savior can survive his own backyard.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Democratic strategist Steven Maviglio, a former communications director for Governor Gray Davis, says Newsom was largely absent from governance in 2025, more interested in his national profile than in managing the hard, incremental work of state policy. “He’s been AWOL,” Maviglio said. “Parading around the country and, sadly, neglecting a lot of California’s challenges.” Maviglio cited polling showing nearly 60% of Californians believe Newsom is not paying enough attention to his job.
And it’s not just one frustrated Democrat saying it. Capitol insiders have expressed growing frustration over the past two years with Newsom not rolling up his sleeves and working on key issues alongside them.
Newsom launched a podcast touting it as an opportunity to understand the MAGA movement’s motivations and figure out a path forward for Democrats after the party’s bruising losses in 2024. But the early response was predominantly bewilderment — from supporters, critics and the public alike — as listeners struggled to make sense of his intentions, his political evolution, and what the show signaled for his leadership of California.
After the podcast launch, the governor held no public events or press conferences, allowing the episodes of his show to drive his messaging almost completely. The guy telling the rest of America how to govern couldn’t find time to show up to work.
The Budget Disaster He Built
California stared down a $12 billion deficit in fiscal year 2025-26. Even with the reductions Newsom proposed, projected revenues were still $19 billion short of his spending plan. The gap got covered by loans and transfers from special funds, shifting spending to other pots of money, and various bookkeeping gimmicks.
It gets worse. This marks the fourth year in a row in Newsom’s tenure that California faced a deficit despite revenue growth. The structural deficit could reach $35 billion annually by fiscal year 2027-28, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Newsom inherited a state budget from predecessor Jerry Brown that was in pretty good condition, but over the last six-plus years, spending growth has outpaced revenue increases. The Legislature’s budget analyst cited an average 9% annual increase in outlays since Newsom became governor, but just 6% in average revenue growth.
You can’t run a state the way Sacramento has been run and then go on a national tour selling yourself as the answer to America’s problems. The math doesn’t lie even when the governor does.
187,000 People Living on the Streets
California’s homeless population remains the biggest in the nation, with more than 187,000 people sleeping on the street and in shelters.
Despite ramping up spending on the issue to unprecedented levels after taking office — the Legislative Analyst’s Office found the administration had spent $24 billion on housing and homelessness — the governor changed his tune. Twenty-four billion dollars and the streets of Los Angeles still look like a third-world country.
Blaming local officials for stagnant progress, Newsom proposed zero dollars for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program — the main source of homelessness funding for local governments.
Republican political consultant Mike Madrid in Sacramento said the state’s homelessness crisis is one of Newsom’s biggest political liabilities, especially if he decides to run for president in 2028. “It’s not hard to imagine one of his primary opponents running an ad with 30 seconds of grainy, black-and-white footage of Skid Row in L.A. or the Mission District in S.F., with an ominous voice saying, ‘This is Gavin Newsom’s California,'” one political analyst warned.
The Medi-Cal Flip-Flop That Exposed Everything
Here’s where Newsom’s whole act starts to fall apart for anyone paying attention.
Newsom — who in 2019 ran on the promise of universal healthcare — proposed freezing enrollment in the state-funded healthcare plan for illegal aliens and imposing new premiums amid a severe budget deficit. The proposal marked a stunning reversal from the prior year’s move to expand free healthcare access for low-income residents without legal status.
California taxpayers had been footing the bill for that expansion for years. Expanding Medi-Cal for illegal aliens has cost an additional $8.5 billion annually, per a state budget hearing. Republicans warned this was coming. Democrats called them heartless. And now the governor who called those Republicans heartless just pulled the plug himself — not out of principle, but because he ran out of other people’s money.
State Senator Roger Niello, a Republican from Roseville and vice chair of the Senate budget committee, said Newsom’s proposed cuts confirmed what Republicans had criticized about the expansion from the beginning: Medi-Cal for illegal aliens is too expensive to be sustainable. “We committed spending to something we can’t afford,” Niello said.
The French Laundry Never Gets Old
Before Newsom lectures the rest of America about leadership, it’s worth remembering what kind of leader he was when it actually mattered.
