SACRAMENTO, California — Vice President Kamala Harris has one advantage over Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) if a Democratic presidential primary were held tomorrow, according to party members in their home state of California.
That edge is that she is not a white man, those Democrats say.
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Regardless of who contests next year’s general election, the political chattering class is talking about the prospects of Harris, regarded by some as President Joe Biden‘s heir apparent, and Newsom, who has been rapidly building his national profile, including by debating 2024 Republican presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
Some Democrats at a California state party convention in Sacramento contend Newsom will cede to Harris, based on their shared histories in San Francisco when Newsom was mayor and Harris was district attorney and, then in California’s capital, when Newsom was lieutenant governor and Harris was attorney general. But other party members are of the opinion that the next primary should be an open, competitive race.
Aja, 42, of Sacramento, who preferred not to provide her last name, dismissed speculation that Newsom is in the middle of a shadow 2024 primary campaign against Biden as he introduces himself to the country, even through Fox News, and takes trips to the likes of China. She was also adamant that there was no “animosity” between Harris and Newsom, whom she calls Gov. Bruce Wayne because he is a “wealthy, good-looking philanthropist,” since “they all came up through the ranks together.”
“I think with the way politics is going, if I had to make one point, she might have the edge because people are tired of wealthy, white men getting the nomination,” Aja told the Washington Examiner.
Aja, a healthcare worker, defended Harris from criticism of her vice presidential record, saying that “nobody paid attention to the vice president until it was a half-Indian, half-black woman” and that she is Biden’s “face of the pro-choice movement.”
But scrutiny of Harris is not a Republican trope, with Joy O’Connell, 79, a retired social worker from Redding, California, asserting her vice presidential work has not been “publicized.”
“I don’t know that much about what she has done,” she said. “I kind of knew where she was coming from as a senator, but I’m not sure. So I think I would support Gavin.”
For Susan Gordon Green, 54, a multicultural and gender studies professor at California State University, Chico, Newsom is a “loyal party man” who will “certainly respect” Harris as “next in line” after Biden. When pressed for evidence, Green cited Newsom not challenging former Gov. Jerry Brown when he was Brown’s No. 2.
“They were known to not necessarily see eye-to-eye on things, but he was right there,” she said. “He knew what his job was. His job was to support Jerry Brown and to support the party.”
But Gretchen Newsom, 42, who is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 9th District’s political coordinator in San Diego and is not related to the governor, disagreed, and she argued that 2028, at least, is “anybody’s game.”
“They do have two very different stories and very different backgrounds, but they have very similar policy perspectives,” she said. “So it will be interesting to see how they differentiate from one another.”
Gavin Newsom, similar to many politicians, has woken up in the morning and seen a president in the mirror since he was a teenager, according to Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, and a co-director of the Yankelovich Center.
“He’s put himself in every conversation for 2028 and beyond,” Kousser said. “Being the voice of Democrats, the self-appointed voice of Democrats in a culture war. That was this spring’s entry into the national debate. Becoming the sparring partner for Ron DeSantis on the undercard of the presidential race because they are going to have the debate and being, in some ways, a proxy president with his visit to China, sitting across from President Xi [Jinping] in that visit.”
“Those all elevate him, make him look presidential,” he added. “That’s the intent.”
Gavin Newsom appears to be keeping his options open, but his and Harris’s “greatest strength is also their greatest weakness,” per John Pitney, a former Republican aide who is now a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College.
Harris has “near-universal name identification in the Democratic Party and access to the national media,” he said, before continuing that she has “no independent authority” and, like other vice presidents, has been undermined for having “not really done anything.”
But although Gavin Newsom also has access “to vast sums of campaign money” as the governor of one of the largest states in America, he is responsible for California’s problems, “which are serious,” Pitney said.
“California continues to [have] rampant homelessness,” he said. “According to the supplemental poverty measure of the Census, which takes housing costs into account, California has the highest poverty rate of the 50 states.”
Kousser underscored Pitney’s homelessness argument, augmenting it with fentanyl deaths and gas prices, alongside liberal issues such as abortion access, gay rights, and gun control, which could be an impediment during the general election, although the governor is “solidly in the middle of where Democrats and most independents are.”
To Kousser, Gavin Newsom has also been critical of Biden, and therefore Harris, for instance, over a farm-workers labor bill, which the president eventually pressured Newsom to sign last fall.
“The relationship between the two has been an interesting dance,” he said. “A couple of years ago, they were really wary of each other. Bidenland has brought him in, brought him in close, and made him their proxy, their official proxy.”
Like Biden, Jack Citrin, the director emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies, posited that the governor is trying to present himself as “somewhat moderate” by not supporting “out-there” state Democratic legislative proposals and seeking tougher penalties for drug dealers in San Francisco.
“Newsom is pretty wonky, in command of facts and figures, and he is improving as a public speaker,” he said. “[He] can be portrayed as a rich guy, a la [Sen. Mitt] Romney (R-UT), and he has some skeletons in his personal closet. He also has credentials as having managed something.”
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But both Pitney and Citrin agreed with the California Democrats concerning Harris’s gender and race advantage over Gavin Newsom, with Pitney stating that “no Democrat can afford to offend black voters, who make up the party’s nominating wing.”
“His campaign would have to use proxies and surrogates to take the case against Harris,” Pitney said.
