Two minutes of airtime during the Democrat National Convention in Chicago gave California Governor Gavin Newsom his latest opportunity to build his national stature. As part of the announcement of Kamala Harris’s clinching of the Democrat presidential nomination during a symbolic roll call of state delegates, Newsom portrayed Harris as a “star” who “has always done the right thing” for civil rights, LGBTQ rights, social justice, racial justice, and on just about every pet cause on the left.
It says something unspoken that this was Newsom’s only official speaking role at the four-day DNC. It put his high-energy delivery on display, lionizing Harris as the future of the Democrat Party but it seemed to us that he was choking on those words as he spoke them. The contrast between his support for Harris and his thinly veiled presidential ambitions was hard to ignore.
Newsom repeatedly denied that he was ever in the running for the 2024 nomination, yet his high-profile nationwide travels and meetings with government officials in Israel and China demonstrated otherwise. He bought ads in Florida alongside a debate with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, further adding to the speculation of Newsom’s real intentions.
His passionately vocal support for Joe Biden after Biden’s June 27 debate disaster seemed tailor-made for Biden to hand his post-campaign withdrawal endorsement to Newsom, and perhaps that was Newsom’s intention all along. All he had to do was stay as close as possible to Biden, keep shouting his praises, and the endorsement would surely be Newsom’s.
It wasn’t meant to be. Biden, upon announcing his re-election withdrawal, endorsed Kamala Harris as the Democrat nominee for president within hours, forestalling any attempt at an open convention to nominate Biden’s successor. As we have previously suggested, Biden’s move was intentional as a form of revenge for being shoved out of his re-election efforts by Democrat Party bosses (Obama, Pelosi, and Schumer especially, but there were many Democrats who greased the skids for Biden’s exit after his disastrous debate performance).
Would Newsom have been a better Democrat presidential candidate than Harris? Absolutely.
Now that Harris is the nominee, does Newsom hope that she wins? Absolutely not.
Newsom had everything to gain by supporting Biden at his bleakest moment. Even with missing out on Biden’s endorsement, which we believe caught Governor Hair Gel off guard, Newsom has positioned himself well among Democrats as a dynamic campaigner, a capable fundraiser, and having a strong appeal among Democrat base voters. His purported loyalty to Biden only gave him more visibility and differentiation from other leading Democrats who publicly called for Biden to stand down from his re-election effort. But in the larger scheme of things, was this a political miscalculation on Newsom’s part or a calculated move to best position himself for a 2028 run should Harris lose in four weeks? Time will tell.
With Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee, Gavin Newsom has only to keep his Harris support superficial and work to repair his record at home, letting Harris and others take a majority of the blame for California’s problems. This will be much easier for Newsom if Trump defeats Harris while Newsom makes a token effort to support her.
This also provides Newsom with four convenient years of runway toward a potential presidential run in 2028. His term as California governor expires in 2026, providing an opportunity to shed much of his poor reputation of contributing to California’s demise and to create a new persona. We’re not sure if it will work, but we are sure it will be tried.
And it will require Kamala Harris to lose to Donald Trump. Newsom could pull off this trick in 2028 after a Trump presidency while facing a new Republican candidate, likely JD Vance, who had a great night last week in crushing Tiananmen Tim Walz. But he can’t pull this off in 2028 against an incumbent Harris presidency or in 2032 after two Harris terms in office. That window of opportunity will have closed by then.
A lot of planets will align in 2028 for a Gavin Newsom presidential run, including the entire world’s attention on California for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. His state will be glamorized, his failures will be sanitized, and his presidential run will be romanticized in a way only Hollywood can produce. But not if Kamala Harris is the incumbent president, no matter how much she screws things up. That’s what’s called Democrat Political Inertia.
With so many of the serial failures of the Biden-Harris administration piling up and having no capability to convince voters that their misery is simply not happening, Democrats are probably thinking the same thing as Newsom: Take the loss to Trump, unleash more chaos, and hang their lousy economy and the world on fire around Trump’s neck. Then it’s Gavin Newsom to the rescue in 2026! Most Democrats are too stupid and misguided to believe otherwise. We know; we both live here in California and have seen the damage that Newsom has wrought during his two terms as governor.
That is why it is utterly critical to Newsom that Harris loses to Trump this year. Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions—and they are significant—rest solely on a Harris defeat. Given his naked ambition and historical disdain for Harris, don’t be surprised to see Newsom torpedo his California rival in some below-the-radar manner to save his political future. We don’t call him Governor Hair Gel without reason. He gives new meaning to the definition of the word “slimy.”
