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The next US presidential election is more than two years away but conservative media has wasted no time attacking expected Democratic contenders. In recent months, they’ve turned their attention to Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California’s governor.
In early April, the progressive writer and researcher Kyle Tharp noted that conservative media and influencers were “aggressively resurfacing” old footage of Newsom, a 51-year-old documentary film-maker who has been married to Gavin Newsom for nearly 18 years. The clips, Tharp said, included “rambling, word-salad answers that seem tailor-made to provoke conservative outrage” and made their way from social media to television and radio, leading to a sudden surge in interest in Google search.
“The selectively edited clips are being used to portray her as out of touch, ‘woke’, and elitist, and they have quickly spread like wildfire across the Maga media ecosystem,” he wrote in the Chaotic Era newsletter.
High-profile conservatives from Megyn Kelly to Donald Trump Jr shared clips of Siebel Newsom speaking at public events with critical or mocking commentary. A columnist for the California Post, the west coast offshoot of the conservative New York tabloid, wrote that she was “single-handedly wrecking” Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions. Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for California governor, described the Newsoms as a “grifter family”.
Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist, argues the surge of attacks is not part of an organic outrage cycle, but an effort by Republicans and conservative media to find a new line of attack against Newsom, who has emerged as an early frontrunner among Democrats for the presidential nomination. The attack line, Nellis said, neatly allows Republicans to avoiding having to talk about Americans’ frustrations with the economy and the war in Iran.
“Going after [Siebel Newsom] is just an extension of them running out of shit to talk about with Gavin,” said Nellis. “They’re trying to fill airtime, and finding things that the governor’s wife has said is just catnip for them to complain about how Democrats are weird.”
He added, “There’s a lot of airtime to fill, so it’s like … let me get a piece up about how the governor’s wife is destroying his presidential bid a year and a half before there’s been any voting in the presidential election contest.”
Conservatives have homed in on Siebel Newsom’s work as a documentary film-maker. She’s produced films focused on masculinity in American culture and the portrayal of women in mainstream media. They’ve sharply criticized her choice to adopt the title “first partner” when her husband became governor.
And they’ve railed against her efforts to champion equal pay and gender equity.
Families were once considered off-limits in US politics, but that’s changed in recent decades, said Debbie Walsh, the director at the Center for American Women and Politics. She pointed to the racist criticisms that Michelle Obama was frequently subjected to while her husband was in politics.
All political spouses can now expect scrutiny, Walsh said, but her past work and areas of interest have made Siebel Newsom a particular target of conservatives.
“She is somebody who is very outspoken and as a film-maker has made documentary films about issues around gender,” Walsh said. “She’s very much engaged with these issues and I think it has made her vulnerable because the right and the Maga movement will home in on things like that.”
“It’s a perfect storm of the work she does plus the fact that she’s not being a traditional [political spouse].”
Republicans have particularly latched on to clips of Siebel Newsom discussing gender stereotypes, as well as one of her speaking to prisoners at San Quentin, the large California state prison in the San Francisco Bay Area, about the the death of her eight-year-old sister. In response to the latter clip, Megyn Kelly referred to Siebel Newsom as a “nutcase”.
“Part of it is social media. It’s easier for this stuff to spread and you can put out a clip and take someone out of context and blow it up into something,” Walsh said. “There’s just this universe that will spread this stuff and kind of give it a life of its own.”
The offices of the governor and the first partner did not respond to a request for comment. Mackenzie Smith, a spokesperson for Siebel Newsom, told Politico: “It’s no surprise that the Maga world is once again trying to distract from its own failures by targeting women.”
“If standing up for women, children, and their futures is considered too radical, that says far more about the state of our public discourse than it does about her values.”
Most Americans are focused on their frustrations about the economy and the cost of living, and don’t care about the outrage over Siebel Newsom, Nellis argued. But that won’t stop these kinds of attacks.
“They’re going to do this to everybody. They’re going to pick apart their lives,” he said. “That’s what happens when you run for president [and] when you ascend to that level.”
