Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to make it through an interview without needling Gov. Jerry Brown.

It isn't easy.

Over and over, Newsom asserts a lack of leadership in Sacramento.

"Please," he says. "It's not me pointing fingers."

But in the same breath that Newsom calls the governors of Delaware, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana "serious" about economic development, he says California is "not in the game."

Almost a year since California's top two officeholders took office, there is little fellowship between them.

"It's difficult, the relationship between the governor and lieutenant governor," Newsom said.

The chill could have been predicted as long ago as 2009, when the younger Newsom, who had not yet dropped out of the gubernatorial race, campaigned by urging voters to support "a sprint to the future," not a "stroll down memory lane."

Now Newsom occupies one of the weakest offices in state government, and Brown – not much for niceties, anyway – pays him little mind.

"The lieutenant governor's office is all right," Brown said when he was governor before, in 1979. "He has about the same powers as the vice president. He stands, he waits, he has a few modest functions."

Newsom said he is "trying to get along," and initially it appeared he might. Newsom has done nothing underhanded on the few occasions in which Brown has left the state and Newsom is acting governor, including this week. It was with Brown's blessing that Newsom spent the first half of the year developing a jobs plan.

Many of the ideas included in Newsom's plan had been suggested before, and most of them would require Brown's involvement. But Brown wasn't on hand for Newsom's ballyhooed jobs event in July, and the following month Brown started his own jobs initiative, appointing a senior jobs adviser and proposed changes to the corporate tax structure that he said would create jobs.

Newsom said his own jobs plan since then "kind of got sidetracked a little bit."

By Brown?

"He didn't sidetrack it," Newsom said. "It just got sidetracked."

It was just a couple months ago that Newsom was jabbing at Brown directly, telling a group of Democrats in Half Moon Bay, "The jobs plan the governor had was laughable." He supported Brown's proposal to change California's corporate tax structure, but he said it fell short of a comprehensive program.

The local paper, the Half Moon Bay Review, wrote about it, then the San Francisco Chronicle, raising Brown's hackles. The paper quoted Brown spokesman Gil Duran challenging the former San Francisco mayor's record on job creation and accusing him of "galloping around on his economy-and-jobs high horse."

More recently, Brown spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford said Brown and Newsom are "working well" together.

She noted that Brown asked Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, as well as Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and his wife, Michelle Rhee, to co-host next month's Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Capitol.

The Newsom and Brown families have decades-long ties. Brown, 73, appointed Newsom's father, William, to be a Superior Court judge and, later, an appellate court justice. Newsom, 44, said there's a photograph of him as a child at Brown's desk.

Newsom said he and Brown are "trying our best" to coordinate but that a better partnership might be forged if California required candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to run as a ticket.

"I think we're all suffering some Mike Curb days," Newsom says, "everybody sort of looking behind their back."

Brown had an exceptionally difficult relationship with Curb, the former lieutenant governor, when he was governor before. Brown at the time traveled frequently, and Curb, a Republican, used his absences to take executive actions Brown was reversed upon his return to the state.

Nor was Brown cozy with Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally, the Democratic lieutenant governor who preceded Curb. Dymally said his relationship with Brown was strained, but that he didn't find it unusual.

"With the exception of (Ed) Reinecke and (Ronald) Reagan," Dymally said, "I don't know that any governor and lieutenant governor drank coffee every morning."

Newsom is a likely contender for governor in 2014 if Brown does not run for re-election, and in 2018 if Brown does. Meanwhile, the lieutenant governorship is affording Newsom an opportunity to immerse himself in parts of the state outside the Bay Area, and to carry with him his stage.

Preparing his jobs plan, Newsom said, involved about 200 sessions with different groups, ranging in size from five people to 150.

"I'm passionate about what I'm doing," he said. "I'm passionate about where I'm going, the people I'm meeting and what I'm learning. I'm getting a Ph.D., I really am. I'm learning an extraordinary amount."

He insists he likes the position, and that he likes that Brown is governor.

"I'm very happy he's governor," he said. "I'm very happy to be here. I know you'll never believe that. I really am."

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Call David Siders, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1215.

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