Looking Back at Gavin Newsom's Career—and National Ambitions

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom attends a press conference about President Donald Trump's tariffs, at an almond farm in Ceres, Calif., on April 16, 2025. Credit - Noah Berger—AP
President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom's clash over the deployment of federal troops in Los Angeles has escalated a longstanding feud between the two to new heights—and may be setting the stage for a bigger political battle come 2028.
The recent standoff has brightened the spotlight on Newsom, who was already considered a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in the next presidential election after building up his national profile with major policy moves and confrontations with Republicans.
Since becoming Governor in 2019, Newsom has embraced his role as the top official of the most populous U.S. state, which often leads the country in implementing progressive policies.
The 57-year-old has been assertive in his opposition to the Trump Administration, most recently challenging federal 'border czar' Tom Homan to arrest him after Homan indicated he would detain anybody who interferes with federal immigration actions.
'Democracy is under assault before our eyes,' Newsom said in an emphatic public address Tuesday evening. 'This moment we have feared has arrived.'
Here's what to know about the Governor's political career so far and what it could signal about a potential future campaign for the White House.
Newsom garnered national attention shortly after becoming San Francisco's mayor—the city's youngest in more than a century—when he gave the green light to issue municipal marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Feb. 12, 2004, more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legalized across the country.
Newsom had been mayor for just one month at the time, after previously serving on the city's Parking and Traffic Commission and Board of Supervisors. He first entered government in 1996 after beginning his career as a well-connected businessman.
His order at City Hall defied both the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act—a federal law that defined marriage as between a woman and a man—and a state law approved by voters in 2000 that did the same thing.
Newsom's attempt to bring marriage equality to San Francisco came after Massachusetts became the first state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage after its Supreme Judicial Court's November 2003 decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.
The move drew controversy, however, including from Democratic Party leadership, as well as legal challenges, as public support at the time was still divided. After more than 4,000 same-sex couples were married, the California Supreme Court ruled the licenses void. The legal battle over marriage equality in the state was not resolved until the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling.
Near the end of his second term as mayor, in April 2009, Newsom announced on Twitter that he planned to run for Governor. But he pulled out of the race just six months later as it became clear former Gov. Jerry Brown was the clear frontrunner.
In March 2010, Newsom announced that he would instead seek the office of lieutenant governor, and he beat his Republican challenger by more than 10% of the vote in the November election.
The California politician continued to prove his boundary-pushing progressive bona fides in his support of Proposition 64, a state ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana that passed in 2016. When the first-term Trump Administration later threatened to potentially crack down on such laws, Newsom issued a letter urging the federal government to work with states like his. 'We can't continue to keep doing what we've done and expect a different result,' he wrote to the President. 'The government must not strip the legal and publicly supported industry of its business, and hand it back to drug cartels and criminals.'
In addition to marijuana legalization, Newsom staked out progressive positions on issues including capital punishment, supporting an unsuccessful proposition to ban it, and gun control, supporting a successful proposition to require background checks for purchasers of ammunition and to prohibit possession of high-capacity magazines.
But throughout and even before Newsom's first tenure in Sacramento, he made clear his frustration with the limits of the lieutenant governorship. And as early as 2015, just after his reelection in the role, he announced his intention to run for the state's top job in 2018, to succeed Brown who was in his final term.
'I've never been a fan of pretense or procrastination. After all, our state is defined by its independent, outspoken spirit. When Californians see something we truly believe in, we say so and act accordingly—without evasiveness or equivocation,' he posted on Facebook. 'I make this promise—this won't be an ordinary campaign—but, then again, California has always been an extraordinary place.'
Newsom was elected in a landslide and took office in January 2019.
In his first year as Governor, he signed a flurry of laws, from requiring public colleges to offer abortion medication to banning smoking on state parks and beaches.
He also increasingly put the Golden State on a collision course with Trump, who was well into his first term as President. Newsom called Trump's plans to build a border wall as part of a national emergency a 'national disgrace,' accusing the President of 'manufacturing a crisis' at the border. And he lashed out at the Administration for trying to reverse the state's strict auto emissions standards.
