Governor Gavin Newsom on California’s wildfires, economy, and future

Politician and businessman Gavin Newsom has served as the 40th governor of California since 2019. Prior to his governorship, Newsom was the lieutenant Governor of California and the 42nd Mayor of San Francisco. Now in the final years of his term, Newsom reflects on the challenges and victories of the past seven years, most pressing being the wildfires that destroyed areas of Southern California this past January. A native to San Francisco, Newsom is familiar with the state’s natural wildfires but has seen a dramatic increase in their devastation during his term. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit Lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off, or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 1:06Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a politician, businessman, and the fortieth governor of California. Prior to his governorship, Gavin Newsom served as the lieutenant governor of California and as the 42nd mayor of San Francisco. A native San Franciscan, Newsom began his political career as a volunteer for Willie Brown's mayoral campaign in 1995. California may be the sixth-largest economy in the world, but it faces some of our country's biggest problems. Most recently, Governor Newsom has been contending with the wildfires

• 1:48Alec Baldwin?

  that devastated areas of Los Angeles this past January. Wildfires are cyclical and a natural part of the topography of the area. However, this year's fires were particularly destructive.

• 2:02Speaker 04

  I mean, I was just reading a Joan Didion piece talking about 100 mile an hour winds and how birds were literally combusting in the sky and horses are on fire and being shot and embers went miles across the PCH and 197 homes were burned. So the answer is yes, this has happened and it will continue to happen. And so we're as dumb as we want to be if we rebuild without a different mindset around science, climate, resiliency, and redundancy as relates to emergency management.

• 2:31Alec Baldwin?

  Is it safe to say, because obviously these areas where this happened, and this is, I'm assuming, in one sense, a complicating factor and in another sense, not really, which is you just can't go back and build the Palisades the way it was?

• 2:46Speaker 04

  I mean, that's the tension. People want to move back. They want to move back quickly. Now they want to move back quickly, but safely. So it comes to the issues of debris removal, soil sampling, testing, and now they want to come back safely, but also recognizing that we want to have a different kind of level of confidence that the building materials that we're going to use when we build are not going to be combustible, that we got redundancy systems as it relates to water, as it relates to hydrants, that we have more evacuation routes, better emergency warnings and the like. And so it's that constant tension that we're going to have to figure out in real time. And in real time, including quite literally today, down here in LA, we got through record-breaking first phase debris

• 3:28Speaker 04

  removal of hazardous waste within three weeks. And we're trying, move heaven and earth, literally and figuratively, to get all the rest of the debris done in nine months to a year, at the same time concurrently, providing building permits, which people are getting today. And you're going to see homes starting to be rebuilt over the course of the next few months. So this is all happening as sort of a rolling process that we hope will give people some confidence in their ability to come back home, but to come back home in a much better place.

• 3:56Alec Baldwin?

  We have a writer coming on to do the show in a couple of weeks who wrote a piece that I was completely fascinated by called "When Plastic Cities Burn." Her name is Zoe Schlerger. And I always remember during 9/11 that when 13 million square feet of real estate came down and formed a toxic booyabays on that site. And then it rained the next day and a lot of that got washed into the harbor.

• 4:19Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 4:20Alec Baldwin?

  And so the problem up here, I'm wondering, is that a big urgent thing? Is to get that Malibu crap out of there as soon as possible so it doesn't go into the ocean?

• 4:25Speaker 04

  No, and it's interesting, we were concurrently, and this is typical California. We had a three-year drought that was the most significance in statehood. That was ended with a three weeks of flooding, the most significance in statehood. So drought and floods concurrently. And so that was our mindset after this fire. Once we put out the fires, we started to get these atmospheric rivers and hadn't seen any rain in nine months up to this fire. Remember, this fire occurred in January. It was as dry as it's ever been in modern history. And then, of course, we had those floods. So we were working with our debris crews and immediately moving them to do water management and to begin to set up barriers to do what we could to protect as much infrastructure

• 5:09Speaker 04

  as well as the ocean and other watersheds. We did a decent job in that. You can always do better. We didn't have a lot of time. But we're deeply mindful to get this stuff out as quickly as possible because of that concern. But again, in that process, you know, you gotta work through the propane tanks, you gotta work through the EV batteries. And, you know, we talk about liquefaction, that's a big part of this.

• 5:29Alec Baldwin?

  Nobody saw that coming.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  No one saw that coming. I made that point to Trump when I was in the Oval Office. I said, you know, Elon may have some insight on this. So it's, you know, it's, this is all challenged, but it's also familiar, and I want to make that point. This is the tragedy of all this. You know, the folks that are working on this debris removal just finished up or are still marginally working in Maui in terms of the wildfires there. The folks that I'm working with are the folks I worked with directly at Coffee Park in Northern California. We lost 5,600 homes to wildfire in Paradise, California, the most deadly wildfire in California history. Eighty-five people lost their lives there. The same folks working on this are folks that worked there. So in a rather perverse way, there's a hell of a lot of experience in this space in terms

• 6:15Speaker 04

  of prevention, suppression, response in terms of the immediate, and then obviously long-term commitment to being here, getting the job done, and not turning our back on this community when the cameras are gone.

• 6:26Alec Baldwin?

  You mentioned paradise. We had on the show Lucy Walker, who made the film Bring Your Own Brigade.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 6:32Alec Baldwin?

  Which is this wonderful doc about Woolsey and.

• 6:35Speaker 04

  She just sent it to me and I've got to open it up. I love she said you, she says, I'm telling you the answers to all your questions are right here.

• 6:43Alec Baldwin?

  She's there in paradise and there's a scene in the movie when they have the consultant come in about what to do to remediate. And the guy gives them five basic things, the distance of the plant life and the vegetation from the house, that no, don't let it touch the roof. But all these, no wood roofs anymore, no wood shingles, gives them a very basic set. They bring him in, they hire him, he makes his recommendations and they reject all of them.

• 7:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:06Alec Baldwin?

