Californians will vote on Nov. 6 to replace termed-out Gov. Jerry Brown with either Rancho Santa Fe businessman John Cox, a Republican, or Lt. Gov. and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. The Union-Tribune Editorial Board invited both candidates to endorsement interviews. Only Newsom accepted despite a series of requests and multiple conversations over several months with the Cox campaign. Here is Newsom’s complete interview. For earlier interviews with Cox and Newsom, visit sdut.us/cagov.

Union-Tribune: Thanks for coming in. I don’t want to cover some of the same ground that we covered last time, but I do want to talk about first wildfires because obviously pretty devastating what’s happening right now. What is the state’s road map to a safer California when you have record air and water temperatures being broken this summer, forest management in our view is a joke and the cost of fighting wildfires is consuming more and more the state budget?

NEWSOM: Yeah we’re just… we’re just establishing. We’re just framing… we put $160 million bucks into the, our forestry program, particularly as it relates to suppression strategies and the Cap and Trade program. We added $96 million last year in the new budget. In addition, for more strategic forestry management strategies, we finally put together a work group around this as you know last year.

RELATED: Read the May 2018 interview with California governor candidate John Cox

So it’s just being developed and we could look backwards or we could look forward. I prefer to look forward and establish some recognition as you frame this that we have been inadequate to the task, but so is the federal government, which manages over 40 percent of our forest lands and it’s the height of irony and almost indignity that we’re being criticized by of the White House and the president himself.

Yet, their budget does not reflect any prioritization whatsoever in the Department of Interior or in any respective agency that’s responsible for clearing out brush and thinning the fields and the like. So we… I’m very committed to this. It’s been a point of ion for me as a former mayor of San Francisco… related to the issues of interoperability, emergency strategies, emergency planning, adaptations, issues of resiliency.

It’s been also a frame of focus of mine as it relates to what’s happened in Santa Rosa and some of the after action reports that are really a great guide if there’s anything that’s honestly worthy of people’s attention and time is to read the after action analysis of what did or did not occur in those fires in Santa Rosa as it relates to the debate around opting in technology versus opting out as it relates to (unintelligible) technology.

As it relates to the broader issues of jurisdiction and mutual aid. I want to reconstitute the emergency council, which ironically was one of the tasks of the previous task of lieutenant governors that emergency council was disbanded when the new istration came in. We’ll reconstitute it, broaden it. We have actually a white paper on this. You can take a look online how we want to reconstitute the emergency council.

Obviously forestry management, fuels, fires, strategies around alert systems, new camera technologies and a much more aggressive relationship with the federal government as it relates to partnerships around this, it’s a big part of it. We’ve bought new helicopters. We have new suppression equipment. Finally spent some capital investment in the last couple of years that will pay dividends going forward, but clearly the interface suburban, rural interface, the issues related to what’s happened since the drought, that five-year drought and the subsequent response we had has been inadequate.

Union-Tribune: How about the budgeting? I mean if so much of it’s done on an emergency basis, is there any way to get it (overtalk)?

NEWSOM: Well, we’ve significant…

Union-Tribune: (Overtalk) there’s no way?

NEWSOM: We significantly increased the budget. The good news, one of the things we don’t is that we get substantial amount of reimbursement on those expenses. We talk about the money we’re spending. There is a substantial amount that’s reimbursed and that’s part of ongoing challenge because it requires a relationship with the federal government, which is tenuous at best, but I will say credit is due… the president hadn’t played politics with these emergency declarations.

There’s three versions or variance of emergency declarations. Each one goes deep to the question of reimbursement. Both from governmental perspective, also as it relates to the individual reimbursements, emergency grants, and loans and like to give to small businesses, but so far that relationship has been sound and the resources to the extent they’re needed… subsequent resources or additional resources they’re there. I’ve sat down. I was just with OES folks and sat down with everybody and said, what are you wanting? What are you needing?

And people felt fairly resourced, meaning they, you know the national… from the National Guard on down. National Guard is actually, was surprisingly well resourced because they’re getting tremendous amount of excess equipment from the Pentagon and the like. So look it’s… we got to work to do and forestry management, fuel issues are a big part of it and we’re going to have to significantly double down on what we’re doing.

Union-Tribune: We’ve had a number of letters wondering why the president hasn’t come to visit yet given this disaster? Is that something he should do or would you…

NEWSOM: Of course, of course, he should do and, you know… of course, but you know well, I mean where do you begin with Donald Trump? I mean it… it’s the right thing to do on a human level. It’s the moral thing to do. It’s an ethical thing to do. It’s what leaders do. They show up, but he’d rather use it as a political frame and that’s clear. I mean, Canadian lumber or blaming the smelt, or you know blaming the delta water somehow rushing out.

So we’re inadequate water supplies for suppression. I mean he conflates all the issues. He’s… he pulls things out of the air because Perdue said something one day or Zinke says something and then you know, he has no comprehensive thoughts around this, and it’s self-evident. That said, he hasn’t played politics with the emergency declarations and be nice to develop a more systemic strategy. Perdue said the right things along those lines yesterday.

So it does sound like at least some of his istration. Zinke have no confidence in whatsoever. Thinks climate change’s a hoax, so does John Cox and so that… that suggests they don’t even connect the hots getting hotter, the dries getting drier, and the wets getter wetter frame that you referenced in your opening question, but he looks at it purely from sort of the Tom McClintock frame. That we have 300, you know, 300 trees per acre and we should have 80. Well that’s a forest. That’s about logging more than it is about healthy forest.

Somewhere in between is probably approximation of an honest assessment and that requires, I understand the environmental component of that is part of a conversation we’re going to have to bring some folks over because there are some legitimate issues. People have different ideological prisms as it relates to what constitutes thinning of our forest versus what constitutes logging of the forest? And dead tree issues.

You guys… I think I said this last time, I spent half my life in Placer County. My dad lives in a small town, Dutch Flat. Been impacted by the fires, within a mile of his house two years ago. The dead trees up there are legendary. I mean just the… I mean my lifetime never seeing anything like it. Hundreds of millions of dead trees and the cost… we just did on our property cost $35 grand and was just, it seemed like a small little patch of dead trees. I mean it was jaw dropping the cost just to one property owner.

You can imagine extrapolating that burden to hundreds of thousands of residents in and around the area that on private property that have responsibility to address that let alone the federal government’s cost burdens and the state. So this is not insignificant in of the totality of the challenge. Billions and billions of dollars.

Union-Tribune: It’s not clear what he’s going to do, but the governor tried to orchestrate a hearing last week at which… his twin tunnels could have been authorized without a vote of the Legislature. Now I know he’s on a legacy hunt, but you’re likely to be the next governor. Are you comfortable with him cutting corners to try to commit the state to a $16 billion project?

NEWSOM: Well, it’s $19.9 [billion] as you know and just was updated and adjusted today. I don’t think he’s cutting corners because he certainly has the right to do that and that right has been well prescribed many istrations.

Union-Tribune: But shouldn’t the Legislature have a say?

NEWSOM: The Legislature has been very actively engaged. So they do have a say to the extent you can stop the project or you need concurrence from the Legislature, just on the totality of the project with revenue bonds. As you know that’s not necessarily the case, but there are many, many public agencies and there are certainly ad nauseam public processes that have to be adopted and representatives at all levels of government are certainly part of that process.

