Although California Governor Gavin Newsom avowed not to throw his hat in the ring to challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential bid, he hasn’t said he wouldn’t accept a vice presidential invitation.
Current Vice President Kamala Harris is within striking distance of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Should a calamity strike Biden after he wins a second term – if he wins a second term – and he is unable to carry out his duties as president, the second lady in waiting would need a new Veep.
It’s possible Newsom wants to be at the ready to slide into Harris’s shoes.
Considering Biden’s current mental and physical condition, the odds of this happening are greater than voters may want to consider.
Kamala Harris, President?
Biden’s reelection announcement video released back in April prominently features Harris.
According to the New York Times, both critics and supporters say increased attention on Harris is “a good thing.”
The current Veep will certainly undergo more scrutiny in the upcoming campaign, given, in a way, she is also running for the top office in the country.
Some consider this a liability for the Biden/Harris ticket. She’s not altogether a compelling option for swing and independent voters crucial to winning any election, but particularly the upcoming one.
As Mike Murphy, a political strategist who was a longtime adviser to John McCain, stated, “What swing voter wakes up and says, ‘Boy, Kamala Harris is going to move me?’”
Still, many of those crucial voters are not prepared to endure another four years of Donald Trump.
California Cronies
Kamala Harris, also hailing from California, has brought her left-coast version of liberalism to Washington D.C. In fact, she often sounds like a parrot of Governor Newsom.
“We are living, I do believe, in a moment in time where so many of our hard-won freedoms are under attack,” Ms. Harris said, addressing an audience at Howard University for a pro-choice rally.
“And this is a moment for us to stand and fight.”
Like Newsom, Harris touts a far-left social agenda not only on abortion, but also gun control, voting rights, gender dysphoria, and climate change, even if she doesn’t always articulate it so well.
Harris and Newsom are two peas in a pod. Both were groomed by “San Francisco kingmaker” and ex-mayor, Willie Brown. Both made history on the same day in January 2004; Gavin Newsom as the youngest mayor in more than a century and Kamala Harris as the state’s first black district attorney.
And while things seem bad for America right now, they can certainly get worse with two California officials leading the charge in Washington, D.C. Just look at what’s happened to San Francisco.
Newsom’s ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, actually foreshadowed that America could very easily turn into California in her bombastic RNC speech for Donald Trump.
“If you want to see the socialist Biden-Harris future for our country, just take a look at California,” she said. “It is a place of immense wealth, immeasurable innovation, an immaculate environment, and the Democrats turned it into a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets and blackouts in homes.”
Guilfoyle, the now wife of Donald Trump, Jr. and ex-Fox News host (how’s that for a 180?) seems to have had bad blood with Harris in the past. An expose in the L.A. Times in 2020 outlined the tangled web between Guilfoyle, Harris, and Newsom.
According to the Times: “This is a story about the battle lines drawn in a high-stakes presidential election. But it’s also a story about three people — young, beautiful and bountifully ambitious — in the supercharged political playground of San Francisco just after the turn of the millennium, charting the courses that would eventually bring them here, to the forefront of the national conversation in 2020.”
Needless to say, the world of politics, particularly in California, is as incestuous and sordid as Hollywood. It would come as no surprise to find Harris and Newsom hanging in the White House together, trashing his ex.
A Demotion for Newsom
However, going from leading the world’s fifth-largest economy in the world to being sidelined as second-in-charge at the highest-level, some of the functions would be a step down for Newsom.
As governor of the largest state in the country (by population) and one that butts up against the southern border, he is arguably more qualified to be president than Kamala Harris. Newsom has experience in managing budgets, tackling immigration, and negotiating with the legislature. I’m not saying he’s done these things well and given the Democratic supermajority, there’s not much negotiation to be had. Still, he’s had to engage with issues that concern Americans across the nation.
But, while he seems to loathe his counterpart across the country in Florida, someone he consistently positions as his main rival, Newsom should take a page from Ron DeSantis’s book.
Newsom should, as DeSantis often says, “racking up wins” in his own state of California and put himself in an undeniable position of prominence for 2028.
California’s governor should, right now, be focusing on how to resolve California’s problems, not D.C.’s, and certainly not Florida’s.
He could start with the homeless, crime, and the unaffordable housing market. Or maybe the cost of gas. Or halting useless projects such as the doomed train to nowhere.
Instead, Newsom is galivanting the country, acting as if he’s running a presidential campaign for 2024. He should save his energy. Even if he is gunning for number two, he’s almost a shoo-in.
Jennifer Galardi is the politics and culture editor for 19FortyFive.com. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University and produces and hosts the podcast Connection with conversations that address health, culture, politics and policy. In a previous life, she wrote for publications in the health, fitness, and nutrition space. In addition, her pieces have been published in the Epoch Times and Pepperdine Policy Review.
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