Tensions escalated in 2019 following the Administration's attempt to alter existing pumping regulations to increase the supply and delivery of water to Central Valley farmers, which Newsom criticized on environmental grounds.
In 2020, Newsom tackled a record-setting wildfire season that saw nearly 9,000 fires burn that year, according to Cal Fire. A state of emergency request for disaster relief aid was initially rejected by the Trump Administration because it 'was not supported by the relevant data that States must provide for approval,' White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere wrote in an October 2020 statement, but it was approved hours after the rejection following a phone call between Trump and Newsom.
Despite their historic hostility, Trump and Newsom praised each other at times in relation to cooperation on the fires and the Covid-19 pandemic—during the latter, in March 2020, Trump called Newsom 'terrific' and said 'We're getting along really well.'
But the friendship wouldn't last long.
A special recall election put Newsom's position at risk in 2021 as voters expressed ire over his policies on immigration, homelessness, and the death penalty. Newsom eventually survived that election with 62% of the vote, though Republicans, including Trump, called the results 'rigged.' Newsom was reelected by a 59% margin in November 2022.
But despite his popularity in the heavily Democratic state, Newsom's governorship has continued to hit snags. The state's crime rate rose in 2023 compared to nationwide figures, though it went down last year; homelessness in the state reached a record-high in 2024; and in 2025, by one measure, California was ranked the most expensive state to live in.
Further recall efforts have been initiated, including a campaign launched earlier this year by the organization Saving California, whose leader Randy Economy was the spokesperson and organizer of the failed 'People's Recall' campaign in 2021. The new effort has until Sept. 4 to collect more than 1.3 million signatures to trigger a special election.
Newsom silenced talk of a presidential run in 2024 and instead threw his support behind President Joe Biden's reelection and later the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Still, Newsom didn't shy from the national spotlight.
In November 2023, he debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Fox News, an event that felt to many like a preview of 2028.
'I'm not there running for reelection as Governor. I'm not running for President, either,' said Newsom shortly before the debate. 'I'm going to defend Biden, for better or worse, rich or poor, 'til death do me part.'
In February 2024, the California Governor ran a television ad in Tennessee in a fight against abortion travel bans. 'Don't let them hold Tennessee women hostage,' the voiceover in the advertisement says, referring to 'Trump Republicans.' The campaign highlighted Democrats' key promise that they would defend abortion rights.
Following Biden's troubling debate performance against Trump in June 2024, as calls for the then-President to drop out of the race mounted, Newsom was floated as a potential replacement candidate, but he again shot down any entertainment of the idea and publicly stood by Biden before ultimately endorsing fellow Californian Harris after Biden withdrew himself.
Despite his decision not to run for president in 2024, Newsom is widely believed to be setting the stage for a potential 2028 campaign.
The Governor, who is term-limited and set to leave office in January 2027, has taken steps, observers have noticed, to try to appeal to a broader base while also seeking to raise his profile as a foil to the current President.
In February, he launched a podcast, 'This is Gavin Newsom,' on which he has hosted high-profile figures in the MAGA world, including former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and right-wing activist and media personality Charlie Kirk.
On policy, he has diverged from other Democrats by pushing for the clearing of homeless encampments and proposing limits on healthcare benefits for undocumented immigrants. He also broke with his history of progressive stances on LGBTQ+ issues when he announced that he thought the presence of transgender athletes in women's sports was 'deeply unfair.'
At the same time, building on his past battles with the Trump Administration, Newsom has positioned himself as a leading opponent of the Republican President. Following Trump's reelection, Newsom convened a special session of the California legislature with the stated goal of safeguarding the state against potential 'federal overreach' from the incoming Administration.
He and Trump locked horns again not long after the President returned to office when Trump blamed California's water management practices for deadly wildfires in Los Angeles.
And their contentious relationship has broken out into even more open conflict in the past week as Trump has deployed National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests over immigration raids despite Newsom's opposition to the federal intervention. Newsom has condemned the President as 'dictatorial' and filed a lawsuit against the Administration over the military mobilization.
In his address Tuesday, Newsom warned the nation that the situation in Southern California is 'about all of us.'
'This isn't just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state,' he said.
'California may be first, but it clearly will not end here,' Newsom added. 'Other states are next. Democracy is next.'
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