For those familiar with California governor Gavin Newsom’s playbook, his postelection focus on the state’s at-times-neglected Central Valley has a familiar ring to it.
Here we had the metrosexual, Bay Area–bred Newsom traveling to redder, less modish parts of the Golden State (three Central Valley appearances in all) and trotting out the kind of empathetic messaging that worked wonders for Bill (“I feel your pain”) Clinton back in the day.
“You know, some people talk about this economy is booming, inflation is cooling, lowest unemployment in our lifetimes,” Newsom declared at a stop in Fresno. “But people don’t feel that way. They feel like the economy is not supportive. They feel like the economy is not nourishing.”
Compare that to what Newsom had to say upon taking office as California’s 40th governor, nearly six years ago: “I recognize that many in our rural communities believe that Sacramento doesn’t care about them—doesn’t really even see them. Well, I see you. I care about you. And I will represent you with pride.”
Speaking of pride, it may be time for Newsom to swallow some of his and, for the good of his constituents, end his public feud with Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder now moonlighting as the co-head of president-elect Trump’s dollar-cutting DOGE initiative (“DOGE” being an acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency).
There are two reasons for Newsom to take the high-road—perhaps, if he wants, in a Tesla built right here in California (Tesla, by the way, is the Golden State’s lone large-scale manufacturer of electric vehicles).
First, the feud at times more resembles high-school pettiness than high-minded policy disputes, with two would-be alpha males trading insults via Musk’s X social-media platform. The latest example: Newsom’s call to offer rebates on electric vehicles sold in California should the incoming Trump administration end the $7,500 federal EV tax credit, with the notable exception of one EV firm. That would be Tesla.
Why would Newsom want to do so? Market caps and encouraging competition would be the wonkish response—the governor wanting to level the playing field in a California where Teslas account for over one-half (54%) of EVs sold (the next closest: Hyundai, at 5.6%).
Or, it could that Tesla isn’t as sufficiently woke as the powers-that-be in Sacramento would like, with Musk, a vocal DEI critic, having all language regarding minority workers and outreach to minority communities removed from Tesla’s 10-K filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this year. Thus, Newsom’s initiative serves as a politically correct rebuke.
But there’s another, far more sinister explanation for what Newsom would do to Musk and Tesla: politically motivated vengeance.
Not so long ago, Newsom and Musk were on cordial terms. That was in evidence at their joint appearance in February 2023 to celebrate Tesla’s opening of an engineering center in the heart of Silicon Valley. The two even joked about Newsom, when he was San Francisco mayor, being one of the first Californians to put a $100,000 deposit on a Tesla Roadster (maybe not the wisest purchase for a future father of four).
But what happened to what seemed like a budding “bromance” between the governor and the innovator?
After a 2021 announcement that he was moving Tesla’s headquarters from California to Texas (the result of Musk’s feuding with local health officials over COVID restrictions that kept his California plant closed), Musk this year said two more of his holdings—X (formerly Twitter) and Space X—likewise would move their headquarters to the Lone Star State. “The final straw,” according to Musk: not taxation or overregulation, but Newsom signing a law that bans school districts from requiring teachers to notify parents about changes in a student’s gender identity or sexual orientation without the child’s permission.
Meanwhile these past few months, something else happened in the Newsom-Musk dynamic: While Newsom campaigned selectively for the Harris-Walz ticket, Musk appeared front and center at Trump rallies (introduced as “the greatest capitalist in the history of the United States of America”). In doing so, the innovator became a public face of Trumpism (Musk at one point calling himself “dark, gothic MAGA”) while Newsom found himself one of a handful of Democrats uncertain of their political future based on the outcome of the presidential election—vice president Kamala Harris’s ultimate loss opening the door to a wave of governors positioning themselves for a 2028 run.
Which takes us to the politics of the moment and this cynical observation: Newsom’s rebate program isn’t so much about market dynamics and offsetting Trump policies as it is California’s governor finding a new foil. (For Newsom, it’s a long list of political piñatas that includes marriage traditionalists, gun owners, Donald Trump, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, “red” states, conservative media, pro-lifers, and Big Oil.)
Why such cynicism? Because Musk isn’t the only Trump-centrist foil available for a spat. Newsom could just as easily engage in a war of words with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to run the federal Department of Health and Human Services, regarding their differences over vaccines, pandemics, and possibly federal abortion policy (Kennedy’s stance on reproductive rights a likely topic should he undergo a confirmation hearing).
So why would Newsom favor Musk over RFK Jr. as his sparring partner? One could argue family admiration (the elder RFK is the governor’s political idol, with Newsom once expressing “my reverence, my respect, and my adulation” for the man).
Or it could have something more to do with math.
At present, RFK Jr. has roughly 5 million X followers—more than double Newsom’s (2.1 million followers). But Elon Musk is X, with more than 206 million followers, or an online army more than 40 times that of Kennedy’s. As such, any Newsom-RFK squabble isn’t going to have the same reach as Newsom sparring with the platform’s owner.
How long can the Musk-Newsom feud continue—and is there a possible offramp? For those hoping for a détente, the governor could be more vocal in his siding with Musk over the California Coastal Commission’s denial of an expanded slate of rocket launches from Vanderburg Air Force Base (Musk, in turn, suing the commission for engaging in “naked discrimination”).
Newsom likewise could ask for an audience with Musk to discuss how the latter’s DOGE initiative might impact the Golden State. According to a Wall Street Journal op-ed coauthored by Musk, the initial goal is to cut “$500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended.” Translation: potentially dozens of aggrieved members of California’s congressional delegation crying foul.
Then again, maybe there’s a limit to this, the term-limited governor’s latest political feud. Mid-May 2025 is the scheduled release date for Young Man in a Hurry, Newsom’s long-awaited memoir. Its description: “As the governor of California, [Newsom] confronts the challenges of balancing his family life as he guides California through plague, flood, wildfire, and the rise of autocratic figures in American politics, and examines the many forces that shaped the lives of his parents and grandparents.”
The timing is curious, as the obligatory media tour accompanying the book’s release coincides with the annual May Revision of the state budget—the update of the governor’s spending plan released in January and the beginning of weeks of budgetary wrangling in the State Capitol prior to the July 1 start of California’s fiscal year.
As with the Tesla tax-credit controversy, the book and the budget could find Newsom yet again at the intersection of governing and self-promoting.
Only this time, without a foil—unless Elon Musk were to buy Newsom’s publishing house.
