sacramento

Jennifer Siebel Newsom was frustrated.

She was standing behind her husband, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, at a February press conference to celebrate a new bill that would give Planned Parenthood emergency funds. A throng of women’s advocates, including herself, had spoken about how the law would help women access healthcare. But now reporters were asking a barrage of off-topic questions, from the California High Speed Rail to the 2028 Olympics.

She paced, she swayed, she laughed with displeasure. Finally, she stepped closer to her husband and gently nudged him aside. She found it “incredulous,” she said, that they had assembled all these allies only for the reporters to ask about other issues.

“This happens over and over and over and over again,” she said as Newsom smiled awkwardly. “You wonder why we have such a horrific war on women in this country and that these guys are getting away with it. Because you don’t seem to care. So I just offer that with love.”

All of a sudden, Siebel Newsom herself was the news. One of Sacramento’s top female journalists, Ashley Zavala, shot back on X that reporters were just doing their jobs and the way they were treated “was not normal.” Right-wing media blasted out headlines from “Gavin Newsom’s wife scolds reporters” to “Gavin Newsom’s wife slams reporters for ‘horrific war on women’ in extraordinary rant.”

The scene underscores Siebel Newsom’s predicament as her husband positions himself as Trump’s chief antagonist and prepares for a possible 2028 White House run.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom with California Surgeon General Diana Ramos.

(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

She came to Sacramento with a mission to speak up for women, calling herself “first partner” to signal she would carry on the theme of her work as a documentary filmmaker and nonprofit leader: dismantling gender norms. But as her husband raises his national profile with a podcast, a memoir and daily trolling of President Trump, she finds herself under mounting scrutiny.

In June, Newsom accused Trump of weaponizing the Department of Justice to launch a politically motivated attack on his spouse after federal agents knocked on the doors of the Newsoms’ friends and former employees, asking about Siebel Newsom’s taxes and nonprofit businesses.

“To get me, he’s coming after my wife,” Newsom said.

A federal source said the investigation began not with Trump, but after federal officials spoke to whistleblowers in Sacramento. Whatever the origin or merits of the probe, Siebel Newsom has long faced questions about her finances — specifically her nonprofits’ partial reliance on donations from companies that lobby the governor, a strategy that does not violate California law but raises concerns about the influence of large corporations in Sacramento.

Her decision to use the title “first partner” and her work “deconstructing” gender are also attracting criticism from the right in the post-#MeToo era as many Americans chafe against what they perceive as radical attempts to undermine traditional values and policing of what they say and do.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom looks on at his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

(Mario Tama / Getty Images)

To Siebel Newsom, the critiques of her work and the federal probe are part of a broader hounding of women who enter the public sphere. When federal agents targeted her associates, she was promoting “Miss Representation: Rise Up,” her new film examining the role technology plays in fueling what she describes as “the rising backlash against women’s progress.”

“We are seeing young women hold themselves back from wanting to pursue careers … not just political leadership, and it’s extremely disturbing,” Siebel Newsom told CNN in June. “It is a backlash, a backslide, and it is happening at an unprecedented scale, where ultimately we are silencing women’s voices.”

She disagreed with those who say scrutiny is the price of admission for being in public life. “Women and girls deserve to be protected,” she said. “Anyone aspiring to a public service career deserves to be safe. It should be fundamental.”

Untangling legitimate political criticism from deeply ingrained gender bias is not easy. Women in the public eye are frequently held to a different standard than men. But some political experts question whether a woman who refuses to stand on the sidelines — raising her voice on radioactive culture war issues and benefiting in part from her marital status to fund her nonprofits — can reasonably expect to be excluded from the rough and tumble of her husband’s political life.

Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and political commentator, said Siebel Newsom had been subjected to heightened public scrutiny for years. “That I think is likely fair,” she said, “in the sense that she has said that she’s very much a partner of the governor, and she has used this platform to advocate for causes that she cares about.”

Still, Levinson said, Siebel Newsom’s availing herself of the public forum did not mean she had violated the law.

“Does the fact that she has created and run nonprofits that receive behested contributions from Gov. Newsom put her and her actions in a different spotlight?” she said. “Absolutely, but that doesn’t mean that she’s doing anything nefarious. It just means that their life and their finances and their jobs are a little bit more complicated than other first families.”

