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Is Gavin Newsom really a moderate Democrat?

February 25, 2026

I don’t normally do such things, but I participated in a panel the other day at a conference up in Sacramento to talk about state politics.

One of my fellow co-panelists mentioned that Gov. Gavin Newsom is, in a sense, somewhat of a moderate Democrat, to which I responded he’s a moderate in the sense that Nikita Khrushchev was a relative moderate in the Soviet Union. I’d like to expand on this point here.

It is, on the one hand, true that there are people far more to the left than Newsom in both state and national politics. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, for example, was recently in California campaigning for a wealth tax proposal that Newsom has spoken out against. Bay Area Congressman Ro Khanna also favors it, and there are state Assemblymembers like San Jose’s Alex Lee who have long pitched wealth taxes.

With his opposition to a wealth tax, Newsom is indeed closer to the center in a sense than those backing the wealth tax. But on the other hand, Newsom backed a split roll property tax measure in 2020, a longtime dream of progressive and labor groups. Gubernatorial candidates like Tom Steyer and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also favor split roll. Would anyone call them moderate Democrats?

When he was first running for governor, Newsom championed a single-payer healthcare system — a stance not generally associated with moderates. He walked back that support in favor of achieving the goal of universal health coverage by expanding access through Medi-Cal. Then, as the costs of doing this began to rise, he panicked and called for caps and maybe having illegal immigrants pay into the system. This sounds more like a progressive getting burned by reality than the work of a moderate.

On business regulation, while Newsom likes to sometimes point to his own status as a successful businessman, does anyone actually think he’s been much of a moderate on the business community? It’s Newsom who signed legislation establishing a very Soviet-ish Fast Food Council to empower unions to exert control over fast-food businesses. It’s Newsom who signed Assembly Bill 5 to crush independent contracting, upending or destabilizing the livelihoods of people trying to make it on their own terms in California. It’s Newsom who has waged an ongoing campaign against the oil industry, blaming imaginary “gouging” for high gas prices that ultimately boil down to state policy choices.

Again, is any of that the work of a moderate?

On social issues, Newsom is very much a San Francisco Democrat. Which is to say, he’s very much on the furthest left-flank of pretty much any social cause there is. In 2020, he backed Proposition 16 to restore affirmative action in public universities, public employment, and public contracting. California voters, in what was a record turnout year, overwhelmingly defeated that proposal.

Even so, Newsom couldn’t help but veer left on racial politics, getting himself into hot water for stoking talk of slavery reparations in California, then having to spin his way out of it by saying reparations are about more than just dollars and cents when some monetary estimates came up. Newsom most recently signed legislation establishing the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery in California state government. Again, not something a moderate would do, especially in a state that wasn’t a slave state.

Then there’s the trans issue. Yes, Newsom conceded in an interview with the late Charlie Kirk that it didn’t make sense for males to compete against females in sports. But Newsom has taken a more progressive stand than probably any governor in the country. In 2022, KQED reported, “California is the first state in the nation to create a sanctuary for transgender youth seeking gender-affirming medical care. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law in September that ensures transgender kids from elsewhere can safely access hormones or puberty blockers here.”

Again, in what sense is Newsom a moderate?

It’s true he has sometimes walked back his furthest left-wing stances. He once supported the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, then rushed to save it when it became obvious closing it was a ridiculous thing to do considering it generated a large proportion of the state’s zero-carbon electricity. As governor, he’s carried water for the California Teachers Association, cracking down on charter schools. He’s awarded public employee unions, especially those politically loyal to him like the state prison guards union.

So, while Newsom might not be Alex Lee or Ro Khanna or Bernie Sanders, he’s by no means a moderate. While Khrushchev at least did some good in de-Stalinization, Newsom took the baton from Jerry Brown and ran as far left as the budget would allow him to.

Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com

Orange County Register

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Is Gavin Newsom really a moderate Democrat?

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