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President Obama's position on same-sex marriages has indeed been "evolving" - back in 2004, he wouldn't even have his photo taken with Gavin Newsom, for fear that being pictured with the man who opened the City Hall wedding chapel to gays and lesbians would cost him votes back home in Illinois. At the time, Obama was a mere state senator from Chicago looking to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Like a lot of up-and-coming African American pols, he tapped Willie Brown to host a fundraiser here to score some badly needed cash.Brown tossed a party at the Waterfront...

On the heels of a headline-making split with talk show host Keith Olbermann, San Francisco-based Current TV has hired on a new talk show host — one well-known to progressives — California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom, the Democratic former mayor of San Francisco, will star in a weekly show for San Francisco-based Current TV called “The Gavin Newsom Show” beginning in May, the network announced Wednesday. According to the release from Current: “The hour-long talk show will have a decidedly California touch as Newsom interviews notables from Silicon Valley, Hollywood and beyond.” “The Gavin Newsom Show” will be executive...

I see Gov. Jerry Brown took some backhanded swipes at our lieutenant governor in a visit to The Chronicle the other day. No surprise there. Even in his "do-nothing" job, Gavin Newsom is still a challenging figure for politicians throughout the state. He's articulate. He has movie-star looks. He has a great eye for issues, and he's young enough to be Jerry's son. That's also why Newsom strikes fear in other politicians. He has the potential for being a favorite of the Google generation. Brown has a special grudge against Newsom, of course, because Gavin tried to run against him...

Gov. Jerry Brown was at the Chronicle Tuesday for an editorial board meeting (mostly to sell his tax plan), and we asked him about how Gavin Newsom is doing in the number two, largely ceremonial, spot of lieutenant governor. The two former Bay Area mayors, you may remember, have a rocky past (in part because of personality, and in part because Newsom also had his sights set on the governor’s office two years ago before dropping out of the race) .“I think he’s well within the tradition,” Brown said when asked whether he’s satisfied with the job Newsom has done.Ouch....

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who pops up from time to time to snipe at Gov. Jerry Brown, suggested today that his fellow Democrat lacks a "vision for greatness" and is "not necessarily the most collaborative executive," and he criticized social service cuts Brown has proposed. "We've got a governor who is doing a very good job focusing on solvency," the former San Francisco mayor, who dropped out of the gubernatorial race in 2010, said on KQED Radio's Forum. "But what we need is a vision for greatness again." Brown and Newsom have a distant relationship, . . .

Gov. Jerry Brown couldn't leave the state when he was governor before without looking over his shoulder at Lt. Gov. Mike Curb, who feuded with Brown and made mischief when he was gone. But as Brown prepares to leave California for the first time since retaking office this year, he can rest easy: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will become acting governor while Brown is in Las Vegas on Tuesday for a clean energy conference, is unlikely to misbehave. . . .

Gov. Jerry Brown has a new "senior jobs adviser." Michael Rossi, a retired Bank of America executive from Pebble Beach, will be "the point of contact between California's business and workforce leaders and the administration," Brown's office announced Wednesday. Operating out of the governor's office, Rossi will be asked to "streamline the state's economic development infrastructure" and advise Brown on regulatory, legislative and executive actions needed to improve the job market, according to the announcement. OK, but wait. Wasn't that what Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom's "growth and competitiveness agenda," introduced three weeks ago, was supposed to do? "Blindsided," said a...

Former San Francisco Mayor-turned-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is once again on the move - this time out of the city. Movers from Delancey Street Foundation, where Newsom did his rehab counseling after admitting to a drinking problem a few years back, pulled up to his Ashbury Heights home Monday. Workers packed the family's beds and other belongings and drove them off to storage. It seems that the four-bedroom, 3 1/2-bath home that Newsom and wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom purchased two years ago for $2.7 million is just not big enough anymore now that a second little Newsom is on the...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Molly Ivins once described the Texas Legislature as the best form of free entertainment in a city that bills itself as the live music capital of the world. From quips about shrinking government to the point where you can fit it in a uterus, to an amendment to a budget bill that would have require 10 percent courses offered by universities to focus on Western Civilization, the Texas Legislature has managed to live up to that billing once again this session. Adding to the theater over the past couple of days: A visit from a delegation of...

Less than three months on the job, and already Gavin Newsom is prepping to run for governor again. A city insider who asked not to be named tells us the new lieutenant governor approached him at a charity fundraiser the other day with a request for help to start raising money for a renewed gubernatorial bid. Newsom's inability to compete with the much-better-financed Jerry Brown was one of the reasons he withdrew from last year's Democratic race and ran instead for lieutenant governor. Newsom has opened a re-election campaign committee for 2014 - but there's nothing to stop him from...