Raised in an affluent suburb in Marin County, Siebel Newsom, 52, grew up in privilege. Her father was an investment manager and prominent GOP donor, her mother a co-founder of the Bay Area Discovery Museum.

After studying Latin American studies at Stanford and volunteering in Ecuador and Africa, she returned to Stanford to earn an MBA. Then she moved to L.A. to try to break into Hollywood. She got small parts in “Mad Men” and “Rent,” but has said she “was typecast as a trophy wife and kind of put into this box.”

That sparked her interest in getting behind the camera.

Around the time she married Newsom in 2008 and got pregnant with her first child, she began work on “Miss Representation,” her debut 2011 film that examines how mainstream culture limits female potential and power by focusing on youth, beauty and sexuality.

When Newsom was elected governor, she announced she would eschew the traditional title of “first lady.”

The “first partner” title, she has said, is not just gender inclusive and gender expansive. “It disrupts some of the male-coded language we associate with leadership, versus a ‘lady’ who sits on the sidelines.”

Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Over the last 15 years, Siebel Newsom has worked on a series of documentaries and founded nonprofits focused on gender equity, the Representation Project and California Partners Project.

“She walks the walk,” said Amy Ziering, a documentary filmmaker whose films Siebel Newsom helped produce. She did not take the role lightly, Ziering said, noting she watched cuts and took notes, made introductions and brought people to screenings. The fact that Siebel Newsom kept pressing women’s issues as her husband became governor, Ziering said, reflected her integrity.

“She’s not diminishing her beliefs, her values, her principles or any other kind of long-term goals” Ziering said. “She shows up, ‘This is what I believe,’ and maybe it’s not politically efficacious to believe this right now, or to say ‘I believe it’ … but she does.”

In 2022, Siebel Newsom took on another public role, testifying in Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial.

“She did not have to do that, she could have been Jane Doe,” Ziering said. “That’s about showing up for other women and for all sexual assault survivors.”

Cristina Garcia, a former assemblywoman who represented southeast L.A. and worked with Siebel Newsom on women’s legislation, said she thought Siebel Newsom would be a target no matter what.

“But I think she sees the power that she has, and it’s like, why should she just sit in the background?” Garcia said. “Why shouldn’t she use her power to uplift women and children … these things she’s been really passionate about?”

In Sacramento and across liberal California, Siebel Newsom’s ideas on women and gender are relatively mainstream.

But as the 2028 election looms, conservatives have dredged up old clips, highlighting Siebel Newsom’s comments about parenting and deconstructing gender roles to portray her as “radical” and “woke.”

In one video, Siebel Newsom said that when she reads to her children she changes the protagonist’s gender from “he” to “she” to show women matter and can center a story.

In another, she raised concerns about boys being exposed to “alt-right socialization online that we know is very, very dangerous.” She and her husband, she noted, were alarmed to find their son had encountered misogynist influencer Andrew Tate while watching sports online.

Some conservatives have noted, with glee, that Siebel Newsom could be a liability for her husband as he seeks national office.

“Jennifer Siebel Newsom is the very avatar of Democrat Woman,” a New York Post columnist wrote. “Haughty, hectoring and pleased with herself, she is single-handedly wrecking her hen-pecked husband Gavin’s lofty political ambitions.”

But former state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Oxnard) pushed back on the idea that Siebel Newsom was some kind of strident activist or woke scold. After working with Siebel Newsom on equal pay and bringing more women onto corporate boards, she said Siebel Newsom was adept at working with corporations to find common ground and recognize what businesses need to be successful.

The scrutiny of Siebel Newsom comes as her husband tries to stake out a more centrist stance on some issues.

Last year, Newsom inspired the ire of some Democrats by launching a podcast in which he chatted with right-wing figures, such as Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. On its debut episode, Newsom distanced himself from his party’s left flank, calling the dismantling of police departments “lunacy.” Allowing transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports, he said, was “deeply unfair.”

Asked why, Newsom told The Times his party had become out of touch with ordinary Americans. “They think we’re elite,” he said. “We talk down to people. We talk past people. They think we just think we’re smarter than other people, that we’re so judgmental and full of ourselves.”

On this point, it’s not clear whether the Newsoms are in sync.

For all her talk of women as allies, Siebel Newsom portrays conservative women who criticize other women as dupes manipulated by MAGA leaders.

