California is gearing up to spend big on its image, and it is bringing in one of the world’s most powerful PR shops to do it. The state plans to award a high-profile, taxpayer-funded branding campaign to Edelman, a global communications firm with a controversial client list that already has critics crying foul.
The governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, better known as GO-Biz, has notified bidders that Edelman is the intended winner of a contract worth up to $19 million for a national push to sell California’s economy and reputation to the rest of the country. The move comes with a political side effect that is hard to ignore, since it could also raise Gov. Gavin Newsom’s profile even as officials insist he will not be the face of the campaign.
According to The Sacramento Bee, GO-Biz has issued a notification letter naming Edelman as the intended awardee and capping the value of the deal at $19 million. The state describes the project as an economic promotion effort, meant to “tell the California story” to a skeptical national audience, and stresses that the governor himself will stay out of the ads. Edelman’s proposal, state officials say, includes smaller partner firms and aims to counter the wave of negative national narratives about crime, cost of living and business flight that have dogged California in recent years.
Edelman’s credentials
Edelman presents itself as a heavyweight in global strategic communications, with offices around the world and a client list that spans Fortune 500 companies, cultural institutions and public agencies. Edelman highlights its work in branding, media strategy and public affairs, along with its widely cited Trust Barometer research series. State officials argue that this scale, reach and data operation are precisely what California needs for a national, multi-channel push focused on the state’s economic strengths.
Why critics are uneasy
Watchdogs and commentators see a different side of Edelman’s track record. They point to the firm’s work for Saudi government-linked clients in the years after the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and question whether that history fits a publicly funded effort that is supposed to showcase California’s values.
The Guardian reported that Edelman received millions of dollars for consulting and PR projects tied to Saudi entities, and detailed a 2022 proposal the firm discussed with the kingdom. For critics, hiring a firm that has helped burnish Saudi Arabia’s image undercuts the moral authority of a campaign that claims to stand for human rights and progressive governance.
Those concerns are sharpened by the U.S. government’s own findings about Khashoggi’s killing. U.S. intelligence concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the operation that resulted in Khashoggi’s death, a point critics routinely cite when they question California’s choice of vendor. In a declassified assessment released in February 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote that it “assess[ed] that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill” Jamal Khashoggi, according to ODNI.
Politics and optics
The contract fight is not happening in a vacuum. It lands in the middle of a broader political tug-of-war over how California spends its money, how it markets itself and how far Newsom’s national ambitions might go.
As The Sacramento Bee noted, some critics argue that a splashy, state-funded PR push conveniently doubles as a national rollout reel for the governor. They warn that a taxpayer-financed “California story” could end up looking an awful lot like a soft-focus prelude to whatever Newsom does next on the national stage.
The governor’s office, for its part, insists the campaign is about business, jobs and investment, not personality politics. Officials emphasize that the creative will spotlight California itself, not the man in the corner office, and pitch the effort as an economic development tool at a time when the state is under constant attack from rival governors and conservative media.
GO-Biz’s notification naming Edelman is an early but important step. It does not yet amount to a signed, sealed contract, since procurement notices normally go out before final approvals and any formal protest period. The notice says the work will run through the end of the year and reiterates that the campaign will focus on California rather than on the governor personally.
Lawmakers, ethics advocates and taxpayers now have a limited window to weigh in on whether California’s big-budget makeover should be led by a firm that has helped manage the image of one of the world’s most controversial regimes. We will monitor the final award decision and the reaction that follows at the Capitol and beyond.
