Gavin Newsom — the hair apparent to the Democrat presidential nomination — just got caught running what might be the most embarrassing book scam in modern political history. His PAC, the Campaign for Democracy Committee, purchased approximately 67,000 copies of his memoir through a bulk vendor called Porchlight Book Company. The book’s total sales? 97,400 copies. His own political operation bought nearly two-thirds of every copy sold.
Imagine writing a book so bad that even with Hollywood connections, Sacramento’s full backing, and a last name that opens every door in California — you STILL have to buy your own copies. With other people’s money, no less.
The book is called *Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.* And boy, did we discover something — just not what Gavin had in mind. The “discovery” here is that without his PAC acting as his biggest customer, this memoir would’ve landed somewhere between your dentist’s self-published poetry collection and that novel your aunt wrote about her cat.
Here’s how the grift worked. The Campaign for Democracy Committee ran a promotion: donate “ANY AMOUNT” and we’ll send you a free copy of Gavin’s book. Any amount. A dollar. Fifty cents. Whatever you’ve got in your couch cushions. The PAC then spent $1,561,875 buying books “at cost” through Porchlight and shipping them out to anyone who tossed a few bucks into the hat.
So donors thought they were supporting Gavin’s political future, and instead their money went to propping up his vanity project. Classic Sacramento.
Newsom’s team, naturally, tried to spin this as a genius strategy. His spokesperson actually said — and we’re quoting here — “We were thrilled with the response. Our goal was to deepen the relationship between him and the millions of folks who have already expressed support for Governor Newsom’s work.”
Deepen the relationship! By mailing people a book nobody asked for! That’s like your ex sending you a framed photo of themselves and calling it “relationship building.”
The New York Times broke the story, which tells you just how bad this looks — when the Times is willing to embarrass a top Democrat, the facts must be absolutely undeniable. Even Mediaite piled on. And Libs of TikTok turned the whole thing into a viral moment that had conservatives howling.
Now, Newsom’s people were quick to point out that he received “no royalties” from the PAC-distributed copies. Oh, how noble! The man didn’t personally profit from the $1.5 million book-buying spree conducted by his own political action committee using donor funds. He just got to walk around claiming he was a bestselling author. He just got the media hits and the credibility boost and the talking point for his 2028 presidential campaign. But no royalties! What a saint.
Here’s a fun detail they probably wish hadn’t made it into the coverage: during his promotional tour, Newsom mentioned he scored a 960 on the SAT and has dyslexia. Look, we’re not going to make fun of anyone’s learning disability. But maybe — just maybe — if writing isn’t exactly your strong suit, the move is to NOT write a memoir and then have your political donors foot the bill when nobody buys it.
This is the guy who wants to be president. This is the Democrat bench. A man who couldn’t sell his own book to his own party without laundering donor cash through a bulk book vendor. The Campaign for Democracy Committee spent a million and a half dollars to create the illusion that Democrats were excited about Gavin Newsom.
They weren’t. The numbers don’t lie. Strip out the PAC purchases and you’re looking at roughly 30,000 organic sales. For a sitting governor of the largest state in the country. A guy who’s been on every cable news show for the past five years. A guy the media has been grooming as the future of the Democrat Party since he was mayor of San Francisco.
Thirty thousand copies. That’s it. That’s what the free market thought of Gavin Newsom’s life story.
And they started shipping copies in November — months before the official February release — because apparently they knew they needed a head start to manufacture buzz that didn’t actually exist. When your pre-launch strategy is “give the book away before anyone can see it flopped,” you know you’re in trouble.
We’ve seen this playbook before, by the way. Politicians buy their own books to inflate numbers, climb the bestseller lists, and then wave the “bestselling author” credential around like it means something. But Newsom took it to a whole new level. His PAC wasn’t just padding the numbers — it WAS the numbers. Remove the PAC and the book barely exists.
This is the Democrat Party in 2026. They can’t win real elections, so they manufacture fake polls. They can’t generate real enthusiasm, so they manufacture fake book sales. They can’t produce real leaders, so they manufacture fake bestsellers and hope nobody checks the receipts.
Well, somebody checked the receipts. And it turns out Gavin Newsom’s biggest fan is Gavin Newsom’s own bank account — funded by the suckers who donated to his PAC thinking they were saving democracy.
Save your money, folks. Democracy doesn’t need saving. It needs fewer politicians who spend a million and a half dollars pretending people like them.