Gavin Newsom will tread carefuly in last ‘State of the State’ speech

Gavin Newsom — no stranger to contorting his body into weird angles — will perform a political circus act Thursday as he delivers his final State of the State speech as California governor.

In delivering the annual address, which will be held inside the Capitol’s Assembly chambers for the first time since 2020, Newsom will have to walk a tightrope when discussing California’s massive budget crisis while juggling talking points about his accomplishments and his role as Democrats’ chief adversary to President Donald Trump — all while keeping an eye on his own likely presidential campaign in 2028.

“He’s going to need to use this speech to paint a picture of everything that he’s done, and he’s going to need to leverage that into the vision for America that he brings from California,” said David Latterman, a political analyst in San Francisco, where Newsom got his start in politics as a supervisor and mayor. 

“He’s also going to have to address, or preempt, what some of the automatic negative things are going to be — the housing crisis is real and unemployment is real. He can talk about the world’s fourth-biggest economy, but it doesn’t hit everybody.”

Newsom has seen the state’s economy soar during his time as governor, and he’s signed landmark legislation around housing, climate change, child care and healthcare. He also enacted stronger worker protections and shepherded the first-of-its-kind regulation around AI technology.

However, the state’s finances have taken a nosedive. Newsom inherited record surpluses during his first years as governor — in 2022, the state had a staggering $100 billion surplus — and California is now staring down the barrel of an $18 billion deficit.

The state’s worsening finances have fueled public speculation about waste, fraud and abuse in government — accusations Newsom will need to address head-on as the Trump administration clamps down on Democratic states. Just this week, Trump announced a fraud investigation into California governance after announcing he was freezing billions in federal funds for child care and social services.

Meanwhile, Californians are feeling the pinch.

As of November, California had the highest unemployment rate of any state at 5.5%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Newsom vowed to build 3.5 million new homes by 2025, but the state has fallen well short of that goal. Homelessness in California grew to 187,000 last year, despite the state spending $37 billion to address the crisis. 

Newsom’s CARE Court initiative has also failed to ramp up operations in getting people who are mentally ill and chronically homeless off the streets. And while the governor is almost certain to describe California as much better prepared to deal with wildfires, that did little to stop the deadly infernos in Los Angeles that occurred exactly one year ago.

Thursday’s speech will no doubt touch on the COVID pandemic, one of the most polarizing periods of Newsom’s tenure, as California was the first state to shut down and protests railed against prolonged school closures and vaccine requirements.

Mike Netter, a leading proponent of the recall election that Newsom survived in 2021 — which ironically propelled him to the national stage as he started touring red states and debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — believes Newsom’s potential presidential candidacy “should alarm every American.” 

“Newsom’s carefully managed national image hides a far uglier reality in California: a culture of corruption, cronyism, and one-party rule that protects political insiders while accountability only comes when federal authorities step in,” Netter tweeted last month.

The governor’s aggressive opposition to the Trump administration will likely be a focal point, as Newsom’s social media attacks on the president have ramped up significantly over the last year. Memes and personal jabs from the governor’s official social media accounts have upped the ante on toxic political rhetoric coming from both sides.

“One of Newsom’s biggest liabilities for president is just going to be the public vision of California, because the Republicans have painted it as a failed state,” Latterman said. “He’s going to need to create a glowing legacy of California, and really lay out the facts to rebut those arguments.”