So I don’t know it’s fair to constitute as cutting corners, but I get the argument against it. Now that’s come from a frame where I’m not ideologically predisposed to two tunnels. So I don’t even come from that prism, but I don’t criticize the governor for at least walking down that pathway. It is an open-ended question. I was with him yesterday, quite literally around this time yesterday on their contributions around this.

Santa Clara obviously was a beneficiary of this, some money for their … project and they are now onboard, but none of the (CDP) partners are onboard and there’s still a major funding gap, which makes this whole project an open-ended question and I am not convinced that they will have locked it in by the time the istration changes hands. So we’re going to have to look it anew and I’m… as I say, I will come at it from a fresh perspective.

Union-Tribune: This spring you told us you shared our concerns about the Public Utilities Commission and how it has overseen the giant investor-owned utilities. We even did an editorial a few weeks ago that says, Brown is so complicit in the PUC because he’s named all the and was tied to the last two presidents that he’s not the guy who should be pushing for the wildfire liability relief.

He doesn’t have the credibility to do it. Whether or not you want to address that part of it? Do you feel that there’s a precipitous action being undertaken by those who are pushing hard for the wildfire relief?

NEWSOM: I don’t think it’s precipitous, I mean I think it’s an existential challenge I mean for these utilities. It’s not an insignificant open-ended question and so, you know, it has to be addressed and to the extent the legislative timetables are what they are, people are working overtime to address it.

Union-Tribune: But Jerry Hill’s point is so powerful. You have these organizations that have this long history of not fulfilling their responsibilities, try to keep things safe. Especially the corporate criminal who are PG&E and now we’re trying to look at… we’re looking at something incentivizes them to behave badly? I think Senator Hill has got a powerful argument.

NEWSOM: Well, everyone’s negotiating and the governor is hardly alone. I’ve been leading with (unintelligible) one of your well-known representatives who was very involved in the negotiations around this speaker and many other of the Legislature deeply involved in this in addition to Jerry Hill. As you know, Bill Dodd, substantively, representatives in the East Bay and others, but you know, there’s not just the corporate “interest” as you described them of PG&E.

There’s the corporate interest insurance companies and there is the, certainly interest of trial attorneys that are equally involved and influential I can assure you in California politics that are making their case as well as constituents that represent all of us. So it’s been very active and it goes well beyond just the governor and the governor’s office. He offered an opening salvo, a framework.

Even PG&E themselves balked at that as you know and pushed back… said it was inadequate and now there are series of negotiations in real time and I’m not the beneficiary of the negotiations over the last 24 hours since I’ve left Sacramento, but I will say there are different thoughts around and it goes to the spirit of that editorial, which I did read and I appreciate, that there could be some interim steps that could be built from moving forward.

Not a comprehensive solution and my sense is that’s what will happen, but I cannot confirm that will be indeed the case because no one has concluded in all the conversations I’ve had a perfect pathway around this. Everybody recognizes the interim nature of this, but we’re going to have to address it substantively, the magnitude of what’s going on is legitimately problematic from perspective for all the parties, not least of which the taxpayers that invariably are the ones on the hook, regardless of how one processes the ultimate liability.

Union-Tribune: The last time you were here you said we shouldn’t hold the CTA and the CFT endorsements against you?

NEWSOM: Did I use that language?

Union-Tribune: That you’re an education reformer who believes (overtalk), etc.?

NEWSOM: Yeah. Yeah, I am.

Union-Tribune: So who are you endorsing for superintendent of public instruction?

NEWSOM: I’ve not got involved in that. I’m close to, I’ve known Tony, I think is outstanding. Marshall I’ve known for years. I haven’t gotten involved. I got my own issues to worry about, getting elected governor. I look forward to working with whoever the superintendent is, but beyond that look, I think both are reformers. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know both of them very well and listening to them.

I know there’s one that’s “considered” a reformer because he’s ed by the charter schools movement as if that’s a proxy for reform. Charters I think as you rightfully recognized in your editorial is one part of the reform agenda. It’s by no means the reform agenda. So certainly Tony shares I know a great desire to reform the public education system and I know Marshall does as well.

Union-Tribune: We’ve met with him this morning and Tony said he was for three years for tenure. Not the present 16 months or two years and so that means both candidates are for, so…

NEWSOM: Yeah, well he, he has (unintelligible) point is, I’m sure he told you. He had introduced legislation.

Union-Tribune: But he also sandbagged Shirley Weber’s bill on tenure reform.

NEWSOM: Yeah, and there’s folks that thought that, that’s correct. That it was done intentionally and he wasn’t sincere about it, but I think he’s expressed his sincerity. Look if reform is how quick you can fire someone, then I’m unimpressed by the reform agenda. There’s a lot, when I think of reform I think of pedagogy. I think of, you know, individualized learning, self-paced learning. I think of, I think of something much more dramatic than tenure.

Union-Tribune: But Assemblywoman Weber’s bill attempted to address that by saying that only should we change how we allow, you know, teachers to, we make them stay longer before they get lifetime job protections.

She also said we have to do everything we can to try to help teachers coach them up in their second, third and fourth year and if you’re losing 20 percent of teachers before their fifth year and that seems like a huge problem. So this is her solution… her bill seemed to be a two for one in both addressed the question of too quick tenure and addressed the importance of coaching up young teachers.

NEWSOM: Yeah. I think there’s, I appreciate that argument and it’s one of many things that we’re going to have to tackle over the course of the next few years. The biggest crisis right now is special education and the fact that 85, not 75 percent… I think when I was here it was 75 percent.

I just read Linda Darling-Hammond’s new report, says 85 percent of the district having a hard time finding teachers. I was just at Lake County. They just opened up their high school and you can imagine being in Lake County with all these fires. They can’t even find math teacher. They can’t even bonus a math teacher to come in by providing upfront dollars. I mean it’s legitimate, I think the P.E. teacher or someone? I don’t know who’s doing the math teaching there.

You’re right, these are one of many things that are going to have to be done. The LCFF questions, the longitudinal data that doesn’t exist that I hope will advance as I say pedagogy to me is the most important thing. I don’t necessarily subscribe to a world where we’re still lining people up in rows of desk based on their data manufacture and I’ve laid out and you may have seen our strategy on our community school strategy and reflects a fact that you all know well that United States out performs Japan, German, Finland, and others in low poverty schools. In all the international tests we outperform.

It’s when you get poverty rates north 25 percent that we struggle and I am of the humble opinion and Eli Broad can disagree and we’ve had this debate and that’s why I bring him up that, that is relevant and our poverty rates are a big part of this equation in reconciling what happens outside the school and what happens inside the school and vice versa. I think it needs to be part of that reform agenda as well and so that’s what our community… the spirit of our community schools and we lay out some series of specific strategies around that.

Union-Tribune: In 2011, Jerry Brown famously dismissed education reform as a siren song, but you look at what’s worked in New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey and Florida and Texas. These are states that have made state policies that seemed to have had genuine, solid achievements. So what do you say to this idea that we can’t really know what works with education?

NEWSOM: Yeah. I don’t buy that. I’m with you. By the way, highly unionized.

Union-Tribune: Right.

NEWSOM: At least the majority of the states.

Union-Tribune: Massachusetts.

