Newsom’s balancing act
Gavin Newsom calls himself a patriot, a Christian, and a climate change warrior. And he doesn’t want to choose.
Much of the attention at last weekend’s Munich Security Conference centered around the spate of potential Democratic 2028 candidates in attendance — Sens. Chris Murphy and Ruben Gallego, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Govs. Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom. The attention was strong enough that AOC, who received largely negative reviews for her appearance, condemned the 2028 focus as “out of touch.”
What caught my eye was something different: Newsom’s delicate dance around climate change.
In Munich, the California governor appeared on a panel discussing climate change, and his comfort around the issue clearly shone through. He called Donald Trump a “wholly owned subsidiary of Big Oil,” bragged that California runs “nine out of ten days on 100% clean energy,” and argued the state’s focus on electric cars has “driven manufacturing, innovation that allows American automobile manufacturing to be competitive globally.” He then flew to London, where he signed a new clean energy pact between the UK and California. The agreement, partly ceremonial, is aimed at ramping up clean energy production by both parties.
The moves are especially interesting because they put two of the governor’s primary goals in tension with each other. Since Trump’s return to the White House, Newsom has eagerly positioned himself as a sort of President of Blue America, attending more international gatherings and conferences than any other American politician and jumping at opportunities — like the California redistricting battle — to become his party’s de facto spokesperson.
At the same time, Newsom has gone out of his way to push back on every possible stereotype of California. He weaves “freedom” and “patriotism” into his speeches and frequently quotes the Bible. As I wrote last month, his State of the State address inveighed against “California Derangement Syndrome,” framing conservatives’ attacks on the state as out of step with the facts. As this piece smartly noted, it all indicates Newsom sees his home state as one of the biggest hurdles in his 2028 campaign-in-waiting, and is already trying to preempt attacks.
It’s a tendency I noticed this winter, when I asked him about the welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota and its implications for his frequent arguments that blue states are superior to red ones. He went out of his way to pitch California as committed to detecting fraud — and argued that red states have been given a pass on their own mismanagement.
“As a state that had to deal with its own share of fraud,” he told me, “we established a new fraud detection technology and platform that actually, months later, was adopted in other states across the country. We knew for a fact that this was persistent all across the rest of the country but was not and has not necessarily gotten the scrutiny and consideration that it should.”
On climate change, an issue on which Americans have supremely nuanced views, Newsom faces an issue on which it is difficult to balance both goals — to position himself as both a shadow president and a credible candidate for, say, western Pennsylvania. As his recent appearances indicate, he has no intention to run from the issue (and couldn’t if he tried). So how he ends up threading the needle will be telling.
We already have some clues about which way the wind is blowing. Over the past year, the movement among Democratic governors on climate change has been noticeably towards moderation. In just the past few months, PA Gov. Josh Shapiro withdrew his state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, MA Gov. Maura Healey moved to delay her state’s emissions reduction goals, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul approved a major new gas pipeline.
Newsom, for all his climate advocacy on the international stage, has made similar moves over the past year. Among them: easing gasoline standards, delaying a windfall tax on oil companies, and relaxing some portions of the state’s carbon tax system. Then, there’s his decision to reform the infamous California Environmental Quality Act in an effort to boost housing production.
It has not gone unnoticed in the environmental movement. One person working in environmental advocacy noted that Newsom’s recent efforts, like weakening California’s environmental review law, have "led to a lot of anger and frustration” among advocates. In Munich, that kind of review might be a liability. Come 2027, it might be music to his ears.
Georgia: Looking around the corner
We are exactly three months away from one of the most impactful elections this year, and it’s yet to arrive on most Democrats’ radar.
The Democratic primary for Georgia governor is on May 19th. It’s a race that carries enormous stakes, both politically and policy-wise, as no state in the country now has a wider gap between its state-level governance and national political identity.
Currently, only seven states in the country have not expanded Medicaid, have a $7.25 minimum wage, and have a total or near-total abortion ban. Georgia is by far the bluest of this group — the only one to have voted for Trump by single digits in 2024 and the only one to back Joe Biden in 2020. Six of those seven have gubernatorial elections this year, and Georgia is the only seat Democrats have a reasonable chance at flipping.
The policy implications of victory could be significant. Two candidates I’ve spoken to argue both houses of the state legislature — in which Republicans hold 99-81 and 33-23 seat majorities — could be in play with the right nominee. A Democratic trifecta would be the state’s first since 2000, and potentially transformative.
This chart has been updated.
There are 2028 stakes at play as well. As election analysts have begun pointing out, Georgia is becoming an increasingly crucial ingredient in any Democratic electoral college victory. Biden’s 2020 victory in the state was insulated from interference in part because Brian Kemp, the state’s outgoing Republican governor, acknowledged Biden’s victory. The next Republican governor is unlikely to do so.
Despite its high stakes, the primary has received limited attention from national observers and Democrats. The race was last publicly polled in October, and all polls thus far have shown former Atlanta Mayor and Biden administration official Keisha Lance Bottoms in the lead. Besides Bottoms, former DeKalb County executive Michael Thurmond, former Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan, and former state senator Jason Esteves have all polled in double digits.
I’ve spoken to Democratic strategists both in Georgia and nationally, and there is some general skepticism around the ability of Bottoms, who declined to seek re-election in 2021 after a big crime wave hit Atlanta, to win a general election. There’s also deep distrust of Duncan, who served as Kemp’s Republican lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2023 and only officially joined the Democratic Party last year. Who in the field ends up emerging victorious could reverberate for years.
There’s one other layer as well. Unlike some other states, Georgia does not require its governor to fill a Senate vacancy with a member of the same party. So, unless Democrats capture the Georgia governorship this year, the party may soon face a dilemma come 2028. If one of Georgia's two Democratic senators — including the one who is very clearly signaling his intention to run — were to successfully mount a campaign for president or vice president in 2028, the party, already scrounging for every Senate seat it can muster, would likely be handing a seat to the GOP.
Got feedback on today’s newsletter? Email me [email protected]