![governor race national dominate ad wars governor race national dominate ad wars](https://www.petrofilm.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Coat_of_arms_of_Norway_C.39214559_std.png)
Newsom, only the third California lieutenant governor in the last 70 years to win the top job, must quickly focus on the practical. Few leaders could pull off a multibillion-dollar expansion of Medi-Cal while at the same time coming across as a frugal guy who canceled state worker cellphones and stashed money in a rainy-day fund. The cliche that has followed Brown for decades is his “canoe theory” of politics, a belief that paddling a little on the right and then on the left ensures the vessel of government steers in a straight path. No one knew that chapter of California’s political life better than the man Newsom will replace in January, Gov. Newsom’s platform was hardly one of a centrist, even though the state’s electorate has rarely been as liberal as its national reputation - choosing instead to be socially moderate but fiscally stingy, environmentally progressive but solidly behind get-tough-on-crime efforts. The majority of the state’s modern-era governors have been Republicans. With his resounding victory over Republican challenger John Cox, the 51-year-old Democrat not only will preside over the nation’s largest economy, but as leader of America’s most fierce resistance to Trump and the nationalist shift of mainstream GOP politics.īut the history of how Democrats came to dominate California politics over the last quarter-century is a story less about provocation than pragmatism. No one will face that task more directly than Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom.
GOVERNOR RACE NATIONAL DOMINATE AD WARS FULL
Less clear, though, is what those marching orders should be - and whether voters will embrace the full panoply of demands that have lurched the state’s dominant party leftward since the election of President Trump. Few can argue with California Democrats that their sweeping victories Tuesday are a clear mandate to set in place an agenda for the state that will last well into the next decade.