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Newsom drops out of governor’s race
October 30th, 2009, 3:25 pm · 93 Comments · posted by BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento Correspondent
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, he of the “whether you like it or not” fame, announced in an e-mail to reporters just moments ago that he is dropping out of the race for governor.
Newsom’s departure leaves just one Democrat in the running for governor next year — Attorney General (and former governor) Jerry Brown, who still hasn’t made his candidacy official. Even so, Brown was widely predicted to win the governorship and crush Newsom in the process, largely because of Brown’s high name ID and Newsom’s lack of campaign cash.
In his letter to reporters, Newsom writes:
“It is with great regret I announce today that I am withdrawing from the race for governor of California. With a young family and responsibilities at city hall, I have found it impossible to commit the time required to complete this effort the way it needs to — and should be — done.
This is not an easy decision. But it is one made with the best intentions for my wife, my daughter, the residents of the city and county of San Francisco, and California Democrats.
When I embarked on this campaign in April, my goal was to engage thousands and thousands of Californians dedicated to reforming our broken system and bringing change to Sacramento.
I would like to thank those supporters, volunteers, and donors who have worked so hard on my behalf. I have been humbled by their support and am indebted to their efforts. They represent the spirit of change and determination essential to putting California back on the right track.
I will continue to fight for change and the causes and issues for which I care deeply — universal health care, a cleaner environment, and a green economy for our families, better education for our children, and, of course, equal rights under the law for all citizens.
So, if Brown was widely expected to whip Newsom anyway, why does anyone care? Well, now at least, it appears Brown won’t have a primary challenge, which means he’ll only have to spend money on attacking the Republicans.
This is a blow for Republicans, even if their candidates include two billionaires in Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay executive Meg Whitman. Brown now may now very well be able to sit back, fund raise and take shots at the GOP while Republicans are busy fighting amongst themselves.
The chances of Republicans holding on the governor’s office may just have dropped. Precipitously.
Click here to read about Brown’s speech yesterday at UC Irvine, where he offered himself up as a moderate populist and governmental elder.
UPDATE: Brown just issued the following statement:
Mayor Newsom is a talented public official and I believe he has a bright future. I am sure this was not an easy decision. Anne and I wish Gavin and his family all the best.
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DENA BUNIS, Washington bureau chief, 202-628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com
CHRIS KNAP, Politics team leader, 714-796-2240 or cknap@ocregister.com
BRIAN JOSEPH, Sacramento correspondent, 916-449-6046 or bjoseph@ocregister.com
JENNIFER MUIR, County government reporter, 714-796-7813 or jmuir@ocregister.com
MARTIN WISCKOL, Politics reporter, 714-285-2867 or mwisckol@ocregister.com twitter.com/MartinWisckol
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Good. Go back to SF and hang with your sanctuary city friends. Maybe your new deputy chief of staff has a cute wife that you can hit on!!!
Good riddance!
FYI he is GAY!
FYI he is GAY!
====================
Newsome is not gay you idiot.
I find it odd that people are happy that he dropped out. It’s pretty much inevitable now that Brown will be our next governor. Newsom would have been a great governor and a much better choice than Brown. Oh well. I guess we will have a few more years of Brown. Republicans do not have a prayer.
he’s out WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. don’t worry, Brown will shoot himself in the foot soon enough. he’s already been enough of a disaster of a Governor AND an Atty General with the whole Prop 8 is unconstitutional then it’s not unconstitutional b.s.
Newsom wouldn’t know what to do with a cute wife. Newsom is gayzilla. Militant activist gayzilla. His policies persecute heterosexuals and other normal people.
Hmmm, the recent birth of his baby would suggest otherwise. But you just go ahead and remain clueless to the fact that you can be heterosexual and still support gay rights.
Well said, I agree 100 percent, what a liberal looser he is.
That’s the best news I’ve heard all year!
I agree!
Me too!!!
Me, three!
AHAHAHA! Newsom No Mas!
He’s out–whether I like it or not. Well…..I like it!
I’m thinking he may have talked with Brown and decided on this strategy. If Brown wins, he can put Newsome in a position that will give him state-wide exposure and let him build name recognition and some state politics credentials so that he’s in a good position to run after Brown terms out.
maybe. I saw him in S.D. at the Pride parade and he did not look well. Very frail and pale. Then again, I’ve only seen him on T.V., prior. Time will tell. Until then, let the games begin.
he couldn’t raise any money so he dropped out. he had less than half the amount Brown has raised. plus everyone outside of SF basically hates him. popularity ratings = not good.