  They want to go right back and have everything the way it was. And that's must be one of the toughest things for you.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, and this is it. I mean, people that you, you know, and I remember in paradise, people said, well, you can't let them rebuild there. I said, well, these people have been around since California was founded. I mean, there's some of the original post office boxes in San Francisco were here before there was millions and millions of Californians. So, so that's the tension because now obviously different level of sophistication around what we refer to as the wooies, this wildland urban interface. And obviously so much in the new construction, that's not, since we've got so much NIMBYism, every major state does, but particularly here on the coast. People don't want density, so they tend to do sprawl and that sprawl gets further and further in to this forested areas. Creating more challenging conditions in the best of times, but when you combine that now with the hot's getting a lot hotter, the dry is getting drier.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  As it relates to climate change and the more extremes in the weather, obviously that's combustible in every way, shape or form. And so that's the tension. Insurance in many ways is taking care of that. Even it's, it's ahead of policy because people are just not insuring. Insurance companies, capitalism is raining. They're pulling out of the market. Now you can't get your mortgage. Now you can't get your home. Uh, and so that's the tension that's happening all across the Western United States and in the South. These hurricanes, the same thing.

• 8:24Alec Baldwin?

  Florida.

• 8:25Speaker 04

  Florida, I mean, Georgia and North Carolina, Louisiana. And so none of this is necessarily unique to California. We just, you know, like everything in California, the future happens here first, the good and the bad. And we're in the tip of the spear, not just to the challenges as it relates to Mother Nature, but also in terms of our response in trying to address a lot of the underlying causes as it relates to the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. And I'm proud of that leadership. But, look, this is the tension, working with the insurance companies who are allowing now climate modeling in terms of their rate approvals, which we never did in the past, which is stabilizing that market. Of course, it's been radically impacted by these recent fires. We are working with land use experts,

• 9:07Speaker 04

  and we actually have more aggressive proposals that I just put out quite literally a few weeks ago in response to these fires, as it relates not just to defensible spaces, but home hardening and other strategies around materials. And we're going to be much more restrictive in terms of those that want to come back and build in a 1930s style. We simply cannot afford that. Structure to structure impacts, you're impacting the entire community, not just putting your own home at risk.

• 9:35Alec Baldwin?

  There's an opportunity here to see the future. There's an opportunity for the people, not just you, because you're obviously way ahead of the curve because of your job, but there's an opportunity here for people to face the future and design a place. It's gone. It's not some burn, this and that, and we have a patchwork. It's all gone. It's a blank slate. What do you do in the blank slate with what the current information is and have the modern community?

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Well, and one thing is with, you know, you start with a framework of humility and grace, and that is it's not top-down, meaning it's not a dictate from Sacramento or Washington DC. It's got to be a community-led effort, particularly not just in the Palisades. Remember, the Palisades represents, you know, it's a diverse community, but certainly the demographics are so different than Altadena, which was even more impacted, which is profoundly diverse community. And the issues that you brought up around speculation and price gouging, people coming in with unsolicited offers to buy out people's property for pennies on the dollar, they were targeting different proportion of the black and brown community.

• 10:38Alec Baldwin?

  Like Maui.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Like Maui. And so we were aggressive on some early executive orders, and our Attorney General's been aggressive, calling that out, addressing some of those issues. But what I just launched was a new platform. Look, we want a community engaged process, but we don't want the community to be intimidated by the mob, meaning by organized interests that have a disproportionate impact on the outcome of a community design effort. So we created a new platform called Engaged California. And it's actual platform that allows people to be heard, has a two-way framework of conversation between the state, city partners, federal partners, and the community where they can design that future and feel heard and represented in the process, a deliberative process to try to find consensus to answer your question.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Bringing in the best minds, the best scientists from around the world. We already, I can't tell you.

• 11:29Alec Baldwin?

  It's a great opportunity for those minds.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  You know, we had Bill and Hillary Clinton reached out. They said at the Clinton Foundation, we've got some of these world-class architects from Japan, and they're sending cellphone numbers. We're getting all these people and we're populating all these folks, the best materials, the best designs, prefab, all kinds of new strategies on fire suppression, et cetera. And so we're trying to bring all that to bear, to your point, to sort of, this is our extraordinary opportunity with all the ingenuity and creativity and entrepreneurial resources, literal and resources, more broadly defined, a resourceful mindset. We have to take advantage of all that. And again, we cannot build it back the exact way that it was left.

• 12:07Alec Baldwin?

  It's like a movie set.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  It was.

• 12:09Alec Baldwin?

  It was a movie set.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  It was.

• 12:11Alec Baldwin?

  Anyway, so one more question about that subject, which is, you know, beyond people speculating about Trump and strings attached and all this other stuff, what I'm wondering is, are you confident, as the governor of such a huge state, or such a wealthy state, and yet they need help? Are you confident the federal government's going to step up and help California?

• 12:27Speaker 04

  I mean, as we, you know, roll back the tape in six months, we'll see. At this moment, you know, we had a very good conversation, you know, at the tarmac with the president, phone call, follow-up conversations in the Oval.

• 12:38Alec Baldwin?

  You're hopeful.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, look, at the end, and I've been through this. I remember Paradise, California, I wasn't even governor during Paradise, but I was lieutenant governor. And I remember Trump tweeting out, saying, you know, the former governor was the worst governor in American history, needs to rake the forests, and basically blaming the governor for the fire up there at Brown, and said, I'm withholding money. And that money eventually came. And so, you know, and he's done it in Puerto Rico. He's done it to other states, including some red states. And so, look, I guess the nature of leverage, he's the master of leverage, he's going to take advantage of those points of leverage, any vulnerabilities. In some ways, I don't begrudge that. I get it. You know, I'm mature, been around. And so, you know, I, we have to work with them. And so far, I've got to say, no BS, it's actual truth. We went from about 700, 800 people

• 13:23Speaker 04

  doing first phase debris removal. After we sat down with them, we had about 1,500. So he stepped it up.

• 13:29Alec Baldwin?

  That matters, yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 04

  It matters. And so if it's attached to him, and success is attached, and I would love all the success to flow his direction, I think we can produce some pretty special results.

• 13:38Alec Baldwin?

  We want them to do well as far as this is concerned.

• 13:40Speaker 04

  Of course. And that's, by the way, is the approach I had during COVID. There was a Democratic governor in the United States of America, period, full stop, absolute objectivity. I don't say this from a subjective perch. No Democratic governor worked better with Trump during COVID than I did, despite the fact we were involved in 122 lawsuits, where he was calling me a clown. I called him Pennywise for caging kids around the border issues.

