California is in a political fix. Not one of the declared candidates for governor has put together a strong campaign, developed broad support, or showed themselves capable of handling the immense internal challenges and external threats our state faces.
What should we do about this dismal race? Here’s a radical idea. Why don’t we identify California’s most capable and effective politician, the person most likely to become a great governor? And then why don’t we draft her into the campaign and rally the state behind the old-fashioned idea of hiring the best person for the job?
Crazy, I know! But for the past year, your lunatic columnist has been pursuing the concept, asking Californians who know our state and its government best:
If you could choose anyone in California government to be the next governor of California, whom would you pick?
The answer I get most often is a one-word name: Buffy.
Not Buffy Summers, Hollywood’s favorite fictional vampire slayer.
Buffy Wicks, age 48, who grew up in the Sierra foothills of Placer County and is now in her fourth two-year term as a state assemblymember, representing Oakland, El Cerrito, Richmond and other East Bay communities.
While this Buffy is little known to the public, many people in state government circles believe that she’s California’s smartest and most able politician.
In Capitol Weekly’s 2025 survey of California legislators, staffers and lobbyists, Wicks was ranked as the best member of the Assembly by far (with twice as many votes as any other member). She was ranked top three for “Best Consensus Builder,” and she edged out San Francisco state Sen. Scott Wiener in overall rankings for “Best Member of the Legislature.”
The respect for Wicks reflects the breadth of her skills. She’s got good political instincts (she worked for Obama’s presidential campaigns), understands how institutions and lobbies function (she knows when to pick up the phone to call a labor official or CEO), and displays unusually strong command of technical and legal details (at the Obama White House, she worked on the Affordable Care Act). Colleagues view her as transparent and forthcoming.
“She is usually the smartest person in the room, but doesn’t act like it,” a Republican legislator told me.
What insiders most appreciate about this Buffy is her bravery. She is known for taking on high-conflict issues and complicated problems, and then brokering compromises between powerful interests that have been deadlocked for years. That’s exactly the sort of thing the best governors do.
The deals she closes break new ground. With her landmark 2022 bill, AB 2011, she shifted California’s focus from how to plan new housing to actually building it — in part by cutting red tape and opening up commercial land for residential projects. In 2024, she forged a compromise between tech companies Google and Meta and media outlets to fund California journalism. (Unfortunately, the current governor is blocking the actual funding — maybe a new governor can fix that).
She enters this election year at the top of her game. In 2025, she pushed through legislation to exempt certain infill housing projects from the California Environmental Quality Act, a move that bypassed decades of political gridlock. She also authored AB 1340, which established frameworks for the unionization of gig workers, and pushed through the Digital Age Assurance Act, improving child safety online, with the support of child advocates, big tech companies and lawmakers of both parties.
All of this makes her a masterful legislator, but her name has never appeared on lists of potential governors. Some might object that she’s not a big enough personality for the big stage of the California governorship, especially with Donald Trump fighting the state from the White House. Our last three governors, after all, have been a movie star, a former governor who had run for president for three times, and a former San Francisco mayor who had twice been elected statewide.
But California doesn’t need another big political celebrity to appear in the media, or to fight Trump. Newsom will be running for president. He can handle the Trump bashing, while Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta handles the legal fight.
What California is missing is excellent, focused, creative governance — not just for the benefit of its people but also as an answer to a Trump administration that uses California’s failures to justify punishing Californians. A Gov. Wicks is the state’s best bet for that kind of leadership.
There is one problem with my Draft Buffy plan: Wicks herself. She has shown no desire to run for governor, which shows her level-headedness and good judgment. She has a great job in the legislature, and big-time momentum to pursue ambitious 2026 legislation that include an affordable housing bond, innovations to make housing construction faster and cheaper, and more protections for our digital lives.
Plus, she’s a wife and mother of two young daughters. Becoming governor, in such an ugly time of politics, would make life much harder for her family.
Getting her to run might require Newsom to get off the sidelines of the campaign to succeed him, and convince Wicks to run. If I were him, I’d form a posse that included President Obama, Vice President Harris, U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, the retiring Nancy Pelosi, and other key Democratic players — and then show up at Wicks’ house and refuse to leave until she agreed to run.
Such support for Wicks would be necessary to clear the large field of weak Democratic candidates, and thus avoid the catastrophe of a Republican governor allied with the California hater in the White House. It’s no exaggeration to say that electing a Trump-supporting California governor would be the most spectacular defeat for freedom and democracy since Paris fell in 1940.
Let me make one thing clear: I’m championing Wicks based on today’s political realities and the informed opinions of others. I don’t know her personally. And if I alone could choose any new governor, I’d pick a brilliant operator from local government — like former West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon or Salinas city manager Rene Mendez — in the hopes that they’d decentralize state authority and funding, and empower our cities to become the most effective governments in the world.
But Wicks is the best person to govern the state we have now. And I take comfort in her experience as a community organizer — in opposing the Iraq war and in Obama’s 2008 campaign — to engage Californians in fighting for the state’s future. If California is going to survive this terrible moment and thrive — either as an American state, or as a new republic of its own — we the people will have to lead the way.
Wicks can help us get there. Draft Buffy now.
Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square and is founder-publisher of the planetary publication Democracy Local.
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