What Gavin Newsom should do next

The SF Mayor had folks yammering when Maureen Dowd wrote an article in which Gavin appeared to indicate he was retiring from politics after his term expired. “This is it. God bless. It was fun while it lasted,” he said of his career, with a rueful smile. “Guys like me don’t necessarily progress very far, which is fine.”


The obvious move is for Newsom to run for Lt. Gov. He is at least considering it, although seeming to lean heavily against it according to KTVU.

If he wants to have a significant career in politics, it is the best move he can make. He's termed out as mayor, his gubernatorial campaign was a non-starter, no other logical races for him to get in to.

The current Dem contenders, Janice Hahn and Dean Florez, aren't exactly setting the world on fire. Hahn's biggest campaign coup so far is getting the endorsement of Ed Begley Jr. And Florez's biggest achievement is that he has no ties to Ed Begley Jr.

According to the Fresno Bee:

• Lieutenant governor: Florez reported raising $229,747 in the second half of 2009 and has $957,381 cash on hand. Democratic primary opponent Hahn, a Los Angeles City Council member who only recently entered the race, raised $420,691 and has $341,341 at her disposal.

So we are 5 months from the primary and both candidates have less than $1 million Cash on Hand. Newsom swamps them both in name rec and could easily raise that type of cash- he couldn't keep up with Jerry Brown, but Florez and Hahn he can take.

Lt. Gov is not a high profile job, but Newsom doesn't need to raise his profile. He should spend the time traveling the stay, going to all the red counties and SoCal and letting people see that he is not a fire breathing San Francisco radical (funny how many people in SF think he is  way too moderate).

If Whitman or Poizner becomes governor, Newsom is a front-runner in 4 years. If Jerry Brown wins, Newsom bides his time- either for 8 years or 4 if Jerry only runs for 1 term. Newsom would also have a great platform to run for Senate in 2012 if Feinstein declines to run for reelection (decent chance since she's 117 years old).

And with all the wackiness from Edwards, Sanford, Spitzer, Vitter, etc., the fact that Newsom slept with his campaign aide's wife is old news. Kind of.

Here's Eliot yucking it up with Colbert:

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Bayh makes the case for moving to the middle

I'll elaborate at a later time on where I think the Dems need to go, but I did think Bayh raised some interesting points in this WSJ article. 

And Calitics has a good article on how Jerry Brown might be the next Martha Coakley.  This is why I thought it might not be a great idea to have Ronald Reagan's gubernatorial  successor as our nominee. Funny how it looked like we could have a massive free for all for the nomination- Antonio, Gavin, Garamendi, Westly, Feinstein, Brown- and instead Jerry will be the nominee and he still hasn't even declared!

Campbell opts for the Senate

Tom Campbell, former Congressman and Dean of the Haas School of Business (Go Bears!), has apparently switched out of the gubernatorial race and instead will attempt to be the GOP nominee against Barbara Boxer.  Campbell's a smart guy and figured out the math of running against former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner was daunting. Poizner is worth hundreds of millions and Meg is a billionaire. Campbell was by far the most experienced and intelligent of the GOP gubernatorial contenders, but he had no chance of getting his message out.

He'll be squaring off against former HP CEO Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck Devore in the Senate primary. Devore is the teabag candidate in the race and Fiorina is allegedly able to appeal to women and fiscal conservatives.

Carly was pretty much a disaster as the head of HP and McCain sidelined her from his campaign after she noted that neither McCain or Palin had the qualifications to run a large corporation. Fiorina walked away with a $21.4 million severance package when HP fired her and she has loaned her campaign $2.5 million, but she certainly does not have the ability to self-fund at the levels of Poizner or Whitman.

I was looking forward to debates between Jerry Brown and Campbell- they are the only two candidates capable of having an in-depth conversation about the massive problems facing our state. Campbell has a better shot at winning the Senate nomination and it might be easier for him to beat Boxer than Brown.

No go, Antonio?

Chronicle columnists Matier and Ross report that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has decided to pass on a gubernatorial run in 2010.

The LA Times reports that Antonio has not ruled out a run....but that he is dating a local TV reporter. No, not the local TV reporter who helped break up his marriage- a different one.

He's certainly an ambitious guy and would like to be Governor. If he Antonio were able to garner a large percentage of SoCal and/or Hispanic voters, he'd be tough for Newsom and Brown to beat.

Kind of funny that "Governor Moonbeam" has the least amount of personal baggage in this race- I don't think his fling with Linda Ronstadt will hurt him very much.

Politico shares info on the CA Gov race

Jerry looks strong.