Gavin Newsom, Eyeing Presidency, Finds Himself Losing Altitude — and Doubling Down on the Bidens

Governor Gavin Newsom’s all-but-official bid for the 2028 Democratic nomination for president — he’s term-limited in the Golden State — appears to be faltering.The polling guru Nate Silver notes that Mr. Newsom “has lost a lot of ground in Democratic primary polls.” A VoteNexus poll published on Monday showed the Californian with 15 percent support in a prospective Democratic primary. That trailed the erstwhile transportation secretary and mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, who clocked in at 17 percent.A polling aggregator, Race to the White House, appears to back up that result. It finds that Mr. Newsom’s support among prospective Democratic voters has fallen to just 15 percent today from a high of 25 percent in January. Around the dawn of the new year prediction markets gave Mr. Newsom a 38 percent chance of claiming the Democratic crown — his likelihood is now around 23 percent.Mr. Newsom’s high-water mark came on the heels of voters backing him in November in respect of Proposition 50, a ballot initiative that empowered the state legislature to redraw congressional district maps for the 2026, 2028, and 2030 elections. That was a response to Republican redistricting efforts in Texas and elsewhere, and is projected to net Democrats as many as five House seats. Yet the Democratic race remains wide open, though the polling appears to capture a small uptick in support for another Californian, Vice President Kamala Harris. Her odds for capturing the nomination have improved to around seven percent from four percent in January. Ms. Harris, the last Democratic nominee for president, lost to President Trump in a truncated race after President Biden dropped out.When Ms. Harris was asked by the Reverend Al Sharpton in April whether she would consider another run — she was also unsuccessful in 2020 — she replied “Listen, I might, I might. I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking about it.” In her campaign memoir, “107 Days,” Ms. Harris alleged that Mr. Newsom did not return her call when she rang him after Mr. Biden dropped out. Mr. Newsom has explained that he was on a hiking trip and out of mobile phone service range.Ms. Harris took slings and arrows from some Democrats for not more effectively distancing herself from the 46th president. A new poll from CNN credits Mr. Biden with just a 30 percent approval rating, down from 38 percent when he left office. Mr. Newsom, though, is doubling down on his support for the former president. He told a South Carolina crowd earlier this year that “I’ll never turn my back on Joe Biden” and ABC News that he was “one of the most successful presidents in the last century.”That is a markedly different tone than the one taken by, say, Secretary Hillary Clinton, who last week told the New Yorker’s David Remnick at the 92nd Street Y in respect of Mr. Biden’s determination to seek a second term that he “made a terrible mistake. He made a terrible mistake for himself, his legacy, and for the country.” She added that persisting in the race “was a terrible miscalculation on the part of President Biden” and a betrayal of his promise to “pass the torch to the next generation.”Mr. Newsom has, even more surprisingly, cast his lot with the next generation of Bidens. Last week, the governor was joined on his podcast by Hunter Biden, whom he introduced as a “presidential candidate.” Mr. Biden, who was issued an expansive pardon by his father following his conviction for lying about his drug use on a gun form quipped back that he would prefer to be Mr. Newsom’s vice president because the vice president’s residence is “a lot cooler” and the role amounts to a “much easier job.” Earlier this month Mr. Newsom announced that Mr. Trump “has directed his Department of Justice to investigate us. They have not found a crime — they are simply trying to find one.He isn’t coming after me because of mean tweets, but because I am considering running for President.” The probe, though, was precipitated not by the White House but by a whistleblower complaint to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California.The investigation, in any event, is reportedly confined to Mr. Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. It centers on tax-related conduct in respect of a non-profit she founded, California Partners Project, that relates to gender equity in media. Ms. Newsom calls herself California’s “First Partner.”Mr. Newsom this week signed a $352 billion spending plan Monday that will be his last before he leaves office in January after nearly eight years as governor. At the signing ceremony he declared “To every other state across our country — to Washington, D.C. — to anyone who’s been told that responsibility and ambition can’t share the same balance sheet: Come to California.”A less optimistic position was offered by a Republican state senator, Roger Niello, who declared that the “governor can claim he has a ‘balanced’ budget on his way out the door, but really, he’s just leaving us with his tab.” California’s boom in Artificial Intelligence has resulted in higher than expected revenues flowing into the Golden State’s coffers. Mr. Newsom’s budget also allocates $29 million to help the state speed up its drawn out vote count by increasing staffing and upgrading technology ahead of November’s election. The delay in counting votes has become a source of intense criticism in the wake of statewide and Los Angeles elections this summer where final results were unavailable for days.Mr. Newsom also appears to be looking ahead to a potential 2028 platform. Last week on his Substack he called for a “true minimum tax on billionaires — a modern Buffett rule — that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay.” He decries “decades of loopholes written by lobbyists and upheld by politicians who knew exactly who they worked for. But this system can be undone.”The governor adds that “we are nearing the 250th anniversary of this country’s revolution. The system America’s founders built was designed to prevent the concentration of power in a few hands, but we have allowed that concentration to happen anyway, slowly, in plain sight, over decades. We can reverse it together, as a country.”

Gavin Newsom, Eyeing Presidency, Finds Himself Losing Altitude — and Doubling Down on the Bidens

Gavin Newsom, Eyeing Presidency, Finds Himself Losing Altitude — and Doubling Down on the Bidens

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