Gavin Newsom is a term-limited governor with an election days away, and he is using his last weeks to ask federal judges to stand in the way of Donald Trump’s attempts to seize ballots in California.
That is the request in its barest form. It lands in the final stretch of an election in which voting access is itself on the ballot. Proposition 39, the Republican-backed voter ID measure, is before voters, and Democrats have spent recent weeks holding press conferences to oppose it. Xavier Becerra, the Democratic nominee to succeed Newsom, casts himself as a defender of voting access.
A governor on his way out
Newsom, 59, has been the state’s 40th governor since 2019. He won in 2018 and was reelected in 2022, and term limits now bar him from another run. Before that he was lieutenant governor from 2011 to 2019 and mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. He is widely seen as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, and he has built a national profile in part by fighting Trump on federal policy. In 2025 he oversaw passage of Proposition 50, a redistricting measure drawn up in answer to Texas redrawing its own lines.
The race he leaves behind
The contest to replace him looks settled. An Emerson College poll taken from Oct. 17 to 19 had Becerra, a former attorney general and Biden’s health secretary, at 60% of likely voters against 33% for Republican Steve Hilton, a gap of 27 percentage points. Nearly two-thirds of the few undecided voters leaned Becerra. Hilton, a former Fox News host who carries Trump’s endorsement, has raised $33.6 million to Becerra’s $40 million.
Trump is deeply unpopular in California, and Becerra has leaned on that at every turn. Asked about gas prices at a rally in Bakersfield, he blamed “Trump’s war in Iran” first. “The first thing, obviously, we have to do is get Trump to end his crazy war abroad,” he said.
Democrats have held the governor’s office since 2011. The last Republican to hold it was Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose term ended that year. Election Day is November 3, 2026, and the handover will go ahead whatever happens with Newsom’s appeal to the bench.
Sources
- Gavin Newsom
- Governor Newsom orders action to protect Highway 1 and coastal communities ahead of El Niño storms | Governor of California
- Is Steve Hilton’s campaigning making any dent in the California governor’s race?
- The First 100 Days: How an Incoming California Governor Might Use Executive Power to Address the Housing Crisis – Terner Center
- California Governor Race 2026: Becerra vs. Hilton — MultiState Elections
- "Reparations requires receipts": Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter on truth, repair, and countering the politics of cruelty
Photo: Office of the Lieutenant Governor of California (Public domain)