Newsom lends a hand in Brown's budget battle - Since Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom took the oath of office last month, the onetime gubernatorial hopeful has been feeling his way in a limited role that gives him virtually no power over the budget process.Newsom has expressed in no uncertain terms that he would relish a chance to participate in the brewing budget battles. He gets his shot in a Web video pitching Gov. Jerry Brown's message that was recorded for the California Democratic Party and released last week."I agree with the governor," Newsom says . . .

In his first remarks at a University of California Board of Regents meeting this morning, Lt. Gov. and Regent Gavin Newsom proposed challenging half a billion dollars in cuts to the UC system proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown. Newsom said the regents shouldn't automatically accept the cuts and said, "I'm not convinced we're going to lose that half a billion dollars." The remark suggested Newsom won't hew tightly to the Brown administration line as lieutenant governor, despite coming from the same party and sharing longtime family ties. Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, . . .

After delaying his swearing-in by a week, former gubernatorial candidate and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom became California's 49th lieutenant governor Monday in a low-key ceremony in line with his new position's limited duties. Newsom told a few hundred people gathered in the state Senate chamber that he would focus on economic development and job creation while admitting that his contributions would more likely involve ideas rather than policy decisions. "I know my role as lieutenant governor is limited," Newsom said. "I understand the constitutional restrictions. I do. But I hope I can add some value in the debate and...

All eyes will be on Gov.-elect Jerry Brown Monday as the 72-year-old Democrat is sworn in for a third term as California's chief executive. . . . LATER: Lt. Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom will be in Sacramento to attend the swearing-in ceremonies for Gov.-elect Jerry Brown and other constitutional officers, but the San Franciscan won't take the oath of office himself. Newsom has scheduled an inaugural celebration for 1 p.m. on Jan. 10 in the Capitol Rotunda, though a spokesman said he could be sworn in sooner. Constitutional officers are eligible to be sworn in as soon as the first Monday...

Even political consultants, who give out compliments as if they were drops of their blood, agree. Facing a crowd, without notes and holding a microphone, Mayor Gavin Newsom is as good as it gets. The downside is he undermines his charisma with petulance. For someone who is proud of taking on the big fights, he is painfully thin-skinned. We've seen both in his seven years as mayor. In the last few years, he has championed same-sex marriages, a groundbreaking universal health care program, Healthy San Francisco, and suffered an inelegant meltdown. When his gubernatorial campaign floundered, he disappeared to Hawaii...

Gavin Newsom's strength and weakness as mayor of San Francisco has been his willingness, as he put it, to take the risk of making "glorious mistakes" or proposing ideas that critics would find "fun to mock." This is the mayor who banned city purchases of bottled water, signed the nation's first mandatory composting law and talked of harnessing the energy of ocean waves. Newsom's most daring move of all - allowing same-sex marriages in February 2004, in open defiance of state law - only seemed to encourage further dashes of audacity by a politician with a penchant for policy analyses...

The solid left majority on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has an opportunity to do what city voters haven't done for more than two decades: put a progressive in the mayor's office.Not since the election of Art Agnos in 1987 has a progressive served as mayor, and his tenure ended four years later when he lost his re-election bid to Frank Jordan, the more conservative former police chief. The only progressive mayor before Agnos, George Moscone, was assassinated in 1978, three years into his first term.Now, with Mayor Gavin Newsom, a San Francisco-style moderate, set to leave office in...

Nature abhors a vacuum and that tenet applies to politics as well as physics, which explains a phenomenon in communities dominated by one political party, such as Democrats in San Francisco or Republicans in Placer County. Since there are no interparty battles waged in such communities, those in the dominant party fracture along minute shadings of ideological difference, thus filling the vacuum. What's happening in San Francisco, where all politicians are liberals of one stripe or another, illustrates the syndrome. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will soon become California's lieutenant governor, but how soon is the issue of an intensifying...

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unseated Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado Tuesday night for the state's No. 2 post. The Democratic challenger maintained a lead all night over the moderate Republican incumbent in the battle for the unheralded job of lieutenant governor. Neither side was willing to concede a winner, but Newsom told dozens of cheering supporters he planned to be in Sacramento.

The races for lieutenant governor and attorney general are too close to suggest that any candidate has a firm edge going into Tuesday's election, according to the latest Field Poll released Friday. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is hanging onto a slim five-point edge of 42 percent to 37 percent over Republican Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado. The survey also found that Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley – the GOP candidate for attorney general – has dipped to a one-point lead over Democratic rival Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney. The latest survey, which was conducted Oct....

