Gov. Gavin Newsom makes a point at the opening of the San Quentin Learning Center on Friday, Feb. 20, 2026.
JOSÉ LUIS VILLEGAS
jvillegas@sacbee.com
Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back Friday on concerns that he has softened or shifted away from his past support for the LGBTQ community and other minorities to win back the young men drifting away from the Democratic Party on the last leg of his book tour promoting his new memoir.
Newsom has pushed for his party to widen its tent by being “more culturally normal” to win back Millennial, Gen Z, and young men of color who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. He has frequently appeared on podcasts popular with the “manosphere,” a loose collection of online communities that revolve around men’s interests like fitness, cryptocurrency, video games and sports.
Journalist Paola Ramos, who interviewed Newsom at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami with her father, Mexican journalist Jorge Ramos, asked the California governor if he had come to identify with the extremely online young men he was trying to reach.
“l’ll take off my journalist hat, and put my lesbian Latina hat on,” Paola Ramos said. “When we hear you say things like, ‘Democrats need to be more culturally normal,’ is that them influencing you?”
“No, no,” Newsom said. “That was in relation to a particular issue, related to some issues in our prisons and gender assignment surgeries that just don’t appear to be normal for a lot of folks.”
Newsom previously said at the New York Times’ Dealbook summit in December that Democrats needed to be more “culturally normal” and offer a positive economic vision for voters disgusted with the United States’ wealth inequality and the Trump administration.
He doubled down to CNN that Democrats needed to be “less prone to spending disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity politics,” prompting criticism from the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, which previously criticized him for siding with conservatives on wanting to bar transgender athletes from school sports.
The LGBTQ caucus did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
For over a decade, California has had laws in place to protect transgender people from discrimination in the workplace, gym locker rooms, and schools. Most polls show voters rank the economy, voting rights, gas prices and other cost-of-living issues as higher priorities than transgender rights.
The issue of allowing transgender inmates to serve their sentences in facilities that correspond to their gender identities has been more politically fraught for Democrats.
In 2024, the Trump campaign ran attack ads saying “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” claiming she supported funding reassignment surgeries with taxpayer dollars while she was state attorney general.
Related Stories from Sacramento Bee
The Sacramento Bee
Lia Russell covers California’s governor for The Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Bureau. Originally from San Francisco, Lia previously worked for The Baltimore Sun and the Bangor Daily News in Maine.