A year in, Gavin Newsom is still fighting Trump. Is he doing enough to govern California?

Marco della Cava | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption California Governor Gavin Newsom discusses 2020 election and family Gavin Newsom became governor of California a year ago. Now he weighs in on the 2020 presidential election and juggling his family and being governor.

SACRAMENTO – Gavin Newsom, the 40th governor of the state of California, emerges from the door to his private office with a sigh.

“Sorry I’m late," says Newsom, 52. "I was watching the impeachment hearings."

For Newsom, President Donald Trump is often unavoidable these days. He and the president continue to be at loggerheads. In fact, Newsom's position as leader of the so-dubbed California Resistance helped him get elected on Nov. 7, 2018.

But some critics contend the governor's first year in office has been diluted by this feud, resulting in a lack of progress on huge issues – a mushrooming homeless population, astronomical housing prices, a dangerous electrical grid – that have led pundits to write eulogies for the age-old California dream.

Newsom is resolute. The dream will live on – in spite of Trump.

“One of the biggest stories that hasn’t gotten full media attention is the assault by the president on the American people who happen to be residents of the largest state of our union,” Newsom says in an exclusive year-end interview with USA TODAY. “But California is thriving despite him.”

So far, polls say most Californians like the job Newsom has done since being sworn in Jan. 7, with 44% approving and 32% disapproving, according to a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

But while Newsom campaigned last fall on the enduring attraction of the mythic and potent California dream – egalitarianism, upward mobility, natural beauty – that postcard image has taken a hit.

Homelessness is soaring; 25% of the nation’s 600,000 homeless live in California. In San Francisco alone, apps have sprouted up to track human waste on sidewalks, people with mental illnesses have attacked other residents, and some companies, most recently Oracle, have canceled downtown convention plans.

Housing costs are driving away the middle class; the median home price in California is $550,000, twice the national average, according to Zillow. More than 28,190 people departed California in the second quarter of 2019, almost double 2017's rate, according to a regular Migration Report from real estate brokerage Redfin.

And California’s already prevalent wildfires now have an added menace; this year’s days-long Pacific Gas & Electric power grid shutdowns wreaked havoc particularly on seniors and the poor. Along with fires, they cost the state’s economy $11.5 billion, according to Bank of the West chief economist Scott Anderson.

To Newsom's constituents, taking on Trump is one task. Governing the state is another altogether.

“He ran as a leader of the Trump resistance, and he’s been all-in there and gets full marks,” says Thad Kousser, chair of the University of California, San Diego, political science department and author of “The Power of American Governors." “So the next step will be to really get a coherent policy agenda set and implemented.”

California's duel with Trump

Leading that resistance has been time consuming. And Trump is fighting back, in ways that affect the state's policies.

Over the past year, Trump has threatened to withhold federal aid for wildfire recovery on grounds that the state isn’t managing its forests, has suggested federal oversight is needed to fix the state's homelessness epidemic, and has vowed to revoke the state's authority to set strict auto emissions standards.

Most recently, Trump has ordered that federal lands in California be open to fracking-style oil drilling, just as Newsom halted all fracking permits so that their ecological impact could be studied first.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in Newsom’s overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature passed a bill requiring Trump to turn over his tax records if he wanted to be on the ballot in 2020. That chess move was overturned by the California Supreme Court, but the jab landed.

“California is a disgrace to our country,” Trump told a Cincinnati crowd days after the bill was passed in July.

Some state lawmakers are concerned about Newsom's slow pace of progress on the traditional parts of his job.

“Newsom has a Democratic majority in the Legislature, and what has he done with it?” says Assemblyman Devon Mathis, a Republican from the Central Valley agricultural town of Visalia.

“Conditions have gotten worse, and gorgeous cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are cesspools,” he says. “And many of us are trying to take care of our families, praying to God we don’t have a mishap and end up in the poverty line. You’re the governor; you have the ability to do something, not just talk.”

Newsom says he is well aware of the criticism. And he asks for time.

“We expect to be held accountable. We expect people to demand more. They want to see evidence of change,” he says. “All I can say is, we got here 11 damn months ago, and in the next few years if they don’t see change, they can make a change at the ballot box. And they should if we don’t produce real results.”

Although Newsom doesn’t offer a specific timeline, he says this coming year should bring progress as a result of steps taken over the past year.

These include releasing $650 million to municipalities to address homelessness, fining cities that push back against affordable housing initiatives, and signing 22 wildfire-related bills while increasing oversight over bankrupt utility PG&E, whose aging and faulty lines have sparked some of the deadly fires.

