Gavin Newsom’s office pays famed photographer $200,000 a year

SACRAMENTO, California — Gov. Gavin Newsom has quietly hired a famed photographer — who boasts Mark Zuckerberg, George W. Bush and Barack Obama as previous clients — to burnish his man-about-the-state image.

Charles Ommanney, a former photojournalist and war photographer who traveled with Newsom to China last fall as a freelancer, was on hand Thursday to capture Newsom in aviator sunglasses, jeans and work gloves, picking up detritus left over from a recently-cleared homeless encampment in Los Angeles County. Late last month, he photographed the governor surveying the damage of the Borel Fire in Kern County.

This week, standing on the edge of a steep river embankment in a bright-white shirt, he pointed his lens at the governor as he collected items left behind in the San Fernando Valley encampment: a shopping cart, skateboard, soiled blankets and tires.

The governor’s office about six months ago named Ommanney its director of photography, a title that comes with a $200,000 per year salary. That makes him among the top earners in the Newsom administration, according to the state controller’s office. The governor, himself, drew a $234,101 salary last year.

Ommanney’s position is new for Newsom’s office, although his team points out other governors make use of the role. It didn’t come with an announcement, as the administration usually shares only new senior staff hires.

“Charles plays an instrumental role in communicating the work of state government across visual platforms — including social media, helping us meet Californians where they are at,” said Izzy Gardon, a Newsom spokesperson, in a statement to POLITICO.

The job makes a certain kind of sense for a governor with national ambitions and an affinity for developing his own media to tout his accomplishments. This year, instead of the traditional State of the State address before a live audience of lawmakers and journalists, Newsom’s office produced a slick video showing shots of the governor delivering his speech behind a podium cut together with relevant images.

The address, released just ahead of President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate, leaned heavily into national issues and painted a dramatic picture, one that his team could easily broadcast to the national audience the speech seemed to target. The video featured some of Ommanney’s photos.

Newsom brought the photographer on full time in January after he worked on a freelance basis last year, when he documented the governor’s trip to China.

Melanie Mason contributed to this story.