Gavin Newsom’s potential 2028 White House bid is drawing fire from an unexpected place: progressive activists in Los Angeles.
Streets For All, a Los Angeles-based group that pushes for reforms aimed at reducing traffic, says it is placing sharply worded newspaper ads targeting the California governor in Columbia, South Carolina, and Reno, Nevada.
The choice of markets is no accident. South Carolina and Nevada are early-primary states that could play an influential role in deciding the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee, a contest Newsom is widely expected to consider entering.
The group’s criticism centers on funding cuts tied to the California Air Resources Board, the state agency whose leadership includes Newsom appointees.
Streets For All and allied progressive organizations have been angered by recent changes to California’s cap-and-invest program, which sets a limit, or “cap,” on greenhouse gas emissions and requires major polluters to purchase allowances for the emissions they produce.
“Governor Gavin Newsom increasingly wants to be judged by voters across the country—and those voters deserve to know what he is actually doing in California,” Streets For All wrote in a blog post announcing the campaign.
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Environmental advocates have objected to a proposal that would provide free allowances to companies that invest in carbon-cutting measures. They argue the incentive could end up encouraging additional pollution while shrinking revenue for climate and energy programs supported by cap-and-trade dollars, including California’s high-speed rail project.
According to one analysis, the incentive could reduce the cap-and-trade fund by $2 billion. Streets For All described the proposal as a “giveaway” to Big Oil and other polluters.
“California Governor Gavin Newsom just supported moving billions away from clean drinking water, public transit, and affordable housing into subsidies for refineries and industrial polluters,” read the ad, which was framed as a letter to Nevadans and South Carolinians from “struggling Californians.”
The agency, the California Air Resources Board, had defended the proposal as a “challenging balancing act” between climate goals and keeping critical industries from leaving the state.
Still, pro-climate groups have seized on a May statement from Newsom’s office where he praised the updates to the cap-and-invest program as a counter to the pro-oil Trump administration. Streets For All blasted his “climate hypocrisy.”
The governor’s tension with certain far-left elements of his Democratic Party — on this issue and others, such as the proposed state billionaire tax — could pose a complicated juggling task for him should he choose to run for president.
The California Post reached out to Newsom’s office for comment on the ad.
