Newsom earned praise for getting results on thorny but urgent issues like housing. | Photo/Rich Pedroncelli Legislative frustrations simmered during Newsom's first session as governor

SACRAMENTO — Nearly one year into the Gavin Newsom era, Sacramento still isn’t certain what to make of the governor.

By many measures, it was a remarkably productive first nine months for Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor and lieutenant governor who cruised to election last November along with a Democratic supermajority in the California legislature. He presided over landmark deals on rent relief, charter schools and police shootings. He excited liberals with a more aggressive stance toward President Donald Trump. His first budget drew praise from both parties for exercising fiscal restraint while directing hefty sums toward homelessness and insuring undocumented immigrants, both issues gnawing at the state’s heavily Democratic base.


But frustrations simmered here in the nation's most influential state capital, leaving lingering questions. Lawmakers, staff and interest group negotiators — many of whom spoke anonymously to avoid antagonizing a new governor as bills remain on his desk — pointed to false starts and mixed messaging that left them uncertain of where they stood, in addition to last-minute intercessions and a sense that Newsom made one-sided demands for votes. That dissension came despite the fact that Newsom dealt almost exclusively with lawmakers in his own Democratic Party because Republicans have so little power in Sacramento.

Some observers attributed missteps and muddled communications to the Capitol inexperience of Newsom himself and top aides. Newsom rarely engaged in the thick of legislative dealmaking as lieutenant governor, while some top staff — notably chief of staff Ann O’Leary, a former adviser to both Bill and Hillary Clinton — arrived unfamiliar with the Capitol’s ways.

Others saw an ambitious new governor who, in his desire to forge early breakthroughs in a variety of policy areas, had a habit of overextending himself, getting publicly ahead of closed-door realities and striving to mollify different groups in a way that could leave negotiators uncertain of where they stood.

As lawmakers prepare for Newsom's second year, some said they were glad he supported bills that former Gov. Jerry Brown rejected — but intend to press Newsom on specifics earlier to avoid surprises. Others remain suspicious of his operating style and say he has lost credibility.

Rob Stutzman, who helped Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger navigate his first year as his communications director, said much of the grumbling reflected the inevitable growing pains as a governor and legislators gauge one another.

“One thing you do constantly hear is the Legislature being unsure of what the governor wants, but it’s his first year,” Stutzman said. “He may have been trying to determine what he wants.”

But Stutzman cited two more vexing episodes, echoed in numerous interviews, that bookended Newsom’s year: his State of the State speech seemingly acknowledged that California’s high-speed rail project was a lost cause, leaving Newsom’s staff scrambling to reassure supporters and counteract reports that the project was dead; and his surprise demand for more amendments to a vaccination exemption measure after he had already sought and agreed to an earlier set of changes.

“With the vax issue, and we saw this with high-speed rail, he said one thing and did another — that’s troubling,” Stutzman said. “That’s unusual.”

One Democratic legislative aide said that as the year progressed, it became difficult to know if policy deals would stick.

"I think the feeling right now is you can't trust anything that they say. Even if a staffer is acting in good faith, the situation is so chaotic within the Horseshoe that a staffer’s assumption your bill doesn’t have problems doesn't necessarily amount to much," the aide said, referring to the governor's senior staff offices on the first floor of the Capitol.

Asked about such frustrations, Newsom spokesperson Nathan Click responded by underscoring accomplishments across a number of policy areas, saying in a statement that the governor has presided over “a huge amount” of progress “on some of the state’s most intractable problems," running through a list ranging from renter assistance to charter school regulations.

Brown comparisons



Inevitably, Newsom’s style invited comparisons to Brown, his predecessor — a man whose record Newsom compares himself to, unprompted, when talking to the press.

Brown had already served two terms before returning in 2011 and relied on a long-established inner circle familiar to Sacramento denizens. He also was more selective about what he became involved in and focused more on “big legislative achievements” like creating the Local Control Funding Formula for schools.

A source close to negotiations on the charter school deal likened Newsom's style of leading to a "strong mayor" form of government compared to Brown. The source said Newsom’s desire to be involved “from very early on” left some legislators “annoyed.”

Other sources familiar with the charter negotiations said those involved felt “caught off guard” by what they say was Newsom’s attempt to appease dueling interests, especially since it forced his longstanding ally, the California Teachers Association, to accept changes sought by the California Charter Schools Association, which opposed the governor during last year's primary.

While Brown would typically telegraph his position or intervene only on a handful of major priority policies, legislators said Newsom and his team would surprise them by jumping in late in the game to try and shape bills before they arrived on his desk. That late-breaking action irritated some.

“With Brown, you did your own thing, and if you reached out to his staff, you may get some input, but at least you knew exactly where he was coming from,” one source said. “The method of engagement is very different. I don’t know how much of it is because he’s brand new, but the surprises … it’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

A senior Democratic legislative aide told POLITICO, "So many people said, ‘Oh, we talked to the administration, they were fine on our bill and then literally two days later they wanted amendments.’ That's just unheard of. The Brown administration would be so embarrassed to be off-message in that way."

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said Brown came in with "fairly fixed ideas based on long experience" and a smaller set of priorities, while Newsom has shown more willingness to work with lawmakers. But there are always some growing pains in the first year.

