Gavin Newsom, firefighter-in-chief

SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t have a military to deploy against a foreign enemy, but he has another kind of army: a 12,000-person firefighting force that he’s spent billions boosting to combat increasingly devastating wildfires in California.

Newsom is at the vanguard of a crop of California politicians from both sides of the aisle trying to turn the state’s rising flammability to their advantage and differentiate themselves from challengers.

The muscular support of Cal Fire gives the ambitious Democrat a photo-op friendly way to demonstrate his emergency credentials to both a state and a national audience. He’s a top surrogate for President Joe Biden and close to fellow Californian Vice President Kamala Harris. His ability to harness the unpredictable and uncontrolled conflagrations will shape California’s path through two of its biggest challenges: climate change and housing unaffordability.

“I’ve been at this for a while,” Newsom said this week during an emergency briefing in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Kern County, where he surveyed damage from the 59,225-acre Borel Fire that’s four times the size of Manhattan. “Towns wiped off the map, places, lifestyles, traditions … I know how personal it is for folks.”

Fires fueled by climate change and a build-up of vegetation have scarred his tenure like no other governor. The state’s deadliest wildfire, sparked only two days after Californians elected him in November of 2018, nearly wiped the town of Paradise in Northern California off the map. Since then, record-breaking megafires have spewed lung-choking smoke into eerily orange skies and property insurers unnerved by massive wildfire losses have pulled back from coverage throughout the state .

As a result, wildfire preparedness grew from a cause championed mostly by the relatively powerless state Republicans representing rural fire-prone communities to a top concern among even urban and coastal Democrats.

This summer, Newsom is putting his response on full display. Heat waves and vegetation growth have fueled the state’s biggest early wildfire season in the past few years, with 18 times more acres burned so far than the five-year average.

Two days before his trip to Kern County, he was in Northern California visiting firefighters battling the Park Fire, which has grown to the state’s fifth-largest fire on record at 393,013 acres, an area larger than greater Los Angeles. And last month, he held a conference at an Air Force base near Sacramento to show off the state’s new night-flying helicopters and ex-military planes being retrofitted to drop thousands of gallons of fire retardant.

He acknowledged and swatted away concerns about stretched resources amid a $46.8 billion budget deficit this year. Since he was first elected in 2018, Cal Fire has added roughly 3,000 firefighters (partly to offset a drop in inmate firefighters because of criminal sentencing reforms). Over the past ten years, it has nearly tripled its base wildfire protection budget, from $1.1 billion in 2014 to $3 billion in 2023, with a sharp uptick under Newsom.

Newsom also touted the agency’s improved technology, including artificial intelligence that now scans the feeds from 1,100 cameras across the state for any smoke, beating the 911 callers and trained fire spotters the state has relied on in the past.

And he put California in a global perspective. Cal Fire owns the largest civil aerial firefighting fleet in the world and often exchanges crews with other countries like Australia and Israel to help battle extreme fires.

“There is no mutual aid system in the country, I would argue around the world, as efficient, effective and coordinated as the state of California, and you see that in these wildfires,” Newsom said in early July at the Air Force base near Sacramento. “This is best in class.”

Bragging about California’s climate and environmental leadership, like its ban on gas-powered cars, is a common refrain for Newsom and a way to stand out on the national and international stage. Fighting wildfires has the unique advantage of also being highly bipartisan — with some exceptions.

Newsom on Tuesday thanked Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, for sending fire engines to California this week, despite their frequent sparring on national hot button issues like abortion.

“I just have no interest in that dynamic of politics when it comes to emergency preparedness and planning,” Newsom said.

“I made that point when I was working with President Trump,” he continued, referring to federal emergency declarations he secured during Donald Trump’s White House tenure. “I don't know there was a Democrat in America working more collaboratively on issues related to emergency preparedness and planning and management than California and the White House, despite all the back and forth that was going on.”

Fires have also driven an uneasy alliance between Newsom and the insurance industry, usually an antagonist of Democrats. Faced with the angst of voters unable to find coverage as property insurers flee the wildfire risk, Newsom has backed reforms to entice the insurance companies back to the state — including some that put him at odds with consumer advocates concerned about costs.

The forced bipartisanship has greased the wheels for Newsom and the Legislature to spend massively on Cal Fire.

Even among this year’s budget cuts , which ratcheted back climate commitments, wildfire spending continued untouched. Both the Legislature and Newsom stuck with a $770 million per year deal to hire an additional 2,400 firefighters and lower the Cal Fire workweek from 72 hours to 66.

“I will give the governor some credit in making this a priority,” said Assemblymember James Gallagher, a Republican from the fire-scarred district that includes Paradise. He also leads his party in the Assembly, where he pushed for broad budget cuts this year but supported increasing fire spending. “We’ve made some very good investments.”

But Gallagher still sees fire as a top issue on which to draw a contrast with Democrats in his state.

“It's like, big splashy announcements, but it doesn't mean the work's done,” he said. “You can't just go, yeah, mission accomplished.”

His district includes struggling ex-logging towns that blame wildfires, in part, on the decline of the timber industry and California’s long standing environmental policies critics say let flammable brush build up in its forests.

“It’s not just money,” said Gallagher. “To really get on top of the fire threat, we've got to treat a lot of acres. In order to do that, you need money, and then it's environmental streamlining, and just the raw human resources to do it.”

Gallagher’s fight against environmental protections is getting a little traction: The Newsom administration has sped some forest management projects through permitting, and a handful of Democrats have proposed small carve-outs in the Legislature this year for roadside thinning.

But a blanket exemption from environmental laws is a no-go with Democrats in power, and Gallagher is casting Democrats’ efforts as too little, too late.

Scoring political points on fire is becoming increasingly attractive to Democrats, too, who tend to tie the problem to broader climate change issues or use it to appeal to certain geographies.

For example, Jessica Morse is running her campaign to unseat incumbent Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley from Congress in a swing district in the fire-prone foothills outside of Sacramento partly on her record as a wildfire official in the Newsom administration.

“We have to make sure that we're adapting to the reality that we're facing, and the state is starting to do that, and we're seeing great examples of progress,” said Morse. “And there's more room to go.”

Among her ideas is to model firefighting and other emergency climate-related responses after the defense industry by spending more on top-notch equipment. She also wants to speed the federal government’s clearing of flammable vegetation near communities, urging “fundamental reform” over “band-aids” proposed by the incumbent Congress.

“Fire is one of the top issues that people are across the board concerned about,” said Morse. “A wildfire isn't asking if you're Republican or Democrat. It's one of the most nonpartisan issues that you can find because it impacts people universally.”