Speaking at a climate summit in New York, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in September he had to block his own Democratic legislature from passing a series of climate laws in the final days before lawmakers adjourned last year.

The comment frustrated his legislative allies in California and prompted Newsom to embark on an apology tour to smooth things over.

Since then, he has tried to ram big policy through the state house twice more.

Each governor uses different strategies as he steps into the executive branch beyond his traditional powers and enters the public policy-making arena in Sacramento, where the state legislature is responsible for introducing, discussing, and passing legislation.

Some governors are limiting their policy agenda

, leaving little need to negotiate with legislators. and give legislators little opportunity to exert influence.

Many tie their marquee proposals to the state budget process that begins and ends with the governor. Others use their celebrity, or the statewide vote, to force lawmakers to make deals.

Whether born of a lack of patience or stubborn willfulness, the policy hallmark of California’s 40th governor

has become

increasingly evident in his second term. Newsom has a penchant for publicly producing a sense of urgency and giving lawmakers as little time as possible to act.

The process is always difficult and I recognize that I don’t always make it easy, Newsom said on a

press news

conference this month in Sacramento as he celebrated the signing of a series of infrastructure bills he

Jump Jump

about the legislature in the

eleventh 11th

hours of the budget process.

You shouldn’t chuckle, Newsom told lawmakers standing next to him on stage.

Although he said this in jest, the governor hinted at an uncomfortable reality. Despite gathering for a photo opportunity that day, the tactic doesn’t end Newsom in front of advocacy groups or his Democratic colleagues in the state House.

Gavin Newsom has correctly decided that he is willing to annoy his allies because they need him more than he needs them, said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at UC San Diego who wrote a book about how governors manage to pass bills and budget proposals. He takes advantage of the publicity that every utterance he makes creates a kind of political ultimatum when he wants the legislature to act.

So far it has produced mixed results.

While Newsom’s tactics have helped him get some wins, it doesn’t always deliver everything he wanted to win.

The Democratic governor last fall announced a special session for lawmakers to fine for excessive profits in the oil industry and just weeks after his mea culpa for suggesting Sacramento lawmakers were held in favor of the oil industry.

Sensing the political pressure of rising gasoline prices, Newsom went on a rampage

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Big

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Oil to drive up prices and benefit Californians. Standing in front of television cameras in Sacramento,

he said

lawmakers had to impose a tax on the profits of the oil industry to protect consumers

now

and get every dollar, every penny back into the pockets of those who were skinned.

But the governor’s plan ran into problems from the start.

No other state had successfully introduced caps and fines on oil profits. Without a blueprint to follow, lawmakers feared a fine could push the industry to continue raising prices in California. Newsom recognized that navigating unfamiliar terrain was challenging.

The legislature held its first public hearing on the proposal

almost

five months after Newsom introduced the idea. By then it had the governor’s office

only

,

only

bee

loose

sketch of a plan to lawmakers with a profit cap yet to be determined as the administration struggled to figure out how to implement its idea.

Gas prices also began to fall, taking the governors’ legislators from urgent action.

Newsom scrapped his original plan in March and instead demanded more transparency from the oil industry, hoping to better understand the cause of price spikes. Instead of lawmakers approving a cap on oil profits, the final law gave the California Energy Commission more power to investigate gasoline prices and the ability to sanction oil companies through a public hearing.

It’s the only thing you can do, said Susan Kennedy, a former Gov. chief of staff. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Every government I’ve seen has taken gas prices to the extreme and they’re doing a study and they’re going after the oil companies and they’re researching gas prices. I think I must have supervised five of them. You do that because you have no control over the supply and demand of oil.

Despite falling short of his very public call for lawmakers to enact a profit cap and fine, Newsom hailed his transparency bill as a major victory over the oil industry.

While Newsom presented his original sentence as necessary to protect consumers, in signing the bill, he acknowledged that “nothing is going to happen any time soon” and “prices will not drop immediately. Also, there is no obligation for oil companies to reimburse consumers for summer price spikes.”

Kousser said the governor’s declaration of victory in that case reminded him of Schwarzenegger, who served two terms as California governor from 2003.

20

11.

His problem, especially in his first year and a half, is that he would come in with this thing…

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Fantastic, said Kousser of Schwarzenegger. He would get something done and declare victory. Then he got a reputation for being like,

okay okay,

he just wants to get something so we can do whatever we want and help take the credit and be happy and that will all work out.

He said that is also a danger to Newsom.

It gives the sense that the governor is really not interested in the policy change, Kousser said. The governor might be interested in the political victory. Once you have that reputation, it can hurt you.

Newsom again tried to block lawmakers in May when he introduced a package of bills to speed up the process of building California’s major infrastructure by limiting the likelihood of long-term legal challenges to projects under the state’s Environmental Quality Act.

Lawmakers and environmentalists criticized the late arrival of the package, the lack of time for sufficient public review of such a sweeping policy, and the inclusion of Newsom’s existing plan to build a tunnel to transport water under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to Southern California.

Kathryn Phillips, the former president of the Sierra Club

California

who publicly criticized Newsom’s plan during the negotiations, said the infrastructure battle speaks to his disdain for the environmental community.

The governor often points out that his father was an environmental activist as an example of his deep roots in the movement.

But his father was a completely different character, he was deeply interested in it, Phillips said. Newsom doesn’t go deep into it. But he “wants to be praised as a leader of something he hasn’t exactly led,” she said. “You have to have people following you if you’re a leader,” Phillips said. “And if you just impose things on people and don’t talk to them, you’re not really leading. You’re imposing.

Phillips also said Newsom’s desire to push policy through is an example of his impatience with the legislative process, and in turn disdain for public transparency and scrutiny of public policy.

The strategy, however, offers a major benefit to Newsom: it limits time for the opposition to grow and for lawmakers to water down the proposal through public hearings or quit as a negotiating tactic to exploit their own priorities. Legislative leaders similarly introduced and passed controversial bills in the final days of the session.

Governor not interested in blocking legislature, former Newsom legislator Angie Wei said

Affairs

secretary. He is interested in solving the big problems California is facing. When your policy is complete, it’s time to go. You can’t let the calendar stop you.

The governor has repeatedly commented on the limited time he has left at the helm of California’s government and his concern that he regrets not doing more when his term expires in 2026.

“I want to actually deliver, not just on goals and aspirations, but on projects,” Newsom said when asked about shoehorn legislation this month. “And so I have a different mindset. There’s a kind of stubborn pragmatism. You know, let’s get moving.”

Negotiations on the infrastructure package have held up a budget deal between Newsom and lawmakers in Sacramento for weeks.

On at least two occasions

The governor threatened to veto the state budget from the legislature unless lawmakers approved his infrastructure plan, a move that could have turned Democratic battles into a rare public spectacle.

Legislative leaders

held out the bluff

other

the state assembly

ended up winning protection for underprivileged communities

that they persisted in their discussions with the governor’s office

. Newsom won many of the amenities he originally wanted to speed up projects, but dropped the Delta Tunnel from the proposal.

Former Speaker of Parliament Anthony Rendon, who stepped down as leader of the lower house this summer following the budget deal, said lawmakers are responsible for how Newsom enforces policy on them. The legislature created an imbalance of power when they left the state capitol during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, allowing Newsom to run the state government and implement policy alone.

That was handed over, said Rendon (D-Lakewood), who was concerned at the time about ceding power to the governor.

The legislature weakened itself by not showing up and that relationship between the departments has never been the same. We like to piss on the administration and on Gavin, but that was our fault. It has never been fixed.