Touting education and job creation through green technology, former President Bill Clinton on Sunday night told San Jose State students they will bear some of the responsibility if Democrats lose their control of the House and the Senate on Election Day. "There's a reason people think that the Democrats are going to lose these houses," Clinton said. "The reason is you." So Clinton urged the enthusiastic crowd of 5,000 -- most of them students -- to tweet, text and e-mail their networks of friends to vote Democratic on Nov. 2. Clinton came to San Jose to campaign for gubernatorial candidate...

Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado is running a radio ad criticizing Democratic rival Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's mayor, for a city policy to try to rehabilitate and release undocumented minors being held for crimes – without reporting them to federal officials for possible deportation. Following is an analysis by Susan Ferriss of The Bee Capitol Bureau: Text Narrator: It took a triple murder for Mayor Gavin Newsom to admit San Francisco's sanctuary city policies were a misguided and costly mistake. Second narrator: For four years while Newsom was mayor, San Francisco refused to turn dangerous illegal immigrant criminals over to authorities...

If Tuesday's opening debate in the lieutenant governor's race is a sign of things to come, buckle up. Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado may be the incumbent, but he was on the attack early against Mayor Gavin Newsom, needling the mayor for his handling of the Cosco Busan oil spill, his wife's investments in oil companies and San Francisco's sanctuary city policy in a roughly 50-minute radio debate on KQED's Forum program. The mayor, for his part, tried to paint Maldonado as out of touch with the state on environmental issues and the embodiment of Sacramento political gridlock. Host Scott Shafer...

Former President Bill Clinton begins pitching for Brown and Newsom as "proven leaders" in green tech job creationFormer President Bill Clinton will begin reaching California voters today with a strong enviromental-based election pitch on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and Lt. Gov. candidate Gavin Newsom, whom he says represent "the kind of leadership California needs" on green tech and alterntive energy to boost jobs and the economy.Clinton's email fundraising message to voters going out today calls them "two candidates whose creative ideas, proven ability to make progress and passionate commitment to our children's future will bring back the...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, considered famously liberal by many, released a radio ad Thursday attacking his GOP rival for lieutenant governor for voting to raise taxes.

Former President Bill Clinton, who endorsed then-gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom during the Democratic primary season, will be in California to campaign for Jerry Brown -- and Newsom -- on Oct. 15 and 17, the CA Democratic Party says. The announcement comes in the same week gubernatorial candidate Brown's off-the-cuff comments about Clinton's veracity created headlines -- and a distraction for his campaign. The State Attorney General's public apology to Clinton came on the heels of an ad by Republican candidate Meg Whitman's team which highlighted Clinton's past criticism of Brown as a tax-raiser -- comments which Clinton himself has now...

"San Francisco values" used to be political code for life in what Republicans dismiss as a kinky liberal enclave.But now a top statewide GOP candidate is redefining the epithet as life in a city handcuffed by its progressive mayor, Gavin Newsom, who is so "extreme" that locals can't get a Happy Meal or a plastic shopping bag without official permission. Republican Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, a moderate running against Democrat Newsom for re-election as lieutenant governor, isn't the first to use San Francisco to fire up his party's base. But at the three-day state GOP convention, Maldonado marshaled a new...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom didn't get the warmest reception Friday morning when he approached a homeless encampment under a bus overpass for the soon-to-be-demolished Transbay Terminal. "Go away, man!" hollered 60-year-old Kolinio Waqairawai as he sat against a concrete pillar, a koala blanket draped over his legs, a pack of Parliament cigarettes on his lap and a 16-ounce Bud Light tall boy near at hand. "You're wasting the state's money." Within five minutes, Waqairawai was holding Newsom's hand and flashing a smile showing his missing lower tooth as the mayor knelt next to him. After rhapsodizing about Marin County...

It didn't take long for Mayor Gavin Newsom's opponent in the lieutenant governors race to tag the country's "greenest mayor" with setting "some sort of record for political hypocrisy" after our colleagues revealed his wife had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in oil companies, including the owner of the deepwater rig that exploded in the gulf oil disaster. "Though Gavin claims to oppose offshore drilling when the cameras are rolling, his bank account has been swelling due to multiple investments in what he calls 'dirty' energy companies who make billions of dollars from off-shore drilling," said Brandon Gesicki, a...

