Gov. Gavin Newsom of California is on a national tour to promote his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry.” It’s a great opportunity for the presumed front-runner of the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination to raise his profile in other states while maintaining the fiction that he is still on the fence about running.
However, it must be galling for former vice president Kamala Harris to watch the national media fawning over him. He’s surpassed her in recent polls of potential Democratic candidates, in large part because of his recent social media strategy of out-trolling President Trump as well as his success in winning voter approval for new congressional maps in California that favor Democrats.
Harris hasn’t said yet whether she will seek the presidential nomination again. But her decision to pass on the California governor’s race suggests she is still interested in occupying the Oval Office. And last month she rebranded her “KamalaHQ” social media accounts, which the chattering class assumed to be a first step toward dusting off her 2024 presidential campaign machinery.
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It looks like there may be two California political superstars battling each other for the nomination.
“That would be an interesting rivalry, because they’ve been frenemies for so long,’’ said Steve Maviglio, a Sacramento-based Democratic political strategist. “They’ve always had somebody there, like [late Senator Dianne] Feinstein, who knew them both and made sure … they never had a run against each other.”
The two contemporaries (she is 61, he is 58) share remarkably parallel career trajectories as products of the powerful San Francisco political machine that has dominated state elections for generations. Both were appointed to their first political positions in the 1990s by legendary power broker Willie Brown, a former mayor of San Francisco and a former speaker of the state Assembly (whom Harris was dating at the time).
Julie Marquis
Despite coming from the same small political circle, the two are not friends. (Harris recounts in her book about the 2024 presidential campaign, “107 Days” how she reached out to Newsom after Biden dropped out of race, and he responded: “Hiking. Will call back,” but never did.) They have mostly stayed out of each other’s way, even as they rose through local and state politics. In 2004, they were elected to their first seats in San Francisco: Newsom as mayor and Harris as district attorney. In 2011, both ascended to statewide jobs: Newsom as lieutenant governor and Harris as state attorney general.
But their higher ambitions appear to be on a collision course for the first time. And it’s anyone’s guess who would prevail in a head-on primary fight.
There’s not a lot of daylight between the two, policy-wise. Despite the descriptions of them as “radical leftists” you might hear on Fox News or the New York Post’s new California outlet, Harris and Newsom are moderate Democrats whose outlooks have been shaped by the earlier careers as a prosecutor and businessman, respectively, and both have been criticized from the left flank of their party.
Paul Thornton
As governor, Newsom is widely considered pro-business and protective of Silicon Valley. (He has vowed to fight a proposal for a one-time tax on billionaires.) Harris was a tough-on-crime attorney general, whose crackdown on parents of truant students, many of whom were from low-income families, dogged her for years. And they both have heavy baggage they will be forced to carry into the race for the party nomination in 2028.
Newsom’s load consists of seven years leading a dynamic but troubled state during one of the most tumultuous eras in its history, with the explosion of homelessness, the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadly wildfires, and now a budget deficit.
Harris’s liability is the last election. Democrats may be grateful that she was the nominee in 2024 when it became clear that Joe Biden had lost his cognitive edge, but some also may still hold a grudge, unfair though it may be, for Trump’s return. “A lot of people are blaming her campaign and blaming her for losing,” Maviglio said.
Mariel Garza
J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, agrees that the 2024 outcome could undermine her campaign. “She’s just so associated with that election,” he said. “I just wonder if that’s going to be her liability going forward.”
Here’s another thing Harris and Newsom have in common: Neither are particularly beloved in their home state. In 2024, Harris received just 58.5 percent of the votes in California. By comparison, 63.5 percent of California’s votes went to Biden in 2020. And while Newsom may be topping the national polls, he’s less popular at home, with only about half of Californians happy with the job he’s doing.
Newsom seems to have the edge right now, but don’t count out Harris just because she’s keeping a low profile. It may be the smartest thing she can do. A lot can happen in the next year, and once Newsom is out of office next January, he loses an important platform to take on Trump’s policies. There may also be other entries into this race like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who could pull into the lead.
Besides, Maviglio said: “She has a base. She ran for president. She’s got a big list … and everybody knows who she is. Whereas Newsom is sort of like the flavor of the month right now.”
This column originally appeared in the Boston Globe, where I am a contributor to the Opinion section. It is reprinted with permission.
