‘Waiting in the wings’: as Biden stumbles, Gavin Newsom’s name is on everyone’s lips

Gavin Newsom speaks to members of the press on the day of the first 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta, Georgia, on 27 June 2024. Photograph: Marco Bello/Reuters

To paraphrase Jan Brady of the Brady Bunch, lately it’s been “Newsom, Newsom, Newsom” all day long.

He’s been at the Vatican for a climate summit, and in Alpharetta, Georgia, for a televised debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s all over the TV, actually – on Fox News and MSNBC, and in advertisements airing in Tennessee.

And ever since Joe Biden’s catastrophic performance at the first presidential debate on CNN, his name has popped up in nearly every list of possible successors. With just four months to go until the presidential election, chances that the president would step aside now are exceedingly remote – but that hasn’t stopped the speculation. Online political betting odds that Newsom would end up at the top of the presidential ticket this year tripled to a one-in-four chance last week.

For the ambitious governor of the most populous US state, this crowning moment has been a long time in the making. For years, Newsom’s flair for a photo op and steady pursuit of network news spots have fueled speculation about his presidential ambitions, and sparked scepticism among constituents who’d rather he stick to his day job. Now, it seems, the man who has spent the last several years seeking a national stage has finally found himself at the centre of one.

“I think it’s been clear that he’s been waiting in the wings for some time,” said Emily Hoeven, an opinion columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle and politics reporter who has followed Newsom’s career closely. “But I think that now there is a far bigger opening for him than there ever has been.”

The governor was swarmed by the press the moment the debate ended. “It was like human piranhas descending on the governor after the end of this debate,” marvelled MSNBC host Alex Wagner, as she settled in for a post-debate interview with him.

Newsom, who is top surrogate for Biden’s 2024 campaign, waved away the buzz about whether he would replace Biden on the Democratic ticket. When Wagner asked about growing calls for Biden to step down, he quickly said such talk was “unhelpful and unnecessary” – before highlighting Biden’s record on the economy and abortion, and the threats his opponent poses to the continuation of US democracy.

“I think what you’ve seen is this, what Gavin Newsom has to say is really not so different from what Joe Biden has to say,” said Bill Whalen, a policy fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Palo Alto, California. “But he takes Joe Biden’s message, and he delivers it much more effectively.”

For Democrats across the US, Whalen said, Newsom is living out a dream scenario – leading a blue state with a Democratic supermajority in the legislature, where he can easily pass liberal reforms that would be nearly impossible to get through in other states or at a national level. “A lot of what Democrats would love to do nationally, California is doing,” Whalen said.

It has also helped that as California governor – one who handily defeated a recall campaign in 2021 – Newsom has amassed formidable political funds that he has been using not only to aid other Democratic candidates including Biden, but also his own political aspirations. Since his easy re-election in 2022, the governor has funnelled millions in campaign funds towards ads and appearances outside his home state.

Whether he can translate that momentum into a successful national campaign remains uncertain, Whalen and other political analysts said.

While he has been busy pursuing the national limelight, his reputation at home has soured. Only 47% of likely voters in California approved of his job performance in a Public Policy Institute of California survey in June, down from 57% in March 2023.

It may not help Newsom’s case that amid recent budget shortages, the state has been grappling with a spiralling homelessness crisis, an underperforming education system and growing economic inequality.

“I think that his actions demonstrate that his priorities are increasingly lying outside of California,” said Hoeven. “And I think that that is frustrating to Californians who obviously did not elect him to be the president.”

In recent months he has appeared to abandon some his more progressive political stances – including backtracking on support for supervised injection sites, vetoing a bill to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms and occasionally siding with Republicans and against allies in the legislature – which some supporters have perceived as an appeal to swing voters.

But it remains unclear whether the liberal governor of a blue state will ever truly have what it takes to amass national support in an increasingly divided country. And while his powerful political connections have helped his star rise in California, it is unclear if he will be able to shed a certain elitist affect that has dogged his campaigns here.

And then there’s the enduing image that’s haunted the governor’s political career for two decades: a photograph of Newsom stretched across a luxurious rug in Ann Getty’s penthouse, with his ex-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle – who is now a rightwing TV personality and Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.

It will be easy for opponents to hearken back to the governor’s infamously ill-timed visit to the Michelin-starred French Laundry restaurant amid a Covid-19 surge, or to point out his family’s decision to move, part-time, from California’s capitol in Sacramento to the wealthy Bay Area enclave of Marin – to enroll their child in a private academy.

In a recent bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live, comedian Josh Meyers plays “your lovin’ Govin” in a fake political ad where Meyers-as-Newsom attempts a bench press in his signature startup chic navy business jacket and half-buttoned white shirt while promoting “lunar power”. He huffs a vape and when someone asks for a hit he says: “Sure, but I only vape merlot” without breaking out of his toothpaste commercial smile.

“There is such a thing as perhaps being too attractive, or, more to the point, looking like the person whose photo comes with the new wallet that you buy at the department store,” said Whalen. “That’s Gavin Newsom.”

Hoven thinks back to his inauguration in 2023 – when he led what was billed as an “Anti January 6 march to the Capitol”. He was meant to march about a quarter-mile, alongside supporters, down the governor’s office. “But in reality, there were these massive fences up on either side of the promenade, basically, so the average person could not participate or really even watch the parade,” she recalled.

The governor walked only a little bit, before getting into a car. “It was emblematic of some of the ways that he’s failed to connect, I think, with the average person,” she said.