Him and Antonio via La Raza are the same guy….empty suit…..the real reason they quit…..nobody wants to vote for them…Go back to your santuary cities Losers !
He is quitting whether we like it or not!! We like it!!
this is one of those thank god moments
Maybe he realized he didn’t have a “Snowballs chance in he11″ of winning. Actually I think the Snowball has a better chance.
Now if only Meg dropped out! Have you all seen her “Van Jones is wonderful” video on You Tube. If not you ought to.
Are you kidding me? I thought Meg Whitman would be a good pick.
Meg Whitman is the Devil incarnate! That “Cee yoU Next Tuesday” needs to disappear. “Poof” says this Fairy!
Linda, do you even think about who you are going to vote for? Have you even done a little research on the issue?
Thank God. He would be a very poor choice for governor, he does not listen to anyone but himself.
HAHAHA…Couldn’t take it huh tough guy? They always blame it on their FAMILY’S when they lose the will or the populace to win.
Like all Liberals…(unless they are guaranteed a win BY HOOK or BY CROOK)…then they going running home with their tails between their legs.
Good thing he dropped out. Newsom was a shoe-in for the gay and illegal-alien vote, which, from the look of things, could have carried the state.
Do you have a problem with the “Gay” vote?
when someone only votes for a clown like Newsom because he managed to help sneak gay marriage through against the will of the voters, then yes, yes I do. good riddance
What a lovely combo! Homophobia & Xenophobia _ He embodies the best of Orange County.
Will any other dems step up? Are they afraid of Meg?
I wish Meg would take a stand on the Central Valley farmers crisis and open up the water for them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i love reading the responses from the right-wing radical republicans in orange county who think their sh–t doesn’t stink. your county sucks. no angry, crybaby, self-centered sobs. no effing character. everything and everyone looks the same. just the way u like it in your lily white world, huh?
Your right Carlo except in the scum bag cities of Santa Ana, Stanton and Midway City. That is were scumbag, shave headed, long socked Dickies wearing dirt bags continue to be burped out by teenagers. Thanks for the contribution. Si se puede.
Nice way to start the weekend!!!!!
I hate to admit it, but Carlo is right on. Orange County has gotten way too white for me. And I’m a white guy. It’s loaded with intellectually bankrupt people. OC Republicans are very self-centered and don’t give a crap about anybody but themselves. They trash any Democrat no matter what. And when they had the majority vote on the Hill they were too stupid or too lazy to do anything about healthcare. Any idea from a Dem is a crazy liberal idea, they scream with their high-pitched voices. Ever notice that Republican men’s voices are high pitched, as if their private parts were removed by their dads. Mr. Clinton left little Bush with a huge surplus in the federal budget when he left, and we all know what Duh–bya left Mr. Obama… a huge freaking deficit. Shoot, even Bush’s old man hangs out more with Bill Clinton than he does with his own son. What does that tell you, you Sara Palin lovers?
Lamest post of the day award goes to John Whitermon. Johnny boy…….don’t you read the OCRAZA? Lily white OC is becoming more and more DIVERSE. They celebrate this in OCRAZA every day. If you can’t tell just look at all the crime, graffiti and murder that takes place now. OC is so much richer in culture than back in the day when pesky whitey was doing all that lame stuff like going to work, paying for their own kids and not beating each other to death. Si se puede.
Your an idiot…Osama Obama has just tripled the debt from Bush ……in 10 months……get off the koolaid
Yea, because of the mess W left him that costs money to clean up….YOU get off the kookaid.
And calling our President Osama is beyond disrespectful. If you don’t like the man in the suit, at least have a little respect for the office he holds and the MAJORITY of your fellow AMERICANS that voted for him.
Sore loser!
Newsom the toothsome.
He’s done more damage to our state than any one little troll has any business doing. Let’s keep him centralized to city politics where he can do the least amount of harm.
Good points, John. I moved from OC years ago. The natives have an intellectual horizon as wide as their BMW that they owe tons of money on or their micro-mini, cookie-cutter backyard. I love diversity and OC is embarrassing. Very superficial people.
Ron,
I really wish you were correct in your post. That fact is OC is being overrun by many non-whiteys and the place is worse for it. I don’t know where you get your info but you could not be more wrong. Just look any day on the OCRAZA were the decrease in whitey is celebrated.
eye like it
ditto!
Good news. This guy is all about what he wants and screw the voters who elected him to represent them. Just another shining example of what is wrong in California. Now if we could just throw out all the other losers in the legislature with a whopping 13% approval rating and we might have a fighting chance.
