{"id":26280,"date":"2025-10-28T00:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T00:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/26280\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T00:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T00:30:07","slug":"could-americans-choose-a-california-democrat-newsom-or-harris-for-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/26280\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Americans choose a California Democrat — Newsom or Harris — for president?"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the tingling chatter<\/a> about a possible 2028 presidential primary face-off between California\u2019s two marquee Democrats \u2014 Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris \u2014 begs the next question: Does a California Democrat stand a chance of winning the White House?<\/p>\n

No state has been more maligned by Republicans, especially by President Trump, than the golden one. Harris, in an abbreviated campaign where she was painted as a \u201cradical California liberal,\u201d lost to Trump in November by a narrow vote margin, but a sweep of red states.<\/p>\n

And with every social media mention of Newsom \u2014 especially his acerbic posts mocking Trump \u2014 a flood of comments are posted\u00a0follow blaming him<\/a> for all of California\u2019s ills, from San Francisco\u2019s stubborn homeless problem to the devastating Los Angeles fires.<\/p>\n

At a time when the country remains deeply divided between urban and rural voters, and Trump\u2019s influence over the Republican party continues unabated, is California\u2019s political baggage too heavy for both of them? Can their personal brands in a national campaign supersede the weighted label of a California Democrat to ultimately appeal to voters in the Heartland?<\/p>\n

\u201cThey absolutely have a chance,\u201d said Thad Kousser, UC San Diego political science professor. \u201cPolls have consistently shown that they\u2019re the two candidates on the top of people\u2019s minds right now. Now that doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re the true favorites, but I think each is a political heavyweight who has a real opportunity here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Political science professor David McCuan of Sonoma State is not so sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to see a Californian winning the hearts and minds of voters in three key battlegrounds that you have to flip to win, which are Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,\u201d McCuan said. \u201cThose three states have gone with the winner every presidential election together since 1992.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s it going to take?<\/p>\n

\u201cLightning in a bottle,\u201d McCuan said.<\/p>\n

Neither Newsom nor Harris, longtime political allies who have both progressive and centrist bonafides, have committed to the 2028 race yet. Despite breathless news coverage about the possibility, their comments during weekend TV interviews barely moved the needle.<\/p>\n

\u201cPossibly,\u201d Harris told the BBC whe<\/a>n asked if she might be president one day. Although she hasn\u2019t decided to run, she said, \u201cI am not done. I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it\u2019s in my bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be lying otherwise,\u201d Newsom told CBS Sunday Morning when asked whether he would seriously consider a presidential run after the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the potential for a Golden State match-up between dueling political cousins<\/a> presents interesting dynamics for both a Democratic presidential primary as well as the general election, should one of them get that far.<\/p>\n

The political pathways of Harris and Newsom have largely mirrored each other since both were elected to political office in San Francisco in 2003 \u2014 Newsom as mayor and Harris as district attorney. Newsom, whose second term as California runs out at the start of 2027, has become a champion of redistricting Proposition 50. Harris advanced to state attorney general, U.S. senator and, under President Biden, vice president.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible to see a situation in which they both end up in competition,\u201d said Dan Schnur, who teaches political communications at UC Berkeley and USC. \u201cOne of them would end up leaving the race fairly quickly. There\u2019s not enough room for both.\u201d<\/p>\n

They each face separate challenges. Harris, who recently released her memoir \u201c107 Days\u201d<\/a>\u00a0explaining her failed presidential campaign, will have to convince voters why she deserves another chance.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemocrats are going to want to make it very much a change election,\u201d said Bill Whalen, a Hoover Institute distinguished policy fellow. \u201cThey\u2019re going to want to find a shiny new object to rally behind. She is clearly not that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The challenge for Newsom, is that he might be peaking too early, he said.<\/p>\n

Newsom has become Trump\u2019s top antagonist, posting a barrage of social media messages trolling Trump about everything from the president\u2019s White House ballroom to his girth<\/a>. Along the way, Newsom has poked fun at himself, posing as superheroes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite Newsom\u2019s constant reminder that California is among the world\u2019s largest economies,\u00a0he will have a lot of explaining to do about the problems he hasn\u2019t fixed in California, including high housing prices and some of the highest unemployment and poverty rates<\/a> in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cNewsom has all sorts of advantages coming into this race, most notably that he\u2019s emerged as the party\u2019s most forceful and most effective Trump critic,\u201d Schnur said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not hard to imagine one of his primary opponents running an ad with three seconds of grainy video of the Mission District in San Francisco with the caption, \u2018this is Gavin Newsom\u2019s California.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the naysayers, and two-and-a-half year lag before the spring 2028 presidential primary season, both Harris and Newsom are running away with the top two spots for the Democratic primary \u2014 both above 20% of polling averages.<\/a> Left in the single digits are former Secretary of Transportation\u00a0 Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.<\/p>\n

Several polls are already taking the far-away contest one step further. Polymarket, which predicts election outcomes by combining news, polls and expert opinions into a value based on a market\u2019s view, shows who would lead a contest between Newsom as the Democratic nominee and Republican Vice President J.D. Vance.<\/p>\n

The projected winner? J.D. Vance, with a 29% chance of winning,<\/a> compared with Newsom with a 23% chance.<\/p>\n

As much as personality appears to rule the day \u2014 Trump is a New York billionaire developer whose bombastic style captured the souls of discontented rural Americans \u2014 the 2028 presidential race might come down to simple, timeworn economic forces.<\/p>\n

In each of the last three elections, the economic models that studied where the economy was going and whether people wanted change all correctly predicted a Trump victory in 2016, a Biden victory in 2020 and a Trump re-election victory in 2024, said Kousser of UC San Diego.<\/p>\n

\u201cCandidates have to play the economic hand that they\u2019re dealt,\u201d Kousser said. \u201cVoters may well want to see a change in the direction of the country in 2028 and turn to a Democrat, even if that Democrat is someone who comes with the baggage of being from California.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All the tingling chatter about a possible 2028 presidential primary face-off between California\u2019s two marquee Democrats \u2014 Gov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26281,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[184,7,9,8,400,2333,457,9394,1533,181,2582,100,182,13,18766,385,77],"class_list":["post-26280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-bay-area","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-politics","tag-editors-picks","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-kamala-harris","tag-keywee","tag-latest-headlines","tag-national-politics","tag-news","tag-pm-report","tag-politics","tag-presidential-election","tag-regional","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26280\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}