SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom sailed to reelection Tuesday night, easily defeating Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle in an outcome seen as so inevitable that he barely campaigned for reelection.
Whether Newsom will stay in office for the next four years, however, has been the subject of widespread speculation.
The governor, who defeated a recall attempt last year, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars this election cycle campaigning outside California — positioning himself as a national political figure by going after GOP heavyweights like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. He’s bought billboards, full page newspaper ads and TV spots in Republican-led states, bashing leaders there for their anti-abortion and pro-gun policies.
The governor insists it’s about countering a GOP narrative on the national level, and has said on multiple occasions that he has no interest in a presidential 2024 bid. During the only debate against Dahle, Newsom committed to serving all four years of a second term.
But his actions, which have grabbed the attention of Democrats and Republicans across the country, have been largely perceived as a preliminary tryout for the White House.
The governor spent much of his campaign efforts inside California promoting Proposition 1, a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution.
A former San Francisco mayor and lieutenant governor, Newsom’s first term was marked by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and a subsequent effort to remove him from office. California in early 2020 issued some of the nation’s strictest lockdown measures, which experts initially praised and credited with preventing a first wave of deaths. As the pandemic went on, however, frustrations over school and business closures bubbled over, helping fuel a recall attempt, which Newsom handily defeated in September 2021.
His fourth year in office was marked by ambitious policy goals around abortion, gun control, climate change and homelessness. Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, Newsom has worked to position California as a safe haven for the nation’s abortion seekers and a state that “still believes in freedom.”
He has said little about his specific goals going into a second term, but one issue looms large — homelessness. The increasingly visible problem has garnered criticism both in and outside California. The state is home to nearly a quarter of the nation’s entire homeless population, and sprawling tent encampments have become a common fixture under overpasses, on sidewalks and in public parks.
Newsom, more than any of his predecessors, has put up a great deal of state funds to combat the problem, but in recent months has shifted blame to local leaders. Last week, he issued a blanket rejection of local California governments’ plans to curb homelessness, putting on hold hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
If Newsom is indeed harboring presidential aspirations, he’ll only have a small window to fulfill them. President Joe Biden hasn’t bowed out from 2024. If he does, Vice President Kamala Harris is widely expected to run again in his stead. Even though the governor has been willing to criticize Democrats on the national stage, he seems reluctant to directly counter Biden or Harris, who, like Newsom, came up through the high-stakes world of San Francisco politics.
Speaking about the vice president in May, Newsom said he’s hopeful that “she’s the next president of the United States.”
Deference aside, Democrats, including those close to Newsom, acknowledge there is an appetite for new leadership in the party.
The president’s approval ratings have remained dismally low. One New York Times/Siena College poll found only 26 percent of Democratic voters said the party in 2024 should renominate Biden, who at 79 is already the oldest sitting president in history. A September Morning Consult/POLITICO poll found Harris was the top-favored Biden replacement. Only about 6 percent of respondents favored Newsom as a Biden surrogate, behind Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
