Gavin Newsom's California Dream
“Fourteen people came up to me and said you should be president,” says Melissa Murray, the interim dean of the Berkeley Law School. She is talking to Gavin Newsom, who just delivered the school’s commencement address. Newsom has been the mayor of San Francisco, and he’s currently lieutenant governor of California, an elected position that’s basically a glorified understudy for governor. Yet to see the mob scene of cooing law students around the 50-year-old candidate for governor — who stands six feet three with a full head of hair swept off a strong forehead and a toothpaste-commercial smile — one would assume he’s the second coming of John F. Kennedy.
“They called me before this speech and said they really liked what I did with gay marriage,” Newsom says. He is referring to his most famous political act, when, as San Francisco mayor, 11 years before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, he flouted state law and ordered the county clerk to start issuing same-sex marriage licenses. “I thought, ‘This is something I never talk about.’ Now they tell me I talked about it the last time I spoke here. So I spent all this time on a speech I already gave.”
This is Newsom’s big year, one that will seal his political fate. With California in a warm war with the Trump White House, Newsom has tirelessly campaigned under the banner of “resistance with results.” He trolls Trump more regularly on his Twitter feed (to resplendent likes) than he discusses state policy. And having won the Democratic primary for California governor in June, Newsom is heading into a very Trump-centric election against Republican challenger John Cox, a businessman whom the president has supported and would obviously love to see in California’s highest office.
California has been a consistent thorn in the president’s side, particularly when it comes to immigration and the environment. The state has filed (and joined) lawsuits against the federal government to keep it from building the promised border wall, leasing public lands to coal companies, banning transgender people from the military, allowing employers to deny birth-control coverage on religious or moral grounds and taking away rights and protections from undocumented immigrants.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/gavin-newsom-california-governor-democrat-711220/
= new reply since forum marked as read
He was ahead of everyone else on important issues (such as same sex marriage) when it could've been risky for him (you'd think "not in California" but remember, we gave ourselves Prop 8 
). I think he's the real deal. He's been for common sense gun laws (when his mom was a teenager she watched her father commit suicide in front of her and her sister by shooting himself). I really hope he's our next Governor...
