Newsom Called His Diaper Deal 'Competitive.' California's Own Records Say It Wasn't.

California's Department of Health Care Access and Information posted the contract for its Baby2Baby diaper program late Friday night, ending months of resistance to public records requests. The timing, after ethics watchdogs and reporters had spent weeks pressing for the document, speaks for itself.

The deal is straightforward on paper: $6.2 million to Baby2Baby, a Los Angeles nonprofit, to supply 400 free diapers to every newborn at participating California hospitals under the state's Golden State Start program. Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled the initiative in San Francisco on May 8, 2026.

The problem is what Newsom said about how the deal was awarded. According to CBS News, Newsom publicly claimed the contract "went through a competitive bidding process." California's own contract database says otherwise, listing the acquisition method as "Exempt by Policy — Other (buyer must indicate policy) — NON-COMPETITIVELY BID."

That is the state's own paperwork contradicting the governor's public statement.

When CBS News pressed the administration on the discrepancy, a spokesperson said "competitive" referred to the nature of the state's Request for Information process, and that the exemption gave the state "flexibility to deliver on the project at the scale needed to serve Californians." But at a May 2026 Senate budget hearing, the department's own chief deputy director described the exemption differently, saying it "allows you to essentially engage in negotiated contracting outside of state rules" because the formal bid process "can be cumbersome and time consuming," according to CBS News.

Those are two very different explanations for the same waiver.

The Newsom Family Connection

Here's why this particular no-bid deal drew scrutiny instead of getting buried like the others: Baby2Baby co-CEO Norah Weinstein sits on the board of the California Partners Project, a nonprofit co-founded by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the governor's wife, according to Timeless Dishes. Baby2Baby says Weinstein isn't paid for that board role and that it didn't affect the contract. The other co-CEO, Kelly Sawyer Patricof, has made political donations that the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust flagged in its audit request.

None of that proves favoritism. Political donations and an unpaid board seat are not evidence of a rigged contract. But they're exactly the kind of facts an audit exists to sort out, and the administration's two-month delay in producing basic records didn't help its case.

The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, a Washington D.C.-based watchdog, formally asked California State Auditor Grant Parks on July 13, 2026, to investigate the contract's pricing, approval process, and the Baby2Baby-Newsom connections. "The Newsom administration has been misleading about whether the contract was awarded in a competitive process and has mired the entire situation with a complete lack of transparency," said FACT executive director Kendra Arnold, according to the New York Post. As of that date, no audit had been publicly announced.

No court, legislative committee, or state auditor has found that Newsom, Siebel Newsom, or Baby2Baby did anything improper. These are allegations, not findings. Baby2Baby has defended the relationship and denied it influenced the award.

Bipartisan Pushback in Sacramento

Criticism of the deal hasn't broken cleanly along party lines. Democratic state Sen. Caroline Menjivar questioned the arrangement at a June 2026 hearing, saying the vendor's connections created bad optics and pressing officials on why the contracting exemption was used, according to Timeless Dishes. Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland has hammered the cost angle, arguing consumers can buy diapers at major retailers for about 16 cents each, not far off the state's own math.

The newly released contract shows the state's cost comes to up to 12.5 cents per diaper, according to the New York Post's breakdown of the filing. Of the $6.2 million, $3.89 million goes to the diapers themselves, $750,000 to shipping, $610,000 to warehousing, $917,000 to labor across 12 employees, and $35,000 to communications. That's an average salary of just under $76,500 per person on a 12-person team running a diaper distribution program.

The department has defended its process, saying it sent out a Request for Information, received 15 responses, and picked Baby2Baby after evaluating all of them based on statewide distribution capacity and partnerships with more than 590 California organizations. What the state has not released, according to Timeless Dishes, is the complete scoring material that would show how each of those 15 bidders was rated and why Baby2Baby won.

The Bigger Pattern

CBS News uncovered more than just a diaper deal. Investigators cross-referencing California's contract database, non-competitive bid database, and multiple years of budget bills found more than two dozen similar no-bid exemptions tucked into the state budget, totaling over $1 billion. That includes a $253 million opioid-response fund and a $12.9 million prison re-entry program. Two-thirds of those exemptions never expire, and because they're carved out of standard contracting oversight, they don't show up in the state's public no-bid contract database at all.

Had Newsom not personally announced the Baby2Baby deal and invited scrutiny of his wife's nonprofit ties, this entire category of hidden no-bid spending might never have surfaced. That's the part state officials haven't had to answer for yet, and it's the question State Auditor Grant Parks will have to decide whether to pursue.