Newsom also points out that in his first year he has signed numerous laws that are in keeping with California’s progressive political track record. These include a ban on facial-recognition software in police body cameras, granting sexual assault victims more time to sue and expanding gun seizure rules.

Plan for 3.5 million new homes now a 'stretch'

Housing, Newsom admits, is perhaps his greatest challenge, since it affects both the poor and the middle class, the engine of the state's massive economy, which totaled $3 trillion in 2018.

During his inauguration speech, Newsom promised a “Marshall Plan for affordable housing,” referencing U.S. aid to post-World War II Europe. He vowed to build 3.5 million new housing units by 2025. But in the first half of 2019, California cities approved 11% fewer residential building permits than the same period in 2018, according to a July report from the California Department of Finance.

He now calls the 3.5 million unit figure a “stretch goal.” Still, Newsom says the coming years should see growth in new affordable housing.

“The housing issue, which is so key to that California dream, we have to hit that one head-on,” Newsom says.

“So we have $4.5 billion from the private sector, including $2.5 billion from Tim Cook at Apple" in the form of land for affordable housing, first-time homebuyer assistance and more, he says. "We put in $1.75 billion in state money. We’re suing cities. We also putting up money to help cities plan for housing. We’re looking at land-use policies. I hope in the next year or so we’ll see movement, but there’s no silver bullet. Nothing happens overnight.”

As mayor of the Southern California surf-hub of Huntington Beach, Erik Peterson isn’t so sure about Newsom’s housing strategy.

“I’m not a fan,” says Peterson, whose city Newsom sued early in his tenure as governor for failing to permit enough new housing.

“Under him, we’re getting a more authoritarian Sacramento,” says Peterson. “The state says, 'Everyone will do what we say; you need to rezone your suburban neighborhoods to be urban centers.' Well, we get pushback on that from our residents.”

Instead, Peterson says, Newsom “should worry more about infrastructure and education, which are falling apart, and let’s make California business-friendly again. If you have jobs, people can afford the houses.”

In the northern California town of Chico, Mayor Randall Stone, an affordable housing developer, applauds Newsom for being “the first governor in recent memory to put money and emphasis on housing.”

Stone said he pulled Newsom aside when the governor visited earlier in the year to check on the recovery of nearby Paradise, which was decimated by fire in 2018. Stone told him: “The reason there’s no building of affordable housing is we’re disincentivized.”

To blame, Stone says, are property and sales tax rates "that only go up 2% a year" and do not keep pace with employee salaries and other municipal costs. That often results in city halls being more likely to approve commercial building projects, like shopping malls and auto dealerships, because they bring in more tax revenue.

"But I'm not sure he can snap his fingers and fix that," Stone says. "They’re longstanding systemic issues.”

Newsom cautions that if a Not In My Backyard attitude persists at a municipal level, state-initiated housing assistance is moot.

“All this NIMBY-ism society becomes how we behave,” he says. “This can’t be, 'I got mine; why don’t you focus that over there?’ We’ve got to own it. We have to transfer that energy of angst toward a real follow-through. And I’m just getting started.”

Newsom: White House dreams?

Some wonder where Newsom wants to end up. An entrepreneurial stint running his PlumpJack Winery company aside, Newsom has been in politics since becoming a San Francisco city supervisor at 29. He became mayor at age 36, and lieutenant governor at 42.

Many California political observers consider Newsom’s presidential ambition to be one of the state’s worst-kept secrets.

Both the bust of John F. Kennedy that sits on his desk as well as the photo of his smiling late father William Newsom, a state appeals court judge, with former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, seem to draw an invisible line between the photogenic governor and Camelot. But Newsom consistently shoots down the speculation that he is preparing for a White House run later this decade.

“Honestly, no interest,” he says.

Indeed, with its 40 million residents – one in eight U.S. citizens calls California home – Newsom presides over nothing short of a nation-state.

Despite Trump administration efforts, California still sets its own climate change goals, brokers its own deals with some of the world’s leading automakers on tailpipe emissions, and puts stakes in the ground when it comes to immigration policies such as its recent ban on privately run immigration detention centers.

“Our role is potent and powerful, substantively so at this moment,” says Newsom.

But while insisting that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is not on his radar, Newsom said he feels confident about Democratic chances to take the White House in 2020.

“We’ve offered a lot of different flavors from progressive to conservative, and we’ll be well-positioned to unite around somebody at a time when we need to do so to take out one of the worst presidents in American history,” he says.

