FLORENCE, S.C. — After nearly six months of President Trump in the White House, California Gov. Gavin Newsom descended on a coffee shop in this small South Carolina city to preach his gospel of resistance.
Click Here to Subscribe to the California Political Review
Suddenly, Democrats here felt they were witnessing a spiritual and political revival: After all the pain and trauma of the 2024 election, they seemed in the presence of an uplifting leader with the savvy to awaken the Democratic grassroots.
“I’ve been so depressed,” Marion Wagner, a retired postal worker, said as she waited for Newsom at his first stop in LilJazZi’s cafe Tuesday. “This is a ray of hope.”
“Thank you for suing Trump!” Suzanne La Rochelle, the executive director of the Florence County Democratic party, told the tall, svelte 57-year-old West Coast politician after he delivered his political sermon.
“This is just the jolt that South Carolina needs,” said Joyce Black, a 63-year-old grant writer, pumping her first.
Newsom promoted his more than 2,000-mile jaunt from California to South Carolina as a bid to help the party win back the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026 and connect directly with rural Deep South communities that had been overlooked by Republicans.
But most people believed the governor, who is mulling over a White House bid in 2028, was in the Palmetto State to forge connections in a crucial election state that traditionally hosts the South’s first presidential primary. There are a dozen competitive House districts right now in California, but not a single one is in South Carolina.
The state’s Rep. James Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress and renowned Democratic kingmaker who rescued former President Biden’s 2020 campaign, addressed the elephant in the room when he joined Newsom in Camden, S.C.
“As we go around welcoming these candidates who are running for president, let’s not forget about school boards,” Clyburn said.
Newsom grinned awkwardly and the crowd roared with laughter. Jokingly, Newsom turned around as if looking for another, unidentified, politician behind him.
Clyburn stopped short of endorsing Newsom, but he told The Times “he’d be a hell of a candidate.”
“He’s demonstrated that over and over again,” Clyburn said. “I feel good about his chances.”
Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor who was first elected governor in 2018, would face steep hurdles if he threw his hat into the race for president.
Just being a Californian, some argue, is a liability.
The Golden State boasts the world’s fourth-largest economy and is a high-tech powerhouse. But as income inequality soars along with the cost of living, Republicans paint the state as the poster child of elite “woke” activism and rail against the state’s high taxes, rampant homelessness and crime.
The signs Republican activists waved outside Newsom’s “Meet and Greet” in Pickens, a staunchly red county that voted 76% for Trump, distilled the GOP narrative:
“Newsom, your state is a MESS & you want to run this country. NO WAY!”
“Keep your socialist junk in CA!”
““he’d be a hell of a candidate.”
Really??? You should live here and watch him do the 180 spin to misrepresent the truth.
“”Republicans paint the state as the poster child of elite “woke” activism and rail against the state’s high taxes, rampant homelessness and crime.””””
Well guess what if the truth stings then that is what the Democrats get.
All you have to do is look around at the wild and uncontrolled swing of the National Democrat Party that makes a radical Socialist by the name of Newsom look possibly reasonable.
Slick is nothing more then the San Fran Nan excuse…..
Good luck SC if you think he looks great.