NEWSOM: Which sort of begs the question, you know, I think it’s lazy that we all say well, it’s just a union issue. When Massachusetts is a top-performing state school system in the country. Very highly unionized, but no, reform is not overrated broadly and school reform has got to be one of the top, one, two, three, four, five agendas on the next governor and I appreciate and applaud the governor on what he tried to achieve on LCFF.

I’m not willing to close the door on that. I do believe in more transparency and more data and more ability in of how those dollars are used and I cannot imagine a day that goes by as the next governor, if I’m successful walking away from prioritizing that agenda and again for me, you all know I believe the ultimate reform is the beginning at the beginning. I don’t think there’s any greater school reform than focusing zero to three where 85 percent of the brain is fully formed.

I don’t think there’s any greater return on investment than high quality prenatal care. I don’t think there’s any smart investment than ECE, Early Childhood Education. I was just literally at the Jacob’s Child Development Center right before I came here with two and three-year-olds. An extraordinary program, 1,100 kids, 21 different sites and that’s exactly the kind of school reform investment that I think we should be making and that all goes deep to the science around that 45 million words that are heard in a high-income family versus the 13 million in low-income family.

That 32 million word gap that a young child that enters kindergarten has and that’s a triage problem, we’ll be playing catch up in perpetuity and that manifests in achievement gap, which is really a readiness gap and so our education framework on reform is a little bit goes a little beyond charters and tenure, respectfully. It doesn’t deny those issues, but it offers I think something a little different than perhaps some of the others.

Union-Tribune: On education reform, on education school issues, if you talked to like people completely separate from politics, a few years ago and you asked them what can you do to most help schools? One of the things that was obvious to them was you delay school start times. Finally that’s beginning to sink in in California.

NEWSOM: I’m with you on that. I’m with you.

Union-Tribune: But the second thing that I found pretty interesting was about a dozen years ago, a woman won a MacArthur grant for geniuses for making the argument that the third most important individual in any kid’s life is his kindergarten teacher or her kindergarten teacher and yet we pay kindergarten teachers the same as gym teachers. Is this something that’s just not possible to even address?

NEWSOM: Wish you were in my press conference at the Jacob’s Child… we’re talking about and it’s a bit part of, they’re losing folks to Costco because of the pay. We don’t even make kindergarten mandatory. It’s not mandatory in California and so I’m with you, but that goes deep into the issue of resources and as you know it goes deep to the conversation we had when you were sitting right there. We spent half that [increase in resources]n pensions and that 8.25 percent payroll that we’re spending 2013 versus the 19.1 percent we’ll be spending in 2020. These are tough issues.

Union-Tribune: Which gets us split roll. Split roll seems to be transparently about propping up CalSTRS and CalPERS. Not the PR that you’ve heard this week. Oh it’s about broadly improving schools and helping government programs. So is there, to me, do you think there’s a dishonesty gap that we perceive on the pension issues?

NEWSOM: No, I think, I understand. I’ve, you know, I read all of David Crane’s weekly blogs on this. I get it. I mean in the absence of additional revenue it doesn’t matter what problem you’re solving. It’s a revenue problem when you help relieve some of the revenue stress it allows additional resources to be used elsewhere, but I get the point and you could be honest about it.

Problem is the problem and you know, but if you’re going to be honest about it, the likelihood of being successful, some of your advocacy will diminish and then the problem will only manifest and when you try to get into the problem solving business, you’re probably more interested in the likelihood achieving a result that is net positive, but your point is right. Being transparent and honest is always the best policy.

That’s my point of view on the high-speed rail, has been. That’s why I’m been critical of previous business plans. People criticize my criticism as a “flip flop” when in fact it was a direct assault on facts and the truth and willingness to have a more honest conversation and you’re right, this pension tax issue is a legitimate point where we have the opportunity to be more honest about what it is and what it isn’t, but yeah, but it is, it is a challenge because if the goal is to torpedo any new revenue that’s an easy way of doing it.

Union-Tribune: … The other tax that just was floated I think yesterday revived like Frankenstein, is this water tax? Where it’s voluntary water tax? You have to opt out to get out of it?

NEWSOM: Which, yeah and I’m not…

Union-Tribune: This is for our clean drinking water.

NEWSOM: Oh, the clean drinking water. Yeah, negotiating with the governor. Yeah. Tough.

Union-Tribune: That seems like a sneaky backdoor thing that’s going to backfire.

NEWSOM: Yeah. I mean they did in the last session. They’re trying to revive it here and the governor’s committed to it. We’ll see what happens when they that baton to John Cox or myself.

Union-Tribune: What is it? A 95-cent [a month] household tax on water. Okay.

They proposed it previously. There’s a million people in California live in poor communities, normally farming communities that don’t have clean water. So the state proposes increasing a new tax instead of spending 0.7 percent. 0.7 percent of their overall budget for water infrastructure.

NEWSOM: Yeah.

Union-Tribune: What is the opt out …? That is a voluntary tax, you don’t have to pay it. You can say I’m going to opt out of this. But you have to be aware of… What, like what is the motive for creating an opt out?

Because which is usually a … Back tax backlash. Tax backlash.

NEWSOM: It’s like checking off on your taxes, you want to voluntarily add an additional contribution to something? It’s a variant (overtalk).

Union-Tribune: If you want give three, $3 to Gavin Newsom’s 2020 presidential campaign.

NEWSOM: Yeah hardly. Jesus, that’s, there’s 100 other suitors there. Look, it would put $520 million of that 7.5 billion bonds to safe drinking water. Obviously there’s an $8.9 billion dollar bond on the ballot that will address some of that. In the absence of that it will be a general fund contribution, but look, you’re going to ask me about tuition at UC San Diego and that’s a general fund issue.

We’re going to talk about kindergarten teachers getting paid more. That’s a Prop 98/general fund conversation. All these things including infrastructure and the magic of $5 billion dollars that John Cox apparently is going to find in a few weeks once he becomes governor or replace the gas tax money, so he can continue investing in the roads and ports and bridges in the state. At a certain point, you do try to get creative with these fees and we’ve found fines to do it and, you know, it’s tough. I mean…

Union-Tribune: If you were governor, would you this [voluntary water tax]?

NEWSOM: No, I don’t know the details of what the guy, it’s interesting. I’ve asked my staff to give me, because that died, and now it’s sort of quickly come back. I have to, have to get under the hood on it, but addressing Flint, Michigan’s… that exists plural in California. Yeah, that’s a top priority for me.

I mean fifth largest economy on planet Earth. That’s a disgrace that’s happened on our watch. We own that. Sadly, things cost money… got to pay for things. Infrastructure is wildly expensive, particularly plumbing and pipes and you got to find that money somewhere. I get it. No one wants to pay for anything and they want everything fixed. It’s the whole gas tax conversation.

I can’t wait to find those and figure out how he’s going to five billion of savings every year, particularly when you pick up the paper and bridges collapsing in Europe. It’s a public safety issue. Got some of the worse roads in the United States in this state and, you know, finally have a strategy to solve it, but no one wants to pay for it. I get it.

Union-Tribune: And this is at a time when the economy is really humming along here in California. What happens in the inevitable…

NEWSOM: I don’t know.

