As blazes continue to ravage parts of California, the heir apparent of the Democratic Party has found himself at the centre of a political firestorm stoked by rivals and Donald Trump.
On January 10, footage emerged on Sky News of California Governor Gavin Newsom being chased down by a local resident who was demanding answers on how the wildfire crisis was being handled.
"Governor, please tell me what you are going to do with the President right now?" the woman asked during the exchange, which has been widely shared on X, formerly Twitter.
Newsom told the woman he and the President were getting the "resources to help rebuild" the state.
California is the fifth largest economy in the world and is culturally quite different to the rest of the country.
The home of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, it is the economic heartland of two innovative industries: film and cinema as well as big tech.
In recent months, Newsom has projected an aura of youthful confidence and glamour, running California like a small nation that was expected to become the engine of the resistance to the 47th president Donald Trump, one where he could keep rehearsing for the job of the 48th.
"The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack — and we won't sit idle," Newsom said in a statement shortly after Trump's re-election in November.
"California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive."
It seemed inevitable that Newsom would one day run for president.
He has the ambition, the resume, the connections, the picture perfect family and until now, a reputation for getting things done.
He was expected to emerge from the shadow of national electoral defeat and become a new standard-bearer for his party.
But the Los Angeles fire crisis gives both Donald Trump and the governor’s rivals within the Democratic party fuel to use against Newsom just as he arrives at the foot of the final step to presidential power.
Who is Gavin Newsom?
Gavin Christopher Newsom's speedy rise to the position of California governor, and more recently as a possible contender in the 2028 US presidential election, has been decades in the making.
Newsom's father, William, was a third-generation San Franciscan and a state appeals court judge, paving the way for his son's future interest in politics.
"My father taught me everything I know about being an activist," Newsom wrote on Facebook in 2017.
"He taught me to never walk away from a fight when you're standing up for what you believe in."
After earning a degree in political science at Santa Clara University, Newsom became an entrepreneur and started his first business aged 25.
PlumpJack Associates was a wine shop astutely positioned in San Francisco's main shopping and dining district in Fillmore Street.
Newsom established the store with billionaire oil heir William Getty. His father was a close friend and associate of William's father, Gordon Getty, after serving as financial adviser to the Getty business.
The wine venture was the beginning of a partnership that eventually spanned several businesses, including boutique hotels, wineries, bars and restaurants.
Within a decade, Newsom had gone from cash strapped entrepreneur to a fully-fledged millionaire.
"He's a big player in a big state. This guy's connected," Professor of political history and international security and presidential scholar Joe Siracusa said.
"He's in with the smart money, Silicon Valley, and he's in with the farmers. He's connected not just through family, but through his business associates.
"His political career has worn well with the different kinds of communities [needed] to be elected governor or anything else in the state of California."
Newsom's ties to old money and power in San Francisco may have helped drive his early successes but they remain a subject of intense scrutiny.
His critics have painted him as a son of wealth and privilege and while the governor does not deny his father's friends are connected, he has attempted to shed more light on his upbringing.
"…My life was working. Mum crying at night because she's struggling and stressed out," he told the Associated Press in 2018.
Newsom eventually pivoted from the world of business to politics, taking up a position with California Democratic power broker Willie Brown before he was appointed to the city's Parking and Traffic Commission.
At 36, he became San Francisco's youngest mayor in a century, surprising many in his first year in office by winning over opponents with a slate of popular initiatives.
His decision to direct city officials to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples parachuted him onto the national stage and made him a polarising figure in the intense debate that followed.
The then unknown mayor became embroiled in a public battle with then-President George W Bush, who called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Dubbed by magazines as the "next Bill Clinton", Newsom continued to champion other social issues, including homelessness, and healthcare initiatives.
But just as his star was rising, a photo of him posing for Harper's Bazaar magazine with his then-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle hit newsstands around the country.
You might remember Guilfoyle now as a former Trump adviser and the rumoured ex-girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. She is also reportedly Trump's choice to be ambassador for Greece.
In the image, Newsom is dressed in a designer suit and seen holding Guilfoyle on a luxurious rug in socialite Ann Getty's Pacific Heights home.
"I was totally surprised when I saw him on the floor," the magazine's reporter, Nancy Collins, told New York Magazine.
"How many politicians curl up with their wife on the floor for Harper's Bazaar? It was kind of a sexy picture in terms of politics. There they were, kind of Mark Antony and Cleopatra."
Three years later, Newsom was again at the centre of controversy after admitting to having an affair with the wife of his former campaign manager as he was divorcing Guilfoyle.