It turns out that San Francisco's eco-conscious Mayor Gavin Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, own a piece of the deepwater rig at the center of the gulf oil disaster. According to the mayor's most recently filed economic disclosure statement, last year the couple invested between $10,000 and $100,000 in Transocean Inc. - the company whose ruptured deepwater rig, which is leased to BP, is spewing millions of gallons of oil, endangering wildlife and beaches all along the Gulf Coast. Just last month, Newsom told the San Diego area East County Magazine that "the environmental catastrophe devastating the Gulf...

San Francisco is generous, good-hearted and socially conscious. It is eager to help the disadvantaged and the poor. There's just one flaw in our civic personality. Tough choices. We'd rather not make them. On Monday, a parade of hundreds of service organizations appeared before the Board of Supervisors, pleading for funding for their programs. These aren't bad people and their programs to help the young, the drug-ravaged, and the homeless are well-intentioned. But the hard truth is there are far too many service providers for this relatively small city. They duplicate efforts, they don't have enough oversight, and they spend...

San Fran Mayor Gavin Newsom speech at LGBT Caucus at the California Democratic Convention April 2010

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced today a moratorium on official city travel to Arizona after the state enacted a controversial new immigration law that directs local police to arrest those suspected of being in the country illegally. The ban on city employee travel to Arizona takes effect immediately, although there are some exceptions, including for law enforcement officials investigating a crime, officials said. It's unclear how many planned trips by city workers will be curtailed.

Oh, what a difference a day makes. On Monday, Mayor Gavin Newsom was questioning the wisdom of City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Supervisor David Campos' proposed boycott of Arizona for its harsh new immigration law, saying the law was "un-American" but boycotting a state and its businesses was "an extraordinarily complicated matter." "I appreciate the desire to condemn the act," Newsom said then. "I understand how (a boycott) would get a lot of attention, but I also think we have a lot of work to do to have a sober dialogue about, 'Is this something possible?' " He was saying...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's idea of holding a special election to name his successor if he's elected lieutenant governor appears to be DOA. Newsom doesn't have the six votes on the Board of Supervisors needed to place a charter amendment on the November ballot to require an election, and there doesn't appear to be much interest downtown for an expensive and rushed petition to get the 47,000 signatures needed to go around the supes.San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Vice President Jim Lazarus, who met with the mayor last week to talk about a charter change, said he doesn't see...

The day before Mayor Gavin Newsom announced he would run for lieutenant governor, he spent hours with the city's labor leaders discussing how to bridge the deficit. Saturday, he took a few hours to dial up the homes of truant kids. The point Newsom likes to make is that even though he announced Friday he's running for lieutenant governor, he plans to be as involved and hands-on as possible in running the city."This city is in my blood," Newsom said, "and I don't want to be the guy who just took off and left the city in ruins." But there...

Mayor Gavin Newsom finally put an end to the questions of will he or won't he, and announced this morning that he is running for lieutenant governor.Newsom dodged reporters' questions for weeks about whether he would trade in City Hall for Sacramento. However, he promised to reveal his decision today, which is the deadline for candidates running for statewide office to file their paperwork. He did just that in an interview on CBS5 with our colleague Phil Matier."I'm in full steam ahead," he said.

It could soon be illegal to sit or lie on public sidewalks anywhere in San Francisco, a law Mayor Gavin Newsom says would make city life safer for pedestrians and merchants, but that homeless advocates and others say would amount to profiling against the poor. Newsom will introduce two separate versions of a sit/lie law today at the Board of Supervisors. One version would prohibit sitting or lying on public sidewalks in about 20 commercial corridors throughout the city and is modeled on a similar law in Seattle that was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals. The...

Hey Scott Brown. You may be the truck-driving new senator from Massachusetts, but Mayor Gavin Newsom says he can teach you a few things about job creation. Brown, you may recall, made the comment earlier this month at his first Senate news conference that President Obama's stimulus program "didn't create one new job." That's not what the Congressional Budget Office says, estimating the recovery program saved or created 600,000 to 1.6 million jobs in the third quarter of 2009. "You can not, in good faith, make the argument that his (stimulus program) has not created a job," Newsom said Wednesday...

Nobody seems to know what the future holds for Mayor Gavin Newsom after he's termed out of office in January 2012 - least of all Newsom himself. He recently sat down in his office with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and told her, "In a couple of years, you'll see me as the clerk of a wine store. ... This is it. God bless. It was fun while it lasted. ... Guys like me don't necessarily progress very far, which is fine."His spokesman, Joe Arellano, said as much to a Wall Street Journal reporter in November, but upon seeing...