• 14:01Alec Baldwin?

  I remember some of that, yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, yeah.

• 14:03Alec Baldwin?

  I read the LA Times every now and then.

• 14:05Speaker 04

  So, you know, we were able to figure that out. And I think we're, you know, it's a familiar space for us again. We'll see how long it lasts, though.

• 14:15Alec Baldwin?

  California Governor Gavin Newsom. If you enjoy conversations about Golden State politics, check out my episode with former California Congresswoman Katie Porter.

• 14:27Speaker 05

  You know, I think there is an attitude that, you know, sort of people are entitled to have Republican representation here. What they're entitled to is good representation, right? People who listen to them, people who fight for them, people who are not corrupt. And that can come in, you know, Democratic or Republican forms.

• 14:47Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Katie Porter, go to hereisthething.org. After the break, Gavin Newsom reveals why he never reads speeches, and the challenges he faced as a child, growing up with dyslexia.

• 15:09Speaker 06

  This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. ¿Qué tal, mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. ¿Cómo te siente tu corazón hoy? Si está un poco cansado, un poco ofensivo, no estás solo. ¿Has comido algo rico? ¿Has tomado un respiro profundo? ¿Al menos has apagado tu teléfono por cinco minutitos? Te prometo, los memes todavía estarán ahí. A veces, el auto cuidado no es como las llantas y la meditación. Es decir, no. Está bebiendo un poco de agua. Está dejando a usted a su lado sin pena. No tiene que probar nada hoy. Solo sea, respira. Estás haciendo lo mejor que puedes. Y sí, eso es suficiente.

• 15:52Speaker 06

  Como un buen vecino, State Farm está ahí.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Hey, soy Nile Rodgers, invitado de Before the Moment, una serie original de Lincoln. Estoy conduciendo por el país, encontrando a algunos de los artistas más fascinantes de hoy. Estamos explorando las historias antes del momento que cambió todo. Esta semana me acompaña Miguel.

• 16:14Speaker 07

  Mi pequeña experiencia con la discrepancia en el negocio de la música me hizo ir en la mejor forma. Y quería terminar. Así que empecé realmente a inclinarme en mi terapia, tratando de llegar a lo que importa ahora. En algún lugar, Miguelito sintió que no tenía un lugar para decir cómo se sentía. Y la música era el lugar que fui a decir cómo me sentía.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Experimente Before the Moment, una serie original de Lincoln en la app de iHeartRadio, YouTube, o donde sea que obtengas tus podcasts.

• 16:45Alec Baldwin?

  Caja de flujo de dinero? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. I had the privilege of speaking with Governor Gavin Newsom recently in Los Angeles. Newsom was raised by a hard-working, single mother who often worked up to three jobs to support him, his sister, and their foster children siblings. Newsom would eventually help support the family himself, working several part-time jobs while in high school. I was curious if Governor Newsom viewed himself as a caretaker, as a young man, and in his political career.

• 17:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, I just, I mean, my mom, a single mom, teenager, came from no wealth, nothing, passed away 15, 18 years ago with nothing. Just worked her tail off. Don't complain, don't explain. You just get up, do your work, and nothing was given to you. So you had the paper roots, you did the construction, you did the janitorial, you went out there, you were an entrepreneur to pay for a basketball hoop. You just made it happen, and that grit, that hard work, what a gift. That was the gift of divorce. And an idealistic dad, that wasn't a dad until I was older.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  He was around. He was around.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  He was around, and he passed years ago. But he was around when I was older, and he was an amazing mentor. But he was passionate about the environment. He was passionate about social justice, racial justice.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Worked for Getty.

• 18:31Speaker 04

  And he worked, yeah, he was a judge, and he was kind of, he was like, he was one of those activist judges, and worked a little bit with the Getty family. And that attachment, of course, is a big part of the narrative of me, that somehow my name's Gavin Getty, not Gavin Newsom. So people just assumed there was a trust fund, wealth, privilege, but my childhood bears testament to something radically different.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  We were going to order pizza and ask you to pay for it, because I thought, I saw Getty there.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  Thank you very much. I know, yeah. By the way, if there's a trust fund in my future, let me know. I'm looking forward to it. But it was, yeah, no, so it was shaped by that. And you never, you know, look, I, the biggest problem with me was not having a single mom was the problem for her, of having two kids and one that couldn't read or write. I don't read speeches, I can't.

• 19:13Alec Baldwin?

  Is your preferred.

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, no, it's not preferred. I have such severe learning disability dyslexia that I, you know, so I'm.

• 19:18Alec Baldwin?

  You have since childhood.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  No, since childhood. So you've never seen me read a speech in my life. And that's a hell of a profession to pick.

• 19:25Alec Baldwin?

  So you're a skilled actor. You were like the Olivier of California politics.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  My point is, I have so much empathy for her that I never was able to express because she passed so many years ago. But what a, you know, what a gift in hindsight, all this, you know, all that, you know, all you can claim your victim, whatever. It shaped who I am and it shaped a work ethic. And that's, I'll tell you, anything else, there's nothing that I value more than just the deep appreciation of taking, you have agency, you can shape the future. It's not conditions that determine your fate and future, it's decisions. And so I've never had a victim mindset. I've always just felt just grit, hard work, and humility at the same time.

• 20:05Alec Baldwin?

  Now, you started in San Francisco, your political career. The reason I say you're the caretaker thing is because obviously everybody talks about you're this handsome guy, you could have driven down the road and gone to LA and had a movie career probably in 15 minutes. But instead, we find you land at the parking and the parking and traffic commission.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you're a little jealous, a little envious, huh?

• 20:25Alec Baldwin?

  I did constituent services one year for Tom Hayden.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  You did?

• 20:29Alec Baldwin?

  Hayden walked into his office, he goes, what are you doing here? I was on a TV show. He goes, what are you doing? I go, I'm doing constituent services. These people can't pay their power bill. He goes, come into my office. Cause I went and volunteered for him. And they put me in that, but I did these, I mean, I'm like you in that sense that I just, I wanted to work.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 20:45Alec Baldwin?

  And get involved in the process. But when you get involved, why at the poli side degree?

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Well, I was a small business guy, started right out of college.

• 20:53Alec Baldwin?

