Gavin Newsom's Big Red Gambit

California's chameleon governor is betting big on a bizarre plan to out-debate right wing figures.

YouTube/ Gavin Newsom

Gavin Newsom may very well be the future of the Democratic party. In late 2023 I was working on this piece about Young Republicans in New York, and I spent the evening watching that bizarre “Gavin Newsom versus Ron DeSantis” debate with a bunch of them at their clubhouse in Midtown. Several of them, at the time, mentioned to me that Newsom was actually one of the scarier opponents on the Democrats’ bench, because he was young, energetic and an effective communicator and debater. They weren’t wrong, but my theory is that they were actually tapping into something else: that Newsom is the closest thing the Democrats have to a ruthlessly cut-throat clout-chaser who will do anything to gain power. We’ve seen how far that took J.D. Vance, who cultivated a national profile through sober political analysis through the lens of a man who could connect to the lost generation of rural white voters seduced by Donald Trump, and then almost seamlessly pivoted to being an avatar of aggressive MAGA-nationalism and mouthpiece for an ageing and increasingly extremist cultural figure who is now attempting to rule by personal fiat. Anyway. Could Newsom do it? Maybe. But I’m not convinced his latest gambit is going to get him there.