In Part Two of our exclusive interview with San Francisco mayor and gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, we look toward the future. These are the toughest times California has ever faced, but here, Newsom sees opportunity – a state in crisis, yet primed to rebound. We discuss ways that digital media can be incorporated into government, why California is in a better position to rebound than other states, and Newsom’s optimism for the future – even in the midst of the worst budget crisis in history. Click here for Part One.
lbpost.com: I think the idea of using the SF311 Twitter account as a public service is really interesting. Are those some of the ideas that you’d like to incorporate in government?
GN: As you know we announced our campaign on Twitter, and then in the afternoon formally announced it at Facebook during a town hall meeting. We’ve been very aggressive in terms of our online presence – not just to win a campaign, but to change the state, to build an army of supporters for new change, and a new direction in the state. And so, my whole foundational philosophy is taking advantage of these new tools of technology and social media networks to really – and what we announced with Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter the other day – start to take advantage of these tools and technology in terms of the governance of our city and ultimately the governance of the state. And that’s the excited part, is how we can have this dialogue and this interaction by taking advantage of this technology in ways that we couldn’t have imagined even 5 years ago, or some would say even 5 months ago.
LBP: How do you see that in terms of governance?
GN: Well, I’m willing to be a first adopter. I think this is an area where you need to take risks to organize around new ideas – some will work, some won’t. What we’re doing, we’re the first city to do the 311 call center with Twitter and you know, this is just the beginning. I think, you know, from my perspective, mistakes are a portal of discovery and the idea is to be more entrepreneurial in terms of the governance of the state is critical. And the only way to be entrepreneurial is to take that principle and that entrepreneurial exuberance and desire to innovate and desire to change the status quo in the way you govern a city and a state, and try new things. Again, you learn from your mistakes and oriate yourself around appropriate strategies to contain the damages of bad decisions.
[SF311] doesn’t cost us a penny, for example. Not one dollar of public money’s been spent. In fact, we were going to do text messaging on our 311, it was going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that’s when we said, “Why are we spending all this money when we could be using technology that exists already, Twitter, for nothing?” And we can connect, so I just think that we’re barely scratching the surface of what we’re capable of doing in terms of governing the state by taking advantage of these tools. I want to be absolutely on the front end of this, leading the way. And I know other candidates in this race have a lot of connections; Silicon Valley, etc. But we won’t cede our role in terms of being early adopters and looking generationally and trying to advance these principles.
LBP: What do you see for the future of California?
GN: I think it’s extraordinarily bright. I know that can come across as patronizing and self-evident that a candidate for Governor would look more optimistically, but I’m dead serious. You know, we’re the envy of the rest of the nation and the world. More scientists, more researchers, more engineers, we’re the birthplace of biotech and life science. We’re the home to more venture capital, not just traditional VC and IT and the medical device side, but also in Green-tech. We’re the home of three of the six most profoundly important and significant universities on the planet, we generate close to $2 trillion a year of gross domestic product. This state is an extraordinary state. And our gateway status. Our coastlines, our mountain range, our natural resources – again, an envy for the rest of the nation. We generate 140 to 150 – depending on how you analyze it – revenue in this state. The world’s eighth largest economy. I am incredibly optimistic.
We clearly have to change the systems of government, we have to dramatically look at our entitlement process, we need to look at our governance generally, and that’s why I support a Constitutional Convention. I don’t think we can play in the margins in terms of reforms – I mean real order for magnitude reforms, but I think at this point in history the bar is so low, we’re forced to make those decisions. It’s an extraordinary time. I’ve never felt more enlivened in my political life. You know, I’ve been doing it for 15, I’ve never felt more optimistic about a moment in time, than this time. I know that sounds almost perverse. Because by definition, just like my budget that I just submitted, there are things that I never could have imagined doing a year or two ago. Never could have done. They were so long overdue that we had no choice but to do it in this year’s budget, that will pay huge dividends in a year or two. And that’s what I feel about the state.
And so I’m optimistic, truly. I mean I’d much rather be here than most other states, trust me. They’ve got real problems there – they can’t rebound like California can rebound. The most diverse state in the world’s most diverse democracy. It’s a remarkable place. You know, we challenge education, healthcare, obviously environmental issues… and the issue of human capital to me is the biggest issue in the state in retaining talent and recruiting talent. And that’s why education is preeminently the number one issue. But, again, infrastructure is in place. From our community colleges to the State system to the UC system, and I think we’re going to come out of this alright.
LBP: Can it be daunting, though, looking at the situation you might be going into?
GN: Yeah, but it’s daunting being a mayor of a big city right now, too. Truly. I mean, you know, we don’t get to borrow and spend, we don’t get to tax and spend on the local level. So I understand the constraints very well. I’m also the only mayor of a county in California. The county functions mirror the state functions. So the issues are so absolutely familiar to me. Down the line, on the welfare, the healthcare, long-term aging issues – all those issues we grapple with. We have our own prisons, in this case, the jail systems. I run the region’s water, not just water from the city – we have a 167-mile gravity-fed system from the Sierras and Yosemite. It comes down and we deal with the needs of millions of people around the bay. Again, port city. All these issues are very familiar.
Some of the challenges are daunting but the opportunities are limitless. You know, I was reading a great Time magazine piece with Pete Wilson as governor. And it was just the “rotting apple” analogy:
The state’s finished! It’s over! The best days are behind it, disastrous! Too many people, too diverse, can’t be managed, can’t be governed.
And we’ve been down this path so many times. Literally, if I was the editor of your newspaper I would just update it and put 2008, or 2009, and keep the exact same article. I’d update the numbers, and it’s the same thing everyone’s saying. And you know, we turned the corner. In fact, remember, we got a little too exuberant in the late 90’s, we were doing too well and we arguably squandered a lot of that. We didn’t put it into a rainy day reserve like we have in San Francisco, and I absolutely support that – we got a little lost in our ways and didn’t make the investment in education and infrastructure that we should, but we had that opportunity and we’ll have that opportunity again.
We go through these boom/bust cycles. We went through the defense boom in the 80’s, you saw the high-tech boom in the 90’s and now we’ve got this sort of consumer-spending housing boom that we just experienced, and now if we can level it in green technology and look at the attributes in life-science and biotech, nanotechnology, and really now frame an economic development and workforce training strategy that’s more rational, then I think we can avoid that roller coaster that we’ve been on in the last three decades. That’s where we’re really orienting our approach, and foundational philosophy. I’m a fanatic when it comes to green tech and our city got a very strong local economic stimulus plan, the only city in the state that’s got a strong local economic stimulus plan.
And I believe that, you know, the engine of our growth will be private sector jobs and employment. That means you can’t be pro-job and anti-business. We have to have a very pro-business orientation in terms of our approach. I have very strong social perspectives – as I think you know – and I believe, I think that’s the appropriate balance: strong social agenda, strong aggressive principles, but discipline and common sense and a hard-headed pragmatism that you can’t buy your way out of problems. You’ve got to manage and focus and reform and you can’t tax people. You can’t beat up on business and expect your economy to turn around, and I’m that type of Democrat in terms of philosophy.
Photos by Russell Conroy
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