Gavin Newsom says he won't run for president ...

[left-of-center2012]

Gavin Newsom says he won't run for president, but don't be too sure

Gavin Newsom is almost sure to win, and he will immediately move into the top tier of Democratic presidential contenders. (Sen. Kamala Harris is already there.) Newsom has sworn off interest in the 2020 White House race — “That is not my aspiration,” he told one interviewer — but the history of politics is full of such promises made and broken. At 50, Newsom is poised to lead the biggest state in the union. Ambition breeds ambition, not contentment.

A presidential bid so soon after being elected governor may seem implausible, but in fact it has been done before, by the younger incarnation of Jerry Brown. (In any discussion of California politics, it is generally safe to cite Brown as an example, since his is such a long and winding career that he has done just about everything at least once.)

Newsom likes to cite Brown’s experience as a cautionary tale, saying that Brown achieved more during his second gubernatorial tenure than his first because he was focused on California rather than Washington.

[AlexSFCA]

1. He will barely have time to show his gubernatorial achievements

before 2020 so it makes no sense to run for pres as he described. But he may be running in the future if he is succesful as a governor.