  A lot of small businesses.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, a bunch and put pen to paper, got 13 investors, raised 7,500 bucks each and opened this little, at the time, still with us today, a wine store. And it was inspiration desperation. I thought this one would crush it and it was a disaster. Two, three years of just struggle and, you know, couldn't afford, literally, when I say no employees, I had a part-time employee, Pat Kelly. She came in at five every night because I couldn't afford anyone else. When I did deliveries, I literally went to my apartment to go to the warehouse to pick up the case of wine. I had to lock the door back in twenty minutes and then drove myself. You made the wine? I didn't make it. No, but it's a wine store. A wine shop. Yeah, wine shop. And I say that not to impress, to impress upon you, sort of, you know, that was, you know, I was inspired to open a small business entrepreneurial mindset.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  You have dyslexia. By definition, you're a little more entrepreneurial because you're used to making mistakes. You try to, you're iterating, you're trying new things, you're willing to take risks because you don't know any other way. You're not rote, you're not linear in your thinking. So, open this business and year three it started to work. And then someone said, you, we should do something more. And I said, I took those same investors, they doubled down fifteen thousand each. Open a restaurant, got lucky with a chef, Arnold Rossman, who knew he was a great chef, three and a half out of four stars, there's lines. People are saying you're, you're a great restaurateur. I said, I don't know what the hell I'm doing, twenty-five years old. Meanwhile, Willie Brown is the mayor of San Francisco, calls me, says, I appreciate he did a fundraiser for me.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  I know my state, status. It was, I think, that's because I did a few fundraisers at the wine store, young people things. And he goes, hey, you want to be on the film commission? I said, that's fantastic. And so I go down to city hall, I'm like, this is great. Twenty-something years old, film commission, this is amazing. And go down and he, he's swearing a bunch of people in the same day. And he says, Gavin Newsom, the new chair of the parking and traffic commission. And I'm like, what the hell? At first I didn't even know what chair meant. And I swear to God, I'll never forget, Kron4News. Better than that. Getting better than that. I was like, film, I'm into. I go and they said, what's your vision on parking and traffic? There was like a camera, I said, I literally, I still have it, it's on a VHS tape, I still have it. Someone stress tested this and I was actually able to find it. And I said, well, I stumbled along, I said, I pay my parking tickets.

• 23:02Speaker 04

  So here I am, damn president of the parking and traffic commission. And it turns out, it actually was an important job because there was a freeway that we had to tear down, wild controversy. West side of town, east side of town, and somehow I'm in the middle of it, and I didn't completely blow it. And as a consequence of that, nine months later, Willie Brown has a vacancy on the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors. And he was out there struggling to find someone. And in Willie Brown's unique way, legend in California politics. He says, I found the perfect affirmative action candidate.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  He referred to me as his affirmative, only straight white male.

• 23:41Alec Baldwin?

  Yes.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  That he said would take the job.

• 23:44Alec Baldwin?

  San Francisco needs one.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  He needs one. So I was the, I was, at least based on his assessment, an affirmative, which, you know, there was some, bared some truth to that. And so he pointed me to the board supervisor and that's how my political life started.

• 23:56Alec Baldwin?

  Now, did you work close, fairly closely with him, or was that what you usually run the board?

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I drove him crazy.

• 24:00Alec Baldwin?

  Why?

• 24:01Speaker 04

  Because I was still that entrepreneur. I was still the small business, and I know, I didn't understand politics. I didn't understand what being appointed meant. It means something a little different.

• 24:08Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Than being elected.

• 24:09Alec Baldwin?

  In your words, what?

• 24:11Speaker 04

  Well, I challenged him a lot. I said, you know, and I was the business guy. So I would come in, I was the little snotty kid. You know, "Well, I take a business-like approach to looking at these things. I need to see the businessman."

• 24:22Alec Baldwin?

  Now you're a Getty.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  And there's the, exactly, whatever, yeah. So I was the champion. I was the conservative in San Francisco politics. And, and he turns out, and, and I guess I, you know, I was like six people, 10 people in the race, and I was 34 years old and, you know, I didn't think I'd have a chance in hell and got in a runoff and boom, I'm, I'm a mayor.

• 24:41Alec Baldwin?

  What did you learn from him?

• 24:42Speaker 04

  Uh, he's a master.

• 24:44Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah. Everybody ascribes a surreal, heavy political, you know, skill to him.

• 24:49Speaker 04

  I remember someone describing, I don't know if it was described accurately, but of the Grateful Dead, of Jerry Garcia, someone describing Jerry saying, "You don't want to be the best of the best. You want to be the only one that does what you do."

• 25:04Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  You don't want to be the best of the best, the only one that does what you, that's Willie Brown. He redefined this part. They had to, remember, term limits in California literally were established because they couldn't get rid of him.

• 25:14Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  And he kept becoming speaker even when.

• 25:16Alec Baldwin?

  It was the FDR of San Francisco.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  FDR, but they had Republicans in the majority and they made a Democrat a speaker because he was a dealmaker. It was a different era. Worked with Reagan. He had great bipartisan bona fides, but he stood on principle, still stands on principle today. He's alive and, and, and he's a fierce critic, uh, still to these, these days. And, and the fiercest and most loyal person I, and the reason I'm here. The reason we're having this conversation is Willie Brown.

• 25:42Alec Baldwin?

  When you, when you're on the board of supervisors, then you become the mayor of San Francisco, everyone that I know, because I. Love San Francisco and I've always enjoyed going there. I haven't spent volumes of time there, but I, you know, always went there with friends and had the best time and love it there. But it seems to have, you know, the same metronomic kind of problems there about housing now because of the tech boom and homelessness and drugs and stuff like that. What shape is it in now, would you say? Is it still struggling?

