GAVIN NEWSOM

Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011. His decision in 2004 to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples was a first step on the path to the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the United States. When he launched a universal health care initiative in San Francisco, it was also a first step. In 2011 he was elected lieutenant governor of California, and since February, 2015, he has been running for governor in the 2018 election. In his campaign, he has advocated for tougher gun laws, the legalization of recreational marijuana, and the adoption of a universal health care program for California.

We met in Newsom’s San Francisco office, across the street from his restaurant where they serve wine from his PlumpJack vineyards.

Gavin Newsom: Robert F. Kennedy’s speeches are so contemporary that if I gave them today, I’d get a standing ovation. I don’t know of anyone who gives speeches like that. They’re jaw droppers. I can connect every single one of them to where we are in the world today. That’s praise for the vision of the speeches, but not a great testament to how far we’ve advanced.

Kerry Kennedy: It does highlight the lack of progress, but the problems he talked about were the most daunting issues facing our country: race, poverty, injustice. He knew progress would be slow. But he also spoke about enduring American values and ideals: that each person can make a difference, that those closest to the problems are most likely to know the solutions, and that we need to treat one another with dignity and respect, be tough with the bullies, and love our country.

GN: Bill Clinton in ’92, and in fact, the Democratic Leadership Council, the New Democrats, took much of their program from your father. His ideas were not just prophetic but also influential. We need to pay especially close attention to his ideas today because, as idealistic as we may be, we need to bring our message back to earth.

We need to give it life, to make it actionable. We need your father’s hard-headed pragmatism. Oliver Wendell Holmes said that because “life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.” Robert Kennedy was about passion and action. Holmes added that we would all be judged and ultimately judge ourselves by the extent to which we contribute to the life of our city, state, and nation, and the world we’re trying to build. To me, that notion of civics is so important. It’s the idea that we have agency, that we’re not bystanders in the world, that we can shape the future; there’s no guy or gal on a white horse who’s going to save the day; we all have a responsibility.

If we want to have responsibility, citizenship, and agency, we have a tool today that people didn’t have back in the sixties. We can use technology to advance democracy by making government accessible. Your father talked about how so many minority individuals were demanding their rights as human beings, how they wanted “a measure of control over their own lives, over their own destinies, a sense of communication with those whom they have elected to government.”

The technology we have today can be a tool of empowerment and civic engagement; it can enable active, not inert, citizenship. Justice [Louis] Brandeis wrote, “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.” Today we have the private citizen with access to the internet.

There’s an important connection between your father’s empathy and this ideal of citizen participation. Your father was able to see the world from someone else’s perspective. He wanted to show other people how to get that same range of perspective. There’s a notion of global interdependence that your father was on to before a lot of other people were. To live in that world we need to know how we can be connected to lots of other people in all kinds of different circumstances all around the nation and the world.

KK: How did you first become aware of Bobby Kennedy?

GN: There’s a picture of my father and your father, literally days before your father lost his life, when my father was running on the same ballot for the state senate. Your father signed it to my mother, Tessa. My mother passed away about fifteen, eighteen years ago. An interviewer once asked me, “If there was a fire in your house, besides your kids, what’s the one thing you would grab?” I said it would be that photo. I am not exaggerating when I say Robert Kennedy inspired me to get into politics. That photo means a lot to me.

My parents were divorced, and the picture connected me to both my father and your father. The picture had always been on my mother’s wall, so it connected me to her, too. I wondered: “What is it about that picture?” It created an inquiry. Why is he important enough to be on our wall?” I had to start learning about the person in the picture. I dove into that period in history, and I’ve been more inspired by that period than any other time. There was that idealism. There was the language that transcended the times, something magical. There was a different kind of politics: hardheaded, pragmatic. These things resonated with my own sense of politics, as a businessperson with twenty-three little businesses who is progressive in my desire to change the world. I connect to all of that, and truly it started with a photograph.

KK: As a politician, you’ve taken progressive positions on the environment, marriage equality, homelessness, health care, and marijuana, among other controversial issues.

