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Gavin Newsom is making appearances on well-known podcasts as part of his apparent image-building strategy in anticipation of his 2028 presidential bid.
These podcasts, like the one with comedian Joe Rogan, are the 2025 version of the newspaper interviews and radio discussion shows that formerly captivated aspirant politicians.
Jimmy Carter, a little-known one-term governor of Georgia, famously hacked his way into the presidency in 1976 by traveling the nation for months with Jody Powell as his assistant, staying in budget hotels, and pursuing interviews with local media and radio DJs.
Personally, I can vouch to that. Powell relentlessly promoted interviews with Carter at a state Democratic Party conference in Sacramento, but to little effect. Carter was a political unknown at the time, overshadowed by more well-known competitors at the convention like retired astronaut John Glenn.
While the media has changed, aspirational politicians have not. In order to secure spots on the unofficial lists of possible candidates kept up to date by political media, pollsters, and possible campaign backers, they attempt to establish their names.
Newsom has clear advantages in his quest for more recognition as the governor of the most populous state in the country and as a leading political theorist. He does, however, have several drawbacks, the first of which is that his state has significant issues that have not improved much under his leadership.
For instance, Newsom frequently boasts about California’s enormous economic production, but he hardly ever brings up the state’s high unemployment, poverty, and homelessness statistics, which are mostly caused by the state’s exorbitant housing, utility, and other living expenses.
This week, the Public Policy Institute of California reminded us once more of California’s chronic poverty crisis by describing what transpired following the elimination of federal assistance programs and the COVID-19 outbreak. A method of evaluating poverty that considers both income and the cost of living was employed by the PPIC and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Its main idea is comparable to the Census Bureau’s alternate method of calculating poverty.
According to the PPIC report’s California Poverty Index, the rate increased from 15.2% in 2022 to 16.9% in 2023, indicating that over 6.4 million Californians were living below the poverty line, with Los Angeles County having the highest rate at 19.9%.
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The fact that 34.8% of Californians experienced economic distress in 2023 when families in near-poverty are taken into account is even more alarming, and there is little indication that things have significantly improved since then. The fact that at least one-third of Californians are eligible for Medi-Cal, the state health care program for the underprivileged, is consistent with that figure.
Additionally, California is singled out in the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty calculation, which takes into account living expenses and other elements not included in the official poverty rate. California’s alternative poverty rate, at 15.4%, is the highest in any state and far higher than that of Texas and Florida, two Republican states that Newsom frequently compares to California, even though the state’s official number, 11.7% for the 2021–2023 period, is almost the same as the national rate.
Given that California has the fifth-highest median household income in the US ($95,921), it is obvious that the state’s high cost of living is a major contributing factor to its high poverty rate.
Most people agree that one of the main reasons Donald Trump won the presidency last year was the growing cost of living. Even though inflation has considerably decreased recently, Trump’s tariffs could cause it to soar. The cost of living will likely also have an impact on the 2028 presidential election. That might cause Newsom a lot of stress.
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