• 26:09Speaker 04

  No, it's coming back in big ways. I mean, by any objective. I just, you know, I think it went through a very difficult period around COVID and there was sort of a, you know, people stepped back, the tents started to amass on the streets. We see that across country, notably in California, more encampments, more tents. And it was, by the way, it was directed by the feds saying, you want to cohort people, we don't want to clean up the tents and the encampments during COVID. There was concerns around that. And so after that, there was a mindset of almost additional permissiveness. And that became very dominant, particularly in San Francisco, where it no longer is concentrated in this 40, 50 square block area in the, in this sort of tenderloin, where it's been for 30, 40 years, started to become more prevalent, even into some of the neighborhoods. But

• 26:54Speaker 04

  that's now coming back. The crime rates are down, uh, near 50 year lows. You're seeing people starting to move back in. The neighborhoods are vibrant as much more than ever. Downtown's still struggling. But look, it's a city that shaped me. My great, great, great grandfather there was a cop and, you know, and my dad used to say, says he didn't know what came first, the Irish cop or San Francisco. Uh, and so I think it took 150 years for the cop to become a politician. Uh, and here I am. But it's one of the most magical, curious and mystical places. And one thing it continues to be is a state of just constant renewal.

• 27:29Alec Baldwin?

  But in that divide between northern and southern California, which I observed for the many years I was here, a more liberal and progressive quadrant here and a more conservative quadrant here, in spite of LA being part of that. When I was in California in the early days I was here, I came here in 83. So it was the end of the first term of Reagan. He's heading into his reelection. I think Duke Magin was the governor. The Olympics are coming. So they just scooped everybody up and put them in buses and took them to Barstow.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 27:57Alec Baldwin?

  They were like clean. It up for the Olympics. We don't want the world to see it. And they took all the whole. I lived in Venice then.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:01Alec Baldwin?

  And they just scooped them all up and put them under us and shipped them out of town.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  Let's be candid, it still happens all across this country. And is is an ongoing issue. And that's the tension. Look, I mean, out of sight is not out of mind for advocates and it's understandable. But right now, I think people are on edge all across this country. People are on edge in this state. They've had it. They don't want to see the encampments anymore. They're done. They're done with the tents. I'm done with the tents. I'm done with the encampments. So we've been very aggressive. We've been very more forceful as a state. You know, when I was mayor, back to the days of mayor. The state of California was nowhere to be found in homeless policy. There was no homeless plan. It was the counties and the cities responsibility. Schwarzenegger was governor at the time. I never thought of calling. And by the way, we had the highest number of people on the streets and sidewalks back then.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  It's not a new phenomenon. This is 20 years ago. It was 188,000 people out on the streets and sidewalks in our point of time count. And it was the dominant issue for me as mayor. And it was my responsibility, my accountability, no finger pointing. And we made real progress for six or seven years, legit, real progress. And we started to see that unwind in the last decade or so. Back to again, I think COVID accelerating a lot of that. Fentanyl, issues of street behavior, issues around drug use, mental health. And again, a permissive structure that we have to address and we are addressing in this state. It just, it's, you know, it's can't turn it around immediately, but directionally, we're much more aggressive, taking responsibility.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  It's not a laissez faire attitude. We're again, not victims of this. And, you know, I'm a little more hard headed, a little more pragmatic. Advocates don't always see eye to eye with me, but it's time that we are held to a higher level of accountability, particularly Democrats. We got to prove we can govern, proving get out of our own damn way and permits, get housing done, get things moving again like we, I mean, we, the world we invented is working against us. Process and SEQA and all the bullshit, excuse my language, and the lawsuits and litigation. And, you know, I think it's one of the reasons Trump's back in the White House. So it's a big wake up call. And all of us own that, I think, and I'll forgive the long windiness.

• 30:00Alec Baldwin?

  No.

• 30:00Speaker 04

  One of the gifts. of the Olympics coming in in 2028 is it forces a regionalization, it forces a national and state focus on getting big things done. And with these fires now, a sense of urgency to do both and. And so I gotta tell you, I would never, I mean, I'm the biggest, this has nothing to do with me as governor, I'm the future ex-governor of California. I am so long LA as a region, so long California as a state, it's the fifth largest economy in the world. We dominate in, you know, more scientists, engineers, more researchers, more normal lawyers, the finest system of higher education in the world, more patents, more venture capital, 32 of the 50 top AI companies

• 30:41Speaker 04

  in the world, all in California, most diverse state, a dynamism, 27% of the state foreign born, a gateway status, geographic beauty unlike any other state. And, and now if we can have a mind that's more aggressive in terms of just addressing the mistakes in our permissiveness of the past through democratic governance, I think this state is going to come out, particularly with all the challenges on Washington DC, in a really dominant position.

• 31:11Alec Baldwin?

  Governor Gavin Newsom, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Gavin Newsom details his plan to increase tax breaks for film production in California in the hopes of reviving one of the state's most famous industries.

• 31:43Speaker 06

  This mood check is brought to you by State Farm. Porque tu bienestar también merece protección. Que tal mi gente? Honey German checking in contigo. Take a second. Literalmente, un momentico para ti. How's your corazón feeling today? If it's a little tired, a little oof, you're not alone. Have you eaten algo rico? Taken a deep breath? Maybe even turned off your phone for cinco minutitos? I promise the memes will still be there. Sometimes self-care isn't candles and meditation, it's just saying no. It's drinking a little bit of agua, it's letting yourself rest sin pena. You don't have to prove anything today, just be, breathe. Estas haciendo lo mejor que puedes. And yes, that's enough.

• 32:27Speaker 06

  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by rising star Sienna Spiro. What is so fascinating to you about impermanence?

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Everything about us, everything we do, is temporary. And I just got terrified of that. You know, what we do with our time and how I feel like the way the world is today and how fast-paced it is and how much we don't even acknowledge anything around us. How I felt temporary to the people around me and how that made me scared and how much I wanted to last and make an impact on people. And I guess to change the way I looked at things and to change myself and to change how I guess I approached everything in my life. It's important that things are impermanent because nothing would feel special. And enjoying, you know, learning to love with knowing it's not going to last.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 34:08Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Gavin Newsom has served as the 40th governor of California since 2019. His tenure has included tumultuous events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and two separate wildfire disasters. Despite the various difficulties of the past six years, I wondered what Newsom would consider some of the joys of holding the office.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  You know, it's been a disaster prone six years.

• 34:37Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah.

• 34:37Speaker 04

  You know, I talked about paradise. I was lieutenant governor, but I was also governor elect when I was standing there in the ashes of paradise with Donald Trump and took over. And we had the largest utility in the United States of America, PG&E, that filed bankruptcy. Within the first few weeks I was in office, we were trying to face the realities of unprecedented drought that I was referring to a moment ago, all of these wildfires, historic wildfires. And of course, we walked right into COVID and California was in the, you know, leaning cutting edge of good policy, those that judged very bad policy. It depends on your perspective.