Gavin out is a good thing but not relevant. Someone please tell me what Meg is trying to do? I mean, her tag line of creating 2M jobs because “i know we can do it” is so weak. If Meg wants my vote (conservative) then she’s going to have to come up w more depth than what her radio broadcasts are airing. Or, does she really think Californians are that stupid where she has to talk down to them. I won’t vote for he cause i think she’s a closet liberal…. Sorry Meg.
Wake up Californians or else we’re going to get another weak, duplicitous politician in Sacto..
DWP, I too am a conservative and if you have not seen it, you might want to go to You Tube and put something in the search like Meg Whitman on Van Jones and several clips come up from when she went on a Climate Warming Cruise with Van Jones, Jimmy Carter, etc. She thinks Van Jones is reallllllly something.
I wasn’t planing on voting for him but did do some research and he did some amazing work in S.F. A friend of mine is a teacher there and says that SF didn’t lay anyone off, and used other funds to help build universal healthcare which is a huge sucess up there. She said he was almost impeached for his ideas on helping the homeless but again, success. Now she can’t think of any other reason to hate him (shes a devout Republican)
I don’t think he would have gotten the Orange Curtain vote however.
You should also ask him why businesses are running from San Francisco. The city taxes for one, every business owner must provide health insurance for all workers no matter how many hours they work plus they must pay for tansportation to and from work. Add the highest minimum wage in the US and you have a recipe for big time tax issues in the city.
I’m glad they didn’t lay off any teachers, but wait a year and see what happens.
Let’s not forget he also had an affair with the wife of his best friend/campaign manager. Yeah, that’s someone to trust.
pure socialism… wow, that’s progress. maybe in 1917 Russia, but not 2010 California.
Too bad he did a lot of innovative things in San Francisco. I hope Jerry Brown appoints him to a high level job in his administration.
I would not have voted for a twinkie
i like it.
get back on your knees gavin! your a homsexual lover. bendover gavin here comes the push!!!
What are you, 10 years old?
Meg Whitman calls CA State employees selfish and arrogant, and I bet she has never met a one of them. Her candidacy is DOA. Its going to be Jerry Brown all the way.
f*ck that pssy. he likes fegs and illegals. this guy is a certified traitor. he needs a one way bus ticket to mexico. thank god this loser is still a loser.
Gotta love this retard
Brown has more money but one would think Newsom would be able to fund a credible campaign. One wonders who or what forced him to get out of the race. Moonbeam is hardly an invincible force in California politics. The memory of Rose Bird and fruit flies as the highlights of his previous term as Governor isn’t much a reason to offer him another term.
No, I gotta believe Newsom has some skeletons rattling around in his closet that forced him to bow out.
Aren’t the facts that he sent several, illlegal Honduran criminal teenagers to a half-way house in Yucaipa, without any word to authorities there, and the fact that he had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife enough skeletons?
How long will it be before his “buddy’s” want a holiday in his name too?
Now the only problem is making sure that Brown isn’t elected!
Brown will be elected. He is the most credible, honest politician in CA at the moment.
Prop 8 is constitutional… Prop 8 is unconstitutional… Prop 8 is constitutional. no actually, I don’t know and decline to state.
now THAT’S integrity and honesty!!
Great news. Our candidates didn’t stand a chance against Brown or Brown. At least with Brown there’s a chance he might have a health issue.
Our candidates didn’t stand a chance against Newsom or Brown
It’s easier to quit than to lose, huh? Gotta protect that ego.
Newsom is a LOSERand always will b e one!!!!!!!!
But he has such great hair! Perhaps, the gay “equality” nonsense, illegal sanctuary and banging his friends wife finally caught up to him. But doesn’t this sound like every other politician in office. Good riddance. Antonio Via-la-raza is going down next.
Viva-la-Raza
Dodged one now that this sissy boy boy is gone, that sissy is very anti-gun.
Yea Adolph, you closet homosexual….you want Gavin bad don’t you. I bet you’ll have a wet dream about Gavin tonight.
Aint that the truth, the county is about 33 percent hispanic and 16 percent asian. Liberal Portland Oregon is only about 8 percent hispanic and about 6 percent black and Asian. But how many liberal Dems mention that Portland and the state of Oregon and Vermont are some of the whitiest places in the Nation. By the way, Vermont where Howard Dean came from is 97 percent white.
Didn’t he realize he had a young family and responsibilities at city hall before he decided to run?
The hand writing was on the wall. There was no way that he was going to beat Brown. He is just keeping his future options open.
REMEMBER THE BOLOGNA FAMILY!!
exactly remember the bologna family. im sick of these mexicans. we need to create our own army and run down every last mexican and delete it from existence. sanctuary cities should denied federal funds closed down and airstrike called in. waste em all! its weasels like newsom who make it easy for this race of mexican losers.
