If Gavin Newsom runs for president, how will his record as California governor play nationally?

Leaving California for campaign events is a big political risk for Gov. Gavin Newsom.

He routinely boasts about his state’s progress and innovation, a mantra that opens him up to sharp criticism as he travels around the country. Newsom was in Washington Wednesday for a White House meeting with President Joe Biden and Democratic governors. He plans to campaign over the next few days in two key swing areas, Bucks County, Pa., and Manchester, New Hampshire.

Newsom has said repeatedly that he is not running for president in 2024. But he’s built the financial infrastructure that would be needed for a run, and on July 15, plans to begin a weekly podcast with former NFL star Marshawn Lynch and NFL agent Doug Hendrickson called “Politickin’.”

Conservative commentators have been blasting Newsom and his record for months and predicting he was angling to replace Biden.

“Republicans love to assail California Democrats. I’m sure Newsom and his record would be part of the campaign if he somehow got nominated,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political analysis site.

That record includes the nation’s highest state unemployment rate, the country’s highest gasoline prices and a 6% spike in homelessness in 2023. California’s tax burden is one of the nation’s highest. Newsom and state lawmakers recently agreed on a budget to erase a $47 billion deficit.

That could be a tough record to defend.

“The history books are going to judge you based on how you do your job at your current station in political life. Many of us would love to see Mr. Newsom flourish tremendously with whatever he wants to do,” said Mike Gatto, a Democrat and former California Assembly member.

“I don’t think I’m saying anything he doesn’t know. But he should probably be mindful of his California legacy as he considers taking the next step,” Gatto said.

Adding to the intrigue: While Newsom is away, the state is dealing with a scorching heat wave and a fresh round of wildfires. And he left many Sacramento lawmakers annoyed over how he handled the effort to crack down on retail theft, a big campaign issue this fall.

Newsom’s trip east effectively ended his efforts to reform Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that allowed some lower-level crimes to be misdemeanors. It set a $950 felony threshold for shoplifting. The governor and top legislative leaders over the weekend unveiled a measure — intended to be placed on the ballot — to compete with another ballot measure backed by local prosecutors, law enforcement groups and big-box retailers.

While Newsom insists he had the votes to get it passed Wednesday night, several legislative sources say it would have been difficult. Many Democratic lawmakers from both moderate and progressive wings of the party were hesitant to support it. Newsom announced late Tuesday that he was dropping his effort, and then left the state for Washington, where he was scheduled to meet with Biden and other governors Wednesday evening.

Newsom’s record

Governors’ records are traditionally strong fodder for critics.

In 1988, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis won the Democratic presidential nomination touting what he called the “Massachusetts miracle,” as his state transformed from a manufacturing-dependent economy to a national leader in technology.

Dukakis had highlighted one of his successes that summer at a ceremony for a new sewage treatment plant at Boston Harbor.

A few weeks later, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, Dukakis’ Republican rival, visited the harbor and challenged Dukakis’ record.

“While Michael Dukakis delayed, the harbor got dirtier and dirtier,” Bush said. Dukakis had delayed work on the sewage plant, though he was taking steps to clean up the harbor.

But the image of a dirty harbor stuck, and Bush’s appearance, and his claims about Dukakis’ record on crime, helped sink the Democrat.

Should Newsom become a serious national candidate, “They’ll do to him what they did to Dukakis,” said Brad Coker, managing director of Florida-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy.

Another California governor also tried to run for President while in office and the results backfired.

Jerry Brown entered his second term after the 1978 election “a very popular governor. Then he left office as a very unpopular governor” after a failed presidential bid, Gatto said. Brown made a comeback and served two more terms as governor from 2011-2019.

“I think that Governor Newsom is a student of history just like I am,” Gatto said. “I think he knows the cautionary tale that Governor Brown’s first time as governor offers. But that being said, I’m not sure that he could escape the national limelight, the sense of national duty right now. I think these are very strange times for the country.”

Getting known

Newsom routinely speaks in glowing terms about California. In his State of the State address last week, he touted the state as “a beacon of self-determination” and “the birthplace of what’s called the Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

One benefit for Newsom: People are not paying close attention to his record at the moment.

“I don’t think it really matters to people in New Hampshire,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. Democrats will welcome him, he said, and “Republicans already don’t like him.”

But will Republicans try to use that record to define him should Newsom become a more prominent figure?

The opening is there. A CNN-SSRS poll taken June 28-30 after the debate showed 48% of registered voters had no opinion. About one-third had never heard of him.