When California Governor Gavin Newsom’s TikTok account posted a “f*** around and find out” meme aimed at the Department of Defense, it wasn’t just a bold move—it was perfectly timed.
The post dropped alongside the state’s announcement that it was suing the Trump administration over its June 7 order to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles for immigration raids. The 26-year-old staffer behind the account had been sitting on the idea of using that meme for weeks, waiting for the perfect moment to deploy it. That same week in June, Governor Newsom's posts generated 79.5 million TikTok impressions—including 17.2 million on the governor’s video address alone.
That viral hit wasn’t a fluke, but the product of a small team of staffers in their twenties helping one of the country’s most powerful governors resonate online. “We don't shy away from using edgy audio or riskier language,” the staffer who runs Governor Newsom’s TikTok account tells Marie Claire. “That’s what’s cutting through the noise.”
Still, for all the public attention their posts receive, the people behind them remain largely anonymous. Out of concern for safety and privacy, the governor’s office has asked that staffers not be named in full. That paradox—being culturally influential while personally invisible—captures a deeper truth about where political power is moving. Just a few years ago, members of Congress were giving tutorials on how to tweet. Today, a compelling social strategy is as essential to a politician’s image as a policy agenda or fundraising machine. And the people shaping it aren’t high-profile pundits or elected officials—they’re the ones in the group chat, the minds behind the meme, the hands on the phone at 2 a.m.
We didn’t merely adopt the internet—we were molded by it.
Newsom’s team is a case in point: a small crew of video editors, rapid-response experts, and visual storytellers who meet twice a day and stay in constant contact through a group chat. They’re led by a 28-year-old Latina digital director who describes her colleagues as “a tight team of folks from California who are just chronically online and follow pop culture.”
And it shows. When California surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth-largest economy, they marked the moment with the “periodt” meme—Photoshopping lashes, lips, and acrylic nails onto a state map. When Trump insulted Newsom on Truth Social, they fired back with a TikTok set to Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down.” “We’re young people. We listen to this music in the club on Saturday nights. We know what sounds are going to hit,” the digital director says.
But it’s not just about vibes. The team moves with intention: every TikTok goes through legal review, they track breaking news in daily syncs, and they’ve built a crisis workflow for same-day approvals. They’re also deliberate about tone and timing. “There are ICE raids—families are being torn apart,” says the digital director, describing how they sometimes hold back to calibrate their messaging in moments of real-life crisis.
The team credits Governor Newsom for backing a strategy rooted in speed, cultural fluency, and trust. Long before TikTok became a political battleground, he wrote Citizenville, a book about digitizing civic life. According to his staff, he followed through as governor by building a younger digital team that reflects the audiences they’re trying to reach. “We didn’t merely adopt the internet—we were molded by it,” one staffer says.
Take the staffer running the TikTok account, who previously worked on Kamala Harris’s 2024 campaign. He’s soft-spoken and serious about the stakes. His “very online” humor—sly, biting, often irreverent—isn’t just a political strategy, he says, "it’s “a way to cope” in dark times. “It’s not about going viral. It’s about being real,” he tells Marie Claire.
We don't shy away from using edgy audio or riskier language.
That’s where the team sees other political operations fall short: chasing trends that don’t fit the moment and failing to invest in young, diverse staffers who actually understand the culture. “That’s why it doesn’t land as well.” And when bold ideas get watered down in layers of review? “It dies."
In a digital landscape often dominated by right-wing meme accounts and influencer outrage, Governor Newsom’s TikTok punches back without losing its sense of humor. The politicians’s reaction to the team's work? “‘Y’all are killing it. Keep going!’” the digital director says, laughing.
It’s hard to argue with the results. The New York Times called Newsom’s social strategy a megaphone that “could galvanize Democrats.” The Guardian dubbed it a “rapid response blitz,” and The Sacramento Bee described a “steady stream” of memes, fact-checks, and GIFs cutting Trump’s messaging down to size.
The reason for that success, they say, comes down to two things: authenticity—and the freedom to take risks. “We’re dealing with people who are actively spreading lies and misinformation and baseless attacks on us,” says the staffer behind Governor Newsom’s TikTok. “So we need to really meet fire with fire.”
