Columnist Joe Mathews, pictured in 2018, when he still wanted to be lieutenant governor.
Santiago Mejia/S.F. Chronicle
My fellow Californians, I am no longer your best choice for lieutenant governor.
The job has simply become too important — and frightening.
In this perilous post-republic period of political violence, the chances are simply too high that the next lieutenant governor elected this year will soon become governor. And that’s a job no sane person should want.
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Here’s how I lost interest in the lieutenant governorship, the only elected office I have ever coveted.
I first raised my hand for this not-so-distinguished post in 2009, in the Los Angeles Times, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had to appoint a replacement for the departing Lt. Gov. John Garamendi.
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I looked into the job requirements and found only three:
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Check if the governor is alive.
I’d already been doing those things as a journalist covering Schwarzenegger. So, there’d be no need for on-the-job training. The lieutenant governor didn’t run anything. Neither did I. It was kismet.
I could handle the light work associated with the office. There are rarely tied votes in the California Senate, but I could show up and break them as needed. Serving on a few governing boards, as lieutenant governors do, would be no problem, since, as a think tank fellow, it’d be useful for me to attend those meetings anyway.
But it was my lack of political ambition that made me the best choice. No need to waste a real leader in a nothing job like lieutenant governor. Indeed, someone with real experience in government would just get frustrated by the role’s limits, as Gavin Newsom admitted he was when he served from 2011 to 2019.
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Any governor would have loved having me, since some lieutenant governors frustrate governors by taking official actions when the governor is out of state and the lieutenant governor is in charge. I never would have pulled a Mike Curb. I also wouldn’t have besmirched my office by raising money for future campaigns — as lieutenant governors always do.
I just wanted to use the lieutenant governorship as a no-show job to support my writing. Journalism doesn’t pay that much anymore, whereas the 2025 salary for lieutenant governor was $184,447!
Alas, Schwarzenegger gave the job to a now-forgotten politician named Abel Maldonado, who is perhaps best remembered for advancing the top-two election system that plagues California. I expressed my interest again during Jerry Brown’s governorship, but never got an interview. In the course of reporting, I did once ask Newsom to consider me as lieutenant governor, but he seemed to think I was joking.
Newsom was wrong about that.
The lieutenant governor’s job was a joke. But my interest in it was serious.
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Now, tragically, the job isn’t a joke. Donald Trump, our president-dictator, has repeatedly threatened Gov. Newsom with arrest and removal from office. Our next governor is likely to be even more in danger. Trump is ramping up his use of the Justice Department to target political opponents. And the right and left are normalizing violence against politicians.
Only two California governors have died in office and forced the lieutenant governor to step in. The last time it happened was in 1934, when Frank Merriam took over after James Rolph’s heart failure. Five other governors have left office, all for political reasons — in four cases to take other jobs, most recently in 1953 when Gov. Earl Warren joined the Supreme Court and became chief justice of the United States, handing the governorship to Goodwin Knight.
The odds of a forced resignation or worse are much higher now. No one with a sense of self-preservation would want to be governor right now. Which is why I can’t stand for lieutenant governor anymore.
The good news is that Californians do have choices who are more appropriate for the job. There are 16 candidates on the ballot, 11 are unknowns, from a nurse named Ebie Lynch to a doctor named Alice Stek.
Five candidates have significant governing experience. Among these are current state Treasurer Fiona Ma, former Sausalito City Council Member Janelle Kellman and Democrat-turned-Republican Gloria Romero, a former majority leader in the state Senate.
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Two candidates whom I’ve seen in action might be better governors than anyone running for the governorship. Josh Fryday, a former Novato mayor, has been a creative, nationally respected head of Newsom’s service and community engagement office. Former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who wrote a brilliant memoir and founded a major anti-poverty group, has more powerful allies than just about anyone in California politics.
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These five experienced candidates all seem too eager to jump into the fray and are talking about their readiness to serve as governor.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square.