In a sign of California’s rising status as a major hub of Democratic politics, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday he’s considering a run for president in 2028 — just a day after the news that former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris made the same pronouncement.
Newsom, a Democrat who has become a nationally-renowned figure this year pitching himself a leader of the resistance to President Trump, admitted for the first time publicly that he is carefully weighing a 2028 presidential run.
In an interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning,” Newsom was asked whether he would give “serious thought” after the 2026 midterms to a White House bid.
“Yeah, I’d be lying otherwise,” Newsom replied. “I’d just be lying. And I’m not — I can’t do that.”
Harris said this weekend in an interview with the BBC that she expects a woman will be president in the coming year. “Possibly,” she said, it could be her.
“I am not done,” she said. “I have lived my entire career as a life of service and it’s in my bones.”
With more than three years until the November 2028 election, is entirely possible that only one or neither of the two California politicians could ultimately throw their hat in the race.
But the early willingness of Newsom and Harris to publicly consider a White House bid shows that the Golden State remains a central power base Democratic politics. It also sets up a potential 2028 political showdown between two of California’s most prominent and nationally polarizing political figureheads.
For years, Newsom has denied presidential ambitions, even as pundits have considered him a potential candidate. But since Trump defeated Harris in the November 2024 election, the California governor has emerged as a more vocal combative critic of the Trump administration’s agenda.
Under Newsom’s leadership, California has filed dozens of lawsuits against Trump — most noticeably against the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles. The governor has also become more aggressive on social media, taking to X to taunt and troll Trump.
Still, Newsom, whose term ends in January 2027 and who cannot run again for governor because of term limits, cautioned that he is not rushing into a 2028 presidential campaign.
“I have no idea,” Newsom said Sunday of whether he will actually decide to run.
After Trump defeated Harris in November, Harris was viewed as a possible candidate for California governor. But in July she announced that, after “serious thought” she would not run for the top California office.
“For now, my leadership — and public service — will not be in elected office,” Harris said in a statement. “I look forward to getting back out and listening to the American people, helping elect Democrats across the nation who will fight fearlessly, and sharing more details in the months ahead about my own plans.”
Newsom’s interest in the White House raises the stakes for passing Proposition 50, a California ballot measure he has pushed — in response to a similar initiative in Texas — that would allow state Democrats to temporarily change the boundaries of U.S. House maps so that they are more favorable to Democrats. California voters will vote on Prop 50 in a special election next week.
Newsom has promoted his effort as a response to Trump’s push to redraw maps in Republican-controlled states to make them benefit the GOP. Some blue states have rules that prevent political gerrymandering, but Virginia is now following California’s lead and a few others, such as Illinois and Maryland, are weighing similar actions.
“I think it’s about our democracy,” Newsom said in the CBS interview. “It’s about the future of this republic. I think it’s about, you know, what the founding fathers lived and died for, this notion of the rule of law, and not the rule of Don.”
If Newsom is successful and Proposition 50 passes, the move could potentially help future Democratic candidates’ bid for the White House.
But either way, both Newsom and Harris would face high hurdles in battleground states if they ran for president.
Just being a Californian is a liability, some argue, at a time when Republicans depict the state as a bastion of woke ideas, high taxes and crime.
While California boasts the world’s fifth-largest economy and is home to the massive tech powerhouse of Silicon Valley and the cultural epicenter of Hollywood, it has struggled in recent years with high housing costs and massive income inequality. In September, a study found California tied with Louisiana for the nation’s highest poverty rate.
Although Harris and Newsom both hail from the Bay Area and worked their way up the Democratic political system in San Francisco, they have yet to publicly compete for the same office.
“We’ve been sort of on this track, but it was always adjacent,” Newsom told The Times last summer as Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee. “The tension was a sort of manifestation of punditry.”
Newsom, 58, a former San Francisco mayor who was born to a well-connected San Francisco family, suggested in the CBS interview that he had surmounted significant obstacles to get to this point. Early on, Newsom struggled in school and suffered from dyslexia.
“The idea that a guy who got 960 on his SAT, that still struggles to read scripts, that was always in the back of the classroom, the idea that you would even throw that out is, in and of itself, extraordinary,” Newsom said. “Who the hell knows? I’m looking forward to who presents themselves in 2028 and who meets that moment. And that’s the question for the American people.”
Harris, 61, who was born to immigrant parents and raised in Compton, was a San Francisco Attorney General before she served as California Attorney General, U.S Senator and became she became vice president in 2020 and then the Democratic Party’s nominee in the 2024 presidential election.
She received criticism last year after losing to Trump by more than 2.3 million votes, about 1.5% of the popular vote. Some Democrats accused her of being an elite, out of touch candidate who failed to connect with voters in battleground states who have struggled economically in recent years.
But speaking in Los Angeles last month as she promoted her new memoir, “107 Days,” Harris did not appeared to reflect on any errors she made in 2024.
“I wrote the book for many reasons, but primarily to remind us how unprecedented that election was,” Harris said.
“Think about it. A sitting president of the United States is running for reelection and three and a half months before the election decides not to run, and then a sitting vice president takes up the mantle to run against a former president of the United States who has been running for 10 years, with 107 days to go.”
Harris’ book received some criticism for keeping score and dishing dirt on Democrats who did not immediately support her bid for Democratic nominee. When she called Newsom, she wrote, he texted her that he was hiking and would call her back. According to Harris, he never did.
Already this year, Newsom has raised eyebrows by traveling to critical battleground election states.
In July, Newsom traveled more than 2,000 miles to South Carolina, a state that traditionally hosts the South’s first presidential primary. He said he was working to help the party win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026. But at the time there were a dozen competitive House districts in California. South Carolina, a staunchly conservative state, did not have a single competitive race.
After Newsom spoke at an event in Camden, S.C. Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker who played a key role in salvagingformer President Biden’s 2020 campaign, told The Times that Newsom would be “a hell of a candidate.”
“He’s demonstrated that over and over again,” Clyburn said, although he stopped short of endorsing him. “I feel good about his chances.”
But other leading South Carolina Democrats voiced doubts that Newsom could win over working class and swing voters in battleground states.
Richard Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorneyand former chairman of the state Democratic Party, dubbed Newsom “a handsome man with great hair.”
But he said the party was searching for someone quite different: “a left-of-moderate candidate who can articulate blue-collar hopes and desires.”
“If he had a track record of solving huge problems like homelessness, or the social safety net, he’d be a more palatable candidate,” Harpootlian said. “I just think he’s going to have a tough time explaining why there’s so many failures in California.”
