Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

For one thing, Jerry Brown is still raising money under the $6,500 limit for Attorney General, not the $24,100 gubernatorial limit that applies to Mayor Newsom and Lt. Gov. Garamendi. For instance, Newsom raised over $336,000 of his $1.1 million above the $6,500 cap.

But the bigger problem for Newsom is that he looks quite bad when compared to his own past fundraising.

When Newsom first ran for Mayor of San Francisco, he raised "$572,000 in his first two months of campaigning" according to the San Francisco Chronicle (I worked for his campaign).

While only raising twice as much in six months of campaigning for Governor as he raised in two months of running for mayor looks bad, the numbers look even worse under the surface. For Newsom's mayoral bid was constrained by $500 limits. Under such circumstances, Newsom would only have raised $370,682 for Governor. That is more than $200,000 less than he could do six years ago despite three times the time. And, back then he lacked the ability to raise money online, which makes the numbers look even worse.

There are a number of reason's why Newsom's fundraising breadth is experiencing shrinkage. For one thing, Democrats determined to win the general election are right to be worried about his negative poll numbers:

Newson is viewed favorably by 36%, unfavorably by 41%, and 23% are not sure what they think of him. Thirteen percent (13%) have a Very Favorable opinion of Newsom and 25% a Very Unfavorable view.

Yet two videos may tell the story better.

Gavin Newsom Galvanizes Support for Cal's Proposition 8 on Newsom's first statewide ad introduction to voters, which wasn't pretty and turned the tide for Proposition 8. [Embedding the video not allowed]

And then there is this Gavin Newsom video...