How Gavin Newsom Built An Online Influencer Machine

When Gavin Newsom needed to hype his redistricting ballot measure, he did it not through MSNBC hits, but livestreamed sit-downs with Substack sensation Heather Cox Richardson, YouTube star Brian Tyler Cohen and TikTok celebrity Mrs. Frazzled.

The Prop 50 campaign was the purest distillation of Newsom’s self-proclaimed obsession with the changing media landscape, an unabashed embrace of the burgeoning liberal influencer ecosystem that is burgeoning at the same time Newsom's political prospects are on the rise.

Newsom’s team not only courted online content creators; it incorporated them into the campaign apparatus itself, leaning on influencers to help with fundraising, rapid response and in-person events.

“It’s not a program, it’s a way of doing things,” said Lindsey Cobia, a senior political adviser to Newsom. “It is truly ingrained in everything we do.”

Newsom, a likely presidential contender in 2028, has for months argued Democrats are woefully behind in countering the robust conservative mediasphere. His fascination with personalities such as Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk earned him outsized attention — and grief with his base. But he also has been steadily nurturing his ties to the left’s constellation of content creators.

The outreach began not long after the Los Angeles fires in January, when conservative critics of Newsom’s fire response flooded social media. The governor responded with a social media presence that was assertive, snarky and unapologetically online. Since then, he’s seen his national profile grow with every all-caps post on X — and with his frequent appearances on popular liberal programs.

“They were ahead of their time with that and recognized it right away — really before any others did,” said Ben Meiselas, co-founder of MeidasTouch, a liberal digital network with a slate of shows that rack up between 500 and 750 million views a month. “Now others are seeing that those types of interviews are getting more attention and having a higher viewership than the cable hits.”

Newsom still pays close attention to traditional media. In the closing days of the campaign, he hit the Sunday show circuit, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS News’ “Sunday Morning,” and did interviews with POLITICO and other outlets.

But for months, Newsom’s team behind the scenes has been cultivating relationships with top influencers. Staffers text content creators on a daily basis, much like they would with beat reporters covering the governor. The office keeps a spreadsheet that tracks every interview and every view Newsom gets across all platforms.

For Prop 50, staff sent out a weekly email to roughly 100 influencers sharing campaign messaging, pushback to the opposition’s talking points and the latest videos of the governor. At a Los Angeles GOTV rally, content creators had their own dedicated riser with unobstructed views to capture the footage.

The result was a cadre of personalities with outsized online followings who felt personal buy-in for Newsom’s effort. Cohen, whose YouTube channel has nearly 5 million subscribers, said he considered himself part of the campaign and emcee’d a three-hour livestream featuring the governor and 17 other content creators. He credited Newsom and his team for their fluency in the online ecosphere, akin to other social media phenoms such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani.

“This is not an old media campaign that has been retrofitted for a new media platform,” Cohen said. “This is very organically new.”

He added, “They go viral on a daily basis. That doesn’t happen on accident.”