(Inside California Politics) — With Gavin Newsom drawing closer to a seemingly-inevitable presidential run, host Nikki Laurenzo spoke with a top national journalist about how the California governor is viewed in Washington, D.C.
Leland Vittert, NewsNation’s chief Washington anchor and host of On Balance with Leland Vittert, compared Newsom to Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. Both govern large states where they’ve led the way on policies that are popular within their own party, riding their state-level success to bigger national platform.
Newsom “does not suffer from a confidence problem,” Vittert joked, weighing in on the governor’s reputation in the nation’s capitol.
“I’ve never heard anyone [in D.C.] speak all that highly of Gavin Newsom, either of him personally or of his political abilities beyond being governor of California,” he said.
Vittert said some Republicans are salivating over the possibility of Newsom as the Democrats’ 2028 nominee because they believe it would make it easy to run against the idea of turning America into California.
In a Democratic presidential primary, Newsom will be somewhere in the middle, Vittert said — not far enough left for more progressive voters and not moderate enough for more conservative Democrats.
“In policy,” Vittert said, Newsom is “a man without a country.”
Vittert also weighed in on two other Californians who could run in 2028: former Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna.
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