California mayor takes step toward governor's race

Newsom, a Democrat best known for challenging California's ban on same-sex marriage in 2004, is six months into his second and final term, which expires in 2011. Speculation over whether he would run to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has pursued him since before his re-election, but the mayor always deflected it by saying his attention remained fixed on the city.

The establishment of an exploratory committee will allow Newsom to start raising money and conducting polls. In announcing the committee Tuesday, Newsom's campaign consultant, Eric Jaye, said it demonstrated the mayor's custom of "listening to people before acting" and that would allow him to launch a campaign "from a position of knowledge and strength."

"He is looking forward to having a dialogue with Californians about their future in the coming few months," Jaye said in a statement.

If he ends up entering the race, one of the 40-year-old Newsom's opponents for the Democratic nomination could be a man 30 years his senior: Attorney General Jerry Brown, who previously served as governor from 1975 to 1983. Brown has said he's thinking about trying to reclaim the job. (He can run again because current term limits were not in place when he was governor).

Brown, 70, hasn't established an exploratory committee devoted to the governor's race, but he has changed the name of his campaign committee from Jerry Brown for Attorney General to Jerry Brown 2010. The committee reported taking in more than $200,000 in donations during the last two weeks.

Newsom has $250,000 left over from his mayoral campaign, but the new gubernatorial committee won't have to file its first campaign disclosure report until the end of the year, according to Jaye.

Newsom made headlines early in his first term when he directed city workers to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, three months before Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.

Some Democrats, including California's senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, blamed him for helping fuel a conservative backlash that propelled President Bush to re-election that same year, while some political observers speculated that he may have irrevocably doomed his chance to secure a statewide office.

With the passage of time, though, his position has seemed less revolutionary. The California Supreme Court, which four years earlier had nullified the gay marriages performed in San Francisco, struck down the state's ban on same-sex nuptials in May.