7 reasons Gavin Newsom has the worst job in politics

SACRAMENTO — Ronald Reagan used the California governor's office as a springboard to the White House. Jerry Brown and Pete Wilson tried to.

But now, the governor of the nation’s most populous state has to contend with massive wildfires, unhealthy air, rolling blackouts, unchecked homelessness, social unrest and the constant threat of earthquakes — not to mention ideological attacks by the president. New headaches arise every week, sometimes every day, all during a pandemic that has led to soaring unemployment.

State executive jobs anywhere come with their challenges to accompany ribbon cuttings and a chance to feed national political ambition. But the pitfalls in California seem enormous, and no more so than under the Gavin Newsom — the suave and stylish Democrat who manages one moment to be a leading liberal figure and at another an unwitting star in Donald Trump campaign ads.

“Most governors will experience some form of crisis,” former Gov. Gray Davis, who was recalled in 2003 following an energy market crisis, said in an interview. “Either a substantial recession, wildfires, earthquakes — that comes with the territory. But I think Gov. Newsom clearly wins the prize for having to cope with the most crises at the same time.”

Pundits have questioned for decades whether the state is governable at all. Here are seven reasons why Newsom finds himself with the worst job in state politics.

1. California is too big for its own good

California is a "nation-state," as Newsom and previous governors like to boast. But that vastness makes it hard to govern. Its sheer size, along with nearly 40 million residents, makes it perennially open to suggestions that it should be split into three or more states.

San Francisco is as culturally and economically different from agricultural towns as it is from anywhere in the Midwest. That's one reason rural residents still proudly wave "State of Jefferson" signs in honor of a 1941 idea to carve out a separate state covering vast swaths of southern Oregon and Northern California — a state that would have far greater allegiance to Republicans.

Southern California could be a nation — perhaps multiple nations — in and of itself. The rugged North Coast bears no resemblance to the Mojave Desert.

"When the lines of latitude cover ten degrees and the topographical regions number eleven, what are a people to do?" asks Mark Arax, a Central Valley native and longtime California chronicler, in his latest book "The Dreamt Land."

As home to the largest number of immigrants — more than 2.3 million of them undocumented — California confronts yawning economic divides and language barriers that can be difficult to transcend. A prime example: Latinos, often on the front lines of essential workers like home health care, agriculture and retail, are suffering the most from Covid.

And despite its homegrown, world-leading tech industry, California has fumbled the distribution of unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands and left thousands of rural students stranded during the pandemic without broadband internet access.

Within California's solid-blue facade lies a diverse political constituency, as well. Newsom's challenge during the pandemic has been to communicate the importance of mask-wearing to libertarian resisters in Orange County and more rural areas — and to tailor reopening rules so as not to trigger a revolt.

2. Climate change hits the state hardest

The dystopian future that climate scientists have predicted is fully coming to pass in California. Each new crisis subsumes the last; planned power shutoffs to prevent wildfires gave way to last month's rolling blackouts to prevent grid overload during a historic heat wave.

The blackouts were then quickly forgotten amid massive wildfires from dry lightning strikes. More than 3.5 million acres have been consumed so far this year — weeks before the typical peak of fire season.

In recent years, climate change exposed problems that forced its largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, to declare bankruptcy. The company's power lines stood for decades in the Sierra Nevada and hillsides across Northern California. But they sparked deadly fires in California's Wine Country in 2017 and then the state's deadliest conflagration — the Camp Fire, with 85 fatalities — in late 2018.

Newsom now faces hard decisions about land use, forest management and electricity supply, with no cheap or easy fixes in sight. And that's before facing the other threats posed by climate change: sea-level rise that threatens waterfront development and the potential for superstorms to cause disastrous floods.

"I do sympathize with the folks in the 'Horseshoe,'" said Michael Wara, director of Stanford University's climate and energy program, using the nickname for the governor's Capitol office. "They did not take the job thinking that this was the future they were inheriting."

3. Coronavirus has exposed fault lines

As the nation’s most populous and geographically diverse state by a wide margin, California has posed a number of unique challenges to Newsom and health officials attempting to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The state’s sheer size has made managing medical resources and coordinating testing and contact tracing logistically fraught endeavors, contributing to more than 770,000 coronavirus infections — the most in the nation — and nearly 15,000 deaths to date.

This geographic diversity has also brought political challenges as Newsom attempts to govern how 58 counties will balance demands to reopen a range of economic sectors while containing the spread of the virus. After winning early praise for their quick decisions to issue stay-at-home orders in March, Newsom and California health officials have spent much of the last few months recovering from a series of self-inflicted political wounds, most notably a botched June reopening that led to a surge of cases and deaths.

“To come up with a single, statewide strategy on top of all that diversity was just extremely challenging,” said Matt Willis, Marin County’s public health officer. “It’s hard to have a California- wide approach to any one issue no matter what it is.”

Efforts to slow the pace of reopening and more strictly monitor the progress of individual counties have proven successful in recent weeks, with new cases dropping and the statewide positive test rate falling to 3.5 percent. But they’ve also sparked anger in conservative regions such as Orange County and the Central Valley where lawmakers argue an economic jumpstart is desperately needed.

Newsom faces his toughest challenge heading into the fall as pressure to reopen increases, along with the potential risks of the coronavirus pandemic overlapping with flu season.

4. The California Dream is out of reach

Despite all the wealth generated by Silicon Valley, Hollywood and massive agriculture and energy industries, California fares terribly on some basic measures of prosperity.