“What’s interesting is that the far right really is using women to go after other women,” she said in June on the “Hysteria” podcast. “So I find it very intentional on their part that they have essentially sent the women out to humiliate, demean, ridicule, mock, silence another women. But that’s just the patriarchy, right? … And that’s what we have to fight.”

Still, she has voiced doubt about whether she would continue to go by “first partner” if her husband were elected president.

Asked in 2023, Siebel Newsom said she didn’t know if Americans were ready for a “first partner.”

“Sadly,” she said, “I don’t know if they are.”

But even as conservatives mock Siebel Newsom’s patrician “girl power” message and activist jargon, she shows few signs of backing down.

As she has taken “Miss Representation: Rise Up” to film festivals in New York and Washington, D.C., she has upped her call for more Big Tech regulation.

An advisor from the first partner’s office said Siebel Newsom had been an advocate for women and girls before she met Newsom. That was unlikely to change, they said, as she faced growing right-wing scrutiny or a federal investigation.

“There’s no strategy change here,” they said.

SACRAMENTO — The Dodgers scratched Shohei Ohtani from his scheduled Wednesday start against the Athletics and said he would instead start Friday at Dodger Stadium against the San Diego Padres.

The Dodgers did not immediately say why they delayed Ohtani’s start or who would start in his place Wednesday. Ohtani is in the lineup at designated hitter for Tuesday’s game.

This series marks the Dodgers’ lone scheduled visit to Sacramento during the A’s three-year stay here. The A’s plan to move into a new ballpark in Las Vegas in 2028, the next time the teams are scheduled to face off.

Ohtani would have been starting on his usual six days rest. However, with the Dodgers on a run of 13 consecutive games without an off day, pushing Ohtani back at some point would allow the Dodgers to better manage his workload.

He is 8-2 with a 1.58 earned-run average this season. Among National League pitchers with at least 70 innings, his ERA is bettered only by Jacob Misiorowski of the Milwaukee Brewers (1.46).

Ohtani already has pitched 79-2/3 innings this season, his most in three years. He spent all of the 2024 season and the first half of the 2025 season rehabilitating from elbow surgery.

On Monday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani, already elected as the NL designated hitter for next month’s All-Star Game, would not pitch in that game if he were not the starting pitcher.

“He’ll obviously DH and then we’ll go from there,” Roberts said. “I don’t know where he is with the pitching thing. We’ll see.”

The Dodgers have carefully managed Ohtani’s workload as a pitcher and might well prefer he be limited to DH in the game. It also would be impractical to have him warm up during a game in which he were hitting, and Misiorowski and Cristopher Sanchez of the host Philadelphia Phillies are top candidates to be the NL starting pitcher.

Voters in California may get a chance to remake the state’s open primary system in two years.

Political consultant Steve Maviglio filed an application Friday with state officials that seeks to alter California’s voting system by reverting to a traditional primary. Under the proposal, the top candidates from each party would advance to the general election in November.

The current system allows the top two candidates, regardless of party, to move on to the runoff. That has led to instances in which two Democrats or two Republicans have faced off in the general election.

The state’s gubernatorial election, for example, has prompted concern that two Republicans could shut out the Democratic candidates. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton have polled high in various surveys and are facing a large field of Democrats.

Democratic voters vastly outnumber Republicans in California, yet some political consultants said they feared there were so many Democrats running that voters wouldn’t coalesce around one candidate and the field would be split. Those fears have eased somewhat in recent months as some Democratic candidates advance from the pack.

The state’s top-two primary system has been in place since California voters passed Proposition 14 in 2010. The goal was to help end partisan gridlock in Sacramento and force candidates in primaries to appeal to a wider range of voters, rather than just those in their own party.

Proposition 14, as well as the state’s once-a-decade redistricting process, has led to some dramatic races, including the 2012 face-off between Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman for a congressional seat in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. Amid aspersions and attack ads, the pair nearly came to blows at a community debate.

Maviglio described the ballot measure as a simple repeal of Proposition 14, and said he was inspired by the governor’s race.

“It was extremely scary to envision the November ballot for governor with Republicans on it,” Maviglio said.

The New York Times first reported on the ballot measure proposal.

A news release from Maviglio states that the proposed repeal of Prop. 14 “is fueled by concerns that California’s primaries are disenfranchising a majority of California voters by limiting choice to candidates from one party.”

A website for the effort includes criticisms of the current primary system by Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks and Ron Nehring, former chairman of the California Republican Party.

