SOUTHERN SWING — If Gavin Newsom is going to be a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, he must figure out how to appeal to voters in the Deep South and Middle America.
It’s a tough act for Newsom, a San Franciscan by birth whom opponents often frame as the embodiment of West Coast liberal elitism, with his slicked-back hair and taste for fine wines.
But the Democratic governor offered an early preview Tuesday of how he might attempt to appeal to voters in the crucial early primary in South Carolina as he opened a two-day swing through the state.
As POLITICO’s Tyler Katzenberger reported from the trail, Newsom spent the first day of his tour appearing with Democratic Party leaders and packing meeting rooms. Newsom grinned sheepishly when Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state’s Democratic kingmaker, introduced him as one of “these candidates that are running for president.”
“It’s no secret,” Clyburn told reporters after praising Newsom to roughly 200 people piled into a community center in the small, rural city of Camden. “I feel good about his chances.”
Newsom, who quoted from Corinthians and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seemed to be playing to the crowd. He cast himself as a happy warrior ready to trade jabs with the Trump administration, bragging that California is the “most un-Trump state in America.”
“American citizens feel like they’re being hunted, racially profiled,” Newsom told the crowd at a coffee shop in Marion County, a predominantly Black, rural county.
