Under Newsom, State of the State has become an afterthought

Once a major event on the legislative calendar, the governor’s annual State of the State address has become something of an afterthought in recent years under Gavin Newsom.

While the speech has traditionally been delivered in the Assembly Chambers, Newsom opted last year to do away with a single event in favor of a statewide tour where he could highlight his priorities informally (and without the aid of a teleprompter, which can be difficult for him to use due to his dyslexia).

And then this year, of course, Newsom held off on delivering a State of the State speech until late June when the administration knew the fate of Proposition 1 – and even then, Newsom opted for a tape-delayed speech broadcast on social media instead of a live event in front of lawmakers.

“In the 21st century, there’s multiple platforms for the governor to express his priorities beyond a one-time address to the legislature,” said Greg Lucas, California State Librarian and a former Capitol reporter. “I think those other platforms are frankly more effective.”

More so than any governor before him, Newsom has tried repeatedly to remake the State of the State speech, a typically staid affair presented with the same pomp and circumstance as the president’s annual State of the Union speech in front of Congress.

In 2020, for example, Newsom broke from the tradition of using the State of the State speech to address a litany of policy goals and instead focused on a single issue, homelessness. The following year, in the wake of COVID-19 lockdowns, the governor moved the speech from the state capitol to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, where he promised “brighter days ahead.”

The governor’s State of the State speech has typically been held in the Assembly Chambers since the 1940s, said Alex Vassar, legislative historian with the California State Library. Before then, the governor gave a “Biennial Message” to the legislature once during each two-year legislative session. Vassar told Capitol Weekly that based on a newspaper description from 1909, the Biennial Message was just a written report.

Under Gov. Earl Warren in the 1940s, however, Vassar said that the governor’s address transitioned to a written report accompanied by a speech. When voters approved Proposition 1A in 1966 making the legislature full, the governor’s speech to the legislature became an annual mandate.

And since then it’s pretty much been the same routine, with little variation. The state library has the text State of the State speeches going back to Jerry Brown’s first term, starting in 1976, on the Governors’ Gallery website. For 42 consecutive years, from Brown’s first year in office, until 2018, Brown’s last year of his last term, the State of the State address was delivered in January.

Then Newsom came along and in his first year delivered his address in February of 2019. He’s been marching to his own beat since then.

Excluding the text from the speech listed last year, the Newsom has been, on average, the second-most long-winded governor since 1976, with his State of the State speeches average 3,519 words per speech, behind only Pete Wilson, who averaged 3,606. The average State of the State address from 1976 to 2022 was 2,883 words – which, if you ever sat through one in the last few decades, is shorter than you might have expected.

Newsom’s speech on Tuesday “premiered” at 10 a.m. on YouTube and elsewhere, with the governor speaking in front of row of flags, with slick cutaways to b-roll shots illustrating various topics his discussed, including homelessness and mental health services. The b-roll also included a healthy helping of clips from news programs, particularly when Newsom criticized Red state approaches to policy.

The address was a sharp departure from tradition in form if not content, with the governor focused on defending progressive policies and attacking conversative ideology just two days before the first presidential debate. But the speech was also unquestionably well produced and engaging in a way that a person talking behind a dais often isn’t.

It didn’t get great reviews on social media, however, as posters to X (formerly known as Twitter) criticized the format. The account @SuperWokedad wrote, “A leader would have done the state of the state live and taken questions from reporters. Instead, we get a pre recored [sic] propaganda video.”

Legislative Republicans were critical of the address as well, blasting Newsom for not only delaying the speech but also for only minimally meeting his legal responsibility to speak to the legislature.

In a press conference outside the Capitol after the airing of Newsom’s speech, Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) and Sen. Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) also castigated the governor for what they called “the hypocrisy” of blaming Republicans for California’s budget and other challenges when Democrats have supermajorities in both legislative chambers. Dahle also took umbrage with Newsom for “not even having the decency and respect to deliver the State of the State” to the Legislature in person.

“I personally think he should address lawmakers,” Sen. Brian Dahle (R-Bieber) told Capitol Weekly after the governor’s speech. “We all have our part with the constituents we represent, and we all have to do our part before the governor can sign a bill, so I think it’s important.”

Dahle said the governor even cuts out most of his own party these days on critical matters like the budget, saying the entire process “has come down to just the governor, the pro tem, and the Speaker.”

He also took the opportunity to criticize the recent effort by Newsom and legislative leaders to block a ballot measure that would have required most tax increases to receive a two-thirds voter approval.

“It’s just unfortunate that we see manipulation of so many things that used to be the norm. If you went out and gathered signatures, you could put something on the ballot,” he said.

Many observers of Newsom’s speech noted it’s somber tone, and in particular his references to 1939 and the early peak of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. But the governor also railed against “the California haters,” saying “Our values and our way of life are the antidote to the poisonous populism of the right, and to the fear and anxiety that so many people are feeling today.”

In that way, the State of the State address continued to be relevant as ever – even in Newsom’s reimagined approach – as a point of political contention.