California Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to keep his political career from turning to ash amid scrutiny of his leadership and criticism that he has done little to mitigate the destructive Los Angeles wildfires.
Mr. Newsom has been blamed for empty fire hydrants, dry underbrush and a shortage of firefighters and equipment. The Democrat, who has served as governor since 2019, was considered a top contender in the 2028 presidential race until last week.
As the devastating fires rage for a second week and are poised to become one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history, Mr. Newsom’s political future hangs in the balance.
“He is the governor of California. Right or wrong, he is ultimately responsible with the other elected partners around the region. And they will be judged, they will be held accountable, fairly or unfairly,” said Daniel C. Weitzman, vice chair of the Sacramento County Democratic Party.
Mr. Weitzman said Mr. Newsom’s response to the fires has been “great, so far” and that he should not be blamed for the destruction.
President-elect Donald Trump called on Mr. Newsom to resign. Many Californians and others point to a failure in leadership for the lack of resources to defend against the fire — namely working fire hydrants, adequate water supplies and fire personnel, and sufficient brush clearing to stop or slow the rapid spread of flames.
Mr. Newsom’s policies that fund and protect the state’s illegal immigrants are also under new scrutiny.
On Friday, police arrested an illegal immigrant from Mexico with a lengthy criminal record after neighbors spotted him using a blowtorch in one of the fire-stricken communities.
Mr. Newsom has approved billions of dollars in benefits and services, including health care, for illegal immigrants. At the same time, Mr. Newsom cut $101 million from wildfire and forest resilience programs, including a program to reinforce homes and money to monitor and research wildfires.
The governor is also accused of waiting too long to deploy the National Guard to fight the Los Angeles inferno.
The Guard’s C-130 Hercules aircraft equipped with modular aerial firefighting systems that drop fire retardant from the air, along with ground firefighting teams and four military police companies to assist local law enforcement and emergency response, were not deployed until Friday, more than three days after the start of the massive blaze. Cal Fire said two of the five fires remained largely uncontained as of late Monday.
The blazes have killed at least 24 people and burned more than 60 acres and 12,000 structures. Neighborhoods have been reduced to ash, and thousands of people have been displaced.
Mr. Newsom is now tasked with a monumental rebuilding effort while facing another attempt to remove him from office via a recall petition. Organizers say they are confident the effort will result in his ouster.
“I think we’re in the process of writing his political obituary right now,” Randy Economy, who is leading the recall campaign, told The Washington Times.
Mr. Newsom, 57, who survived a recall effort in 2021, is fighting back. He announced executive actions to remove red tape and help the burned communities build back faster.
“We’re going to be back. We’re going to do it efficiently and effectively,” Mr. Newsom said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Don’t turn your back. Don’t walk away because we want you to come back, rebuild and rebuild with higher quality building standards, more modern standards. We want to make sure that the associated costs with that are not disproportionate, especially in a middle-class community like this,” he said.
Mr. Newsom promised to determine “what happened to the water system” when firefighters in Pacific Palisades, the largest and most devastating of the fires, were left with empty hydrants and low water pressure. He denied that he was attempting to publicly blame Los Angeles officials who maintain the city’s water infrastructure.
“I want to know those facts. I want them objectively determined and let the chips fall where they may. This is not about finger-pointing,” Mr. Newsom said.
His administration denied cutting firefighting funding. Although the forest resilience program funding decreased in the 2025 budget, money for preventing and fighting fires increased significantly, including funding to expand the state’s aerial firefighting fleet.
Mr. Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, has been a top Trump critic and prolific Democratic fundraiser who was poised to use his perch to lead the resistance to Mr. Trump’s second administration.
On Monday, the state’s Democratic-led Legislature proposed $50 million to fight Mr. Trump’s agenda, including $25 million to block his plan to deport illegal immigrants.
Mr. Newsom said he had invited Mr. Trump to California and phoned him after his Nov. 5 election victory. He said he hasn’t heard back from Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump has derogatorily labeled the governor “Gavin Newscum” in social media posts.
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social.
Mr. Trump has battled Mr. Newsom for years over the state’s draconian water distribution policies. Mr. Newsom fought the first Trump administration’s plan to send more water from the northern part of the state, which receives the majority of precipitation, to the water-starved farmers in Central California and the bone-dry communities of Southern California. Mr. Newsom later implemented a modified version.
Mr. Trump also criticized Mr. Newsom for failing to ramp up controlled burns and brush clearing. A 2021 report from CapRadio and NPR’s California Newsroom found the governor “has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested in wildfire prevention.”
On Jan. 8, Mr. Newsom’s staff issued a memo outlining how the governor has ramped up fire prevention “in the face of a hotter, drier climate,” including $200 million budgeted annually through 2029 for healthy forest and fire prevention programs such as controlled burns and forest thinning.
Mr. Weitzman said the world will watch Mr. Newsom lead the recovery in Los Angeles.
“In any great crisis like this, a leader is forged, and so far, he’s doing tremendously well based on what I’ve seen,” Mr. Weitzman said. “But you never know. This is uncharted territory. I’ve never seen this kind of devastation in Los Angeles. It’s a big deal, and he seems to be really rising to the occasion.”
Mr. Economy hopes to remove Mr. Newsom from office long before the 2028 presidential race heats up. He is confident his team can collect the required 1.3 million signatures in time to trigger a recall election by the summer and predicts Mr. Newsom will be forced out of office.
“He’s just not leadership material,” Mr. Economy said. “And I think what we’re seeing right now is his absolute 100% failure of leadership in the time of crisis.”
Mr. Newsom’s politics team said the governor is “100% focused on the fires, ongoing rescue efforts and the recovery process — not politics.”
The recall effort, they said, is run by “the same group of far-right activists [who] have launched 6 different recall attempts against the governor since he’s taken office, each of which have failed spectacularly.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.