Maviglio’s ballot initiative proposes to appear on the 2028 ballot and take effect in 2030.

Talk of changing Proposition 14 has been swirling in Sacramento for months.

Secretary of State Shirley Weber told reporters at an unrelated news conference last week that she had voted years ago against Proposition 14. She questioned whether it had actually succeeded in creating more diversity.

“I did not like the open primary,” Weber said. “I didn’t think it would solve any problems. They had a list of problems it would solve, and none of those have been solved.”

John Seymour was the rare politician who didn’t mind harming his career if it meant doing right by his constituents.

As the newly elected mayor of Anaheim in 1978, he angered the city’s Police Department by suggesting the creation of a citizens oversight commission after residents complained that officers regularly harassed and beat them.

The lifelong Republican upset his party’s conservative base in the 1980s as a state senator, when he announced his support for abortion rights and opposition to offshore drilling.

“I’m not going to always be right,” Seymour told reporters in 1990. “Therefore, to expect one to never change a position on an issue … is too much to ask.”

Appointed to the U.S. Senate in 1990 after Pete Wilson was elected governor, Seymour lost his seat to Dianne Feinstein two years later and never ran for public office again. He remains the last California Republican to serve in that role.

“John was a guy who had great courage, he had great goodwill and a damn good mind,” Wilson, who was mayor of San Diego when he first met Seymour in the 1970s, said Monday. “He not only enjoyed a little combat, he was willing to give the time necessary for it.”

Seymour died on April 18 at his home in Carlsbad. He was 88, and the cause was Alzheimer’s disease, according to his son John.

As his party swung to the right, the moderate Seymour had no problem with becoming a political afterthought.

Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, center, poses with senators on Capitol Hill in 1991. With Thomas, from left to right, are Sens. John Seymour (R-Calif.), Larry Craig (R-Idaho), Bob Dole (R-Kan.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Connie Mack (R-Fla.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.), right front.

(John Duricka / Associated Press)

“If somewhere in a footnote, history should record my public service, I would hope that they record me as one who cared more for people than for policy, one who was a no-nonsense guy who worked hard for those in need of help, but who wasn’t hesitant to knock heads of bureaucrats in order to get things done,” he told supporters at the kickoff to his Senate campaign in 1992.

Born in Chicago, Seymour settled in Southern California in the 1960s after a stint in the Marine Corps. The UCLA graduate started a real estate business in Orange County as the region transformed from farmland to suburbia. After four years on the Anaheim City Council, he became mayor in 1978.

He quickly established the pragmatic persona that would enable his rise in California politics.

Months after Seymour’s mayoral win, Anaheim police officers stormed a Latino neighborhood and beat up dozens of people in what became known as the Little People’s Park riots. At community meetings, Seymour admitted his shock at learning about the poor relations between the police and many residents.

The mayor described his approach as: “Don’t sweep it under the rug; don’t look the other way. Admit that we have a problem.”

At the same time, Seymour was negotiating with the Los Angeles Rams to move from the Coliseum to Orange County. While other O.C. officials proposed a new stadium, he convinced the Anaheim City Council to convert Angel Stadium into a multipurpose venue that he argued would create “the greatest opportunity for Anaheim since Disneyland and the California Angels.”

The Rams moved to the city in 1980. Two years later, Seymour was off to Sacramento as a state senator.

He became head of the Republican Senate caucus in his first year and bucked the stereotype of an Orange County GOP firebrand by largely eschewing culture war issues in favor of matters like higher pay for teachers and government support for poor parents that sometimes aligned him with Democrats. That made him few friends in his own party, with many finding his personal ambition grating — he once wrote a letter to then-Gov. George Deukmejian asking that he be appointed state treasurer — and a distraction from getting more of their own elected to Sacramento.

Seymour made no apologies for selling himself as a public servant while simultaneously seeking more power.

“I like to do things,” Seymour told The Times in 1987. “I’ve been a doer all my life. I don’t like to sit around sucking my thumb. I like to resolve problems.”

That year, conservative opponents deposed him as caucus chair. They snickered two years later when he announced that while he personally opposed abortion, he now supported a woman’s right to choose.

Sen. John Seymour in 1991.

