In an indication of California’s rising standing as a significant hub of Democratic politics, Gov. Gavin Newsom stated Sunday he’s contemplating a run for president in 2028 — only a day after the information that former Vice President Kamala Harris had made the identical pronouncement.
Newsom, a Democrat who has develop into a nationally famend determine this yr pitching himself as a frontrunner of the resistance to President Trump, acknowledged for the primary time publicly that he’s rigorously weighing a 2028 presidential run.
In an interview with “CBS Information Sunday Morning,” Newsom was requested whether or not he would give “severe thought” after the 2026 midterms to a White Home bid.
“Yeah, I’d be mendacity in any other case,” Newsom replied. “I’d simply be mendacity. And I’m not — I can’t do this.”
Harris stated in an interview with the BBC posted this weekend that she expects a girl shall be president within the coming years. “Presumably,” she stated, it might be her.
“I’m not performed,” she stated. “I’ve lived my whole profession as a lifetime of service, and it’s in my bones.”
With greater than three years till the November 2028 election, it’s solely attainable that just one or neither of the 2 California politicians might in the end throw their hat within the race.
However the early willingness of Newsom and Harris to publicly think about a White Home bid reveals that the Golden State stays a central energy base in Democratic politics. It additionally units up a possible 2028 political showdown between two of California’s most distinguished and nationally polarizing political figures.
For years, Newsom has denied presidential ambitions, at the same time as pundits have thought of him a possible candidate. However since Trump defeated Harris within the November 2024 election, the California governor has emerged as a extra vocal, combative critic of the Trump administration’s agenda.
“That is Gavin Newsom lastly saying out loud what everybody’s been whispering for years,” stated Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego. “He has apparent presidential ambitions and now he’s able to personal them.”
Below Newsom’s management, California has filed dozens of lawsuits in opposition to Trump — most noticeably in opposition to the Republican administration’s deployment of Nationwide Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles. The governor has additionally develop into extra aggressive on social media, taking to X to taunt and troll Trump.
Nonetheless, Newsom, whose time period as governor ends in January 2027 and who can not run once more due to time period limits, cautioned that he’s not speeding right into a 2028 presidential marketing campaign.
“I do not know,” Newsom stated Sunday of whether or not he’ll really determine to run.
Kousser stated Newsom was most likely motivated to precise his presidential aspirations now as a result of Harris has signaled her willingness to run.
“There might be a priority right here that Gavin Newsom can be boxed out by the opposite most distinguished Democrat from California if he doesn’t be part of the sphere and doesn’t admit his presidential aspiration on the similar time she’s declared hers,” Kousser stated.
However Kousser emphasised that Newsom had at all times had ambitions to run when the time is true.
“Now, the political success he’s had in staunchly opposing President Trump on immigration raids, on Nationwide Guard deployments, and doubtlessly now on redistricting, that has elevated him within the subject,” he stated. “It means his time is likely to be now.”
After Trump defeated Harris in November, she was considered as a attainable candidate for California governor. However in July she introduced that, after “severe thought,” she wouldn’t run for the highest California workplace.
“For now, my management — and public service — is not going to be in elected workplace,” Harris stated in a press release. “I sit up for getting again out and listening to the American folks, serving to elect Democrats throughout the nation who will battle fearlessly, and sharing extra particulars within the months forward about my very own plans.”
Newsom’s curiosity within the White Home raises the stakes for passing Proposition 50, a California poll measure he has pushed — in response to an analogous initiative in Texas — that might enable state Democrats to briefly change the boundaries of U.S. Home maps in order that they’re extra favorable to Democrats. California voters will vote on Proposition 50 in a particular election subsequent week.
Newsom has promoted his effort as a response to Trump’s push to redraw maps in Republican-controlled states to make them profit the GOP. Some blue states have guidelines that stop political gerrymandering, however Virginia is now following California’s lead, and some others, corresponding to Illinois and Maryland, are weighing comparable actions.
“I feel it’s about our democracy,” Newsom stated within the CBS interview. “It’s about the way forward for this republic. I feel it’s about, you realize, what the Founding Fathers lived and died for, this notion of the rule of legislation, and never the rule of Don.”
If Newsom is profitable and Proposition 50 passes, that might doubtlessly assist future Democratic candidates’ White Home bids.