GN: That photograph and what I did in 2004 on marriage equality are directly connected. Your father talked a lot about the shortness of life; he was very aware that a person’s time is limited and our wisdom is limited, too. A person might get just one chance to step up and do the right thing, so he urged us to do the right thing: strike out against injustice, never let anyone explain it away, be authentic, be bold. Even people who hated your father admitted he was authentic. I remember the moment when I made that decision on marriage equality. I remember thinking, “I’ve made the decision. I’m going to do this tomorrow.” There were five more days of discussions after that, but I had already made the decision. The sense of authenticity was exhilarating. My striving for that was inspired by your father.

You know what? It’s addictive. Once you’ve done something truly authentic, you’re like, “God I want more,” because you don’t ever again want to live a life “managing” problems or explaining them away or “failing more efficiently.” Fifty years from now, I don’t want to see the same problems I’m facing today. As they say in psychology, it’s time for pattern interrupt. All the issues are more pronounced now: the income inequality, and wealth disparity, the fear of the other, and the xenophobia and nativism.

I get restless. When I see these difficult problems, I feel like I have to do something. Here’s your father again: “The world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity.” I introduced Governor [Jerry] Brown with that quote three weeks ago at the State of the State. He’s turning seventy-eight, and he’s a man of action who’s done a magnificent job here in California because he’s a youthful seventy-eight-year-old who has a predominant love of courage over a love of ease. We’re not talking about chronological age; it’s about a state of mind. It’s an energy that prevents you from resting when there’s something wrong; it’s a feeling that you have to right that wrong. That comes from the Day of Affirmation speech, of course—your father’s greatest speech, in my opinion. Not just the words, but the context…. Apartheid South Africa didn’t allow black South Africans in to hear your father speak.

KK: Yes, actually, June 2016 was the fiftieth anniversary of my parents’ trip to South Africa. RFK Human Rights organized a delegation with twenty-three members of my family, six members of Congress, including John Lewis, and Polly Sheppard and Felicia Sanders, the two women who survived the church massacre in Charleston. As you remember, the next day, at the arraignment, Polly and Felicia said to the shooter, “I forgive you.”

We followed my parents’ steps all throughout South Africa and we ended up at the University of Cape Town, where he gave the Day of Affirmation speech. One thing I didn’t know about their trip was that the South African government refused to give my parents a visa for six months. Then, a couple of days before the trip, the regime said no press, so it was only my mother and father and a couple of aides. When they arrived in Pretoria, the South African government pulled their security detail. Five years before, Dag Hammarskjöld, the secretary general of the United Nations, had died in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), and many credible people suspected that the South African government had killed him. My parents were bold. When they flew over Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held), they asked the pilot to tip the wings for the prisoners below. After that action, the pilot was stripped of his flying license.

Ian Robenson, the student who had invited Daddy to speak, was banned, and placed under house arrest. When Nelson Mandela came to Boston, he told the story of Daddy visiting Robenson, and suggesting that they talk in the bathroom, where Daddy opened all faucets to make the bugging devices fail. Robenson, surprised, said, “Where did you learn that?” and Daddy, with an easy laugh replied, “I was the attorney general, you know.”

GN: The Day of Affirmation speech was gutsy; you didn’t have to read between the lines, it was full throttle. Those words are powerful and they’re a good reminder. It’s not youth; it’s the energy and commitment of youth.

KK: Yes, and he spoke about the four great dangers to all social movements—futility, expediency, timidity, and comfort—all the ways in which we tell ourselves not to try to create change. But creating political change is what your life has been about. You don’t really fall into a liberal or conservative camp, so you’re sort of a hybrid. My father was that, too. He said: “What we do need and what 1968 must bring is a better liberalism and a better conservatism. We need a liberalism and its wish to do good, yet that recognizes the limits to rhetoric and American power abroad; that knows the answers to all problems is not spending money, and we need a conservatism in its wish to preserve the enduring values of the American society, that yet recognizes the urgent need to bring opportunity to all citizens, that is willing to take action to meet the needs of the people.”

