Gavin Newsom, the California governor who could hit the national stage

Talk has been swirling since last week's presidential debate that the Democratic Party may seek to replace President Joe Biden on its 2024 presidential ticket, and one name pundits have consistently put forward is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The 56-year-old has led the Golden State since 2019 and has raised his national profile considerably over the last few years. 

But even if Biden doesn't drop out of this November's race, Newsom is unlikely to disappear from the national stage; the governor has long been groomed as a rising face of the party and could emerge as the frontrunner to be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028. Where did Newsom get his start, how has he run California and what are his future ambitions?

Newsom's beginnings and governorship

Gavin Newsom was born in San Francisco in 1967. His father was a state appeals court judge, giving Newsom an early interest in politics. He "received a partial baseball scholarship from Santa Clara University, where he graduated in 1989 with a degree in political science," according to Newsom's gubernatorial biography. 

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Newsom then made his way up the totem pole in San Francisco politics throughout the 1990s. In 2003, he was elected the city's mayor, serving until 2011. Newsom then immediately jumped into statewide politics, serving as California's lieutenant governor. He was elected the 40th governor of California in 2018, beating his Republican challenger by nearly three million votes, and was reelected in 2022. 

As governor, Newsom has "led a historic transformation of the state's behavioral health care system, awarded over $267 million to 55 cities and counties to combat and increase prosecutions of organized retail crime, launched the Reproductive Freedom Alliance and built new climate partnerships across the globe," according to a press release from the governor's office. But his tenure has also been controversial; Newsom faced a recall vote in 2021 following "mask mandates, shuttered schools, sluggish vaccine rollouts" and increased crime and homelessness in California, said CalMatters. However, the governor was able to fend off this recall attempt by a large margin. 

Newsom's future

For all of the talk of replacing Biden, that doesn't appear to be a likely scenario. The president has said he intends to stay in the race, and Democrats "aren't going to turn our backs because of one performance. What kind of party does that?" Newsom said after Biden's debate. If Biden were to change his mind and drop out, Newsom would need to win enough delegates at the brokered Democratic National Convention this summer.  

But this doesn't mean that Democrats aren't still high on Newsom's prospects in 2028, and the governor has been traversing the U.S. and abroad raising his profile. In 2023, he "toured Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas to push back against what he describes as 'the rollback of progress' on civil, women's and LBGTQ+ rights in red states," said The Washington Post. He also "popped up in Tel Aviv and Beijing, meeting with world leaders [and] promoting his climate agenda."

While "other potential White House aspirants are quietly laying the groundwork for the future, the second-term governor has been more of an attention-seeking missile," said the Post. Newsom has been "darting across the country and the world stage as he courts a broad array of Democratic constituencies who could be helpful in a future presidential run." 

Perhaps most notably, this includes a long-running feud with a formerly shining GOP star: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The pair have sparred numerous times over each other's running of their states, and in 2023 participated in a feisty debate with each other. That matchup, perhaps a preview of what the California governor would be like during a presidential campaign, "revealed a new side of Newsom — who'd never participated in such a high-profile debate since he governs a deep-blue state," said Politico. It also presented a "kind of fantasy for an alternate world many yearn for — a 2000s-era throwback."