The devil, as they say, is in the details. And in California, those details are starting to smell worse than a diaper pail in July.
Governor Gavin Newsom finds himself neck-deep in accusations of corruption after funneling $20 million in taxpayer money into a nonprofit organization run by an executive who sits on the board of his wife’s organization. The initiative, dubbed “Golden State Start,” promises to provide free diapers to newborns in hospitals throughout the state. It launched with great fanfare ahead of Mother’s Day, promoted as a partnership between California and the Los Angeles-based Baby2Baby nonprofit.
But scratch beneath the surface, and what emerges is a troubling picture of how the organization was selected and its uncomfortably close proximity to Newsom’s political and personal network.
The math alone raises eyebrows. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton put it plainly: “If you take the number of diapers they’re planning to send out and the amount of money that he’s spending on it, it’s 50 cents for each one, which is like 100 times more expensive if you just bought them in Costco. But where’s the money coming from? Us.”
Here is where the connections get interesting. Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, co-founded the California Partners Project, which helped facilitate this partnership. The organization aims to increase women in leadership positions. Noble enough on its face. But Norah Weinstein, the co-CEO of Baby2Baby, sits on Siebel Newsom’s board of directors. Kelly Sawyer Patricof, the other co-CEO, also runs the organization.
Critics are calling this glaring evidence of the sweetheart relationships that have become all too common between state-funded programs and affiliated nonprofit networks. The question is not whether these relationships exist, but whether they serve the public interest or private ones.
“Instead of taking our money, putting into some scheme that benefits their friends and cronies,” Hilton argued, “why don’t they let us just keep more of our money in the first place so we can decide how to spend our money?”
The cozy arrangements extend beyond just the diaper deal. Patricof’s family ties have drawn additional scrutiny, including her marriage to film producer Jamie Patricof, whose father, Alan Patricof, is a longtime Democratic donor with deep ties to the Clinton-era political network. The connections form a web that would make a spider jealous.
Some $7.4 million has already been approved for the diaper program, with another $12.5 million proposed for future funding. That is real money, taxpayer money, flowing through channels that lead back to the governor’s inner circle.
This is not about diapers. It is about transparency, accountability, and whether public funds are being distributed based on merit or connections. California families deserve answers about why their tax dollars are being spent at what appears to be a significant markup, and why the organizations receiving those funds happen to be run by people in the governor’s orbit.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has covered politics for any length of time. Programs are created with the best stated intentions, money flows to connected organizations, and the public is left to wonder whether they are getting their money’s worth or simply funding a network of political allies.
Newsom owes Californians a full accounting of how Baby2Baby was selected, what the actual costs are, and why this arrangement serves the public better than more transparent alternatives. Until those answers come, the questions will continue to pile up, much like those expensive diapers.
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