Union-Tribune: … crash that’s going to come… not crash necessarily, but a recession will come eventually to California and money is going to dry up. Do we have sufficient reserves for all the various places we need…

NEWSOM: No. Not even close. That’s why continue to stubbornly increasing our reserves. Statutorily we’re at our 10 percent and if I’m privileged again to be here next year we’ll get… we’ll continue that pattern of reaching that 10 percent threshold. We paid off, and everyone has a different number, so forgive the number, but by at least one assessment, $29 of our $35, $36 billion dollars of debt, there’s still some debt to pay off. I have a very prescriptive strategy on infrastructure.

Used some of these one-time surplus dollars to reconstitute our (I bank), which I’m very, very excited about and I’ve got some really smart folks looking at that and hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll have something much more substantive to say.

All of this in a way, and it’s way of answering your question indirectly to recognize the inevitability of a slow down and to be thoughtful about how we use any surpluses to try to do our best to mitigate overly indulging in ongoing operating expenses that will only exacerbate that and to try to look at one time money and one time investments a little bit more strategically either paying off debt or putting things into capital programs that will not necessarily incur subsequent operating burdens, but we you know, I only governed during bad times when I was mayor. I’m very, very comfortable in that space and more than prepared for making those tough choices and…

Union-Tribune: In 2004…

NEWSOM: That’s something you know, I’m anticipating having to make.

Union-Tribune: In 2004, you gave a speech in San Francisco when you were mayor ….

NEWSOM: Jesus, you went back, huh?

Union-Tribune: Which you predicted your approach to homelessness would be so successful that you would have… you’d be able to close emergency shelters because…

NEWSOM: We did.

Union-Tribune: There’s so few people.

NEWSOM: We did actually. We closed a number of them, which I was proud of.

Union-Tribune: But it’s tough to argue that things have gone well in the homelessness front in San Francisco.

NEWSOM: Because it’s not a static population. It’s dynamic and that’s the challenge we have as a state, not just as a city like San Diego. So we got over 12,000 people off the street. We started with 7,000. How is that possible, except to make the point I just made and that’s the burden that will be placed on Mayor Faulconer and Mayor Garcetti.

You name it and that’s why you have to regionalize strategies and solutions and frankly we have to nationalize them… we have a national problem manifesting on the streets of California. You have a statewide problem manifesting on the streets of San Diego. When I was mayor, I infamously doing a survey where over 90 percent of the homeless were not from the city. I think it was like closer to 95 percent or something. It was just jaw dropping and not surprising at the same time.

So that’s going to be the challenge of… and it has historically been the challenge of every mayor that says my top priority in the next five years is to end chronic homeless for all our veterans and invariably you write the editorial saying, thank you, Mr. Mayor or Mrs. Mayor for focusing on the problem and then you write the article saying well, it doesn’t look good. Then you write the articles that critique and then you write the condemning editorial saying, once again, all our tax dollars, what’s going on, what the hell is going on?

Union-Tribune: We wrote editorials that said that’s not a realistic goal. You’re not going to solve mental illness. … we still did give the F.

NEWSOM: So no, I… and you know, look I’m going to set myself up to give you that gift and that opportunity to write those same editorials. Maybe I help you write them in advance? I want to be audacious, I told you guys last time, I subscribe to two theories. The Roger Bannister theory of life and, you know, is I don’t know what I don’t know, but he did break the four-minute mile because he didn’t listen to the experts in ’54 and to Michelangelo’s theory of life.

That the biggest risk is not you aim too high and miss it, i.e., these goals. You aim too low and reach it and so I don’t want to plan saying, we’re going to build 120,000 housing units, 20 percent more than we did last year and solve it. No problem whatsoever and we be rewarded with an editorial saying boy, you build 125,000. You under promised, over delivered and so on homelessness; we should have a goal in ending chronic homelessness.

We should have a goal of substantially addressing the needs of our veterans as a top priority, particularly with all the federal dollars that are attached to it. We’d be naïve and purposeless if we didn’t and I’m going to set those goals very soon. I mean if I’m privileged to be governor that’s going to be one of the top agenda items in of establishing that homeless office and czar, and establishing these audacious goals and beginning to measure those efforts political.

Union-Tribune: Mayor Breed came up with something I’ve never heard of before. She talked about having the city affirmatively take over people’s lives essentially… becoming a conservatorship and she says there’s a percentage of the population that are so far strung out on drugs… on meth especially that they’re never going to reform and that San Francisco has a, San Francisco homeless population is not going up, but the number of homeless people who are deranged with drugs and psychosis is going up and I thought was kind of remarkable when the city that’s home to civil liberties and so many people that she would consider something that radical that maybe it’s not radical?

NEWSOM: It’s not radical. I tried when I was mayor. My good friend, John Burton made sure it didn’t happen. So I in fact had a meeting with her two weeks ago. I said well done, keep at it, not easy. We’re debating in Sacramento as well. Good people going to disagree, the Sac Bee did it, oh no it was the LA Times (unintelligible) against that notion of conservatorship until we have the requisite resources to back it up and so I’ve lived this. It’s a tough issue.

Look, I think, you know, I was just out in skid row yesterday, 5th and 6th Street literally yesterday and the amount of money that’s out on the street is one of the biggest problems. I mean talk about conservatorships. Not just as it relates to people with bipolar or schizophrenic, paranoia that are self-medicating, but having some third party ister people’s resources was also very top of mind as I was walking around and I did a version of that as you may recall called Care Not Cash in San Francisco and by the way we’re reducing street population 40 percent objectively and you’re right about that street population manifesting. In California it’s worse than any other state.

Not just in raw numbers, the 134,000, but the percentage that are “un-housed.” And it is a substantively challenging issue from a behavioral health perspective and vast majority of folks I was with yesterday they’re not going to just naturally make their way back into society without a little bit of help and at time and I know the arguments on coercive treatment and . I’ve read plenty of studies on it. I am leaning in this direction. Not the other direction and I’m happy to butt heads with some of my friends in the ACLU on this.

Union-Tribune: You know, and I think we talked about… not revisiting stuff we talked about last time, but when you were here last time we talked about affordable housing, affordability crisis and you talk about the McKenzie study?

NEWSOM: Yeah.

Union-Tribune: And I went and looked at those numbers afterward… and those numbers really didn’t make sense to me. Like I applied them in San Diego … we’ve been having to meet those numbers. I mean it would be like putting up, you know, 10 or 15 of these towers extra every year for the next 10 years.

NEWSOM: Right.

Union-Tribune: I just, A, I just can’t imagine that would happen. B, I don’t really think that is a solution that the public really would envision or embrace? And there was a letter to the, or an op-ed today by somebody, wasn’t super deep, but basically it said, this idea that we can build our way out and provide housing at an affordable level for everybody who wants to move here.

NEWSOM: Oh yeah, yeah.

Union-Tribune: Not the homeless population, just… right?

NEWSOM: Right.

Union-Tribune: It’s just not practical. So you know, I just want to revisit that for a minute (overtalk) vision there? Are you really into this McKenzie (overtalk) I forget the number of units, but…

NEWSOM: But it’s 3.5 [million units] by 2025, but what’s interesting…

Union-Tribune: It’s a big number.

NEWSOM: Yeah. It’s a big number. Look, and I as I said, if there’s a new word for audacious, it would describe that number…

Union-Tribune: I mean they’re talking transforming California and that San Diego would be a completely different place with those kind of numbers…

NEWSOM: Yeah. Well, you know so there’s, you’ve described the dilemma. So that’s been the policy that you’ve described has been our policy for 50 years and we have painted ourselves in this corner and we are 100 percent to blame. We, society becomes how we behave. We are our behaviors. It’s like saying boy honey, I’m stuck in traffic. You’re not stuck in traffic. You are traffic.