However both means, each Newsom and Harris would face excessive hurdles in battleground states in the event that they ran for president.
Simply being a Californian is a legal responsibility, some argue, at a time when Republicans depict the state as a bastion of “woke” concepts, excessive taxes and crime.
Whereas California boasts the world’s fifth-largest financial system and is residence to the huge tech powerhouse of Silicon Valley and the cultural epicenter of Hollywood, it has struggled in recent times with excessive housing prices and large earnings inequality. In September, a research discovered California tied with Louisiana for the nation’s highest poverty fee.
Though Harris and Newsom each hail from the Bay Space and labored their means up the Democratic political system in San Francisco, they’ve but to compete for a similar workplace.
“We’ve been type of on this monitor, however it was at all times adjoining,” Newsom informed The Instances final yr shortly after Harris turned the Democratic presidential nominee. “The stress was a type of manifestation of punditry.”
Newsom and Harris have had parallel, however not intersecting, political careers, Kousser stated.
“This might transfer them from cooperation into competitors,” he stated. “However that’s a part of politics.”
Newsom, 58, a former San Francisco mayor who was born to a well-connected San Francisco household, instructed within the CBS interview that he had surmounted vital obstacles to get up to now. Early on, Newsom struggled in class and suffered from dyslexia.
“The concept that a man who obtained 960 on his SAT, that also struggles to learn scripts, that was at all times behind the classroom, the concept that you’ll even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary,” Newsom stated. “Who the hell is aware of? I’m wanting ahead to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that second. And that’s the query for the American folks.”
Harris, 61, who was born to immigrant dad and mom in Oakland and raised in Berkeley, was San Francisco district lawyer earlier than she served as California lawyer common, U.S. senator and have become vp in 2021 after which the Democratic Get together’s nominee within the 2024 presidential election.
She obtained criticism final yr after shedding to Trump not solely within the electoral school however within the in style vote — by almost 2.3 million votes. Some Democrats accused her of being an elite, out-of-touch candidate who failed to attach with voters in battleground states who’ve struggled economically in recent times.
However talking in Los Angeles final month as she promoted her new memoir, “107 Days,” Harris didn’t seem to replicate on any errors she made in 2024.
“I wrote the guide for a lot of causes, however primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” she stated.
“Give it some thought. A sitting president of america is working for reelection and 3½ months earlier than the election decides to not run, after which a sitting vp takes up the mantle to run in opposition to a former president of america who has been working for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”
Harris’ guide obtained some criticism for retaining rating and dishing filth on Democrats who didn’t instantly help her bid to develop into the Democratic nominee. When she known as Newsom, she wrote, he texted her that he was mountaineering and would name her again. Based on Harris, he by no means did.
Already this yr, Newsom has raised eyebrows by touring to essential battleground election states.
In July, Newsom traveled greater than 2,000 miles to South Carolina, a state that historically hosts the South’s first presidential main. He stated he was working to assist the get together win again the U.S. Home of Representatives in 2026. However there are a dozen aggressive Home districts in California. South Carolina, a staunchly conservative state, doesn’t have a single aggressive race.
After Newsom spoke at an occasion in Camden, S.C., Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and famend Democratic kingmaker who performed a key function in salvaging Joe Biden’s 2020 marketing campaign, informed The Instances that Newsom can be “a hell of a candidate.”
However different main South Carolina Democrats voiced doubts that Newsom might win over working-class and swing voters in battleground states.
Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina lawyer and former chairman of the state Democratic Get together, dubbed Newsom “a good-looking man with nice hair.”
However he stated the get together was looking for somebody fairly completely different: “a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and needs.”
“If he had a monitor report of fixing enormous issues like homelessness, or the social security internet, he’d be a extra palatable candidate,” Harpootlian stated. “I simply assume he’s going to have a tricky time explaining why there’s so many failures in California.”
Kousser stated Newsom had lengthy grappled with the query of whether or not he might break by to a broader, extra mainstream viewers.
“He actually has taken that problem of being too California and too Democratic to win in November head-on over the previous yr,” he stated, noting that Newsom had taken a nationwide promoting marketing campaign defending California values to crimson states, debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and appeared on a string of conservative podcasts.
“He’s been making an attempt to counter that narrative — and to develop the centrist fame that it’ll take to win — for some time now,” Kousser stated.
