Newsom tries to walk Trump ‘tightrope’ as he eyes a future White House run

OTAY MESA, Calif. – Days after Donald Trump won re-election to the White House, Gavin Newsom was in a fighting posture – calling a special legislative session to prepare for expected legal battles with the incoming Trump administration.

He flew to Washington to strategize with President Joe Biden about how to protect the state from Trump’s threats about immigration enforcement and disaster relief. But weeks later on his “Politickin’ ” podcast, Newsom seemed to be recalibrating – emphasizing his desire to collaborate with the Republican president-elect, suggesting voters want to see a back-to-basics approach to governing and crediting Trump with being “crisp and clear” in his diagnosis of the country’s problems.

Stepping into the spotlight this week as his home state hosts the nation’s Democratic governors at their winter gathering in Beverly Hills, Newsom was back on offense against Trump, making a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border to launch construction on a new port of entry and warning that there will be devastating consequences for California if Trump carries through with his plans for mass deportations and higher tariffs on trading partners like Mexico.

It’s “not a closed fist as it relates to these issues, (it’s) an open hand,” Newsom said when asked whether he would direct state officials to cooperate with Trump’s mass deportation plans. He said the state would not “interfere with the federal right to advance federal laws with federal resources” but would also abide by state laws intended to shield some immigrants. “It’s not black and white.”

Like other potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders, Newsom is grappling with how to strike a balance with Trump as he faces pressure from liberal California voters to lead the opposition against the president-elect. But how Newsom finesses his relationship with Trump over his two remaining years in the governor’s office could shape voters’ perceptions of Newsom nationwide and damage – or bolster – his odds of eventually winning the White House. (Newsom has demurred when asked about his presidential aspirations).

Newsom’s potential 2028 primary rivals – including Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Jared Polis of Colorado and JB Pritzker of Illinois – are also trying to find the most politically advantageous positioning as the Democratic Governors Association meets in Southern California Friday and Saturday. The Democratic Party is in the midst of its own messaging reset as they examine the reasons for their losses in November and whether they can find any common ground with Trump’s agenda.

Pritzker and Polis launched a nonpartisan alliance of “Governors Safeguarding Democracy” in mid-December – an effort that would push back against what they described as the dangers of authoritarianism and the undermining of democratic institutions. Others like Shapiro have emphasized the need to “work together” and “compromise” after his state went red for Trump. Whitmer took an oblique shot at other Democrats who were adopting a combative stance toward the president-elect while speaking to reporters in mid-November.

“Some of my colleagues have staked out some pretty aggressive strategies,” Whitmer said. “As I’m thinking about what a Trump administration will mean for our work … I’m trying to focus on where we can find some shared priorities.”

Newsom has insisted that he is not aiming to lead the Democratic resistance to Trump, and several of his confidants noted that the California governor didn’t use that phrase in his initial comments about the election results and his call for a special legislative session (though others ascribed that label to him).

For much of this year, Newsom became a target for Trump as he blasted “Newscum” in his stump speeches – reviving a schoolyard taunt that Newsom said was first directed at him by his seventh-grade peers. In those same speeches, Trump threatened to withhold disaster funding – punishing blue states that didn’t support him – and weighed moves like revoking California’s ability to set strict pollution standards.

The warning shots from the president-elect were “sobering,” Newsom told reporters this week after he greeted lawmakers at the California Capitol at the start of the special session.

He is urging the state’s lawmakers to create a multimillion-dollar legal fund for the next round of legal battles – seeded initially with a $25 million litigation reserve – and told reporters he is deeply worried about potential cuts to Medicaid as well as how Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations could rock California’s economy, which is the fifth-largest in the world.

“We are reacting to the reality of Trump 1.0 and his assertion of what he wants to do in the second round,” the Democratic governor said, alluding to the state’s 122 lawsuits against the Trump administration in his first four years in the White House.

But after a year in which Newsom repeatedly baited Trump on the campaign trail, several people close to him, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, acknowledged that the governor has been reflecting on how to lower the rhetorical temperature and focus on voters’ day-to-day concerns rather than ideological battles.

Dan Newman, a California-based strategist close to Newsom who has advised several of his campaigns and spearheaded the outside effort backing San Francisco Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie, argued that the November presidential results showed that the voters signaled that they were more interested in seeing leaders focus on results rather than the ideological battles that Democrats have waged in recent cycles.

Even in liberal San Francisco, Lurie defeated Democratic Mayor London Breed by presenting himself as a pragmatic problem solver who would address issues like public safety, public drug use and homelessness.

“I really think people are weary of politics and they want to see leaders who are focused on the tangible, on daily realities,” said Newman, who helped Newsom defeat a 2021 recall effort. Though Newsom will be drawn into ideological warfare with Trump, Newman noted, he will also have to show voters that he’s focused on the more basic concerns that he was elected to fix.

“It is that tightrope walk of delivering on what you’re elected to do, but you can’t be naive or unprepared for the potential horrors of the Trump administration,” Newman said. “If this cabinet from Fox News sends the military to California to start deporting citizens and taking rights away, you’ve got to be prepared, but then at the same time, remain focused on the fundamentals, which is what voters are asking for.”

Newsom and Trump initially forged a partnership in Trump’s first term as they worked together on the early response to the pandemic. Their first policy talks unfolded shortly after Trump took office when then-Gov. Jerry Brown toured fire-ravaged areas of California with Trump and Newsom joined them as the governor-elect.

Ann O’Leary, Newsom’s former chief of staff, said as they traveled the California wildfire areas “they established in those early days, this important working relationship around disasters that was critical to California’s ability to address the wildfires, but became even more critical when COVID hit.

“Newsom really figured out a way to be in partnership and responsive from a federal, state government standpoint,” O’Leary said. “The question is – is that going to hold because now Trump is in much more of a fighting spirit.”

But she noted that Newsom and other state leaders also waged an aggressive legal strategy with the 122 lawsuits the state filed against Trump administration actions. Again, she said, that will be “an extraordinary tool that Democrats have to push back against anything that (Trump’s) doing – on the environment, on immigration, on guns.”

When asked this week in Sacramento about his effort to build a collaborative relationship with Trump during his first term – including in the early days of the COVID pandemic in 2020, Newsom said “it didn’t make any difference whatsoever in terms of his desire to attack California and try to unwind our progress.”

“His call for retribution, revenge is pretty clear,” the Democratic governor said, “and anyone who is not paying attention, I think is doing so at their own peril.”