We collectively have created these conditions and we could perpetuate them through a mythology that we can simply suppress the free market through repealing cost to Hawkins and then begin to micro manipulate our diverse economies. That’s one version and that’s a dubious pathway equally. It’s about three piece from my perspective. It’s about preservation, which is, you know, when I was at skid row that’s a big part of it. The gentrification there and we’re losing a lot of the SROs and existing housing stock that would afford a remedy and it’s about production.

Now whether or not one’s brand of production is 3.5 or 1.5 over the next 10 years we can debate and it is about some form of prevention and that may be rent control, but it has to be eviction protections. It has to be some form of relief for people legitimately feeling the stress that are quite honestly a job or paycheck away from being out on the street or the shelter. So look I’m with you. I get it. I like McKenzie because it was a study of many other studies. That’s why I keep reciting it and plus they did a deep dive of 34 housing regions, which I thought was more comprehensive than some of the work I’ve seen.

Union-Tribune: I guess I just want to get the vision for the Gavin Newsom world, like when I read that I felt like I feel like the solution here is worse than the problem. So like we’re going to transform, you know, we’re going to transform these cities into little Tokyo’s all up and down California. That’s the vision?

NEWSOM: No.

Union-Tribune: Is that really the world we get to try to move this number? And I agree with you, we do have a problem, but I guess and obviously I agree with you. It’s a very difficult one, but from a leadership point-of-view, where do you want take us? Where are you steering us?

NEWSOM: Well, I do believe that, I think this is an urban challenge that is, that exists and persist in every part of the globe and we’re dominantly an urban society. We’re well on our way, two-thirds of human beings living now in urban centers. That was not the case up until I think 2004 or ‘05. The majority of Earth’s population lived in rural and suburban areas.

So it’s a relatively recent phenomenon in the context of at least modern human history you go back obviously different, but unless we do density around transit corridors, then we’re fooling ourselves. We’re never going to address the issue of affordability and then you just… you’re going to have a two-class society and you have to accept that. It will not be a three-class society. The middle class will simply not be able to afford to live where their parents lived and we will have completely reconstituted who we are and what we represent, the California dream will have been snuffed out.

That’s my humble opinion and it’s not an urban construct. I think can be shared in rural parts of the state and some of the fastest growing parts of the start certainly are in central valley and it’s one of the arguments by the way in favor of the high speed ramp… valley to valley, to encourage more density. Encourage more development in that part of the state and reduce some of the pressures on the coastal parts of the state, but Scott Weiner’s bill was an interesting proxy for this debate.

Union-Tribune: Right.

NEWSOM: And I, you know, everybody agreed that it was imperfect. Scott was not naïve about it. He itted it as many times as our constitution has been amended and still fell short, but the spirit of it was spot on and it was forcing the debate anew, and that’s the spirit of the leadership question you ask. That’s the spirit of the conversation I want to have. An honest conversation because if we don’t remake our approach then we will have conceded that we are going to remake society as we know it and it’s in real time and those pressures are profound and it’s the issue that defines all of the issues as I’ve been out in the campaign trail for two years, affordability.

Union-Tribune: Take a stronger hand from the governor and the state government because local government just won’t do it.

NEWSOM: They won’t do it.

Union-Tribune: Not to get into the whole NIMBY thing, but we had a situation down here near our trolley tracks that the community went berserk over the notion of six stories, they were calling six stories high-rises … and that cracked me up. We couldn’t even get six stories along a transit corridor, but getting to the Weiner bill, I mean is that really, does the state have to take a heavier hand or is this ever going to get done?

NEWSOM: So I think the, sadly, I think yes, and I’m a local, I mean a wrote a damn book about localism and I think localism should be determinative save when, save a society that is in real decline and in stress where we should use our tools to intervene. … This, 50 percent of us can’t afford housing. The poverty rates manifest is disproportionate because the housing crisis.

What’s out on the street is yes, a substance abuse issue, is a mental and it’s a housing issue and no one is satisfied with that. People have had it. People are just outraged. The comion fatigue is everywhere too. I mean some of the most progressive level people. I had enough and I don’t want to hear about, it used to be Austin, Texas, now everyone’s discovered you know, Nashville. I mean I get it. I mean, you know, and I read the same studies you read about people saying oh you know with [the cap on state and local tax] deductions and everything else going on in the state, you know?

And they’re just waiting to cash out or they’re waiting for the kids to graduate or whatever that moment is to mark an exit. I don’t want to see that happen to this great state. So look you can’t do it around transit corridors. It can’t be done and so it has to be done around transit corridors.

Union-Tribune: Is there another aspect? If the state moves in that direction with, you know, heavy hand might be the wrong terminology, but forcing certain actions or through incentives or just forcing them, but you as governor, do you have to kind of sell Californians on it’s going to be different? Not saying Blade Runner, but obviously it’s going to be a lot (overtalk) in order to (overtalk).

NEWSOM: Yeah. I mean it’s (unintelligible) I get it. I mean we…

Union-Tribune: I think… I think China’s a better example… Well, you go through China and there are giant complexes built to solve this very problem. The transformation of people moving from an agrarian society to an urban society, which is really the thing that drives that number and I’m not sure that people will see it as a solution. I mean really, it’s obviously a difficult problem.

NEWSOM: Oh, yeah, but I’m not…

Union-Tribune: [Isn’t] that saving the California dream?

NEWSOM: Yeah.

Union-Tribune: I’m not sure…

NEWSOM: No, I get it.

Union-Tribune: The localism here is responding to people’s instinct about, how they want to live.

NEWSOM: I agree with that.

Union-Tribune: Right?

NEWSOM: And I’m not calling for the Manhattan-ization of California. So I don’t…

Union-Tribune: Go back and run the numbers.

NEWSOM: Yeah look, I’m not painting that picture, so I don’t accept that frame, but God bless you. Yeah, if that’s frame, you’re right. I don’t subscribe to that any more than any of our critics would. You know is it a variant on Toronto or Vancouver? Maybe getting approximately more, is it a variant of what Seattle has done?

I mean Seattle is actually building housing and hasn’t destroyed the quality of life in Seattle. Seattle’s actually producing at an extraordinary clip. There’s a lot of clues there. So incentives first, not sticks always. I mean in our housing plan, we laid up. We want to provide the funding to help the local planning efforts of municipalities that are stressed financially to help them with their master plan specifically around their housing elements.

We want to actually help fund and offset some of the programmatic… work to deal with (unintelligible) right zoning, so we can deal with the risk issues and the time value of money. We lay out on the enhanced infrastructure financing districts strategies to actually improve upon. San Diego is one of the better practices in the state. Trucking in San Diego.

We want to take it to another level in ways we can that increment as a cost to the taxpayers in Sacramento from a general fund, but your local efforts to also address the missing middle, which is a big part of this. Those at 16, 120 percent of AMI. That’s where we want to go, but to the extent that I do see this as a transportation issue as much as a housing issue, that’s where we have put in our paper, it’s right there. It’s been out six months that we want to use that as a potential stick to redirect tra nsit dollars. If you’re not meeting your housing element and meeting your general plan goals.

