(04-21) 08:45 PDT -- Aiming to stake his claim to the tech-savvy young voters who helped elect President Obama, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, 41, today took to the new media to formally announce he's running for governor - by directly addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters simultaneously via YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
to the same old tired ideas and expect the same result," the Democrat told supporters in his three-minute YouTube announcement, part of the unprecedented "virtual fly-around" campaign announcement done entirely in the new media.
The gubernatorial candidate's announcement video, which premiered on his Web page, GavinNewsom.com, utilizes three languages - English, Spanish and Mandarin - as well as images of solar technology, schools and health care facilities. It argued that Newsom - now in his second term as the city's mayor - has created jobs, helped San Francisco establish a rainy day reserve and budgetary "sound fiscal policy," and has tackled the challenge of providing universal health care to the uninsured.
In his announcement, Newsom says his record on issues like environmental and green technology issues, health care and government spending "isn't conservative or progressive. It's just plain smart for everyone."
His advisers hope the unusual new media-based campaign rollout reaches an estimated half-million computer users in the first 24 hours - which would underscore what Newsom has called a "2.0 campaign" for the 2010 Democratic nomination. A key target will be the "millennial" voters, those technology-bred Californians born between 1982 and 2003 - part of the largest and most diverse generation in history - who helped boost Obama to the presidency, his advisers said.
Though other political candidates in California and nationwide have employed various new media outlets to bolster their campaigns - Hillary Rodham Clinton's famed YouTube campaign announcement or Obama's unprecedented use of Facebook, both in the 2008 presidential campaign - Newsom's team said his approach today represented a landmark because of its scope and variety.
"No candidate has ever used all of these tools at once - and it had to happen with a candidate from the Bay Area. This is the capital of new media," said Newsom's political consultant Eric Jaye, who noted that San Francisco-based Twitter, Palo Alto-based Facebook and San Bruno-based YouTube, now a subsidiary of Google, are all located in the region.
Jaye said the mayor has amassed some 270,000 followers on Twitter - second only to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - as well as 40,000 on Facebook, 150,000 names on his campaign e-mail lists, and reaches thousands of others with his regular blogs on the Huffington Post and Daily Kos, two progressive Web sites.
Newsom is expected to bolster the "virtual" campaign with some more traditional face-to-face politics this week - holding a meeting today with employees at the Palo Alto headquarters of Facebook, the social network site, as well as a press conference.
Later in the week, he's expected to hold town hall events in Fresno and Bakersfield, as well as campaign events in Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego.
Garry South, a senior adviser to Newsom - and a veteran California consultant who helped the last Democratic governor, Gray Davis, win statewide election twice - said that in the 21st century and in the wake of the Obama campaign's groundbreaking use of technology, announcing a campaign through the standard fly-around "is passe."
"The Obama campaign changed politics in America forever, from top to bottom. And anyone who tries to use the old model will find, like Hillary Clinton did, that it doesn't work anymore," South said. "We're going to take this campaign for governor to places that no other race has gone."
With about 13 months to go before the 2010 gubernatorial primaries, Newsom - by formally jumping into the race today - confirms what has long been expected regarding his political ambitions in the nation's most populous state. The mayor has been exploring a candidacy for governor since July, traveling up and down the state meeting voters and raising money.
Newsom's announcement comes just days before the state Democratic convention will convene in Sacramento, where more than 1,000 delegates are expected to hear from potential 2010 gubernatorial candidates.
Those include state Attorney General Jerry Brown, 71, who has already served two terms as governor, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, 56, who was only recently re-elected to a second term. Neither has made a formal announcement for the race.
Democratic Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, 64, has already announced his campaign for governor, but he has also strongly suggested he is considering a run for the 10th Congressional District seat soon to be vacated by Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, who has been tapped for a role in the Defense Department.
Among Republicans, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman - two wealthy Silicon Valley-based technology executives - are still raising money through exploratory committees, as is former San Jose Rep. Tom Campbell, who is also from Silicon Valley.
Newsom, in the YouTube announcement that announces his formal bid, indirectly takes a jab at some of his competitors, suggesting the state is sorely in need of fresh blood - and fresh ideas - to tackle its myriad economic and social problems.
The mayor tells voters that the state's leaders must "stop looking backward and start looking for solutions."
Newsom told The Chronicle in an interview that his campaign message will also underscore his lengthy experience as a businessman.
The mayor, who co-founded the PlumpJack Group - a winery that has expanded to include hotel and restaurant interests - said he has "created jobs and a business plan," met payroll for hundreds of employees and understands the fiscal realities of doing business in the state.
"I'm taking that real experience into the public realm," he said. "If voters want a hardheaded pragmatist, I've lived in that world."
But as the top executive in a city considered one of the nation's most liberal bastions, Newsom also faces considerable challenges in his coming race.
His actions as mayor to facilitate same-sex marriage in San Francisco have become the focus of years of legal wrangling - and his statements that gay marriage, "like it or not," would be the law of the land were used to good effect in ads that supported Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage and was approved by voters in November 2008. The city's sanctuary city policy - which has been widely criticized by Republicans, including Whitman - may also be fodder in the campaign.
E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.
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