Gavin Newsom’s “Established Insurgency” Has a California Record

Gavin Newsom has found a new label for himself: “established insurgent.”

Campaigning in Michigan after Abdul El-Sayed’s upset Senate-primary victory, Newsom said voters are tired of incumbency and the status quo. They want “people with conviction,” people who “get it” and want to get things done. Then Newsom placed himself in that same category: an “established insurgent.”

It is a clever phrase. It lets Newsom claim the moral energy of an outsider while retaining all the power, fundraising network, national media exposure, and institutional advantages of a career insider. But it also invites a simple question: after two terms as California’s lieutenant governor and two terms as governor, what has this insurgency actually delivered?

California’s homelessness crisis remains the most visible test. Los Angeles County’s 2026 count reported a 1.2% increase countywide; the City of Los Angeles count rose 3.4% to 45,194 people, while unsheltered homelessness rose 7.9% in the city. Los Angeles is not an isolated exception. The most recent complete federal Point-in-Time count recorded 187,084 Californians experiencing homelessness in 2024; roughly one-quarter of the national total, with about two-thirds unsheltered. Statewide and local counts vary by year, geography, and methodology, but California remains home to the nation’s largest homeless population.

The same problem is visible in infrastructure. California’s high-speed rail project was sold to voters as a modern transportation system connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. Eighteen years after voter approval, the state is focused on a 171-mile Merced-to-Bakersfield segment, with about 119 miles under active construction and a completion target of 2032. The original $33 billion statewide vision has given way to estimates of roughly $34.8 billion for the initial Central Valley segment, $126 billion for Phase 1, and as much as $231 billion for a more extensive system. The issue is no longer merely delay. It is whether California will ever deliver the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles system voters were promised.

Then there is the state’s Next Generation 911 rollout. California spent more than $450 million on an emergency communications modernization project before the approach was deemed unworkable and abandoned in favor of a new statewide strategy. That is not insurgent competence. It is a costly admission that the government’s chosen system failed and had to be rebuilt.

California families also continue to live with unusually high costs. Gasoline topped $6 per gallon statewide in spring 2026, the highest average in the country. Global oil markets and international instability affect fuel prices everywhere, but California’s persistent price premium is also shaped by state-controlled policies: fuel taxes and fees, cap-and-trade and Low Carbon Fuel Standard compliance costs, specialized gasoline-blend requirements, and regulations that limit supply flexibility when refineries go offline. Those policies may be defended on environmental grounds, but their affordability consequences are not accidental or beyond the state’s control.

Newsom can point to enormous state spending and to failures that predated his tenure. But he has been governor since 2019. At some point, an official who claims to be a disruptor must be judged by whether his disruptions have worked, or simply added to the growing list of issues the next governor will inherit.

This context cannot be overlooked as Newsom embraces Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s newly nominated Democratic Senate candidate. El-Sayed defeated a more moderate, establishment-backed candidate, Haley Stevens, in a race that has become a national test of whether Democratic primary voters are moving toward more activist and left-populist politics.

Newsom moved quickly to embrace and campaign alongside El-Sayed. He rejected claims that El-Sayed’s victory reflected Democratic extremism and argued instead that it represented a broader revolt against incumbency. He also made clear that Michigan’s Senate race is strategically important and requires national Democratic support.

That explanation is politically plausible. Michigan is a battleground state. Helping El-Sayed could strengthen Democratic odds of holding or gaining a Senate seat. It also gives Newsom an opportunity to build relationships in a pivotal presidential state as he publicly weighs a 2028 campaign. Political scientist Melissa Michelson put the motivation plainly: Newsom wants to be part of the El-Sayed story and receive credit if El-Sayed wins.

But Newsom should not pretend that this is merely an exercise in neutral party unity. El-Sayed has embraced policies Newsom has generally avoided making central to his own national political identity: Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, a billionaire wealth tax, and more aggressive taxation of capital gains, inheritances, and wealth held in trusts. El-Sayed has also appeared alongside Hasan Piker, a prominent left-wing streamer who campaigned with El-Sayed, and who has drawn widespread criticism, including from Democratic officials and party figures, for saying that America “deserved 9/11.” El-Sayed later called that statement “dumb” and said America did not deserve the attack.

Piker’s significance to the coalition is not limited to one offensive 9/11 comment. At a Yale Political Union debate in April, he argued in favor of the resolution “End the American Empire,” criticized ICE, Israel, and capitalism, described the Cold War as an “endless series of butcheries,” and called the collapse of the Soviet Union “one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20^th century.” He also argued that the “American empire” was already dying and that the country should manage its retreat from global power. The event drew extraordinary student interest, underscoring Piker’s reach among politically engaged younger people.

Newsom is not responsible for every statement by a candidate’s media ally, and support for El-Sayed does not mean he embraces Piker’s worldview.  But Piker is not an incidental figure in El-Sayed’s coalition. He is a prominent ideological and media partner whose views illustrate the political constituency Newsom is now eager to court. Voters deserve to know what Newsom is endorsing: the candidate, the platform, the insurgent style, or the political advantage that may come from being associated with an insurgent victory.

The irony is difficult to miss. Newsom’s own ascent in California politics was not propelled by an insurgency against wealth or elite institutions. Rather, it was assisted from the beginning by some of San Francisco’s most established and affluent families. A Los Angeles Times review found that eight prominent family networks, including the Gettys, Pritzkers, Fishers, Swigs, Marcuses, Buells, Wilsey-Traina, and Guggenheim families, provided roughly $2.2 million to Newsom’s campaigns through his 2018 gubernatorial bid. The Times reported that Newsom’s father was a close friend of Gordon Getty and managed the Getty family trust, while the Gettys supported Newsom’s early business ventures and political ascent.

This history does not disqualify Newsom from national public office. It does, however, make his claim to outsider identity difficult to defend. It also makes his effort to cast himself as an “established insurgent” unusually revealing. Newsom is not a figure who rose by challenging California’s elite economic networks. He is a politician who emerged from them, benefited from them, and now seeks legitimacy from a movement that often defines itself by hostility to them.

That is what makes “established insurgent” less a philosophy than an opportunistic strategy. Newsom wants to speak to voters who feel betrayed by institutions while remaining one of the country’s most powerful institutional politicians. He craves the credibility of a movement skeptical of wealth and elite influence while quietly maintaining a political ecosystem built on the very same deep-pocketed donors, nonprofit networks, and privileged access to power they decry.

California’s record gives voters reason to be skeptical. An insurgent is supposed to challenge a failing system and produce something better. Newsom has had nearly fifteen years in statewide executive office to do that. His new label does not erase the homelessness, infrastructure, emergency-system, and affordability problems that remain.

And his rush to embrace El-Sayed suggests that the label Newsom seeks may be less about results for California, than about a looming presidential primary. Newsom is not an insurgent challenging the establishment. He is an establishment politician scrambling to ensure the insurgents do not leave him behind.