by Gillen Tener Martin, Washington Monthly

More than two years before the 2028 presidential election, California Governor Gavin Newsom is a leading Democratic contender, and it’s easy to see why. The two-term governor of the most populous and powerful state, and a two-term mayor of San Francisco, he is, by recent presidential standards, comparatively youthful at 58. Charismatic and savvy, he’s taken on Donald Trump with gusto, mocking the president on social media and succeeding, by an impressive margin, in pushing a ballot measure to redistrict California’s congressional seats in response to the Texas gerrymander that the president sought and got.

With an autobiography, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, out last month, Newsom has become even more ubiquitous: the star of lengthy profile pieces, podcast interviews, and right-wing slammings. Armed with name recognition and bound by term limits, national politics is the only summit left for the governor to climb. As he readies his all-but-announced presidential run, however, Newsom must defend his record on perhaps the most high-profile of California’s problems: homelessness, a crisis so multifaceted, intractable, and defiant of simple solutions that few candidates anywhere—let alone here, where it’s at its thorniest—have dared to run on a platform of addressing it.