Caught. That’s what happened to Gavin Newsom with his latest literary endeavor, Young Man in a Hurry. That fact that it was ghostwritten was not a problem. This was something worse. Humiliating was what The New York Post called it.

It seems that Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy PAC spent $1.6 million buying up copies of his book to land it on The New York Times best-selling list. Apparently, The Times saw something strange about the meteoric rise of the new book and discovered that sales were “initiated by institutional buys instead of through word-of-mouth and rave reviews.”

I’m not sure how they knew that. Hard-hitting investigative journalism may have led to the discovery. Wink-wink.

As a result, they put a “dagger” or asterisk by the book’s name. It’s akin to what happened to baseball players who set batting records while on drugs.

I suspect that many best-selling books by celebrities have found their way to the top of the list through this very means: Buy up a bunch of copies and voila you’re a best-seller. After all, if you don’t buy your book, how can you expect anyone else to be interested?

Maybe if I had tons of money. and it meant that much to me, I would spend millions to get my mysteries a place in the literary sun. I’m trying to do it the hard way and not having much luck. But I’m not giving up-.

And perhaps $1.6 million isn’t a hefty price to pay for more fame, especially if it’s part of your campaign strategy. It feels like everyone who has presidential aspirations “writes” a book. I’m not sure what percentage of potential voters are readers. Probably people who don’t read, also don’t vote. But you can’t count on that.

Has anybody ever voted for a guy or gal for president because they liked their book? If that was the case, Danielle Steele and Dr. Seuss would get the nod.

So, at $15 a pop for a hardcover, that’s 107,000 books. Where in the heck are you going to store all of those? Maybe at campaign headquarters?

This can’t be a money-laundering scheme. As in take the campaign money, spend it on books, and give the author a check for $80,250. That’s what Mr. Newsom would receive from Amazon if every book he sold was a hard cover version. Shameful.

In other words, 75 cents out of every $15 someone spent when they bought his book from Amazon would go to the “author.”

Don’t get me started. In my mind, that’s the real scandal.