Observers believed at the time it would overshadow his political ambitions, just as the photo shoot had, but it didn't stop his dizzying climb through the ranks of the Democratic Party or from becoming California governor.
Newsom married American documentary filmmaker and actress Jennifer Siebel Newsom in 2008.
Widely seen as a charismatic and energetic leader, he is now a prominent and popular figure on the national stage.
And only a few months ago, he was briefly spruiked as a possible contender for the 2024 presidential race.
The Democratic Party's heir apparent
As George Clooney took to the opinion pages of the New York Times and ratcheted up pressure on Joe Biden to step back and let someone else take the Democratic Party to the election, names started to fly around.
Kamala Harris was the obvious choice, but would anyone else dare to challenge her?
Newsom kept his powder dry, opting to let Harris have the moment. He's on record in 1998 telling a reporter he wanted to be president of the United States, and he has made very strategic moves ever since to get closer to the oval office.
Making his run outside of a primary only to go up against a resurgent Donald Trump was not to be part of that calculation.
So as Kamala Harris made her concession speech to the crowd at Howard University, the question then became: who next?
Politically, Newsom does a few jobs for a Democratic Party suspended and suffering in an identity crisis.
"He's progressive. But he does appeal to the business community as well because he's a small businessman," Dr Siracusa said.
Newsome is an accomplished campaigner from a big state who has used his platform and appearances on national television to make the case against Mr Trump and for the Democratic Party.
California is of course safely blue, but homegrown senator Harris performed worse in 2024 than Hilary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
In November's general election, all but one very small Californian county swung towards Trump.
The election left the Democratic Party very much in need of a hero who could usher in a new era for the party, one where lessons had been learnt and in four years' time, it could emerge victorious as the Trump era drew to a close.
"In America, at this critical time, the Democrats need a leader. And in America, like Australia, perception is almost the same thing as reality," Dr Siracusa said.
Dr Siracusa said Newsom had been well placed to become that leader, but the crisis of the past fortnight had delivered him "a number of problems".
"When you see on air famous movie stars get stuck into this guy, indirectly that is, 'What happened to the Palisades Reservoir?', 'How come the fire department is underpaid?', … we had one of the Kardashian girls complaining prisoners are only paid $US1 an hour [to fight the fires]," he said.
"When you get that kind of political fire, you have to deal with it. He's in a very special area, he was poised to become the next president of the United States.
"He can kiss the White House goodbye unless he is able to manage his way out of this."
How the fires changed everything for Newsom
Within days of the wildfires sweeping through LA on January 7, it became clear the raging infernos would bring about one of the biggest natural disasters in California's history.
After suffering months without any significant rainfall, Southern California was particularly vulnerable when forceful Santa Ana winds collided with extremely dry brush this month, providing the perfect kindling for small sparks to turn into multiple, fast moving blazes.
Firefighters have worked around the clock to stymie the spread of flames across different parts of LA despite water shortages, changing weather conditions and apocalyptic scenes.
But as they have performed their lifesaving work, residents have started to wonder at the severity and scale of the tragedy unfolding before them and whether their governor had let them down.
Newsom might not be able to control the weather, but as the leader of a state very vulnerable to extreme fire disasters, he can prepare for it.
America's political heavyweights have also started playing the blame game.
It is the nature of politics that opposing sides seek out, and exploit, the perceived failures of their rivals. That is, after all, how political parties jostle for power.
When tragedy strikes, especially when it attracts national and international attention, calls for unity and bipartisanship can quickly evaporate in the midst of political point scoring.
So it was not surprising that the leader of progressive California, a Democrat who has long championed social and environmental causes, found himself under attack by Donald Trump as fires raged across the state.
"One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It's ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Newsom and the president-elect have often found themselves at odds since his first term, when the former president christened the Californian Governor with a derogatory nickname and lobbed criticisms over his homeless policies.
But the latest string of attacks carry extra weight on the eve of Trump's entry into the White House and the Republican take over of the federal response to the wildfires.
While many of Trump's criticisms are rooted in misinformation, centring on a 2020 proposal to divert water away from Northern California to farmland further south, it's not yet clear if he will use them to prevent aid from flowing through to the state when he is in office.
Joe Biden has promised the federal government will cover 100 per cent of disaster assistance costs to California for the next 180 days, but Trump has a long and messy history of withholding aid as a political tool against Democrats.
"We know Trump is not afraid to do that. In fact, he relishes those kinds of opportunities," says Emma Shortis, US expert and director of the Australia Institute's International & Security Affairs Program.
