Gavin Newsom has raised more than $5 million for a presidential campaign he insists does not exist.
Now he found a way to bring that campaign inside conversations that have nothing to do with politics.
The operation only works if the people on the receiving end never realize who wrote what they're hearing.
Gavin Newsom's 2028 Campaign for Democracy PAC Dares Journalists to Call This Propaganda
Starting this week, Gavin Newsom's Campaign for Democracy PAC launched weekly Tuesday training sessions to recruit volunteers it calls "Messengers" – people who receive campaign-approved content and distribute it into online communities where politics don't belong.
The tool is a web app called Echo.
The email advertising the program tells recruits the task is not forwarding talking points or propaganda.
Recruits are told to rephrase Newsom's talking points in their own words and drop them into family text chains and neighborhood Facebook groups.
The email explained why: "A lot of those spaces aren't political at all. That's the point."
Los Angeles political consultant Matthew Klink told the New York Post: "The Left has this preoccupation of making everything political and this is carrying it to another extreme. We joke that families are already divided by talking politics at the dinner table – this is that on steroids."
Klink added: "Gavin Newsom will be whoever you want him to be to elect him president."
A spokesperson for Newsom called the program "smart political organizing: empowering real people to persuade the people they know best."
The people receiving those texts in family group chats this weekend will call it something different.
The Same PAC Behind Gavin Newsom's FBI Investigation Fundraising Is Running This
The money funding this operation came straight from Newsom's FBI investigation announcement.
Newsom's Campaign for Democracy PAC raised $250,000 after the governor announced he and his wife were under federal investigation – a quarter-million dollars generated off a fundraising email that cast the probe as a Trump political hit job.
He offered no evidence the White House directed the investigation when he made that claim.
The money came in anyway – almost entirely from small-dollar individual donors who FEC records show flooded the PAC within days of the announcement.
The same PAC now funds the Tuesday training sessions targeting Democrat primary battlegrounds.
Newsom's Messenger program registration page lists the Nevada gubernatorial race and New Hampshire Senate race as targets – both early states in a Democrat presidential primary.
Meanwhile, Newsom's former chief of staff Dana Williamson was indicted on 23 federal counts – fraud, conspiracy, and tax crimes – after federal prosecutors say she stole $225,000 in campaign funds and wrote off $1 million in luxury handbags and first-class travel as business expenses.
FBI agents intercepted communications from inside Newsom's own office during the investigation.
Williamson sat on California's government payroll for an additional $62,000 in vacation payouts even after being placed on leave while under federal scrutiny.
Newsom went on offense. He called it political persecution and cashed the fundraising checks.
The Astroturfing Playbook Democrats Borrowed From Moscow
The operation has a name that predates Newsom by four decades.
Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen coined the term "astroturfing" in 1985 to describe what happens when centrally funded political operations disguise themselves as spontaneous grassroots activity.
Russia ran a version of it through its Internet Research Agency and got Senate hearings and federal indictments for the trouble.
Newsom's version differs in one key way: he's using real Americans instead of bots.
A family member or neighbor receiving one of these texts has no reason to suspect the sender rehearsed the message in a Tuesday training session before typing it out.
The PAC email spells it out directly: "The person already in that room is the only one who can get a message in, and the only one who knows how to say it so it doesn't feel out of place."
Real organizing happens when people spontaneously act on convictions they actually hold.
What Newsom built runs scripted talking points through the most trusted channel in American life – the family group chat – while the man who built it keeps declining to confirm he's running for president.
Somewhere right now, a volunteer is practicing how to sound like they're not.
Sources:
- Josh Koehn, "Gavin Newsom's frisky tactic to win over group chats with cheesy one-liner ahead of 2028 presidential run," New York Post, August 6, 2026.
- Nick Naulty, "Ex-Newsom Aide Facing FBI Probe Netted $62,000 In Taxpayer Cash – After Leaving Office," Daily Caller, 2026.
- Federal Election Commission filings, Campaign for Democracy PAC, Committee ID C00836346, 2026.