There is one consolation for Mayor Gavin Newsom now that he's dropped out of the governor's race - he won't have to take a $72,477-a-year pay cut. Newsom, who earns $246,464 as mayor of San Francisco, would have seen his pay drop to $173,987 if he had won the governor's race, as a result of the salary cuts imposed on state elected officers last week.

There is one consolation for Mayor Gavin Newsom now that he's dropped out of the governor's race - he won't have to take a $72,477-a-year pay cut. Newsom, who earns $246,464 as mayor of San Francisco, would have seen his pay drop to $173,987 if he had won the governor's race, as a result of the salary cuts imposed on state elected officers last week.Under the new pay levels, the governor gets about $25,000 a year less than San Francisco's park and recreation director, Phil Ginsburg.And if District Attorney Kamala Harris wins the race to become the next attorney general,...

I was away for most of the week, but I did catch up with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at a tree-lighting party on the Embarcadero Friday evening.He looked very relaxed and was having his picture taken with everyone. He said he was back in the swing of things and really looking forward to tackling the city's $500 million budget deficit. This time, he said, he would be free to do what needed to be done because he won't be beholden to anyone. It ought to be interesting.He also asked if The Chronicle had gone after me the way the...

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stopped just long enough outside his office door the other day to give reporters a hint why he's been ducking them these past two weeks: "I think you guys should consider your reporting," the mayor said, before fleeing down a staircase and out a City Hall basement door.Newsom ignored our question about why he was leaving Monday night without taking time to address a sizable dinner crowd assembled under the Rotunda to honor the visiting deputy prime minister of Vietnam - whom he had just greeted in his inner office.One organizer told us that Newsom...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday was successful in overriding Mayor Gavin Newsom's veto of legislation changing the sanctuary city ordinance. Newsom, who said the ordinance conflicts with federal law, said through his spokesman that he would ignore the legislation - prompting the legislation's author to threaten a legal challenge to the mayor. The new law takes effect in 30 days, and Supervisor David Campos said the board may fight the mayor in court if no compromise can be struck. Campos' ordinance - which garnered eight votes Tuesday - requires that undocumented juveniles be turned...

Mayor Gavin Newsom was spotted this morning at City Hall, but there's still no word on his mysterious disappearance. He arrived at his office at about 9:30 a.m., walking past members of the media who were hoping he'd comment on his absence. No such luck. "The mayor is back, and he's busy conducting meetings in his office in City Hall right now," said his spokesman, Nathan Ballard. Newsom is meeting with staff and plans to meet with both sides of the hotel workers' dispute sometime today, Ballard said. He is not planning to make any public appearances. "He's been kept...

From major conferences at the Moscone Center to small coffee shops in the Mission, San Franciscans are buzzing about Mayor Gavin Newsom and the stunning turn of fortune that in a few short days took him from being a candidate for governor to hiding out in Hawaii. From Newsom's highs, like his law-breaking same-sex marriages in 2004, to his lows, like an admitted affair and alcohol problem in 2007, the telegenic, risk-prone mayor has always given his constituents something to wag their tongues about - and this bizarre chapter is no different. Last Friday, hours after speaking before a bank...

It's understandable that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, having given up on his gubernatorial ambitions, might want to take time to lick wounds, lie low and, as my colleague C.W. Nevius suggests, do some reflecting. Unfortunately, there's important and immediate mayoral business to attend to. When Newsom's press secretary, Nathan Ballard, told The Chronicle that Newsom will be back "soon," one hoped he meant this morning. That's when Newsom was scheduled to speak to 6,000 land-use professionals, architects, planners, real estate developers and other urban experts from all over the world at the opening of the Urban Land Institute conference...

After three days of radio silence following his withdrawal from the governor's race, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unexpectedly jetted off Tuesday morning to Hawaii to join his wife and baby daughter, who already were vacationing there. The trip, which the mayor apparently booked on his own, caught his staffers off guard. Many did not know he was gone until the city attorney's office sent out a notice informing them that the mayor had left the state and naming Supervisor Carmen Chu acting mayor.Mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard apparently was among those who did not get a heads-up about the trip....

Last week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, the boy-wonder politician sought out by network cameras at the Democratic National Convention, profiled in Newsweek and the New York Times, was forced to pull out of the race for California governor before opponent Jerry Brown even officially declared his candidacy. Newsom's campaign wasn't sputtering. It never got off the ground. A candidate who raised nearly $6 million for his 2003 bid for mayor (with maximum contributions limited to $500) only raised a little over $3 million this time, according to the California secretary of state's office. It was a harsh political lesson....