Copyright scmp
California’s Governor Gavin Newsom said on Sunday he was considering a run for US president in 2028 - just a day after former vice-president Kamala Harris made the same pronouncement. Newsom, a Democrat who has won national prominence this year pitching himself a leader of the resistance to President Donald Trump, admitted for the first time publicly that he was seriously weighing a 2028 presidential run. In an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, Newsom was asked whether he would give “serious thought” after the 2026 midterms to a White House bid. “Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom replied. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not - I can’t do that.” Harris said in an interview with the BBC on the weekend that she expected a woman would be president. “Possibly,” she said, it could be her. “I am not done,” she said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.” The next presidential election in the US is scheduled for 2028. Trump, 79, has not completely ruled out his own candidacy, as he and his circle frequently hint at the possibility of a third term. However under the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, no one may be elected president more than twice. Vice-President J.D. Vance is widely expected to seek the Republican nomination. With more than three years until the November 2028 election, it was entirely possible only one or neither of the two California politicians could throw their hat in the race. Besides Harris and Newsom, other potential candidates include Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. For years, Newsom has denied presidential ambitions. But since Trump defeated Harris in the November 2024 election, the California governor has emerged as a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s agenda. Under Newsom’s leadership, California has filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump - most noticeably against the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. The governor has also become more aggressive on social media, taking to X to taunt and troll Trump. Still, Newsom, whose term ends in January 2027 and who cannot run again for governor because of term limits, cautioned that he was not rushing into a 2028 presidential campaign. “I have no idea,” Newsom said Sunday of whether he would actually decide to run. After Trump defeated Harris in November, Harris was viewed as a possible candidate for California governor. But in July she announced that, after “serious thought” she would not run for the top California office. “For now, my leadership - and public service - will not be in elected office,” Harris said in a statement. “I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people, helping elect Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly, and sharing more details in the months ahead about my own plans.” Newsom’s interest in the White House raises the stakes for passing Proposition 50, a California ballot measure he has pushed - in response to a similar initiative in Texas - that would allow state Democrats to temporarily change the boundaries of US House maps so that they are more favourable to Democrats. California voters will vote on Prop 50 in a special election next week. Newsom has cast his effort as a response to Trump’s push to redraw maps in Republican-controlled states to make them more favourable to the Republican Party. “I think it’s about our democracy,” Newsom said in the CBS interview. “It’s about the future of this republic. I think it’s about, you know, what the founding fathers lived and died for, this notion of the rule of law, and not the rule of Don.” If Newsom is successful and Proposition 50 passes, the move could potentially help future Democratic candidates for the White House. But either way, both Newsom and Harris would face high hurdles in battleground states if they ran for president. Just being a Californian is a liability, some argue, at a time when Republicans depict the state as a bastion of “woke” ideas, high taxes and crime. While California boasts the world’s fifth-largest economy and is home to the massive tech powerhouse of Silicon Valley and the cultural epicentre of Hollywood, it has struggled in recent years with high housing costs and massive income inequality. In September, a study found California tied with Louisiana for the nation’s highest poverty rate. Newsom, 58, a former San Francisco mayor who was born to a wealthy and well-connected San Francisco family, suggested in the CBS interview that he had already surmounted significant obstacles. Early on, Newsom struggled in school and suffered from dyslexia. “The idea that a guy who got 960 on his SAT, that still struggles to read scripts, that was always in the back of the classroom, the idea that you would even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary,” Newsom said. “Who the hell knows? I’m looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment. And that’s the question for the American people.” Harris, 61, who served as a US senator and California attorney general before she became vice-president in 2020 and then the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election, received criticism last year after losing to Trump by more than 2.3 million votes, about 1.5 per cent of the popular vote. Some Democrats accused her of being an elite, out-of-touch candidate who failed to connect with voters in battleground states who have struggled economically in recent years. But speaking in Los Angeles last month as she promoted her new memoir, 107 Days, Harris appeared to take little responsibility for her 2024 loss. “I wrote the book for many reasons, but primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” Harris said. “Think about it. A sitting president of the United States is running for re-election and 3½ months before the election decides not to run, and then a sitting vice-president takes up the mantle to run against a former president of the United States who has been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go.” Additional reporting by dpa and Bloomberg
