Follow Up on Gavin Newsom’s Late August 2026 South Carolina Campaign Trip

CNN Politics has a piece on the outgoing California Democrats working South Carolina for the 2028 Democratic Presidential nomination sweepstakes….

He joins Pete Buttigieg and Jon Ossoff in making the stops in the state that will hold the first 2028 Presidential primary voting….

The hair gel mostly withstood the Low Country’s sticky sweat.

Between events in South Carolina, now fully enshrined as Democrats’ first presidential primary state, Gavin Newsom acknowledged last week’s trip was indeed part of feeling out a campaign.

“Obviously, it’s an early calendar state, but, you know, my state of mind was here before,” the California governor told CNN during an interview in the staff kitchen of a cultural center after his session with voters here. “I’d be lying,” he admitted, if he denied 2028 was a factor in the visit but insisted it was further down the list of motivations for his fourth trip to the state in as many years….

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But even before this trip, Newsom’s team already knew that he would have work to do connecting with Black voters — who tend to make up over half of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina — if he goes forward with a presidential run (or, what some aides have taken to calling “the next thing”).

He says that’s part of why he started his Southern swing touring the racial injustice Legacy Museum in Alabama, just down the street from the state capitol where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy. It’s the kind of poetic juxtaposition that tends to grab the 58-year-old.

“If you’re a Democrat, you’ve got to come back to the South, you’ve got to connect with what’s going on in this country,” he said.

For a party in a never-ending neurotic twist over whether they’re talking too much about what the president is doing or not talking about him enough, Newsom is trying to straddle the continental divide: by segueing from recounting how he fought back against Trump through California’s retaliatory redistricting ballot proposition into how that showed him Democrats need to fight differently now….

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In a free-associating stump riff that carried aspirational notes in the style of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, he told a story of a country battered but resilient. Democrats, and really most Americans, he said, need a hug, giving one to a younger woman in one audience who held a bright yellow “HOLD ME” sign for Newsom to see. He described Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as anti-Black and how “capitalism as we know it isn’t working,” but mostly focused on ticking through detailed breakdowns of how he said Americans are paying the price for Trump’s crypto-coin profits and upgrades to the Qatari-gifted jet and more, often eliciting gasps from audiences….

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“He’s just saying things that touch us,” said Bill Clyburn, the 85-year-old longtime state representative and a cousin of the state’s power broker congressman, Jim, who helped deliver the Black vote in South Carolina for Biden in 2020. If Newsom runs for president, Clyburn added, “He can do about as well as expected.”

Asked what, in fact, would be expected of Newsom’s performance in the state, Clyburn left his comment at a small chuckle….

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Taking on Trump over the immigration crackdown, federalizing the National Guard and redistricting is what put Newsom on the minds of so many of the Democrats who turned out to see him. Sitting in South Carolina, he previewed how he’s going to keep that going once his time as governor is up….

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Pressed by CNN to respond, Newsom tried to weave his record as governor and attacking Trump together with some of what will likely be his more specific, forward-looking pitch if he’s back in South Carolina for the next phase of a campaign.

“Minimum wage, universal health care, subsidized childcare, lowering cost of prescription drugs, making sure families are supported or getting Medicaid — I imagine those are not popular, according to (Wilson), which is kind of remarkable,” he said sarcastically….

More…

Note…

For a good many of us?

The 2028 Democratic Presidential Nomination IS Newsom’s to lose….

Harris is NOT looked at viable….

Butiieg is NOT looked as electable….

And Ossoff?

Might also have something that could cause people in a general election to pause….

image….California Gov. Gavin Newsom shares a laugh with Dianne Kittrell, at right, during a campaign event at the Brookland-Lakeview Empowerment Center, Friday, Sept. 4, 2026, in West Columbia, SC.

Mic Smith/AP