Gavin Newsom is doomed. That’s the smart money on a still-far-away 2028 presidential race. Except, it isn’t so smart. For all his flaws, Newsom has one big thing going for him: he’s got more of Donald J. Trump in him than observers might think.
The California governor is all but openly campaigning for the Democratic nomination, with his aggressive press operation and willingness to engage with Right-wing podcasters. Conventional wisdom suggests his bid will flame out. He presides over a state drowning in social and economic woes. California is expensive, its streets are filled with the homeless, and the state’s population is no longer growing.
The knock on Newsom is that he’s a coastal liberal who has never run in an election where he’s had to take Republicans all that seriously. Vice President JD Vance, who seems poised to be the Republican nominee two and a half years from now, is likely enthused about the possibility of facing down Newsom on the debate stage.
Newsom is slick, too slick, and he oozes California privilege. He was the guy who imposed Covid lockdowns and then went dining at the tony French Laundry restaurant. He is a creature of San Francisco’s Democratic elite, a relentless ladder-climber who owes his early career success to billionaire heir Gordon Getty, a family friend, and to Willie Brown, the Democratic power broker and former mayor who also elevated Kamala Harris..
There is nothing terribly inspirational about Newsom’s backstory. He played the inside game well, got himself elected mayor, then lieutenant governor, then governor. Now, he thrills the Democratic base as he apes Donald Trump on X. (“SEND IN THE ADULTS!!! GRANDPA IS TIRED” Newsom’s press office replied recently to a Trump video.) In a few years, he’ll be left in the dust by some other Democrat, perhaps a more “serious” standard-bearer like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttgieg, Joe Biden’s former transportation secretary and a 2020 contender.
All of this isn’t wrong, and could come to pass. But there is a certain kind of pundit who underrates Newsom’s appeal and can’t quite comprehend that this California liberal could be poised to seize the Democratic nomination and become the next president of the United States.
Isn’t Newsom just Hillary Clinton with hair gel and a smarmy grin? Maybe. What he also is, however, is a budding media star, equally comfortable on television and podcasts, and he relishes a political brawl. He has no trouble with Fox News, and he hosted the late Charlie Kirk on his own podcast, which has become strikingly popular. In 2023, he staged a Fox debate with Ron DeSantis, who looked like, for a brief moment, he could be the next Republican nominee. Pundits derided the Newsom-DeSantis debate as a publicity stunt, but it was, for the California governor, a chance to flex real media muscle.
What became clear was that DeSantis, for all his braying about the “free state” of Florida and California’s ills, could not dominate Newsom. Republicans, until then, had imagined Newsom to be another liberal patsy. They didn’t think he could hit back. One conservative who did notice Newsom’s potential, Matthew J. Peterson, then editor-in-chief of The Blaze, put it best: “he’s comfortable in his own skin like Trump, and doesn’t just want to be there, but is comfortable and assured and loves being there.”
Indeed, Newsom has more in common with Trump than many Democratic or Republican pundits might believe, and this will be a strength for him in 2028, not a weakness. He is savvy at holding the spotlight, identifying and bludgeoning enemies, and adapting to shifting political moods.
In the old Fox formulation, bullies versus nerds, alphas versus betas, it was increasingly obvious that Newsom, the oily former jock, was a man fit for the quasi-demented and deeply influential arena of cable TV. Unlike DeSantis, who was also an outstanding amateur baseball player — he participated in the Little League World Series and captained his Yale squad — Newsom retained his ex-jock aura, or at least the sensibility of a guy who was comfortable with athletes and celebrities.
He swaggered and slithered like Jerry Maguire. This, too, would be Vance’s problem if he ended up on a debate stage with Newsom. For all Vance’s tough talk, he still sounds like the doughy, overachieving Yale Law grad who is secretly pleased with himself for rustling up a pair of blue jeans in his bedroom closet. Newsom, meanwhile, is a bit like the guy who cut class all the time and bedded the homecoming queen.
“Newsom, meanwhile, is a bit like the guy who cut class all the time and bedded the homecoming queen.”
If his Trump resistance is shtick, it’s effective shtick. He has read the national electorate well. He executed on a successful push to get a gerrymandering referendum passed in California, countering the Texan push to add more GOP House seats. A Democratic-base voter is desperate for a politician who will mock and belittle Trump on Trump’s own terms. And even the happy warriors like Zohran Mamdani, who don’t sound like Trump, understand that you’ve got to be able to mix it up with the president and his supporters. Mamdani’s chummy White House visit didn’t hurt him because he didn’t offer Trump any concessions or even smile for photos.
Newsom has never had much of a fixed ideology — he occupies the Left flank these days, but was a centrist, business-friendly mayor of San Francisco — and he’ll be able to conform himself, come 2028, to whatever mood the voters might feel. This, again, is like Trump — or maybe another famous politician born in 1946, Bill Clinton. Newsom knows conservatives expect little from him. In that way, they are no better than the Democrats, coddled in their bubbles, and they are used to punching at what never punches back. The older Republicans can still remember Sean Hannity’s nightly thrashing of Alan Colmes. In Newsom, they see only the latest woke lib, when they would be better off conceiving of Newsom as a West Coast Clinton: debonair, chameleonic, and cutthroat when needed. Clinton exuded alpha charm. He commanded a press conference room and a TV screen. Newsom isn’t so different.
The other knock against Newsom is electability. If he does beat the field in 2028, including Kamala Harris, how can he possibly triumph in the purple states? Didn’t a Californian just go zero-for-7 in the key 2024 battlegrounds of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia? Newsom could certainly struggle in the rural towns and swing suburbs. It’s not like he has any experience winning these people over.
But don’t be too certain of the electability arguments. Recent history has shown that there’s no way to really tell which kind of candidate can triumph. A black man with a foreign-sounding middle name and less than one term in the Senate wasn’t supposed to win two presidential elections. A fading reality television star who boasted about his sexual conquests and demonized war heroes wasn’t supposed to win two presidential elections. And in New York City, a 34-year-old Muslim socialist wasn’t supposed to beat back (twice) a former three-term governor. American politics is getting stranger all the time. And President Gavin Newsom, if still unlikely, is not at all beyond the realm of possibility. One challenge Newsom will have is convincing an electorate weary of political elites and eager for outsiders that he is one of them — or close enough, anyway. In such an anti-establishment country, can the chosen son of Democratic San Francisco actually get himself elected president? Soon enough, we’ll know.