Union-Tribune: But SB35 just came off a gigantic success in Cupertino. I mean I just think that it has potential and it’s not incentive. It creates the rights for developers. What happened, if it happened in Cupertino over amazing NIMBYs, they redid a mall there. They turned a mall into a massive multiple use project and it was opposed by everybody in the city, but SB 35 gave the developer the clout to get it done.

Chris, I still think like if you just apply the numbers that are in [use about needed housing] … Physical presence that that would create, it just feels like, oh, there’s not a path there. Right? I mean you can’t build your way out of it and create the society that we all want, so oh, now that’s really a problem.

NEWSOM: Right.

Union-Tribune: So what is, I guess I don’t have… I’m not going to be governor, I don’t have a solution, but…

NEWSOM: I might be if…

Union-Tribune: This is a tough problem, man.

NEWSOM: …overcompensate either. Yeah. Or overcorrect. Now look you know, the three and a half, the reason three and a half, it just, it’s established a framework to create some … equilibrium. It’s, you know, so the number and by the way, the number now, it was 370, 378,000 housing units last year and when the new governor gets sworn in it will be closer to half a million housing units, which has simply never been done in this state.

So look we’ll have to, we’ll repackage in of just the precise, maybe you do the three and a half? Extend the timeline more realistically based on a series of factors, but look, just raising and by the way John Cox and I at least to his credit he’s establishing an audacious goal as well because we recognize the nature of the crisis, but I do think this is a big state. We’re not talking about San Diego bearing all, Ron I get it even…

Union-Tribune: Just 10 percent of it. Right?

NEWSOM: Yeah, I mean…

Union-Tribune: Ten percent of the state.

NEWSOM: But we’ve got to, I mean you look at Imperial Valley. You look at Riverside, Bakersfield, parts of the state, Stockton and the opportunities up there, Modesto, Fresno, I mean this is a big state. There’s a lot of exciting things happening up there. There’s not much density up there. There’s real opportunities for investment that can relieve some of the coastal pressure that you identify. Yet, I get it. I mean I live this.

This is why as mayor we never were able to accomplish our goals. We were just shut down and everyone would do hit pieces with 3000, 50-story buildings all around Golden Gate Park saying that’s what this guy wants to do. You know, it was the end of the conversation and so you know, it’s like having a tax conversation about a service tax you know, they all have the same version of the opposition.

None of this easy, but this has to be a top priority at least let’s establish some goals. I mean I’d like to think there’s an approximation of a goal most folks would agree upon and then work our way backwards. Use the convening power of the governor’s office to bring regional agencies in and address the issues of land use fiscalization, address the issues obviously, regionalization, address the issues of permitting. Address the issues of CEQA as it relates to more of categorical exemptions for socially desirable projects, more negative decks, to address some of those stresses. Which a lot of projects, you know are still struggling to address and let’s be audacious and not just call to double our production, which is just inadequate.

Union-Tribune: There’s the view of Jerry Brown that he’s the smartest guy in the room and the shrewdest guy in the room, the greatest governor ever and then there’s the view of those who look at the Bureau of State Audits and look at all the reports about all the different state agencies that never get better and looks to me like Jerry Brown cares about a handful of things, but not the great majority of state government.

So now we have this DMV thing where they’ve had 13 years lead time to prepare for a 2005 federal law and they still don’t prepare for it. Then the Legislature blocks an audit on it. It just feels to me like you need an ombudsman in your istration when you’re elected… if you’re elected who takes these things seriously. Because Elaine Howe is like preaching to no one. She puts these reports out and nothing happens.

NEWSOM: Good things happened at UC with that report and we actually made some real progress, but yeah look, the spirit, like you want to hit the DMV I’m not going to… anyway … Jesus. By the way that same damn book where I was talking about localism there’s a chapter on the DMV. So you know, five years ago, I was complaining.

So none of this is new. It predates the 13-year runaway we had on the Real ID program. We had upgrades $50 million dollars was wasted under the Wilson istration. I’m just making it relevant to you down here in San Diego on IT improvements. We had a legendary debacle, 2013 when we scraped the $208 million dollar HP enterprise upgrade. We had spent $135 million. These are actual numbers and we just abandoned that project.

So you’ve got the plumbing of the entire system at the DMV that’s, as the DMV director said dangerously antiquated. Could collapse at any time and so we’ve been patching on top of that. You’ve got six or seven states that already have pilots out on digital IDs. California is not among them. You’ve got many other states that are using their partner relationships with AAA and others with more kiosks.

They’re actually providing much more digital opportunities with apps that are a little more relevant, that (our) app, so you make sure you fill out the forms online and they print them out there and the only thing you’re there to do is secure your ID and your recognition at the table. We have interestingly, we’ve had for years, I’m surprise no one’s written about it in our vehicle code, I think it’s Section 1669 and if I’m right, I deserve a bonus for that, 1669 where it actually prescribes statutorily a wait time of less than one half hour.

That’s already on the books. It’s just a fun fact because of the absurdity of this moment. So all of those things require leadership, ability. You’re right and that, the fact that the DMV is the retail component of government. It’s a window into why I think most people had it with government, are sick and tired spending more money you know, or moving away, literally or figuratively, from even wanting to vote or giving a damn and so it’s incumbent upon the next governor to fix the damn DMV, but without, you think three and a half million in housing is tough?

Let’s not over promise on this because this can’t happen overnight, but let’s start with Saturday hours. Not just a few dozen sites. Let’s have a full compliment around Saturday. There’re all kinds of opportunities here. We’re … we did $16.6 million, add 230 new personnel yesterday agreed to #26 million dollar line of credit of sort to potentially have as much of 400 additional staff. That’s short-termism. That doesn’t describe the systemic challenges we face, which are substantively IT and I think technology really is our potential friend, not our foe, if managed correctly to substantively address the modernization of the DMV.

Union-Tribune: If you want to take two water bottles to the DMV after and hand them out…

NEWSOM: I know it’s good. I like that. Good for him, I mean he’s highlighting a problem and just look in the audit, yeah. Look I love we’d love an audit. I love that. So yes on an audit and…

Union-Tribune: Yes on an audit now?

NEWSOM: Yeah but what’s that audit doesn’t put you in the, I mean audit it’s…

Union-Tribune: Right.

NEWSOM: It’s you know, I’ll have a task force. I mean I’m just giving you five or six specific ideas of things I want to do hitting the ground running. I’ve studied the IT procurement there. I have deep ideas of 371 million dollar payroll system. I have a lot of ideas. We have procurement white paper for Christ sake. Who the hell runs for governor with a procurement plan that goes deep into this space? To me, you know I feel like we’re a couple steps ahead of the audit, but yeah let’s do the audit as well and we’ll hand out some water.

Union-Tribune: Let me ask you about a subject that hasn’t got a lot of attention, but it’s kind of baked into San Diego’s DNA really since 9/11 terrorism, the 9/11 pilots were here… In Sacramento County just … days ago, suspected ISIS agent identifies a terrorist in federal documents is arrested. What as governor, what can you do to assure safety? Are we just, is it inevitable that at some point there’s going to be a terrible situation somewhere in the state or…

NEWSOM: Yeah. I’m more worried about Mother Nature right now and not just firefighters, fires, but earthquakes, which I still to me, is top of mind and can assure you will be a big part of a quick agenda for us if we’re successful, but no, I worry about this. I worry about cyber in that context as well. We’re wholly unprepared. It’s not again been an area, it’s good segue from that last conversation and… I mean, so and you’re already seeing I mean you know, I won’t get into who’s been trying to get in our campaign stuff, which is in and of itself fascinating.