"…He uses events like this all the time to his political advantage."
The president-elect has attacked Newsom over his refusal to sign a "water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water" to put out the fires.
In 2020, Trump sought to divert water away from Northern California to farmland further south but Newsom opposed it and California's attorney-general blocked the measure, citing potential harm to endangered fish species.
Experts told the BBC the issue "has no bearing on the current availability of water for firefighting and Newsom has called any connection between the fish and the fire "inexcusable because it's inaccurate".
But as the political fallout plays out, stoking bizarre conspiracy theories and disinformation online, the wildfire crisis has exposed weaknesses in the state's infrastructure and governance.
Problems with the equipment needed to fight fires, adequate funding for emergency fire departments and the safety net of insurance have attracted scrutiny.
"The Democrats, are partly kind of responsible for the situation that they find themselves in where the state and institutions of the state have been so hollowed out by decades of neglect," Dr Shortis said.
"…And so elected officials find themselves in this double bind, where people want the state to play a role, they're desperate for leadership, they're desperate for government infrastructure and support. But [they] also have no trust in those institutions …[which] are also facing constant attacks from the far right as well.
"So it's an incredibly difficult political situation for Democrats to face, but they've also been complicit in creating that situation."
Newsom has already announced an independent state investigation into the loss of water pressure and unavailability of water from a key reservoir during the wildfires.
The state's largest reservoirs are almost all currently above the historic average levels for this time of the year, but the 442 million litre Santa Ynez Reservoir, which is located near Pacific Palisades, was closed for maintenance and empty when the fire broke out.
Its closure may have limited the water system’s ability to provide consistent pressure for firefighters, but a former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said it is unlikely to have made a significant difference in the battle against the Palisades Fire.
"People ain't stupid. They can see a full reservoir and they can see an empty reservoir. And it's been sitting there since February, when the water [ran] out. Why? I mean that should have been resolved. Newsom could have cut through that … he's the boss," Dr Siracusa said.
"Now that he's being attacked for not getting ahead of the problem. You know he can't stop these things, but you can fill up the Palisades reservoir."
The political problems for Newsom won't just come from across the aisle. His Democratic rivals will be watching.
"The criticism of this guy is going to come within a Democratic Party from the political platforms or the political operatives who work for these other people. So they see him as the front runner and they're going to use this fire and the reaction to it, to sideline him," Dr Siracuse said.
At the moment, the narrative is one of alleged ineptitude on the part of city and state officials and Trump is doing his best to stoke ideological criticism too.
"He's got a team. They could see that this looks really bad and it looks like he has no control over the people below him," Dr Siracusa said.
"He has to micromanage the narrative and he has to persuade people … he's done everything possible to make it right.
"Americans like redemption stories. They like these people who can come back. And I think that every word uttered by Governor Newson right now is being measured by his team in terms of how it will be interpreted."
As the independent investigation attempts to root out answers, the governor will have to navigate growing anger over California's approach to the crisis while also orchestrating a rapidly evolving wildfire response.
What now for Newsom
In a natural disaster, messaging is everything.
Since the outbreak of wildfires, Newsom has attempted to get on the front foot of the criticism coming at him from all sides.
He has regularly posted about the resources California is deploying to fight the blazes, heavily campaigned to secure resources for the state and joined US President Joe Biden for a briefing from fire officials last Sunday.
He has also invited Trump to visit and called on him not to prevent valuable aid from flowing in, as he has done in the past.
But given the scale of the tragedy unfolding in California, there will be inevitable political blowback for Democrats and Newsom.
"I think the consequences for Democrats, of course, go beyond electoral politics when they are facing an opponent in Donald Trump and the Republican Party that is so effective at weaponising these kinds of crises to redirect blame from where it really belongs," Dr Shortis said.
The next general election is four years away, the midterms just two.
If you look at the calendar, it might seem as if the Democratic Party and Newsom have time to recover, but in the biggest election machine in the world, realistically, hopefuls are always fundraising, always campaigning.
For the Californians who have lost loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods, a few years will do little to dull the pain.
"[Newsom] is trying to say he is overwhelmed by nature, and indeed he is overwhelmed by nature, … but he is going to have to deal with rebuilding these places," Dr Siracusa said.
Newsom has long used his political positions in California to prepare for the role he really wants.
Now, a perfect storm of weather events underwritten by alleged administrative failures have delivered him his biggest test.
As analysts have pointed out, whether or not Newsom can recover is likely to depend very much on his ability to help his community do the same.
