As presidential and state politics heat up, where is California Gov. Gavin Newsom? | Opinion

The presidential primary season is sailing onward without Gavin Newsom. As someone who relishes the national stage, he’s finding himself, for now, without one.

Back at home, he is bogged down in a surprisingly difficult fight to reform the state’s mental health services, and he otherwise seems content to remain in the shadows with little to say about the state’s legislative business as scores of matters head toward closure.

Newsom is in no-man’s land. He’s probably going to reside there for a while.

Opinion

Aspiring leaders like Newsom want to be part of the chatter in the system. Now, there is no room for him in that system.

Republicans, unlike the Democrats, are having a real primary season. Republicans have announced candidates, real debates and real action in states throughout the map.

There are now 10 candidates for president in 2024: There are the eight Republicans who qualified for last week’s debate in Milwaukee. Then there is the front-runner, Donald Trump, who skipped the debate. And there is the incumbent, Democrat Joe Biden.

The chatter for now stops there. They and they alone command the stage.

If the Trump-less Republican debates become the norm, they will be the engines of political mystery. Who will emerge as the alternative to the indicted? Will it be the current second-runner, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, who struggles for dominance in the debate format? Or will someone else emerge, such as Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur, who exudes a confidence that suggests the presidency is easy?

The Democratic Party is acting as if there is nothing to debate because it has an incumbent. That lack of party debate is almost undemocratic.

Consider that polls have Joe Biden nationally with a two-point lead over Donald Trump — at the moment. Trump has proven difficult to poll accurately. Put another way, Hillary Clinton had a bigger lead going into the November 2016 election than Joe Biden has right now. While there is a long way to go, one thing is clear: The Republican Party is busy searching for its best candidate that can beat the opponent, while the Democratic Party is not.

Newsom is finding no comfort at home, on the sidelines. He finds himself being labeled the bad guy as he tries to expand California’s spectacularly inadequate mental health system, particularly its ability to reach homeless people in need of treatment.

The governor is seeking to place a $4.68 billion bond on the March ballot to expand mental health facilities and services and better prioritize services for the homeless. But this upsets the status quo of state-funded mental health services at the local level and the providers who deliver these services. They are not on the governor’s side. Neither has been the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Newsom deserves credit for confronting the existing, inadequate system. It is an example of what a governor can do when engaging directly in the legislative process.

In the rhythm of the Sacramento political summer, the lawmakers take a recess in July after passing the budget in June. They have now returned in the heat of August to deliberate the surviving bills that are roughly two-thirds of the way through the process. This used to be when all observers of all things politics would hang on the governor’s every utterance for direction on how to proceed.

Newsom seems to have little to say beyond his mental health agenda. He chose May to make his major policy move, a streamlining of processes to help launch big infrastructure projects. He got most of what he wanted.

The governor should hunker down for a while come Sept. 15, when the legislative session is over and he will have hundreds of bills to decide whether to sign or veto. His predecessor was known for avoiding the public limelight for weeks while reading and then writing legendary rejection memos. Jerry Brown knew those were some of the most important weeks of his job.

It’s too bad that it takes political stunts by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, such as when DeSantis flew plane loads of migrants to Sacramento, for Newsom to act like he is equally interested in Sacramento-based affairs. The moment cries out for Newsom to show leadership and to actively — and publicly — land the many legislative efforts demanding his attention.

For now, Gavin Newsom is relegated to a nothing-burger status on the presidential stage and seems to have chosen the same silent path for his day job in the coming weeks, just as things inside the Capitol are getting hot.