So it’s a totally different world and we are not prepared for it. In the center of the innovation yet we are on the leading cutting edge of 1973, in of our approach and so that has to change and we have a number of ideas around this that again I feel like I’m selling my book, but literally we laid them out in the book. That was the inspiration for the book, not just as it relates to terrorism in the more traditional sense, which to me is still a dirty bomb issue.

My sort of… that’s deep in my subconscious or conscious that… my concern about that. So, yeah, and this is why need a damn relationship with the Trump istration. This is why, you know, we don’t need to go to war with security clearances with former CIA directors. I mean all of this is the politicization of these areas that were safe places where we had political free zones. It’s so damn dangerous… profoundly dangerous.

Union-Tribune: Who is trying to get into your campaign?

NEWSOM: We decided, I won’t get into it, but it’s not just Russians that trying to try to hack campaigns. Not to parrot, you know, 800…

Union-Tribune: Devin Nunes?

NEWSOM: Yeah, well, Nunes yeah, Jesus. I don’t, maybe yeah Devin and with all due respect to Devin Nunes I’m not counting on him to solve this problem. I am not looking for his leadership. I’ll say humbly and respectfully. In fact, quite the contrary, I think that’s been one of the problems. These guys are in denial because they’re playing purely from a political frame and this is not (overtalk).

Union-Tribune: But on terrorism though, should, after this arrest, should Californians be more nervous? Is this an isolated incident that…

NEWSOM: I think there’s a lot of those you don’t even know about. Just in a modest sense. So I’ve, you know, one of the benefits of being on the UC Regents is our relationship to Lawrence Livermore Labs and some of the others and getting some interesting briefings that are always just interesting.

Not nothing sort of romantic about the insight you get, but it’s interesting and then being a former mayor the information you got on a consistent basis around things that no one ever finds out about that are, you know… unlike baseball and the Padres you don’t get credits for saves in politics and there’s enormous amount that you should be reasonably considered about, but we are better positioned than we’ve ever been, but with the federal government I’m concerned about those relationships … in real time.

Union-Tribune: Let me just go back one half step again for a second. So is there a story that we’re missing about the cyber security of campaigns in general right now? Is that [a] conversation you guys have?

NEWSOM: Well substantively after the … example in that race no, I think it’s real. The good news we haven’t had any issues with our voting system. These are campaigns…

Union-Tribune: No, no campaigns. That’s …

NEWSOM: Yeah, but unquestionably. Yeah, I mean you have proof of one high-profile example. I can assure you there’s others out there and so that’s the new norm and so that’s the world we’re living in and that’s…, yeah, and that’s why we all should be very I mean…, you know by the way that’s the strongest argument against these digital driver’s licenses, the ability to manipulate those licenses.

Also one of the greatest advantages of digital driver’s license because you can constantly update them. So yeah, anything that doesn’t have a paper trail is potentially problematic. So no, and by the way I think I was with Alex Padilla two days ago and he gave me a briefing of everything they’re doing. I felt really good about the sincerity in which he’s engaged substantively at a national level around best practices and services, securing our voting systems and ing county efforts in that respect and we’ve also put capital …

Union-Tribune: He’s flatly told us there been no successful attempts to hack California and yet there seems like a definitional thing because on the other hand federal authorities listed California as one of the states that had been subject to these things. Is it just, he’s defining it in one way and the feds are defining in another? Successful. Right.

NEWSOM: I think it’s you know, you may have attempted to fish, but you didn’t catch, right? Fishing is not catching I guess is the definitional point. So there’s plenty of fishing going on and that’s, but it’s a matter of time and as this gets more and more sophisticated.

So again I think you know, it’s like talking to me about infrastructure. I think about broadband sort of relates to infrastructure. Think about terrorism, I don’t think about it necessarily just from the perspective of, you know, the malls and … infrastructure. I think about it from the vulnerability of our water systems and obviously, our information.

Union-Tribune: Soft targets are a bigger concern.

NEWSOM: Yeah, and full disclosure a nominal one, and not even particularly interesting. When I was mayor, we had a guy lock out our entire payroll system. We could not write checks. One individual and he refused to give the and it’s an interesting little story.

Without anyone’s knowledge reached out to his lawyer, broke every protocol, told him, that you can’t make this up. I said I’m getting married this weekend. I have to leave the state. This is not about anything, except my marriage. Would you sit down with me and I went and visited him. Walk to the back of… I knew the sheriff. Sheriff, said, all right I will allow you to do this. I can’t believe I’m going to do it and I snuck in the back, sat down with him, and he gave me what amounted to one of the longest s I’ve ever seen and we went to Cisco and they thought it was a booby trap to blow up the entire system.

Turned out it was the and just in an empathetic moment decided to give it back and that’s a version of a domestic version of obviously was a disgruntled employee and had enough.

Union-Tribune: Didn’t BART get hacked last year?

NEWSOM: And some of the other municipal and regional systems have been impacted. So I mean again this is very real and that’s for what it’s worth, a side story.

Union-Tribune: Is there going to be any debates?

NEWSOM: We’ll see. I mean I guess he said I agreed to a fake news debate with CNN. He agreed to Fox News and then some other versions, but I don’t know how real those other versions are. We’re doing, the New York Times had an idea, but then they were happy to get me for a couple of hours to do substantive drill, something like this in a public matter. Just did Politico yesterday. We’re doing a couple versions of this …

Union-Tribune: Does Cox not want to go? …

NEWSOM: Exactly. So it’s interesting what he’s agreeing to and what he’s not and then he’s acting a victim on debate, so ….

Union-Tribune: So wait a minute. So Cox is somehow trying to elude you in debates by putting up obstacles?

NEWSOM: Or I don’t know… He’s picking and choosing I guess? I mean we all do in some respect, but you know, forgive me for, because I know you guys are still [unhappy] I missed. I get it, but we did nine debates. You know I was five, four or five times on there with Cox and quite literally three or four more Jerry Springer episodes. Or at least what it competed for … with the Springer viewers in of just…

Union-Tribune: We will set you up with the LA Times. But on a broader issue are these just becoming a thing of the past? When Jerry and Meg campaigned, there were three debates. When Jerry and Kashkari, there was one debate on the night the NFL season opened. Come on.

NEWSOM: Pretty shrewd of Jerry and then that was off the record. That was… strike that, your honor. That’s correct and then, you know Kamala did one and yeah, it’s sort of the new norm.

Union-Tribune: Is that just the new norm? Yeah, but zero would be a bad number?

NEWSOM: Yeah. No, I’m with you on that. Look do, I’m being really, I’m wildly subjective so disregard what I say, but I’m attempting to be objective here. The utility of some of these things is legitimately questionable. These are not great moments of insight.

This is not a great way to fill one’s fantasy and learn about the capacity of one’s ability to lead on the basis of their deep understanding of a particular issue. It’s just sound bites. It’s personality. It’s process and to the extent there’s nine specific examples of that. Maybe you could find one or two that offered a little bit more insight than the rest, but I don’t think any of them particularly were illuminating to the voters.