• 35:09Alec Baldwin?

  Tough policy.

• 35:09Speaker 04

  Tough policy and you know, but for a state that's larger than 21 state populations combined, you know, I mean, it's not, it's not a small, isolated state.

• 35:17Alec Baldwin?

  It's a different game here.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Different game. And, and I also realized in that case, you know, it was also a different game and mindset. The public looked to me not as governor of California, but I really felt like they looked to me as mayor of California. And you had to be accountable for now, everything in nuance and detail, accountable for what was happening in every city, accountable for every crime that was occurring, everything, not the traditional role of a governor or dramatically different role. And I think that mindset continues to this day. And I think in many ways, the office of governor has changed since COVID in terms of that expectation. And that's more challenging perhaps here because of the diversity of the state, because of the scale and scope of this state. It's not an excuse. It's just, it's been part of an interesting journey of recognition of understanding for me in

• 36:01Speaker 04

  terms of trying to understand what people expect of their governor that I never expected of my governor before I got here. Every day I wake up just to be able to not scream and yell at the TV set and actually do something about it, to be on the forefront, unprecedented forefront of climate change and addressing that issue head on and leading this nation.

• 36:24Alec Baldwin?

  Climate change policy.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  Climate change policy and low carbon green growth, changing the way we produce and consume energy, the work we've done on mental health at scale no one else has done. I mean, someone said, you know, you really need baby bonds. We put $2 billion up. Every child, 3.4 million kids gets a college savings account or a career account up to $1,500 that enters into kindergarten. Brand new grade, pre-K for all. Schwarzenegger said he wanted after-school for all, put $150 million in, we put $5 billion and made it happen. After-school and summer-school for all, community schools, reimagining the school day, extending them to nine hours a day. The ability to do what we've done on policymaking, on homelessness, again, I know it's not been felt, but this new care court, new paradigm to address the issue of mental and behavioral

• 37:10Speaker 04

  health, the issues we've done in terms of reforming our Medicare system through this thing called CalAim, which is nation-leading effort. I can go through, honestly, list, universal healthcare, only state in America, regardless of pre-existing conditions, ability to pay, or immigration status, controversial, California's done it, we're not talking about it. And so, in each category, the ability to effect a policy at scale has been a gift and a dream, but, at the same time, it's disaster time, over and over and over again. And it eclipses a lot, and it makes for a lot of situational politics, when I have a sort of policy-sustainable mindset around politics. And, of course, you add Trump into

• 37:49Speaker 04

  the mixture, Trump 1.0, his last two years, had Trump 2.0 in his first two years of his second term. That also requires some adjustments and some tacking and changes.

• 38:02Alec Baldwin?

  It's reality now.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  Different reality.

• 38:04Alec Baldwin?

  You've got to face it. For me, another memory I have of living here, and my knowledge of, my awareness of California politics, was I thought Gray Davis was a nice guy, I thought he was a good guy, I thought he was a decent governor, when I met him. I love Gray Davis. So when that all happened, Daryl Issa decides he's going to do the recall of Gray Davis, the whole Enron thing was involved, the brownouts, and Issa thinks he's going to be anointed. He helps to put the whole thing together, he produces the recall, he wins, Davis is gone, and then they turn him and they tap him on the shoulder and they go, "It's not your night, kid." And they bring Arnold in to become the governor, no political record, no nothing, he becomes the governor. And I've had a lot of caustic comments about that as well. But you had a recall effort launched against you.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:44Alec Baldwin?

  What was that, I mean, was that tough and painful?

• 38:46Speaker 04

  It was intense, yeah, well, yeah, because, I mean, talk about, you know, a little humiliating.

• 38:49Alec Baldwin?

  God.

• 38:50Speaker 04

  And I've got four young kids, I mean, they're going to school, they're, you know, my oldest daughter ended up being... Being homeschooled because it just didn't work. The bullying and everything else was going on and and that's hard. It's, you know, hard to explain, you know, I we couldn't get, I mean, there was, I'm not exaggerating. I say over a year where you couldn't get out the front door of your house because of protests. You know, Hitler must a whole thing during that time and and and and so it just extended. And, you know, and I think the hardest part I was, you know, it's strange to say this, but, you know, I was working. You know, I'd written a book called Citizenville, which doesn't even matter. But I, you know, Newt Gingrich was talking about it and we were taught, we became, you know, I became friendly with Newt on some ideas and was able to work with folks on the other side. And then there's Newt on TV promoting my recall.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  And and there's, you know, Mike Huckabee out there promoting the recall and then I think getting a few bucks for it as well. And and my friends in the legislature, Republicans that I was working with, co-chairing the recall. And I'm like, whoa, OK. And I thought politics was all local, a little old fashioned there, right? All politics is local BS. All politics is national. Now it is. And they came hard. The RNC put in the first month, I had to raise eighty four million dollars to defend it. And there were polls just a few months before that showed it neck to neck. We were able to pull away with a twenty plus point margin. And it was a big mistake for the Republicans because then my reelect, you know, it was a year later. Seventy two percent. Yeah, we kind of just coasted through, but but I'll tell you, it sharpened my muscles.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  Got me focused with the difference and there's sense of finality with a recall in that humility is a finality. And then my focus, my energy and also, you know, the points of contrast. That's why I started going out on the road, started this PAC, this Campaign for Democracy, because I had a few dollars left over from my campaign, put twenty million into this PAC, raised more money and started going out, went on Fox with Sean Hannity, did those debates with DeSantis, started doing billboards in states across this country, taking on some of the Republican leadership, calling them out for their hypocrisy, doing the same thing with full page newspaper ads, did TV commercials across the country. And then it led me to sort of getting more involved with the Biden campaign. Was one of his chief surrogates, was out there doing the spin room and the debates for better for worse

• 41:00Speaker 04

  and extended a little bit to come, meaning I found myself now recognizing the politics in DC and what's happening across this country was impacting the state in ways I honestly, I didn't fully understand at the level that I should have. And so I'm a different guy from that. Right. And of course, you know, God is my witness. We're sitting here, yesterday they submitted another one.

• 41:23Alec Baldwin?

