This week Gov. Gavin Newsom announced another pointless podcast and another pointless website, proving he will do anything to avoid governing.
Newsom is always making announcements and though the results aren’t there a liberal friend once defended Newsom to me by saying his flurry of activities show he’s at least trying.
But is he though?
Newsom launched a podcast last summer with his longtime friend and sports agent, Doug Hendrickson, and Hendrickson’s client, NFL legend Marshawn Lynch. For Newsom, the podcast is mostly a platform to awkwardly insert himself in discussions with self-aggrandizing comments.
The limited publicly-available information suggests this podcast is not all that popular, certainly not popular enough to justify a second.
But a second podcast is coming regardless.
In this new podcast, Newsom claims he’ll seek common ground with MAGA celebrities, police the left, and talk to constituents. Newsom told Politico he was trying to emulate Bill Maher, the comedian-turned-TV host, who is known for mixing it up with people on the right with whom he disagrees and criticizing the fringe left.
“I watch him because I appreciate how he calls balls and strikes — takes shots at both parties,” Newsom said of Maher, adding: “I’m asking the same questions you’re asking of me: Where the hell is the Democratic Party? What are we doing? Who are we? Where are we going? What’s the path back?”
This plan is flawed. Newsom is not funny like Maher and talks like a bureaucrat. He wants to ask “Where the hell is the Democratic Party?” because, with a Democratic presidential primary just a few years away, he is dying to repeatedly claim he’s the savior the country has been waiting for.
Newsom will do what he always does: Promote himself.
The podcast is called “This is Gavin Newsom.”
He’s right. This is Gavin Newsom. This really is.
Apparently, I’m not the only person who is down on this idea. Fox 11 Los Angeles’s Elex Michaelson asked Newsom to respond to critics (like me) who say another podcast is just a distraction.
“It’s essential to my day job,” Newsom said.
Yes, no one can possibly govern without a podcast (or two)! How could we have defeated the British without the great George Washington Cannot Tell a Lie Podcast?
In fact, Newsom showed just how essential podcasting is by teasing us with a clip of him tackling one of the top issues of 1989: the Menendez brothers.
A big chunk of Los Angeles just burned to the ground, less than a third of 8th graders are proficient in reading, homelessness is on the rise and California leads the nation in poverty, and Newsom is calling for a review of whether it’s safe to let two guys who murdered their parents more than 30 years ago out of prison.
How dare anyone question whether Newsom is focused on key issues?
Newsom is not new to this, he pointed out to Michaelson. He hosted his own T.V. show more than a decade ago that lasted just over a year. He’s a veteran creator of content no one wants.
Newsom has been heavily criticized throughout his governorship for avoiding California media, opting instead for national publications, cable news hits and vanity exercises like his first podcast. He goes where his eyes are pointed, which is far away from California. And he’s not going to stop for anyone.
The most he has to talk about is prolific record of spending a lot of money (with nothing to show for it), or making “unprecedented investments,” as he claims on a website launched this week called accountability.ca.gov.
The website purports to hold counties responsible for results on homelessness and housing production, but it lacks meaningful context and shifts the blame away from the one thing he can control: Himself.
Newsom’s administration took well-deserved heat last year for failing to track the spending and results of its “unprecedented investments” on homelessness and then vetoed a bill that would have required accountability. He also campaigned on building 3.5 million new housing units, only for reality to be a mere fraction of that. Why isn’t any of this being tracked on a website?
On top of that, the state has many things it could do to assist counties with housing production, like regulatory reform and streamlining and speeding up funding awards. If Newsom is making meaningful headway on any of this, I’m not aware of it. I asked his office, but I got no reply. They must have been developing podcast merch.
So much of the problems in this state are due to bureaucracy and regulations. Even Newsom’s very own California Interagency Council on Homelessness needed 35 pages to explain using “state and federal funds to prevent and end homelessness.”
Newsom could help here. As Graham Knaus, Chief Executive Officer of the California State Association of Counties, wrote in a statement: “Who’s responsible for ensuring a shelter bed? Is that a city? A county? The state? Churches? Non-profits? It’s not clear in state law.”
Again, are we sure Newsom is doing something?
He claims to be, but history suggests he won’t produce much beyond headlines. He’s focused on higher office, endless self-promotion and at best nibbling around the edges of reform.
Another podcast won’t change anything. Another webpage probably won’t either. But until he leaves office this is all Californians will get.
This is Gavin Newsom.
Matt Fleming is a regular opinion columnist for the Southern California News Group and a former California Republican spokesperson and legislative staffer.