加文·纽瑟姆为南卡罗来纳州民主党助选——同时为2028年总统竞选试水

Gavin Newsom stumps for South Carolina Democrats — and a possible 2028 bid

2026-09-07T09:00:29.339Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/07/politics/gavin-newsoms-2028-south-carolina

Aiken, South Carolina—

The hair gel mostly withstood the Low Country’s sticky sweat.

Between events in South Carolina, now fully enshrined as Democrats’ first presidential primary state, Gavin Newsom acknowledged last week’s trip was indeed part of feeling out a campaign.

“Obviously, it’s an early calendar state, but, you know, my state of mind was here before,” the California governor told CNN during an interview in the staff kitchen of a cultural center after his session with voters here. “I’d be lying,” he admitted, if he denied 2028 was a factor in the visit but insisted it was further down the list of motivations for his fourth trip to the state in as many years.

South Carolina Democrats are in such rough shape that their big aspiration is just winning enough statehouse seats to break the GOP supermajority. But Newsom said he’s truly committed to the state, explaining that he chose to come back to where he campaigned for both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and traveled on his book tour, because of the relationships he’s cultivated with state party leadership. Chair Christale Spain, for example, chose to celebrate her 50th birthday on Thursday by driving in a van ahead of Newsom’s small motorcade to introduce him at events and touted the $370,000 he’s raised as having literally helped them keep the lights on at party headquarters. (Newsom arrived with a present of a tiara and a birthday sash for her at one stop, and boxing gloves at another.)

As staffers set up extra chairs and the temperature rose in rooms not used to that kind of turnout, there was clearly interest in a very California governor in this very different part of the country. But even before this trip, Newsom’s team already knew that he would have work to do connecting with Black voters — who tend to make up over half of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina — if he goes forward with a presidential run (or, what some aides have taken to calling “the next thing”).

He says that’s part of why he started his Southern swing touring the racial injustice Legacy Museum in Alabama, just down the street from the state capitol where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy. It’s the kind of poetic juxtaposition that tends to grab the 58-year-old.

“If you’re a Democrat, you’ve got to come back to the South, you’ve got to connect with what’s going on in this country,” he said.

For a party in a never-ending neurotic twist over whether they’re talking too much about what the president is doing or not talking about him enough, Newsom is trying to straddle the continental divide: by segueing from recounting how he fought back against Trump through California’s retaliatory redistricting ballot proposition into how that showed him Democrats need to fight differently now.

In front of crowds of over a hundred mostly retirees, peppered with California transplants, each in Hardeeville and St. Helena Island, in Summerville and West Columbia — all spots picked by state Democratic Party leaders because they’re trying to scratch out wins far from the traditional Democratic population centers — Newsom delivered a confrontation call to action against the “invasive species” of Trump.

In a free-associating stump riff that carried aspirational notes in the style of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, he told a story of a country battered but resilient. Democrats, and really most Americans, he said, need a hug, giving one to a younger woman in one audience who held a bright yellow “HOLD ME” sign for Newsom to see. He described Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as anti-Black and how “capitalism as we know it isn’t working,” but mostly focused on ticking through detailed breakdowns of how he said Americans are paying the price for Trump’s crypto-coin profits and upgrades to the Qatari-gifted jet and more, often eliciting gasps from audiences.

But who was and wasn’t in those crowds was hard to miss at Aiken’s Center for African American History, Art and Culture, in a building constructed in the late 1800s to educate Black children, but where the audience for Newsom was predominantly older and White.

“I was saying to my wife—where are we? Are we not part of the Democratic Party anymore?” said Bradley Taylor, recently retired from the Savannah River nuclear waste site, looking around for other Black attendees ahead of Newsom’s remarks. Taylor said he wasn’t convinced about Newsom but has his eyes on former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for his “human connection.”

His wife Jacqueline Taylor, a registered nurse, was more open to the California governor: “Watching him troll Trump — that kind of turns me on.”

After listening to Newsom’s 20-minute routine, Taylor told CNN she felt inspired hearing about California’s redistricting effort, and the way he tied it to Democrats more broadly needing to “draw the line” in what they’ll allow Republicans to do.

“I am so thankful for him. If you want to gerrymander and cheat… you’ve got to fight fire with fire,” Taylor said.

She said Newsom made her think of what could be done to help her grandchildren: a truck driver trying to make a living with diesel costs high, another in the Army.

Listening, her husband amended his initial reaction — “He pretty much said everything I already knew”— to say his wife convinced him.

“He’s just saying things that touch us,” said Bill Clyburn, the 85-year-old longtime state representative and a cousin of the state’s power broker congressman, Jim, who helped deliver the Black vote in South Carolina for Biden in 2020. If Newsom runs for president, Clyburn added, “He can do about as well as expected.”

Asked what, in fact, would be expected of Newsom’s performance in the state, Clyburn left his comment at a small chuckle.

An hour away on Friday afternoon, 25-year-old congressional candidate Zyon Khalifa listened to Newsom’s rundown in West Columbia, liking the feel of a younger politician energetically working a room, and the way he talked explicitly about Black people being targeted.

“You don’t hear him trying to code-switch,” Khalifa said. “Instead of trying to sugarcoat it, say it in some way that all audiences would be OK with, he’s just saying what’s happening.”

