Case study Newsom: When elected leaders hire political consultants, watch out: it means they're not focused on fixing problems

Professor Joe Mathews explains that California’s governance issues can’t be solved by hiring more political consultants, as Gov. Gavin Newsom continually does. Instead, the state needs strong leaders with operational expertise—leaders to follow through on issues affecting local citizens, businesses, and schools. Newsom’s “dropped the ball,” and his political spin doctors aren’t recovering it. This article originally appeared in Foxes and Hounds Daily.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has governance problems. He’s struggled with finding a consistent response that local officials will follow. He’s failed to fix the state department that handles unemployment. He hasn’t rallied sufficient support for the unemployed and distressed businesses. He’s failed to re-open schools.
But Newsom seems to think his problems are primarily about politics and perception. So instead of bringing on stronger managers and those with governance experience in California, he’s turning to political consultants, and putting them in charge of his administration.

He’s handed over key tasks to task forces and strike teams that haven’t performed well. And on central priorities—especially early childhood, and his signature promise of a “cradle to career” system for children—he’s dropped the ball himself.

In his first year, he backed away from the promise of a universal system of early childhood education and care by retreating from an initial budget proposal. (And when challenged on it, he didn’t seem to understand he had retreated). This fall, a master plan to advance his vision actually backtracked from universality, and failed the most basic test of a plan: it lacked the money needed to do what he’d promised, and failed to identify a funding source.

These failures suggest that Newsom’s central problems are managerial. The governor doesn’t need to empower spin doctors to address that. He needs managers who understand the peculiarities of governance in California.

This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily.

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