If Gavin Newsom wants to be president, he's got work to do

The “Newsom for president” bandwagon hit another rut this week. A new poll by the LA Times and UC Berkeley found California’s registered voters believe — by a margin of more than 2 to 1 — the state’s gallivanting governor is more focused on boosting his chances of winning the White House than fixing the multitude of problems facing him here at home. Which is not great news if you believe the best credential when seeking a new job is high praise for the one you’re doing. Those surveyed were decidedly mixed on Newsom, with a tepid 46% approving of his performance in his second and final term. (Presumably few, if any of them, have listened to Newsom’s unctuous political podcast.) The same percentage of registered voters said they disapprove of his job performance. That’s not a great look compared with other Democratic governors swirling about the 2028 gossip mill. Pennsylvania voters give their chief executive, Josh Shapiro, a healthy 59% approval rating and Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer gets favorable marks from 54% of her constituents. Kentucky’s Andy Beshear boasts a positively gaudy 68% approval rating in his deep-red state, the highest of any Democratic governor in the country, according to Morning Consult’s nationwide survey.

Of course, Newsom insists he’s not even thinking about running for president, though a simple application of the duck test — if it waddles and quacks like a duck, you can be reasonably certain of its waterfowl status — suggests otherwise. In a recent interview with video podcaster Mark Halperin, the governor insisted he’s more undecided about a 2028 run than people think. “I have to have a burning why, and I have to have a compelling vision that distinguishes myself from anybody else. Without that, without both ... I don’t deserve to even be in the conversation,” Newsom said. All the while very purposefully thrusting himself into the conversation — which is sort of like someone stripping naked, standing in a department store window, then asking why everyone is staring. But whatever. The good news for Newsom is that California voters probably won’t have an opportunity to weigh in on his presidential candidacy, should he run, until well into the nominating contest. Come March 7, 2028 — the date currently set for the state’s presidential primary — California will almost certainly continue its 50-plus years of having very little bearing on the outcome.

Maybe next century. The full 2028 political calendar has yet to be determined. In 2024, Democrats shook things up at the behest of President Joe Biden, eliminating their kickoff caucuses in Iowa and pushing South Carolina and Nevada to the fore. More changes may be coming, though New Hampshire, which has held the first presidential primary for more than a century, may very well hang on to its lead-off spot, which might not be a bad thing for Newsom. Jim Demers, a lobbyist in Concord — the state capital — and a longtime Democratic activist, said California’s governor stands as decent a shot as any Democrat thinking of running. “Whether it’s Gavin Newsom, or (Illinois Gov.) JB Pritzker, or Shapiro or Whitmer or (New Jersey Sen. Cory) Booker — whoever — people are ready to hear them out and want to see who’s going to really be willing to take Trump on and stand up,” said Demers, who’s so far neutral in the contest.

Newsom, he said, is “pretty much a blank slate” in New Hampshire. “The average person really doesn’t know that much about him, other than they know of him.” What’s more, Demers doesn’t see Newsom’s California return address as necessarily a detriment. “You probably will have Republicans who’ll paint a California candidate as being a lefty liberal,” Demer said. “But I think you have a lot of Democrats ... who look at many of the policies that have occurred in California and see them as maybe progressive, but forward thinking.” Dick Harpootlian is certainly no Republican. He’s a former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, state senator and veteran of decades of presidential politics. His tongue is sharp and pungent, like the vinegar-pepper barbecue sauce favored in parts of his state and — though, he too, has no early favorite — Harpootlian had little good to say about California’s governor, or his 2028 prospects. “I think Gavin Newsom is what all of us think of when we think of a slick, wealthy California playboy kind of guy,” Harpootlian said from his law office in Columbia. “I mean, his hair is perfectly coiffed. His shoes are shiny, and probably Italian.

“Many of us,” he went on, “remember during COVID when he was telling everybody not to go out and he was having a fabulous dinner at the French Laundry in Napa. I just think he’s out of touch with the blue-collar folks we need to get back in the (Democratic) Party. Nor, Harpootlian suggested, is California a particularly good place to hail from politically. He cited the state’s “huge homeless population,” its tent cities, looming budget deficit and taxes that “are so freaking high.”

“It’s not,” he said dryly, “a model the rest of the country wants to follow.” Iowa has probably lost forevermore its privileged place on the political calendar after the disastrous 2020 caucuses, which took days to yield a winner. Still, Democratic strategist Jeff Link has a practiced eye from observing scores of presidential candidates pass through over the years.