  Uh, so to recall you.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, so here we go. So, you know, I'm, uh, that may, I don't know. It could happen this time. I don't know. We'll see. So it's just.

• 41:31Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, God, no.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  A hell of a, hell of a job. I like that acting thing you talked about.

• 41:34Alec Baldwin?

  Yeah, there's room for you.

• 41:36Speaker 04

  There's room.

• 41:36Alec Baldwin?

  You're still young enough.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Jesus.

• 41:38Alec Baldwin?

  You can pivot.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  You can pivot.

• 41:39Alec Baldwin?

  Speaking of acting, my sense, and you can fine tune this, and of course, you know infinitely more than I do about this, which is that tax breaks in a state like this are very fragile because people are like, tax breaks for Hollywood? Hell, no. We have so many other things we gotta pay for. We're giving so many things away. There are social programs in this state unlike any other state that cost millions and billions of dollars. And so when you come and say, we want more tax breaks for Hollywood, a lot of the population of the state, north, that's south, is like, screw you. Now, the problem is, many of the jobs have left. And then my friends who used to go out to Atlanta and rent a house, they don't rent a house. They bought a house there. They left here. They've left this state.

• 42:14Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 42:14Alec Baldwin?

  The business is imploding in Los Angeles.

• 42:16Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 42:17Alec Baldwin?

  And the question becomes, is there any chance of increased tax breaks for the movie business?

• 42:21Speaker 04

  We're gonna double it.

• 42:22Alec Baldwin?

  You are.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's gonna be higher than New York.

• 42:24Alec Baldwin?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  I proposed that a few months ago, and that was right before the fires. What are the fires only reinforce?

• 42:29Alec Baldwin?

  Right.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  The imperative. And also working with all our friends, some of, you know, the who's who of Hollywood, saying it's time to double down on bringing production back to California, particularly this time of recovery and renewal. And so I wanna see them step up as well. But we're gonna step up. It's in my budget, and I'm gonna, I said to my legislative friends, I said, there's no budget. I'll veto the budget. If we don't get it done, it's gonna get done. And we're gonna do other things to start promoting.

• 42:53Alec Baldwin?

  It's heartbreaking.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Bringing people back. I, look, you know, world we invented is competing against us in so many ways. I mean, and, you know, across the spectrum of industries. And so I think California started resting on its laurels a little bit. And we, we didn't invest in our future like we did in the past in the 50s and 60s, and we have to reconcile that. Now, we've got 180 billion dollar infrastructure plan that's bigger than it was during the Pat Brown era in the 50s and 60s. We're starting to make big investments, bold investments in quantum and immunology, new public-private partnerships. Again, the conditions of Silicon Valley continue to thrive. That's why you have the Nvidia's out here, and you have so many, I mean, the Sam, for all the people hating on California, they still. seem to have so many of their business imprints here in this great state.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  You know, we, we have progressive tax system, but we haven't increased state taxes since 2011. Trump administration did with the salt, the state and local salt deductions, which are impacting you in New York as well. It's hurt the big blue states, but I'm mindful of sensitivities around taxes. I'm mindful about the need to do regulatory reforms, seek why I've done 42 secret reform bills. We've done streamlining on large sale projects. Again, I watch Fox, I pay attention to Newsmax, one American news. I don't turn my back to the critics, but there is a sort of California derangement syndrome out there. That is just sort of ridiculous. This notion that this is the only state that has challenges. It's just comedic, but it's damaging. We record breaking tourism last year.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  We have a surplus again, we have a state with population growing again. You wouldn't know that that's not prevalent. It's not part of the discussion.

• 44:26Alec Baldwin?

  engulfed by the fires.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  It's been engulfed in the fires. It's, you know, it's a failed state, you know, California. And so it's, you know, it's a whole industry.

• 44:34Alec Baldwin?

  No one gets beat up more than California.

• 44:35Speaker 04

  It's amazing, and I get it is, you know, it's like, yeah. And so, yeah, buck up. But for me, I, you know, it's not just bucking up. It's like, it's a big, it's pride for me again, as a guy lives here and cares about the state is to make a case anew for it. And I'm a little Clinton about it. There's nothing wrong with it. It can't be fixed with by what's right with it. And so, you know, I need some boosters out there. And some of the biggest critics again are the biggest beneficiaries. Elon Musk, why did he become a billionaire? His first billion came from California because of the regulations, not despite them, because of them. Because of our, our vehicle fuel mandates that helped create that industry. Billions and billions of dollars of subsidies that the people of the state of California, not just the federal government has provided these guys.

• 45:19Speaker 04

  And yet they're attacking the state, even though this state created a state of mind, that quality of imagination and a regulatory framework that made risk taking work for them. God bless their entrepreneurial talents. Thank you for their entrepreneurial, I don't begrudge their success, but I do take a little umbrage by their constant drumbeat of criticism that I just find unbecoming of people that have enjoyed the benefits and success that have been a big partner that we've been partners in, in this state.

• 45:49Alec Baldwin?

  Eighty-four, I'm here in this state. I moved here, I lived in Venice for five years, I drive over the 405. You'd hit the top of Mulholland, you'd be going into the valley heading north. And it was like mustard gas, the band of toxins in the air in the valley in California.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  That's right, it's horrible.

• 46:04Alec Baldwin?

  In the eighties, it was, I couldn't even believe it. Your eyes were tearing if you had the top down of the car. And of course, California renowned for this, making the emissions laws change and change and change. When I lived here, everybody lived on the west side. Nobody lived inland. Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Koreatown, downtown, nobody lived there unless you didn't have any money. And you all lived on the west side. Now, the west side is like the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Only old rich people live there, and all the young people have moved inland. Yep, because of the change in the air quality in this state.

• 46:32Speaker 04

  People forget.

• 46:33Alec Baldwin?

  It's changed everything.

• 46:34Speaker 04

  In the late sixties, LA was basically unlivable. The business community was outraged. They went to this guy up in Sacramento, happens to share a similar office, guy named Ronald Reagan, governor. They said, Jesus Reagan, you know, this, this smog's out of control in Los Angeles. Uh, we can't recruit employees, let alone businesses, corporate headquarters, et cetera. You gotta clean this. So, literally, modern air quality movement started with Ronald Reagan, Republican. Created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, a guy named Richard Nixon, Republican, codifies California's waiver with something called the Clean Air Act. Two Republican leaders that allowed us to have these established rules.

