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If Europe’s leaders had a say in the next US presidential election, Gavin Newsom would be the frontrunner. A month after making a spectacle of himself in Davos, California’s governor seemed like a veteran in Munich. Add in the red carpet treatment Newsom got from China’s Xi Jinping last October and his presence at the global climate summit in Brazil (partly filling the void of America’s absence) and he could be leading the world primary too. “Donald Trump is temporary,” Newsom keeps saying. “He will be gone in three years.”
America’s Democratic voters will be a much tougher sell than foreigners. But Newsom has two early edges in what promises to be a crowded field. The first is that he can throw a punch. Trump loathes Newsom and vice versa. At a time when Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill seem to be perfecting the art of strongly worded letters, Newsom has been America’s nearest thing to leader of the opposition. He has found ways of messing with Trump’s head. The “Newsom knee pads” — his accessory for US chief executives and allied leaders who kneel in obeisance to Trump — are selling well.
Newsom’s other plus is that he knows how to campaign. In contrast to his fellow Californian Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in 2024, Newsom is more than willing to take on the Democratic left. Bill Clinton’s attack on the black rap activist Sister Souljah in 1992 is the model. Newsom embarked on a series of mini Sister Souljah moments last year by hosting the since murdered Maga activist Charlie Kirk on his podcast. Newsom told Kirk that it was “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in women’s sports. The cultural left now hates him. Harris should have courted their enmity in 2024.
Though Newsom easily leads the betting markets for Democratic nominee — with the progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trailing a distant second, and Harris even further back — all kinds of Democrats distrust Newsom. Nobody is certain what he stands for. As mayor of San Francisco, he was America’s strongest early advocate for gay marriage. Now he is throwing the identity left under the bus. Harris was skewered by Trump’s advertisement “Kamala is for they/ them. President Trump is for you.” Newsom could be ripe for, “Newsom is for he/him, Y candidate is for you.”
Of his vaunting ambition, nobody is in any doubt. Newsom seems to have been preparing his White House run since about 1997. That also means he has put some thought into what it takes. The title of his campaign memoir, Young Man in a Hurry, tries to turn his monomania into a strength. The book also deals with an affair he had with a staffer’s wife when he was a mayor, Newsom’s role in his cancer-ridden mother’s assisted suicide when he was in his mid-thirties, and his weakness for self-help gurus. Middle America is unlikely to warm to a Californian with perfectly coiffed hair. Newsom leans into being his party’s “hair apparent”.
What makes America’s next presidential election unique is that no one can be confident that it will be free and fair. The same applies to the 2026 midterms in November. Trump’s assault on US constitutional norms has dramatically raised the stakes. Being a governor who can get judges to expel the US national guard from his state puts points on the board. As was the Newsom referendum to gerrymander an overt five-seat Democratic gain that passed by a landslide in November. California’s governor has shown he is a pugilist, but his larger purpose remains in question.
Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic Speaker and Newsom’s biggest cheerleader, says “democracy is saved at the kitchen table”. At a time when affordability is the rallying cry, Newsom’s economic philosophy remains unclear. Signing clean energy deals, as Newsom did with the UK on Monday, and accusing Trump of ceding a renewables “own goal” to China, is no substitute.
History might look back on the Trump years as the moment when the Silicon Valley broligarchs took control of everyone’s future. Newsom is uncomfortably close to his state’s tech billionaires. Middle America on the other hand seems to be ripe for AI populism. Cornering the latter has a three-in-one upside. The candidate who can best articulate voters’ fears over their children’s digital addiction and their own job security while also confronting America’s dystopian levels of inequality is likely to profit.
That figure may not be Newsom. But as the saying goes, he should aim for the prize or die trying. In Munich last week, Newsom witnessed the hardening transatlantic divide. When it comes to AI fears, however, America is trending European.
edward.luce@ft.com
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