GN: I created a program called Care Not Cash; the idea was to cut cash grants for homeless people and replace them with more shelters and other services. When I announced it, I paraphrased that exact quote. I said, I’ve supported spending more money in the past five years and poverty is getting worse, not better. I said liberalism needs to be redefined. There was a lot of opposition. I literally had to move out of the house because they spray-painted my house. I ended up having to move to an apartment building where they had security people downstairs. Finally we won at the ballot box. In many ways, this was a demonstration of why I became mayor. I was arguing for taking away money from poor people, the most vulnerable, homeless people, as a solution. I mean, good luck doing that as a liberal. It really is redefining liberalism—at least that’s one way to put it. By the way, the program has been a phenomenal success. We radically changed people’s lives; thousands of people got housing because of what we did. My worst critics, even to this day, ten, fifteen years later, recognize the merits of it. It was difficult, but the whole effort was based on your father’s words. I need the inspiration, believe me. You don’t know how difficult it is as a politician to try such a radical move with respect to your ideology, to your label. It’s a big thing to find a solution outside the usual lines in which the game of politics is played. In this case, at least, the result was that we helped people.

KK: Change is inevitable, but it’s frightening. People prefer the status quo, even if it’s uncomfortable. It’s predictable.

GN: There’s nothing more difficult than changing the order of things. There’s a huge constituency for the status quo. This is particularly true as it relates to antipoverty programs, particularly as it relates to those that have been beneficiaries of the status quo as it relates to governmental largesse, or private-sector and nonprofit largesse. And they’re going to fight like hell to hold on to their piece of the pie or their trophy that they have on the wall, and frankly, that’s one of the fundamental great challenges of our time.

Fortunately for me, in a way, I have pretty severe dyslexia, so there’s no linearity in my thinking. I was never going to succeed being rote or walking down the old cow path; I’ve always had to come at things from different angles. I started something many years ago called the “Failure”: every month, I reward the biggest screwup with a bonus that’s over $1,000 now. At the end of the year we announce our twelve biggest failures at our annual party and we announce the Failure of the Year award. The idea is that we’re celebrating initiative. It’s also about taking responsibility: don’t just sit there, do something, learn from your mistakes. It’s about change; it’s about disrupting the status quo; it’s about that creative buzz that comes when you try something different.

Change is inevitable; we’ve proven that twice, with Obama and Trump. Progress is not. That’s a major distinction, and we’ve got to face it.

KK: Daddy said, “Progress is a nice word but change is its motivator and change has its enemies.” That’s the struggle, right there.

GN: You have to lean into the world. It’s what I used to say to my staff here: Live life out loud. Be fully expressive in life. Everyone has the capacity to flow with the forces of life. Learn from it, don’t follow others. Step up and be authentic, and don’t be ideological. That’s another thing I love about your father: he was never ideological. Be open to argument, interested in evidence. I don’t want to be a bystander in the world. I try to shape the future. Your father said, “We cannot stand idly by and expect our dreams to come true under their own power. The future is not a gift: it is an achievement. Every generation helps make its own future.”

The determining factor is your purpose. “Why am I here, why am I doing this, what’s the motivation?” It’s not just being something, having a big title or reaching a certain status. You have to do something once you get there. That’s your father’s spirit. You don’t have to be something to do something. It’s this notion that so many of us wait to be this or be that: “When I’m mayor, when I’m governor, when I’m president, I’ll do this.” I mean, of course your dad was a senator and had formal authority as attorney general. But people like Sarge Shriver and King himself, and Gandhi, and Cesar Chavez: none of them had formal authority, but they still changed the world. At the end of the day, you don’t think of Nelson Mandela as a one-term president and the things he did in that term; you think about his moral authority and what he accomplished in his lifetime. Again, that’s your dad; it’s his moral authority. He didn’t need to be president. He left us a sense of genuine possibility. That’s a transcendent legacy, and maybe it’s more powerful than what could’ve been achieved in two terms and a presidential library.