From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

Wanted: Any Job But the One I Have

Four months ago, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom dropped out of California’s gubernatorial race, he also seemed to drop out of his day job. He failed to appear at many public events. Reporters called him MIA after he disappeared from City Hall for several days and then was spotted in Hawaii.

Now Mr. Newsom apparently is trying to revive his mojo with a bid for the state’s lieutenant governorship. He announced earlier this month he will challenge Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, a fellow Democrat, for the state’s No. 2 executive job. Ms. Hahn, daughter of the late Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn and sister of former L.A. Mayor James K. Hahn, is not taking his entry lightly. She welcomed Mr. Newsom into the race by filing a complaint charging him with illegally going back to the maxed-out donors who financed his abortive gubernatorial bid. Under California law, individual donors can give up to $25,900 to a gubernatorial candidate but only $6,500 to a candidate for the Lt. Governor’s job.

Mr. Newsom is most famous for ordering the San Francisco city clerk to perform same-sex marriages, a practice later halted by judicial injunction and then a voter referendum. His role in the affair gave him global name recognition but compromised his ability to run for statewide office since his action was widely perceived as a violation of state law. The charismatic Mr. Newsom has also sullied his image with marital and alcohol troubles.

His rival Ms. Hahn has already begun attacking him as a lightweight and flake. In February, she released a video of Mr. Newsom saying at a pro-gay marriage rally that "for the life of me" he "doesn’t know" what the lieutenant governor does. Her campaign manager Michael Trujillo issued a message saying Mr. Newsom "never wanted to run for lieutenant governor of California, until it became something more interesting than dealing with a $522 million dollar deficit within his own city. So he did what boys usually do, he tried to push the woman out of the race, out of the way, out of the light."

Even Mr. Newsom’s former campaign manager Garry South, now working for Ms. Hahn, sent out an email criticizing Mr. Newsom: "On a couple of occasions, he directed me to repudiate publicly in the strongest terms that he had any interest in ever running for lieutenant governor. . . . If the Mayor does run, it is his responsibility to explain why he now claims to want an elected office he summarily dismissed publicly numerous times over the last several months."

Bottom line: The lieutenant governor’s race, usually a sideshow, is likely to be one of the central attractions of California’s political season.

— Allysia Finley

This entry was posted on Monday, March 29th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.