(Don Boomer / For The Times)

The impetus was a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave states more leeway to regulate abortion. Since California had legalized the procedure decades earlier, Seymour reasoned that he should respect women’s choices. He spoke with people who were for and against abortion, and with his own family, before going public with his change of heart.

Naysayers accused the state senator of trying to pick up female voters as he was campaigning for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor against fellow Orange County legislator Marian Bergeson, who opposed abortion. The charge was bogus, according to longtime Seymour campaign advisor Eileen Padberg.

“He didn’t get talked into it — he was an effing Marine,” she said. “He had to be convinced in anything before making a decision. In my career representing hundreds of candidates, John was one of very few who consistently would say about their stances, ‘This is going to kill me, but I gotta do it.’”

Seymour lost the primary to Bergeson. Six months later, he was once again one of the most powerful Republicans in the state when he took the Senate seat Wilson had just vacated to become governor.

Seymour’s son John recalled his father getting the call from Wilson while the family was vacationing in Shasta.

“Dad knew that it was a heavy, weighted responsibility, and that it would affect the family,” John said. “But we kids said, ‘You should do this, if it makes you happy.’”

Seymour became the second Anaheim Republican to serve in the position, after Thomas Kuchel in the 1950s and 1960s.

Wilson told The Times that he originally wanted to keep his friend in Sacramento to help push through his agenda. But the governor figured he needed a trusted voice in Washington even more.

“You’re looking for people who are not only friends but are capable and experienced and understand what’s necessary,” Wilson said. “And I don’t think I was doing him a great favor, because it was a tough time for the state.”

California was weathering its worst recession in decades and a punishing drought. The state’s vaunted defense industry was shedding tens of thousands of jobs with the closure of military bases after the end of the Cold War.

The daunting task didn’t faze Seymour.

“I mean, you gotta be good to succeed in the private sector,” he told The Times in 1992. “But if you’re gonna succeed in getting things done in the public sector, you gotta be better than that! That’s the challenge!”

Seymour spent most of his short time in the Senate in triage mode. He lobbied especially hard for California’s real estate industry, calling himself the “realtors’ senator.” But the diminutive man’s plainspoken demeanor failed to gain traction with California voters — a 1991 Times profile deemed him “the unknown senator.” And his one moment in the national spotlight became fodder for opponents.

In the spring of 1992, Los Angeles erupted in deadly riots after a jury acquitted four police officers who beat Rodney King. As he once did in Anaheim, Seymour went on a listening tour across affected neighborhoods, accompanying President George H.W. Bush.

This time, Seymour was accused of seeking photo opportunities a month before his primary election and being tone-deaf to the riot’s root causes by airing television ads stating, “We can’t be tough enough on lawbreakers.” White House aides ridiculed him in the press as the “Velcro senator.” His Republican opponent, Orange County Rep. William Dannemeyer, labeled him “Senator Flip Flop.”

Seymour easily beat Dannemeyer, then faced Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor whose narrow loss to Wilson in the governor’s race had earned her widespread name recognition. He received only 38% of the vote as Feinstein rode a Democratic wave that swept Bill Clinton into the White House and a record number of women into the U.S. Senate, including Barbara Boxer in California.

California Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer worked for Seymour at the time and saw his “regular guy” boss give “one of the kindest and most gracious concession speeches I’ve ever heard.”

“Then he went down to O.C. to be with his supporters,” Palmer said. “He was true to his roots.”

Wilson soon appointed Seymour to head the California Housing Finance Agency, which helps first-time home buyers access low-rate loans. He stayed in that role for two years before becoming chief executive of the Southern California Housing Development Corp. The Inland Empire nonprofit, which managed and built affordable housing complexes, is now known as National Community Renaissance, or National CORE.

John, who is the nonprofit’s vice president of acquisitions, said his father had no regrets about leaving politics behind because “housing was his passion. He saw it as a platform for people to grow. He would say, ‘Once you’re housed, you have a big, beautiful horizon to do anything.’”

Seymour did lean on his past to urge skeptical cities and counties to allow affordable housing projects, challenging them to be like him: do the right thing regardless of political cost.

“If in fact you’re going to try to change an environment in which a mayor or city council will do what they know in their hearts is right, you need to offset the political blow,” he said at a housing conference in Cathedral City in 2002. “I challenge you to form a coalition.”

Seymour is survived by his wife of 54 years, Judy; children John, Shad, Jeffrey, Barrett, Lisa Houser and Sarena Talbert; nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.