Khalifa, like the Taylors and Clyburn, took a photo with Newsom. Asked if he would use that in his campaign against Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, he scrunched up his face and admitted, “probably not.”

Jermaine Johnson, the Democratic nominee for governor, made the opposite calculation, having Newsom headline a fundraiser for him on Thursday evening and then join him for a fireside chat at the historically Black Allen University in Columbia on Friday afternoon. By Newsom’s last event on Friday in Lancaster, a higher proportion of Black faces were in the seats.

“I don’t need big crowds, I don’t need to give a speech. I love this connection, I love the human connection, I love the granularity. I like reading between the lines, I like these small groups of people that we’re meeting,” Newsom told CNN. “I learn a lot.”

The strength of Newsom’s appeal to Black voters is already driving some internal deliberations, advisers say, as they look at Black support among potential primary opponents ranging from Harris to Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose reelection ads often get played on airwaves over the state border.

Newsom said he wasn’t worried about the crowd makeup this visit, explaining that he’d been told that was the downside of scheduling events while many people are working.

“You come on the weekends, completely different,” he said. “By the way, last time we were here was almost exclusively African-American audience.”

When a traffic accident Thursday afternoon delayed Newsom’s remarks in a country hall reception room by an hour, Spain, the state party chair, vamping for time, asked people to shout out which other politicians they’d like to see come through. Ossoff and Buttigieg, who was in South Carolina last month, followed by Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who’s been through and is spending part of Labor Day weekend campaigning in New Hampshire. When another suggested Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, she said she’d been told he wouldn’t come until January. Another mentioned Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who’ll be in the state in early October for his book tour.

But they waited for Newsom, and lined up for photos after, some in the $5 “Newsom 2028” buttons and $30 “Gavin 2028” hats sold by bootleg vendors who followed him around to every stop.

“Of course I’d look at all the options, but I think he’s viable,” said Keri Whitaker, a recent retiree, after posing for a photo with Newsom in one of the bright blue caps bearing his name and the California bear.

Most potential 2028 candidates will have a day job during the run-up to the election. But Newsom — like Buttigieg — is an exception: Come January, he’ll be out of office for the first time in a 30-year run from San Francisco supervisor to mayor to lieutenant governor to governor. While that means, as he noted to CNN, that he’s had to start figuring out health insurance for his family, it also could allow him to fill his weeks with events like these —building connections beyond core Democrats who already know him from TV or his social media team’s endless mockery of Trump.

State Sen. Margie Bright Matthews said seeing him in person has already surprised her.

“I thought he was just a tall glass of sweet tea,” she told the crowd in a church meeting room in Jasper County. “I realized he’s more than just a good-looking face. He’s got moxie.”

Expanding his battle with Trump

Taking on Trump over the immigration crackdown, federalizing the National Guard and redistricting is what put Newsom on the minds of so many of the Democrats who turned out to see him. Sitting in South Carolina, he previewed how he’s going to keep that going once his time as governor is up.

That effort was on display as he delved back into his late-night June 2025 phone call with the president as immigration enforcement officers faced off with protesters in Los Angeles.

Newsom has called the president a liar for claiming to have berated him in the conversation, and he retold his version of the story several times in South Carolina, most extensively in Aiken.

The call began with Trump bringing up the 2024 race against Harris, Newsom said, claiming to have won their debate and arguing that “it was a four against one” set-up with the hosts, cameramen and Harris set against Trump.

Presented with this account, White House communications director Steven Cheung did not directly dispute it, but told CNN via email: “The only liar here is Gavin who continues to fail his state and gaslight the public instead of helping his state that is suffering under his radical policies. The president called Gavin Newsom to tell him to get his ass in gear, but Gavin decided to disgustingly side with the violent rioters instead of protecting Californians. He is a loser of the highest order and continues to beclown himself on a daily basis.”

Newsom, anticipating such a response, said that he has already submitted his contemporaneous notes of the call to House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Jim Comer of Kentucky, and they’re also part of his defamation lawsuit against Fox News, now entering the discovery phase, regarding the outlet’s coverage of the phone call. Fox has denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight the allegations.

“I’m in this for the long haul,” Newsom said. “They can say whatever they want. These facts are well established in the court of law and in Congress, and not a word has been said to refute those assertions and facts. And I’ve done them on the penalty of perjury.”

An aide to the governor declined to provide a copy of the notes to CNN. Comer did not respond to a request for comment.

But he kept his focus on South Carolina, even as a few protesters showed up at some of the stops to lackadaisically hold up signs like “Barking up the Wrong Palmetto Tree” and “Bless Your Heart, Gavin,” or GOP gubernatorial nominee Alan Wilson posting “Don’t California My South Carolina” ahead of his arrival.

Pressed by CNN to respond, Newsom tried to weave his record as governor and attacking Trump together with some of what will likely be his more specific, forward-looking pitch if he’s back in South Carolina for the next phase of a campaign.

“Minimum wage, universal health care, subsidized childcare, lowering cost of prescription drugs, making sure families are supported or getting Medicaid — I imagine those are not popular, according to (Wilson), which is kind of remarkable,” he said sarcastically.

CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.