• 47:11Alec Baldwin?

  You get a couple of good ideas every now and then.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, a few every once in a while. But the point being, those are the rules that are being vandalized by the current administration. Those are the rules they're coming after. That are the rules that established the strategies that ultimately led to some of the improvements that you rightly noticed.

• 47:24Alec Baldwin?

  You know, for me, I would come out here, and when you're in Toronto, when you're in New York, when you're in Vancouver, when you're in Chicago back in the day, you're going to different places in this country, Orlando, where they had to grow an indigenous crop of, of people to work there. Uh, D. L. Rentes apparently was somebody who coaxed people in the unions to bring furniture makers to come and build sets in North Carolina. When he built his DDL Studios there. You gotta have an indigenous worker base. Now, there is no indigenous worker base on the planet that compares to Los Angeles. And I always say the same story. You go to New York, and the prop guy would say, what kind of watch you wanna wear? And we go, well, let's take a look. And he opened up a case and there was 50 watches in there in a case. You come to Los Angeles, you have the studio, the guy goes, what kind of watch you want to wear?

• 48:06Alec Baldwin?

  And you go, I don't know, let's take a look. He rolls in two steam trunks with 400 watches in them. Hollywood is Hollywood.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:12Alec Baldwin?

  Hollywood is Hollywood. And everybody who knows knows, I get a little emotional about this, which is, you only want to make movies here if you can. I love working here. It's the best of the best. There's nothing like shooting a movie in LA. And I don't want to see that come back.

• 48:26Speaker 04

  A hundred percent. And just to, you know, give you a little bona fides for me on this. When Arnold was governor, I remember back to when I was mayor, he was governor. And I was very, I was very vocal by one critique of Arnold. There were a few, but one of them was like, why the hell aren't you doing more to keep Hollywood production here? You're Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he's like, well, he made the point that you made earlier, which is interesting, was a legitimate point.

• 48:46Alec Baldwin?

  Sensitive issue.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  I gotta do this. I gotta then do it for biotech, where the birthplace of biotech and life science and nanotechnology.

• 48:51Alec Baldwin?

  Get in line.

• 48:52Speaker 04

  They want, and, and so it was a race to the bottom from his perspective. But in San Francisco, we became the first city to do it. So we did, and I got an NBC production, which was a big deal, at least at the time I made it a big deal. It was a small ball thing, it was a little TV show, but with our tax credits to make the point. And then, of course, I ran for governor, making a commitment. We were able to increase the tax credits a few years ago. We were able to expand how you can utilize them, a little more flexibility, there was some questions there. But now I said, look, we're playing small ball. We gotta double it to the point. So look, that's one way. But I think it's more important than that. We gotta make, you know, this industry, and I, you know, and I appreciate you know this better than anyone. And with all the, the labor issues, I mean, the SAG and everything else that happened. So you have COVID. These things are shut down.

• 49:35Alec Baldwin?

  Strikes.

• 49:36Speaker 04

  Strikes, social unrest, George Floyd, all this, you stack all that stress and anxiety, all the burden. But it hasn't come back since the strikes ended at all, even back to where it was prior. So this is a, this is code red. This is life support time. And it's a point of deep pride that, and first of all, it's a point of pride to hearing you say how much you love to be down here.

• 49:55Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, God.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Do movies. Cause that's, that's the intangible. There's no legislation for that. It's spirit, pride. And that's the game that should separate the game played here from anywhere else. But we have to have more muscle and we as a state need to be more supportive and. Create the conditions to stabilize and send the signals that we're going to have the back of this industry. And again, it's not just people like you with love and respect. It's the person that rolled up in that car that was showing you those watches that are the beneficiaries of you being in town. It's the damn crew.

• 50:24Alec Baldwin?

  Best crews in the world.

• 50:25Speaker 04

  Yes, and they, and they deserve, middle-class folks, hard-working folks that are out of work right now.

• 50:30Alec Baldwin?

  My last thing for you is this, which is that you're one of the few people, I mean, many people in your profession, everyone, but in life, you're one of the few people who you know when your job's over.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  (laughing)

• 50:39Alec Baldwin?

  It's over.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Except I don't. I mean, these recalls.

• 50:42Alec Baldwin?

  I'm ignoring that. 2024, so the next election's in 2028 in Washington. That'll leave you two years to kind of focus on, what are you going to focus on those two years?

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm a milk carton. I got a sell-by date. I get it. And it's very sobering, and I'm very mindful of that. And, and again, with the sense of urgency that I brought into this job after the recall. And I have no idea what the hell is going to happen.

• 51:05Alec Baldwin?

  Got some ideas then?

• 51:06Speaker 04

  You know what? Everybody's like, well, what does Democratic Party need to do to get back on track? What are the, why did Kamala Harris lose? So I'm up to nine pages of analysis. Each page contradicts the prior page. I think, you know, we're going to have to figure out where the hell this party is or how we get out of this. I think all, most of it will be shaped by what Trump does and the reaction to. But I think there's got to be a little bit of deeper reflection on this party. And where we'll be in four years, who the hell knows?

• 51:33Alec Baldwin?

  I won't ask you that question, but I will say, as we finish, I don't think your caretaking years are over. You still have some more work to do.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  God bless you.

• 51:41Alec Baldwin?

  To take care of people.

• 51:42Speaker 04

  To take care of people?

• 51:43Alec Baldwin?

  And you may have to move out of California. So we'll see.

• 51:45Speaker 04

  We need another California politician.

• 51:47Alec Baldwin?

  We need a California governor to step up and solve some of the country's problems.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  God bless you. Good to be with you.

• 51:56Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to California Governor Gavin Newsom. This episode was recorded at Lime Studios in Santa Monica and CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is Danielle Gingrich. Special thanks to Chris O'Keefe. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's The Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  This is Mario Lopez from all Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at traded. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 53:14Speaker 06

  With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. Whether you're leading a big project, planning an elaborate trip, or trying to balance work and life. ChatGPT can help. Give it a goal, plus things like files, notes, or project plans. Develop a trip itinerary with daily updates or create a prioritized schedule. So you can spend less energy sorting out the details and more on bringing your biggest ideas to life. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 54:14Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.