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Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., is facing backlash from the left over his social media tactics and "cheap" homophobic jokes that his accounts have used to target Republican rivals, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Newsom's press office account on X has targeted members of the GOP with references to "Grindr," a popular LGBTQ+ dating app. The X account replied Wednesday to a post from Benny Johnson regarding reports of alleged fraud in California.

"We got a call from Grindr after this and said your team was their biggest users. Congrats!" Newsom’s office wrote. It was not the first time the office had used Grindr as a punchline. In January, Newsom’s office responded to another of Johnson’s posts, writing, "We’ll make sure Grindr servers are ready…" in response to Johnson saying his team would be traveling to California to investigate fraud.

Jane Natoli, a vice president of the Equality California board, an LGBTQ organization in the state, told The New York Times that Newsom shouldn't revert to "cheap homophobia jokes" and said she and other members of the organization would send eye-roll emojis to one another every time his office posted something along those lines.

The California governor speaks at the "Networth And Chill With Guest Governor Gavin Newsom Featured Session," during the 2026 at Hilton Austin on March 15, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images)

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Former Rep. Barney Frank, who served as a lawmaker in Massachusetts and came out in the 1980s, said the governor should not have said it.

"He should not have said that," he told The New York Times. "It uses sexual orientation as an accusation, which is wrong."

LGBTQ+ outlet, "Them," published a piece headlined "Gavin Newsom Is Being Weirdly Homophobic Yet Again," last week.

"Them" noted that Newsom had been trying to imitate President Donald Trump on social media, as the governor has spoken about as well.

"That in and of itself is already a strange choice, which is only all the more bizarre when you take into account that Newsom’s account has also been posting sentiments that are, frankly, homophobic," the report said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks onstage during the Vogue World: Hollywood Press Announcement at Château Marmont on March 26, 2025, in Los Angeles, California.   (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

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A USA Today column also slammed Newsom and mocked the governor's office response last week.

"Grindr is an LGBTQ+ dating app. So the joke is that Johnson and his right-wing team are gay! And being gay is embarrassing! What a sick burn here in the year 2026!" the column, written by columnist, Rex Huppke, read.

"On behalf of decent people everywhere, allow me to say to Newsom and his team: Get lost. Keep your low-brow, high-school-bigot nonsense to yourselves and stop trying to pretend there’s some mythical "middle" in American politics that wants a Democrat unafraid to make homophobic jokes," Huppke wrote.

Newsom, as San Francisco mayor in 2004, had called on the city to issue marriage licenses for thousands of same-sex couples, which put the now-governor in a national spotlight.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a campaign event in support of Proposition 50 in San Francisco, Monday, Nov. 3, 2025.  (Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

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The governor's press team said the posts were directed at "exposing the putrid behavior from the right wing through ridicule and mocking."

"You can choose to find offense from what we are doing or you can see it for what it really is: holding up a mirror to the hypocrisy and derangement of trolls like Benny Johnson, who lives his life soaked in fake outrage," Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for Newsom, told The New York Times. "We are not engaging in the same behavior as this fool and his ilk — we are mocking their hypocrisy and continued degradation of society, holding a mirror up to what others ignore or dismiss as merely juvenile."

The governor's office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for additional comment.

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Newsom was called out last week by Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, who said the governor was using "homosexuality as a slur."

"It’s so odd to see the former mayor of the most gay-friendly city in America, San Francisco, use homosexuality as a slur. Weird!" Dhillon wrote on X.

Fox News' Madison Colombo contributed to this report.

Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.

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