If Gov. Gavin Newsom couldn’t write a book that would fly off the shelves, he was willing to use PAC money to boost sales artificially. It turns out the memoir falsely earned a place on a prestigious best-seller list.
It is a sort of open secret that politicians’ books often do not sell well, particularly from Democrats. Every politician who held or ran for high office in America seems to write a book or several, all of which find publishers, even though most Americans have no interest in such “literature.” This would not be the first time a high-profile egotist purchased many copies of his or her own book, but it is rather astonishing just how many Newsom bought using his political action committee’s (PAC) funds. It accounted for the overwhelming majority of the book’s sales.
Newsom wrote his supporters, “Make a contribution of ANY AMOUNT today and I will send you a copy" of his Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery. And according to The New York Times, 67,000 of the California governor’s supporters did in fact send donations in response to this message, receiving books that accounted for two-thirds of the memoir’s entire print sales.
The memoir appeared on The Times’s own best-seller list, but ironically, that same leftist outlet is now exposing the reason the book should never have made it to that list.
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The Times continued:
On Wednesday, new federal records revealed that Mr. Newsom’s political action committee paid $1,561,875 to buy and distribute copies of his book through the donation program.
A spokesman for Mr. Newsom, Nathan Click, said his PAC, the Campaign for Democracy Committee, wound up netting more money from contributors attracted by the book offer than the cost of 67,000 copies of the book that the PAC provided. Mr. Newsom does not receive royalties for books sold through the program, he said… Mr. Newsom’s team had hailed his book sales back in March, including a map in a news release showing all the sales by location across the country.
It turns out the 97,400 copies sold were not such a cause for celebration — although Newsom’s spokesman is still trying to frame this as a positive. “We were thrilled with the response,” Click insisted, referring to the invitation to donors. “Our goal was to deepen the relationship between him [Newsom] and the millions of folks who have already expressed support for Governor Newsom’s work. And as it turns out, the tactic more than paid for itself.”
But the fact remains that none of those people bought copies directly. They only decided the book was worthwhile when they were invited to give a donation of any amount. Not only that, but Newsom‘s team actually had to offer the book as an enticement on two separate occasions to get a satisfying number of people to respond, with his first offer coming in November after he wasted a great deal of money forcing through his outrageous gerrymandering.
[New York Times:] The governor’s PAC made two payments totaling more than $1.5 million to the Porchlight Book Company, listing the purpose as “books at cost.” The money was by far the biggest expenditure for the governor’s federal PAC in the first quarter of 2026.
Back in November, Newsom wrote, “We just spent a bunch of money on passing Prop 50, so now I need to refill that coffers at my Campaign for Democracy for the fights ahead — including helping other states pass redistricting to stop Trump from rigging the next election.” The most ironic part is that Newsom’s gerrymandering is actually the election rigging.
The disastrous California governor offered the memoir again to donors in January. The Times noted that former Vice President Kamala Harris has also used the tactic of buying many copies of her own book and offering it to potential donors. Democrats really are incapable of achieving victories that are not fake.
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