Newsom, seen widely in the Democratic Party as a 2028 presidential contender-in-waiting, isn’t doing all that much waiting. While other potential White House aspirants are quietly laying the groundwork for the future, the second-term governor has been more of an attention-seeking missile — darting across the country and the world stage as he courts a broad array of Democratic constituencies who could be helpful in a future presidential run.
President Biden’s decision to seek reelection in 2024 has put an ambitious new generation of Democrats in something of a holding pattern — with many joining the front lines of the efforts to support him as they seek to leave their own marks for the future. For Newsom, that has meant a series of appearances outside his home state regarded by some as savvy and derided by others as stunts.
But Newsom has relished his role as one of the party’s leading antagonists of Republican leaders and “going on offense” as he seeks to persuade voters to back the Democratic agenda in unfriendly territory like Fox News. During the debate on “Hannity” Thursday night, he slashed DeSantis as a cruel bully — accusing him of demeaning and humiliating people and groups he disagrees with, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, and playing political games with the lives of vulnerable people such as migrants to the United States.
“By the way, how’s that going for you? Ron, you’re down 41 points in your own home state,” Newsom said after charging that DeSantis had tried to “out-Trump Trump” by shipping migrants out of his state to far-flung locales.
Later DeSantis’s face hardened with anger when Newsom pointed out how former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley has eclipsed his campaign in recent weeks: “When are you going to drop out and at least give Nikki Haley a shot to take down Donald Trump in this nomination?” Newsom asked.
DeSantis, who appeared to be more in his comfort zone attacking Newsom than parrying with his GOP rivals in the recent debates, also did not hold back. He claimed that Californians are fleeing high crime, taxes and the homelessness crisis; accused Newsom of running a “shadow campaign” for president; and at one point, held up what he described as a map of human feces in San Francisco generated by an app.
“This is a slick, slippery politician whose state is failing. People are leaving his state, and he’s trying to run interference for his failure,” DeSantis said.
While Thursday night’s debate is unlikely to have any significant impact on the 2024 presidential race, Newsom’s effort to raise his national profile has drawn mixed reviews from voters at home during a time when many Californians are concerned about the state’s homelessness and mental health crises and a looming budget crunch that could curtail the governor’s agenda in California.
“In terms of raising his profile and becoming more popular, better-known and more defined to Democratic primary voters, I think it’s going very well for him,” said Rob Stutzman, a California-based GOP strategist who has been a keen observer of Newsom, when asked about the governor’s activities outside the state. “But it clearly is not helping him at home.”
Pointing to a recent slide in Newsom’s approval ratings, Stutzman noted that the governor will need as much political capital as possible to drive his agenda in Sacramento during what is likely to be a tough budget year ahead. Stutzman also noted that there are perils inherent in the governor’s penchant for driving headlines (and raising money) through controversial proposals such as his push to restrict gun ownership with an amendment the U.S. Constitution: “There’s a bit of a reputation here of being a political stunt man,” he said.
Newsom’s approval rating among registered voters dropped to an all-time low of 44 percent in a recent poll by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS poll, noted that much of the erosion in Newsom’s approval rating was among independents.
When registered voters were asked whether they favored their governor taking on a more prominent role in national Democratic politics and traveling to events in other states to criticize the Republican Party, 70 percent of Democrats said they favored those efforts; 19 percent opposed them. But only 37 percent of independents approved, and 47 percent were opposed.
“These no party preference voters are not all that keen on Newsom taking on this new role,” DiCamillo said. “They would rather that he just stick to California issues and solve the problems that the state is facing.”
But Newsom’s allies believe he can do both.
He has leveraged California’s position as the world’s fifth-largest economy to promote his policy goals agenda abroad — meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in October to push his climate agenda. And he has found ways to skillfully pair his public travels as governor with trips that have built his rapport with powerful constituencies in the Democratic Party.
Before his recent trip to China, for example, Newsom made a surprise visit to Israel — meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the midst of the Israel-Gaza war and visiting with the parents of a Californian who was being held hostage in Gaza, as well as other victims targeted by Hamas. In a statement from Tel Aviv, he reflected on the “deep connections between my home state and this country.”
In Georgia on Thursday night, the California governor faced off against DeSantis in his capacity as a surrogate for the Biden campaign.
DeSantis and Newsom often talked over one another — sometimes making their arguments unintelligible — during the 90-minute showdown moderated by Sean Hannity, the Fox News host who at times pleaded with the two men not to make him into a “hall monitor.”
