Gov. Gavin Newsom will spend two days subsequent week in rural South Carolina, fueling hypothesis that the California Democrat is laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential run.
Through the go to Tuesday and Wednesday, Newsom will make stops in eight rural counties which can be among the many state’s “most economically challenged and environmentally weak,” the South Carolina Democratic Social gathering stated Thursday.
The chair of the state Democratic Social gathering, Christale Spain, stated in an announcement that Newsom’s tour by way of the Pee Dee, Midlands and Upstate areas was aimed toward displaying rural voters in areas that had been “hollowed out by many years of Republican management” that “they aren’t forgotten.”
Newsom’s go to can also be aimed toward a state that will likely be among the many first to have a Democratic Social gathering main in 2028. However Lindsey Cobia, a Newsom senior political advisor, denied that the governor is laying the groundwork for a presidential run.
Cobia stated Newsom is “squarely targeted” on serving to Democrats win again the U.S. Home of Representatives in 2026 and on “sounding the alarm about how rural households and communities requesting catastrophe aid are being left behind by the Trump administration.”
Newsom’s tour with the South Carolina Democrats, dubbed “On the Highway With Governor Newsom,” will embody stops in Marion, Chesterfield, Marlboro, Laurens, Pickens, Oconee, Kershaw and Florence counties. The Publish and Courier reported that Newsom’s schedule would come with stops in small settings similar to cafes, espresso outlets, group facilities and church buildings.
The tour will take Newsom to among the state’s reddest counties. Seven of the eight counties Newsom is scheduled to go to went for President Trump in November, together with two the place he garnered 75% of the vote.
The South Carolina journey is one in all a number of overtures that Newsom has made to Southern voters in recent times. He stumped for then-President Biden in South Carolina in 2024. In 2023, he confronted off in a extremely publicized debate with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And in 2022, he purchased advertisements in Texas and Florida excoriating their governors for his or her stances on gun violence and abortion.
Newsom isn’t the one California Democrat visiting South Carolina this month.
U.S. Rep Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) of Silicon Valley will likely be holding city halls within the Palmetto State on July 19 and 20 in partnership with the advocacy group Defend Our Care, which has been mobilizing voters in swing Home districts in opposition to the deliberate Republican cuts to Medicaid.