In November 2020, Newsom sat down for a fancy dinner party at the tony Napa Valley restaurant The French Laundry while the state was in the midst of a COVID-19 surge. He and other state officials were emphasizing the importance of following social distancing rules and wearing face masks in public places, as mandated by an order he had issued in June. They were urging Californians to forgo Thanksgiving dinners and other private social gatherings, which they had identified as an important source of virus transmission.
Yet there was the politician behind those policies, sitting shoulder to shoulder with people outside his household, celebrating the 50th birthday of his friend Jason Kinney, a prominent political strategist.
His own words said it all. “It was a dumb mistake,” Newsom later admitted in an interview with Sean Hannity. But it wasn’t just dumb. It was the kind of arrogance that only comes from someone who never believed the rules applied to him in the first place. He locked down churches, crushed small businesses, and shut government schools — while dining indoors at one of the most expensive restaurants in the country with lobbyists.
His Former Chief of Staff Just Pleaded Guilty
And then there’s the corruption scandal that won’t go away.
Newsom’s former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, subscribing to a false tax return, and lying to federal investigators. The case shocked Sacramento.
The federal grand jury indictment accused Williamson and four other co-conspirators of funneling $225,000 in money from a dormant campaign account. Williamson was also accused of falsely claiming more than $1.7 million in fraudulent business expenses on her taxes, for a $15,000 Chanel bag, a chartered jet, and a nearly $170,000 birthday trip to Mexico.
“Dana Williamson and her co-conspirators weaponized public trust for personal gain,” said Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel of the FBI Sacramento Field Office. “They stole from a campaign account, fabricated contracts, filed false tax returns, and lied to federal agents.”
It was a staggering fall from grace for the former chief of staff, who just a few years ago was widely considered the most powerful unelected person in Sacramento.
California Representative Ro Khanna didn’t mince words. Referring to Williamson’s indictment, Khanna called it a “toxic stain” on the state.
Now His Wife Is Under Federal Investigation
Williamson’s plea was just the beginning.
A Justice Department probe into the wife of Newsom burst into public view recently after Newsom — prominent critic of President Donald Trump and a potential 2028 White House contender — accused the administration of spearheading a politically motivated investigation into his inner circle. CNN confirmed that the California governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, is under investigation.
Newsom allegedly solicited at least $1.9 million in charitable payments known as ‘behested payments’ in 2024 and 2025 for Siebel Newsom’s California Partners Project, including $1 million from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, according to disclosure reports filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission.
California Post opinion editor Joel Pollak noted that some of the payments were directed to organizations linked to Newsom’s wife. “He was fined for failing to report what are called behested payments,” Pollak said. Newsom was actually fined for missing deadlines in reporting dozens of behested payments in 2024 and 2025, many of them related to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
Newsom’s response was to go on offense, claiming Trump put him on a political “hit list.” Newsom accused Trump and his DOJ of “abusing the grand jury process,” saying: “He’s coming after me because I’m considering running for president.” Maybe. But the question that doesn’t get answered with that defense is why there was so much to investigate in the first place.
The National Ambition Problem
Even Newsom’s own allies see the trap he’s walking into.
Much of Newsom’s legislative and policy activity in 2025 could, observers argue, be seen not as transformational governance but as groundwork for messaging and momentum for a national campaign. “He’s either vetting guidelines for the future or developing talking points for the campaign trail — or both,” one political analyst concluded.
If primary voters prioritize electability, Newsom — a former San Francisco mayor and current leader of left-leaning California — could be seen as a risky choice, Democratic operatives say.
And that’s the real problem for Newsom. He spent years locking down California, spending money the state didn’t have, watching homelessness explode on his watch, and presiding over a culture of Sacramento corruption that has now touched his own inner circle. One analyst warned: “It’s not hard to imagine one of his primary opponents running an ad with 30 seconds of grainy, black-and-white footage of Skid Row in L.A. or the Mission District in S.F., with an ominous voice saying, ‘This is Gavin Newsom’s California.'”
But Newsom keeps parading around like none of it happened. He wants to be President of the United States. And the record he’d be running on is California in 2025 — deficits, tent cities, a guilty plea from his top aide, and a federal investigation of his wife. Good luck selling that to the rest of the country.
Sources: CalMatters, State Affairs, Axios, The Hill, NBC News, CNN, Fox Business, Reason Magazine, Cap Radio, Fox News, Daily Journal, ABC7 Los Angeles, Bloomberg Government