In an indication of California’s rising standing as a serious hub of Democratic politics, Gov. Gavin Newsom mentioned 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 fastidiously weighing a 2028 presidential run.
In an interview with “CBS Information Sunday Morning,” Newsom was requested whether or not he would give “critical 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 mentioned in an interview with the BBC posted this weekend that she expects a girl will probably be president within the coming years. “Probably,” she mentioned, it may very well be her.
“I’m not executed,” she mentioned. “I’ve lived my total 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 doable that just one or neither of the 2 California politicians may finally throw their hat within the race.
However the early willingness of Newsom and Harris to publicly contemplate a White Home bid exhibits 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 outstanding and nationally polarizing political figures.
For years, Newsom has denied presidential ambitions, at the same time as pundits have thought-about 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,” mentioned Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at UC San Diego. “He has apparent presidential ambitions and now he’s able to personal them.”
Beneath Newsom’s management, California has filed dozens of lawsuits towards Trump — most noticeably towards 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’t 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 mentioned Sunday of whether or not he’ll truly determine to run.
Kousser mentioned Newsom was in all probability motivated to specific his presidential aspirations now as a result of Harris has signaled her willingness to run.
“There may very well be a priority right here that Gavin Newsom could be boxed out by the opposite most outstanding Democrat from California if he doesn’t be part of the sector and doesn’t admit his presidential aspiration on the identical time she’s declared hers,” Kousser mentioned.
However Kousser emphasised that Newsom had at all times had ambitions to run when the time is correct.
“Now, the political success he’s had in staunchly opposing President Trump on immigration raids, on Nationwide Guard deployments, and probably now on redistricting, that has elevated him within the subject,” he mentioned. “It means his time is likely to be now.”
After Trump defeated Harris in November, she was considered as a doable candidate for California governor. However in July she introduced that, after “critical thought,” she wouldn’t run for the highest California workplace.
“For now, my management — and public service — won’t be in elected workplace,” Harris mentioned 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 combat 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 identical 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, equivalent to Illinois and Maryland, are weighing related actions.
“I believe it’s about our democracy,” Newsom mentioned within the CBS interview. “It’s about the way forward for this republic. I believe it’s about, , what the Founding Fathers lived and died for, this notion of the rule of regulation, and never the rule of Don.”
If Newsom is profitable and Proposition 50 passes, that might probably assist future Democratic candidates’ White Home bids.
However both approach, 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 economic system and is house to the large tech powerhouse of Silicon Valley and the cultural epicenter of Hollywood, it has struggled lately with excessive housing prices and big revenue inequality. In September, a research discovered California tied with Louisiana for the nation’s highest poverty charge.
Though Harris and Newsom each hail from the Bay Space and labored their approach 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, but it surely was at all times adjoining,” Newsom instructed The Occasions 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 mentioned.
“This could transfer them from cooperation into competitors,” he mentioned. “However that’s a part of politics.”
Newsom, 58, a former San Francisco mayor who was born to a well-connected San Francisco household, advised within the CBS interview that he had surmounted vital obstacles to get thus far. 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 you’d even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary,” Newsom mentioned. “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 legal professional earlier than she served as California legal professional common, U.S. senator and have become vp in 2021 after which the Democratic Social gathering’s nominee within the 2024 presidential election.
She acquired criticism final yr after dropping to Trump not solely within the electoral school however within the fashionable vote — by practically 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 lately.
However talking in Los Angeles final month as she promoted her new memoir, “107 Days,” Harris didn’t seem to mirror on any errors she made in 2024.
“I wrote the e book for a lot of causes, however primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” she mentioned.
“Give it some thought. A sitting president of the USA is operating for reelection and 3½ months earlier than the election decides to not run, after which a sitting vp takes up the mantle to run towards a former president of the USA who has been operating for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”
Harris’ e book acquired some criticism for holding rating and dishing dust on Democrats who didn’t instantly assist her bid to develop into the Democratic nominee. When she known as Newsom, she wrote, he texted her that he was climbing 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 mentioned he was working to assist the celebration 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, instructed The Occasions that Newsom could be “a hell of a candidate.”
However different main South Carolina Democrats voiced doubts that Newsom may win over working-class and swing voters in battleground states.
Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina legal professional and former chairman of the state Democratic Social gathering, dubbed Newsom “a good-looking man with nice hair.”
However he mentioned the celebration was trying to find somebody fairly totally different: “a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and needs.”
“If he had a monitor document of fixing large issues like homelessness, or the social security web, he’d be a extra palatable candidate,” Harpootlian mentioned. “I simply assume he’s going to have a troublesome time explaining why there’s so many failures in California.”
Kousser mentioned Newsom had lengthy grappled with the query of whether or not he may break by way of to a broader, extra mainstream viewers.
“He definitely has taken that problem of being too California and too Democratic to win in November head-on over the previous yr,” he mentioned, noting that Newsom had taken a nationwide promoting marketing campaign defending California values to purple states, debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and appeared on a string of conservative podcasts.
“He’s been attempting to counter that narrative — and to develop the centrist repute that it’ll take to win — for some time now,” Kousser mentioned.