Newsom was supportive of longtime friend and sometime political rival, Sen. Kamala Harris, including planning an Iowa trip to tout her candidacy before it was scratched when Harris ended her campaign Dec. 3.

Of her withdrawal, he says simply: “She had the burden of high expectations that she set herself, after outperforming many people who have had far more years on the national stage.”

Whether it was watching Harris soar then nosedive, or simply tacitly acknowledging success in his first term as governor is key to any presidential run, he says California has all his attention.

“This is the office of the governor of California, the fifth-largest economy in the world,” he says, looking around the room. “It’s Earl Warren’s office. Ronald Reagan’s office. Pat Brown, not just Jerry Brown. It’s the best job in the world.”

Newsom's bliss? A recycling plant

Over the past 11 months, Newsom has kept up a busy travel schedule within the state, often away from Sacramento at least one or two days a week. He has visited those displaced by fires up north, comforted shooting victims down south, and talked about water scarcity with farmers in the Central Valley.

What little free time he has back in the capital he dedicates to his wife, filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, and their four kids, all under 10. To unwind, the governor says he likes to take his kids to the local fish hatchery and, his favorite, the recycling plant.

“I’m not sure what it is about seeing tens of thousands of things bouncing around, but you get into that space and relax and zone out,” Newsom says, laughing.

But those who know him best suggest the governor relishes negotiating California’s many vexing issues.

“Gavin’s the happiest in the eye of the storm, and that’s where he’s been all year long,” says Nathan Ballard, founder of The Press Shop media relations firm and Newsom’s former mayoral press secretary. He recalls the heat Newsom happily took for allowing same-sex couples to marry in 2004, a stand that anticipated a national movement.

The longtime friend and informal adviser says that while “it’s not in Gavin's nature to relax,” Ballard and a small group did manage to take Newsom away from Sacramento in October, hauling him off to a rustic Marin County restaurant to celebrate the governor’s birthday.

“That was fun, but he knows that now it’s time for him not just to survive a crisis, but to make this state a better place to live,” says Ballard. “And the proof will be on the streets. Simple as that.”

Newsom, a self-confessed policy wonk, says he plans to get results over the coming years by learning everything he can about as many thorny California issues as possible.

"Governing is all about nuance, the details," he says. "Simple program passing isn't problem solving. When everyone else is running off to the next thing, I have to dig into it all to be sure we can implement changes effectively. I'm accountable."

That approach has critics like Mathis, the Visalia Assemblymember, shaking his head.

“Newsom seems like he’s trying to solve every problem in the state by himself,” says Mathis, whose fellow state Republican party officials recently endorsed long-shot efforts to get Newsom recalled as governor. “He needs to step up and start to delegate authority out and do so by stepping across the aisle.”

Governor swings at many pitches

For Anthony Rendon, who has been California’s State Assembly speaker since 2016, Newsom stands apart from his predecessor Brown, “who was uniquely not interested in many issues,” precisely because he “cares about more.”

Newsom matter-of-factly says he is “not capable of not trying to solve a problem. So if today’s critique is we’re swinging at a lot of pitches, absolutely that is fair criticism.”

But, he adds, “do I tell a senior citizen, 'Sorry, I can’t help with your prescription because my team says I just need to focus on a couple of things'? Do you tell kids, 'Preschool can’t be a priority because my communications staff think I should stay on wildfires'? Do you tell wildfire folks, 'Listen, we did some polling, and it looks like this year it’s got to be housing and homelessness'?”

Newsom’s eyebrows arch. “My point is,” he says, “when you look at those trade-offs as governor, you just know it all has to somehow be on the agenda.”

One thing is certain. With a 2020 to-do list as high-profile as Newsom’s – start building new affordable housing, shelter the homeless across the state, fix a broken gas and electricity utility, engage the Republican president in battle – it will be easy for voters here to keep score.

But what would he say to someone who has given up on California's golden dream and isn’t willing to wait for Newsom to polish it?

“I would tell those folks I have a sensitivity to that. They’re not wrong: The median price of a home is comically high in California,” he says, veering off into details on his team's “deep dives” on housing solutions with city officials in Vancouver and Singapore.

But then Newsom resets.

“I’m empathetic and sympathetic, and it’s disturbing to me,” he says. “But that said, I feel for them. You’re missing the opportunities this state can provide. We had a historic decade in venture capital investment, a historic decade of job creation. There is no Trump economy without California’s success. This is Florence in its golden age.

"Sure, there are costs associated with that success, yes. But if we can balance those out, boy, the sky’s the limit."

Follow USA TODAY national correspondent Marco della Cava: @marcodellacava