"It’s still a learning process," Rendon said. "It’s both a matter of us learning how to work with a new governor and the governor’s staff. Those who haven’t been here long have had to learn how the process functions in the Capitol."

Surprise sunsets



In May, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) and Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) stood next to Newsom at a podium celebrating a long-fought victory after the new governor agreed to exempt menstrual products and diapers from sales taxes in California.

They didn't realize until days later that Newsom only wanted the exemption to last two years. Both lawmakers said they were surprised and disappointed.

“I initially thought it was going to be permanent,” Garcia told POLITICO in an interview. “They told me they were going to do this exemption in the budget, and I said, 'Great, let’s do this.'”

Garcia said she learned a minute or two before the press conference with Newsom that there would be an expiration date. “I couldn’t get an answer on how long,” Garcia said. “Someone told me it was a two-year sunset. Someone else told me it was five years, then they said it was 10 years.”

She blamed herself for not pressing the administration earlier, but also said Newsom could have been more transparent. Gonzalez said she learned about the two-year sunset from reporters days later.

“I was asked about it and didn’t know, that’s never comfortable,” Gonzalez said about the sunset. “I learned about it from the media. It seemed odd.”

Ultimately, though, both said they were happy that Newsom agreed to an exemption that Brown rejected and viewed it as an opening to push further next year.

“These things happen,” Gonzalez said. “I don’t think it was intentional, I don’t think they were trying to deceive us. I just think it was miscommunication. I think we’re all trying to figure out how this governor communicates."

Labor fight



On one of the year’s signature issues — a battle over labor in the gig economy, which pitted tech companies against organized labor — Newsom’s attempts to balance both sides fueled discontent. Unions wanted to enshrine in state law a California Supreme Court ruling deeming more workers to be employees, rather than independent contractors, with Assembly Bill 5. Tech companies like Uber said re-classification would be ruinous for their business models.

While Newsom ended up proclaiming his support for AB 5, his administration’s role in seeking a compromise at times alienated organized labor. That was illustrated most starkly when the head of California’s powerful building trades union lost a spot on a Future of Work panel and then blasted the Newsom for his openness to the gig companies.

Just hours after the Legislature passed AB 5, with supporters assailing gig companies and lauding a watershed moment for workers, The Wall Street Journal published a story in which Newsom said he was “committed” to continuing negotiations with “Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, others, some of the gig platforms.” A day later, Uber would cite that language in a press release essentially defying California by saying the company would not re-classify workers.

Some within labor seethed. In their moment of triumph, here was the governor sending a signal of encouragement to companies they’d just denounced as standing in the way of progress.

Rent bill



On renters’ issues, too, Newsom sowed confusion before eventually striking a far-reaching deal.

After breaking with many Democrats by not supporting a 2018 rent control ballot initiative, Newsom said early in the year he would support a rent deal. But his engagement on the issue was uneven in the early going, sources said, and O’Leary ended up calling members to apologize after she promised housing advocates that Newsom wanted to move every rent bill then before them — a surprise to lawmakers who had not heard from Newsom’s office.

“This was a brand-new administration, so people were still learning about and figuring out how to negotiate with the governor and his staff,” said a lawmaker who asked not to be named in order to speak freely, “and that wasn’t a helpful moment.”

Similarly, when Newsom told reporters in August about engaging in a “long overdue” effort to enact renter protections and avert “another costly ballot fight,” he surprised lawmakers by trying to push the process forward. His office subsequently increased its engagement, producing a deal that surmounted opposition from real estate agents to pass. The final result — a win for the governor — belied the confusing and choppy process.

Legislators had similar criticisms of the administration pushing for tough votes in a manner seen as demanding a win without taking their starkly different political milieus into account. Tensions tautened as Newsom and his staff pushed lawmakers to pass a clean drinking water tax, a signature issue of his that collided with an aversion to new taxes among legislators in competitive districts, or to conform California’s tax code to federal changes in order to fund an expanded earned-income tax credit.

A senior legislative staffer summarized those conversations as: “I’m not negotiating, I’m just listening to a laundry list of their desires which they attribute to the governor.”

Better than a surprise veto



Others, however, saw it as preferable to learning of the governor’s opposition via a veto message, particularly given how many legislators tried again with Newsom on bills Brown had nixed.

And Newsom earned praise for getting results on thorny but urgent issues like housing. Dan Dunmoyer, who served in the Schwarzenegger administration and now heads the California Building Industry Association, said it was “very common” for a first-year governor to experience growing pains with hammering out a negotiating style and establishing a clear staff hierarchy — and he said Newsom still came through on a central campaign vow.

“Housing has been something he kept front and center from a policy and public communication perspective. his predecessor didn’t do that,” Dunmoyer said, adding that “the governor has made it politically cool to talk about trying to solve the housing crisis … rhetoric does matter when it comes to pushing policy.”

Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) carried the rent cap bill that Newsom’s dealmaking helped push across the finish line despite opposition from the politically powerful California Association of Realtors. Chiu acknowledged that the bill “experienced a circuitous route” and that Newsom’s public call for a deal surprised him, but he said Newsom still played an invaluable role.

“We were very appreciative of governor’s engagement,” Chiu said.