The forum took place on the sidelines of the emerging battle between the two likely 2024 nominees — Biden, who has nominal opposition on the Democratic side, and Donald Trump, who is polling more than 40 points ahead of his closest GOP rivals, including DeSantis.
When asked to grade Biden’s performance, DeSantis predictably called the president a failure while Newsom gave Biden an A. The Florida governor also argued that Biden is experiencing cognitive decline that “is dangerous for this country,” while Newsom batted away the question about Biden’s mental acuity by stating that he would take “Joe Biden at 100 versus Ron DeSantis any day of the week at any age.”
When Newsom was pressed on the hypothetical question of whether he would rule out a 2024 run if Biden were to suddenly bow out of the race, the California Governor replied: “Joe Biden will be our nominee in a matter of weeks — and in a matter of weeks, Sean, he [DeSantis] will be endorsing Donald Trump for the Republican Party.”
DeSantis responded by repeating that Biden is “not up to the job” and asserting that the people around him would “look to California for the model to go forward in the next four years.”
“That would accelerate the decline of this country,” DeSantis said. “Freedom is what works. The failures need to be left in the dustbin of history.”
Newsom has trolled DeSantis for the past year-and-a-half as a bully who has molded Florida into an “authoritarian regime.”
With fiery social media posts and ad campaigns financed by his Campaign for Democracy PAC, he has targeted DeSantis’s efforts to limit discussions of LGBTQ+ issues and reshape the way history is taught in Florida’s classrooms, as well as the bill DeSantis signed curtailing access to abortion in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy, following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
To amplify his arguments, Newsom has dipped into the war chest that he began building while fending off an attempted recall in 2021 and during his reelection campaign last year. In the lead-up to Thursday night’s debate, for example, Newsom narrated an ad that Campaign for Democracy aired on Fox in Florida and Washington, D.C., suggesting that DeSantis would jail women and doctors who try to terminate a pregnancy in Florida after six weeks.
Over time, the rivalry has proved beneficial to both men. DeSantis’s sparring with Newsom drew media attention in the GOP primary where he has often been overshadowed by Trump. And it has helped Newsom fashion himself into one of the Democratic Party’s most visible figures, forging a profile as a skillful combatant for Democrats who is at ease on unfriendly turf. His peers — and potential future rivals in a Democratic primary — such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, have maintained decidedly lower profiles.
Newsom proposed the one-on-one debate with DeSantis on the platform formerly known as Twitter in September 2022, shortly after the Florida governor asserted that Newsom’s hair gel was “interfering with his brain function” during a disagreement over DeSantis’s treatment of migrants.
“I’ll bring my hair gel. You bring your hairspray,” Newsom tweeted as he goaded DeSantis to debate him, “Name the time.” (The California governor’s team was ultimately surprised when DeSantis agreed).
Newsom’s aggressive public posturing initially raised eyebrows in Democratic circles — particularly in the months before Biden announced his reelection bid when some Democratic operatives questioned Newsom’s motives.
But more recently only a few lone voices in the party have publicly needled Newsom for his ambition, most notably Sen. John Fetterman. The Pennsylvania Democrat recently argued in an Iowa speech that both Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and Newsom are “running for president right now,” but “only one has the guts to announce it.”
The Biden campaign has publicly welcomed Newsom’s fundraising efforts on the Biden campaign’s behalf and how he has championed the president’s accomplishments, including as one of the most sought-after surrogates at this year’s Republican debate in Simi Valley, Calif.
When asked about the campaign’s objectives for Newsom’s debate with DeSantis on Thursday night, Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo said the campaign was “fortunate to already have one of the most robust and active surrogate operations in the history of presidential politics” and that Newsom “is an important piece of that effort, as he forcefully and effectively makes the president’s case.”
Newsom has helped raise about $6 million for the Biden campaign this cycle both by tapping his own small-donor network online and by hosting and appearing at fundraising events, according to a spokesman. Other Democratic governors have helped the campaign raise similar amounts this cycle, according to a source familiar with the Biden fundraising effort.
As part of Newsom’s insistence that the Democratic Party must help Democrats rebuild their outreach in deep-red territory, his aides say he has also directly donated about $110,000 to Democratic Party groups in red states. And his Campaign for Democracy PAC has raised about $1 million for Democratic candidates including Rep. Colin Allred, who is running for U.S. Senate in Texas, as well as other Democrats in tough races including Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Gov. Andy Beshear, who recently won reelection in Kentucky.
On Thursday, Newsom was often focused on criticizing the GOP side and needling his Republican debate opponent.
“You and President Trump are really trying to light democracy on fire,” Newsom said. “But there’s one thing … that we have in common — neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.”
