###

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

###

Get ready, America. After years of firm denials, Gov. Gavin Newsom is finally acknowledging his presidential ambitions.

Over the past month, the Democratic governor who once insisted that he had “sub-zero interest” in the White House has begun publicly inching toward the idea. In a profile published in the Wall Street Journal this week, Newsom said he would wait to see if the moment felt right.

“I’m not thinking about running, but it’s a path that I could see unfold,” he said.

The shift in tone comes, perhaps fortuitously, as all eyes are on Newsom again.

With President Donald Trump sending military troops into Los Angeles in recent days to quell sometimes unruly protests against immigration enforcement raids, Newsom has seized the moment to reestablish himself as the leader of resistance. The governor sued to stop the deployments and is now doing nearly endless rounds in the media accusing Trump of slipping into authoritarianism. He has sent daily queries to his fundraising list referencing the situation in Los Angeles and the president advocating for his arrest.

On Tuesday evening, Newsom gave a short video address, carried live on CNN, that sought to elevate his fight to national significance, warning that “other states are next,” and to rally the public behind him to defend democracy.

“This is about all of us. This is about you,” Newsom said. “It’s time for all of us to stand up.”

Many people already assume that Newsom is in campaign mode. A poll released last month by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times found that more than half of California voters believe Newsom is more focused on boosting his presidential prospects than governing the state and solving its problems.

But the ability to expand his message beyond California could stir voters in the rest of the country to start seeing Newsom as a potential leader, said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

He commended Newsom for channeling the growing fear and anger over Trump’s actions in his remarks, which Sabato believes may have changed the minds of some skeptics who regarded the governor as just “another pol with good hair gel.”

“He saw the danger to the American republic,” Sabato said. “It was a home run.”

Though speculation about a future presidential bid has followed Newsom throughout his career — his family even joked about it in a congratulatory message in his college yearbook — he never would have admitted that he had his eye on the White House even a few years ago.

After defeating a recall attempt in 2021, Newsom told NBC’s Chuck Todd in an interview that he had “never” considered running for president and had “no, no, no, no, no” interest in ever doing so because “who needs the damn stress?”

During an endorsement interview with the San Francisco Chronicle during his re-election campaign for California governor the following year, Newsom said he had “sub-zero interest” in being commander in chief and that “it’s not even on my radar.” He reiterated to CBS that “it’s not my ambition” and “I have no interest” in ever running.

The question came up again repeatedly last summer as frantic Democrats considered whether to replace President Joe Biden on the ticket, and Newsom always loyally batted it down, emerging as perhaps Biden’s most forceful surrogate until the bitter end.

Newsom’s star has risen in recent years

Whether those proclamations were sincere is, of course, another matter.

Newsom’s political star exploded with his early handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and he has spent the years since burnishing his national profile — touring red states to campaign for fellow Democrats, proposing a constitutional amendment to restrict gun ownership, debating Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis on Fox News, launching a controversy-generating podcast. The recent book “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” reported that Newsom was among the prominent Democrats who contacted campaign operatives last summer to explore their chances if Biden dropped out.

Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference in the state Capitol following the first COVID-19 death in California. March 4, 2020. Photo by Anne Wernikoff for CalMatters

Representatives for Newsom did not respond to questions about why he is speaking differently now about a potential presidential campaign and whether it represents an intentional strategy. But the switch has been notable and consistent in recent weeks.

In early May, Newsom told the video podcast Next Up with Mark Halperin that his decision was “to be determined.”

“I might. I don’t know,” he said. “But I have to have a burning ‘why’ and I have to have a compelling vision that distinguishes myself from anybody else. Without that, without both and, I don’t deserve to even be in the conversation.”

On his own podcast last week, guest Dr. Phil asked Newsom whether he was running for president in 2028 and the governor did not rule it out. “You’re not ruling anything out about your future either, so we’ll leave it at that,” he said.

If Newsom does ultimately enter the race, voters are unlikely to care about his pivot from past pledges that he would not, Sabato said, because it will be so expected.

“If you’re governor of California, the assumption is that you’re running for president,” he said.

And broken promises seem to matter little in politics anymore, Sabato added, “The one thing that Trump has done for everyone is eliminate the issue of hypocrisy.”