Union-Tribune: So what should the voters be looking for?

NEWSOM: I think, the reason I’ve done dozens and dozens, I did five town halls down here, open to anyone who walks in. I’m doing these open forums where folks, we had, you know, state folks, local folks ask me any question, I’m doing these, just finished the L.A. Times. Ask me anything, put transcripts out. I am availing myself to you know, challenging me on 3.5 million.

That’s a conversation never will have in a debate, not a damn chance, unless the debate is just about housing. Then it’s an interesting debate. That’s something I can, I’d love to dozens of those, but that’s why I’m doing town halls… but I get it. The old debates… you’re right. I mean it’s, I get it’s frustrating from your lens, but from our lens I just see them as opportunities to you know, to crowbar strategy.

Union-Tribune: Well, it’s not just our lens, isn’t it the public lens? Like asking them to come to a town hall on a Saturday morning, they’re not going to come to a town hall on Saturday morning. Asking them to sit in front of a television and see two politicians…

NEWSOM: On a Saturday morning? I’m not so sure it’s, which one is more challenging. You’re not wrong…

Union-Tribune: It’s really not worthwhile.

NEWSOM: No, it’s not that. Look, debates… I love debate, look, I love watching debates because I watch for the same reasons you do and so I get it and I get the motivation. We all do and you know, and I get the benefit and also get the liability and this is a cliché, right? I mean I’m sitting here. You know, you’ve, I mean, you know, you wrote, I think you wrote right after the primary. You said, I know this script.

Back to the point, you know, he’s going, if he’s ahead, he’s going to, and you know, forgive for wanting, and forgive me, seriously. I’m happy to debate and I am happy to debate. I’m hoping for a format that is more substantive than not.

Union-Tribune: So no to a pull-up contest?

NEWSOM: But when we’re getting to pull up contests you know, we’re getting a little off, you know? And, you know, yeah, and theater is not something you know, I’m just not, and honestly, look back at some of those debates. Look at the Jorge Ramos debate. I mean it was, even…

Union-Tribune: I watched that live, yeah.

NEWSOM: Right. I mean come on, some of these, there were serious people… It’s a serious, you know, some of these just you know, diminishing to folks. Not necessarily elevated and John is a good guy. I like John. I mean I actually, honestly I like John. I think we would have a very civil conversation.

Union-Tribune: I think you guys would have a good debate.

NEWSOM: Yeah, and so I think he’s actually more interesting than most. They’re just purely going to go to, I mean you know, Travis frankly was, I thought start crossing a line. Accusing folks of murder and things like that. It was getting a little bit more theatrical, you know? But you know, so we’re I’m not, you know, I’m not by any stretch opposed, but it’s interesting he sort of stuck on his. We’re stuck on ours where you got this open-ended debate that is, it’s on my schedule October 1st, CNN.

Union-Tribune: Okay.

NEWSOM: You know, so we’ve committed to it and I’m literally organizing my schedule around it, but he hasn’t accepted it yet and if he doesn’t and we can come up with something else, let’s do it. I mean I’m not, he’s not someone I need to run away from.

Union-Tribune: Question on politics, Democratic politics in particular. Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi are once again getting a lot of flak for being longtime leaders of the Democratic Party and not stepping away for people to change. Do you see yourself in their… in that camp, the old school camp? Are you a bridge to a new generation? What’s going to happen with the Democratic Party in California?

NEWSOM: With Jerry Brown as governor and [the others] … yeah, I mean there’s, we’re in the process of order of magnitude generational shift, the party across the country, I think. So it’s happening. May not happen as fast as some people want, but it’s happening. I mean it’s certainly going to happen in California.

It’s happening… you know, Diane is you know she’s there until 91. I mean you know, next, you know, five or six years someone will emerge as her successor and Nancy, I don’t ,you know, I think she’s, her eyes are wide open in of this moment and how she gets past this moment. Gets back to the speakership, but I imagine she would organize her thinking around that and she’s already expressed that from a generational shift.

The problem is people around her don’t necessarily represent the … two and three generation shift, but I think all of them are recognizing the utility of turning the page and we’ll organize as a party around one narrative, one voice around a presidential, but until then it’s many leaders in the party and it’s localized and I know that leaves a lot of our activists wanting because they’re frustrated. What’s the… even pundits like yourselves and critics and columnists and editorials, what’s the message of the Democratic Party besides their hatred of Donald Trump? But it’s always the case isn’t it?

The opposition party until someone that emerges and then can help organize that narrative around the platform and more broadly around his or her personality and that’s going to emerge. So I’m confident, but I do think California is the positive alternative. I really do think California plays that role and I do think that the tenets of where the Democratic Party will ultimately go and I know it drives Tucker Carlson and others crazy. I say this, but we are…

Union-Tribune: He’s a Californian too.

NEWSOM: I know. Yeah, apparently yeah, his Tucker rant yesterday was curious and I watched it last night. “As a San Diegan I own …” It was a curious thing if someone reads this transcript, they’ll be confused, but anyway, it’s, we are America’s coming attraction, 27 percent foreign born. I mean this, the things we’re addressing, the challenges we’re facing on affordability, all these things are previews of the broader national discourse and our ability to navigate that, address them, and we’ll pay real dividends in the broader debate, I think.

Union-Tribune: Where is Jerry Brown fitting in the 2020 conversation?

NEWSOM: I think, look I said it yesterday if he was a few weeks, months younger, he’d be very much in the mix. Look he was the antidote from the voter’s mind to Schwarzenegger, to the celebrity. You know? You dusted off the old sage came back. In many ways I think, you know, you need someone in contrast too. I don’t think someone in Trump’s image is the response to Trump.

I think someone contrast Trump and I think profound contrast is someone like Jerry Brown who has run three times. He’s had experience … and he’s a new kind of Democrat or at least can assert that at a national frame with serious surpluses, tackling some vexing problems and also his amazing capacity to connect with this progressive base because he has enough proof points of being on these issues decades before others were on these issues. He’s able to cross appeal in ways that few folks are and he’s almost a political mastermind.

He’s a tough guy to run against, as is Trump. These guys are tough and Jerry is at that level of capacity, size you up. That’s all Trump does is size you up. Find the vulnerabilities. That’s Jerry’s success and so very, very similar in that respect, plus Jerry’s intellectual capacity is exponentially more, but anyway, it’s just yeah, he’s 80.

Union-Tribune: We asked Dianne Feinstein who she sees as the rising stars and she said former mayors.

NEWSOM: She’s still, she’s once a mayor, always a mayor. God bless Dianne. She’s always been that. You know, and one of my favorite books is “If Mayors Ruled the World.” It’s a great book and it’ll be the book that Garcetti going to be handing out at every bus stop over the next few months. … [being] mayor is in the how business.

You can’t be ideological, there’s no Republican plan on graffiti removal or Democratic plan. You know, you guys, no one would put up with that. You got to get stuff done. So it’s that pragmatism that is lost at higher levels. So I think, you know, it’s the only thing that makes me interesting. Otherwise you know, but who knows, you know? John Cox is interesting too for different reasons.

Union-Tribune: Thank you coming in.

NEWSOM: Thanks, guys.

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board also interviewed Newsom in the primary election. You’ll find that here.