CALIFORNIA GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM, eager to raise his national profile as a Democrat willing to aggressively confront President Donald Trump, scored a campaign victory Tuesday that may help his party in the midterms as he moves toward a White House run.
With Proposition 50, Newsom successfully bet he could persuade California voters to throw out independently drawn U.S. House maps in favor of new districts designed to help Democrats win five more seats.
His gamble was a response to Trump’s redistricting push in Texas, where Republicans hope to pick up five seats of their own. Republicans have made similar moves in other states in an effort to maintain their grip on power for the remainder of Trump’s term. Democrats have too, but they have fewer options. Newsom framed the campaign as a near-existential conflict, arguing that democracy was at risk.
The two-month campaign sprint cemented Newsom’s status as one of Trump’s leading adversaries at a time when even many Democrats described the party as ineffective and weak.
“We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness,” Newsom said Tuesday. “After poking the bear, this bear roared.”
Democrats are eager for a fighter
The contest further raised Newsom’s profile among activists who are clamoring for Democratic leaders willing to battle Trump, said Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist. Newsom can now point to a tangible victory, she said.
“Democrats think that finally someone’s standing up and being creative and thinking outside the box and fighting back,” Lake said. “And that’s a very strong profile.”
The election win comes shortly after Newsom last month confirmed for the first time that he is considering running for president in 2028. He told CBS News he’ll make a decision after next year’s midterms.
“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom responded when asked if he’d give serious thought to a presidential campaign.
“Democrats think that finally someone’s standing up and being creative and thinking outside the box and fighting back. And that’s a very strong profile.”
Celinda Lake, Democratic strategist
Though the next presidential election is three years away, ambitious Democrats are jockeying for an advantage in a crowded primary field that’s already taking shape.
“He’s betting that Democratic primary voters will remember that he was standing as this bulwark against Trump as he’s attempting to consolidate power,” said Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic strategist and commentator. “And I think that he’s right about that.”
California is a ‘blessing and a curse’
Newsom is nearing his last year in office as California’s governor. He can use that time to continue stoking his national profile by fighting back against Trump while working on a vision for the Democratic Party, said Hackett, who managed former cabinet secretary Julian Castro’s 2020 presidential campaign.
He’ll face a tangle of ongoing problems that affect not only the quality of life of California residents but the state’s image in the rest of the country. They include an ongoing homelessness crisis, high energy bills, a struggling home insurance market, notoriously high taxes and housing costs that have been driving residents out of state in search of affordable living.
Voters last year spurned fellow Californian Kamala Harris, then the sitting vice president.
“California is a political blessing and a curse,” said Thad Kousser, a political scientist at University of California, San Diego. “It rockets you to prominence and comes with the baggage of the state’s political stereotypes.”
A majority of California voters “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the way Newsom is handling his job as governor, but support for a Newsom presidential run is lower.
Just over half of California voters said they would not like to see Newsom run for president in 2028, according to the AP Voter Poll, while 45% said they would. That includes some voters who support him generally or share his party: About 2 in 10 voters who approved of Newsom’s performance running the state don’t want him to seek the Oval Office, and about 3 in 10 Democrats or voters who lean toward the Democratic Party don’t want him to run.
They’re even less excited about Harris running again — about 7 in 10 California voters said they’re opposed to her running in 2028.
Kalinda Jones, who teaches social work classes at a community college outside Sacramento, said Newsom could be a possible choice for president, but she wasn’t enthusiastic about him or any other candidate. Jones supported Proposition 50.
“I guess right now, he seems like a good option,” Jones said.
Republican Dennis Guerrero, a 67-year-old retired salesperson who voted against Proposition 50, said he faults Newsom for his inability to slow the homeless crisis, among other issues.
“I would not vote for him for president,” Guerrero said.
Newsom seeks a place on the national stage
The Proposition 50 fight gave Newsom something else that will be valuable if he decides to run for president — donors big and small.
Newsom and his allies spent roughly $100 million. His campaign team says he collected 1.2 million contributions and brought in so much money that they asked people to stop giving. Campaign finance records show well over 100,000 donations came from outside California.
Newsom has long sought a more prominent voice on the national stage. As far back as 2022, Newsom was blaming his own party for setbacks in the nation’s culture wars, asking at the time, “Where is the Democratic Party?”
He has traveled extensively in recent years, including to crucial early-voting states like South Carolina, and is appearing on television shows and podcasts with national audiences, making some obvious steps toward the political center. He stunned fellow Democrats by holding mostly chummy conversations with prominent conservatives on a new podcast he touted as a way for the party to grapple with the “Make America Great Again” movement’s popularity and reach out to young men who have soured on the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, his press office has delighted Democrats and attracted widespread attention by mimicking Trump’s bombastic, all-caps social media posts.
“Newsom is the one Democrat of this generation who has leaned into the culture wars and done quite well with that,” noted Republican consultant Mike Madrid, a longtime Trump critic. Denting Trump’s momentum is “what the Democratic base has been looking for. They want a fight.”
Reporting by Michael R. Blood and Jonathan J. Cooper, The Associated Press
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