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!
Go Jerry Brown. The brightest mind for governor!!
bright? more like a 70’s retread (slash retard).
by the way, all the people that mocked John McCain as being “too old” or “too out of touch” to be President? wellJerry Brown is 2 years younger than McCain. when you factor in it’s a year later, that’s a 1 year age difference than McCain was when running for executive office.
What does that have to do with McCain being out of touch? Age is just a number, but Grampy McCain acted much too old and out of touch to understand the complexities of the 21st century….whereas Brown, IMHO, does not.
by the way, here’s a link you should probably check out. more Brown “issues”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5grStierBGjqyvzUq2QvW6pPSS_uQD9BLQEOG0
Jerry brown is better than the piece of crap Gov weve got now….KFI John and Ken has a hour long interview with Meg……you can go to the site and listen….sounded good to me, said she’d end the santuary cities and more
Jerry (Moonglow) Brown is a certified idiot. He was a crappy gov. before and there is no reason to suspect any difference should he be elected again.
It’s Moonbeam you idiot!
“With a young family and responsibilities at City Hall, I have found it impossible to commit the time required to complete this effort the way it needs to - and should be - done,” Newsom said in a statement.
———————————————————————————————–
Why wouldn’t Newsom just say that he’s quitting because he’s apparently not popular outside of SF; that nobody outside of SF gives a rat’s *** about him; that everybody thinks that’s he’s a left-wing, high-tax kook; that everybody thinks that he’s a nanny, interfering with people’s plastic bags when they go to the grocery store; that he’s got homeless people stacked up like Skid Row in San Francisco; that he ended up helping to kill 3 members of the Bologna family with his stupid *** illegal alien sanctuary city policy???
Why doesn’t Gavin Newsom tell the truth about himself??? That he’s an alcoholic narcissist and didn’t even bother to give the widow of Tony Bologna a call to express his condolence.
This guy is an absolute fraud.
Sad that Newsom dropped out. Would have liked him in the governor’s office, but he probably wasn’t going to beat Brown anyway. Brown will trounce whomever the Republicans offer, and for the better. Brown really is a moderate, as his work as Oakland’s mayor and as Atty. Gen has demonstrated.
The OC needs to sexceed from the state iff Newsom had become governer. His only priorety is caving in to gay voters, athiests and illegals. SF and north cal is already ruined by those peoples. Thank The Almighty that OC is still the Land of the Pure and righteous people. This is our last republican bastion. Newsom go away!
Freudian slip? Maybe Newsom brings it out in you.
bigotry aside ( most of us in the OC are not so backwards as PWg, Thank God.
GAVIN NEWSOM is uniquely qualified for SAN FRANCISCO CITY/COUNTY leadership. SF is it’s own unique Island.
JERRY BROWN is the only one who can take us both back and forward at the same time. He knows what’s cooking in the back rooms and how to repair much of what went wrong.
BROWN is best for the WHOLE STATE.
DEM/GOP/ETC.
ProudWhitegirl…..more like ProudWhiteTRASH
What’s sad to see is the ignorance of the comments. True Newsome is a clown who would only further the decay of California. This state faces bankrupcy in the near future. This is not a democrat or republican problem. This is, we the tax payers are getting screwed by both parties in this state. Big government and the unions (Fire, Prison guards, teachers) have joined forces and handed themselves VERY lucrative retirements. It’s unsustainable…..who’s going to pay??
California is NOT small business friendly, thus small business is closing shop and leaving the state. Who do you think pays most of the taxes in this state? Small business. California is in BIG TROUBLE, as all states with liberal majorities are. Liberals punish those who work hard and succeed, and reward those who are slackers. Proofs in the pudding, liberals (Arnold is a liberal) have run this state for years and it’s bankrupt. I’m voting anti incumbent regardless of party affiliation.
GAVIN NEWSOM is uniquely qualified for SAN FRANCISCO CITY/COUNTY leadership. SF is it’s own unique Island.
JERRY BROWN is the only one who can take us both back and forward at the same time. He knows what’s cooking in the back rooms and how to repair much of what went wrong.
BROWN is best for the WHOLE STATE.
DEM/GOP/ETC.
macdoodle~~~~
I don’t want another governor who’s gonna be hoarded out to the unions just like Schwarzenegger had become. And I feel Jerry Brown is the next in line. There hasn’t been a clamor for the return of the Jerry Brown governorship. The nostalgia is just isn’t there.
I’m leaning more toward Meg Whitman or Steve Poizner for governor.