A Kamala River Runs Through Newsom’s 2028 Presidential Campaign

California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Jake Tapper he will not run for president in 2028 if former Vice President Kamala Harris enters the race—a concession delivered not in Sacramento, but waist-deep in a Montana river. 

“I don’t know if she runs, but we’ll see,” Newsom said. “I wouldn’t run if she ran.”

Tapper pressed him. 

“Why would I? I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do it to me. … I won’t waste everyone’s time. Who needs that?” Newsom replied. 

The interview, part of Tapper’s “Out of Office” series, was staged at Newsom’s in-laws’ Bitterroot Springs Ranch near Stevensville, Montana. The two men stood in the cold Bitterroot River, casting for trout and talking childhood, family, regrets, and whether Newsom is the “zeitgeist” or just “wasting everybody’s time.” 

Newsom called a Harris-Newsom primary “a gift from God for everybody else” and “mutual assured destruction.” He said it “services no greater good.”

Tapper noted that Harris collapsed before 2020, then lost the presidency in 2024. Newsom conceded that was “pretty good” and “objectively true,” then said he would not split the same donor and activist networks.

“Every other Democrat is praying for that, and every other Republican is gonna pray for that. And that’s just not gonna happen.”

He also said he was not ready to challenge Joe Biden in 2024 because he lacked a big enough “why,” that his wife and four children would have to sign off on any White House bid, and that he is “not screwing anything up anymore.”

He said all of this in a river. Californians are still waiting for a bullet train on dry land, while being told the governor is focused on the job he already has.

So the deal is this: if Kamala’s in the water, Gavin drops the rod. If she isn’t, he keeps casting.

The California Globe has documented the gap between Newsom’s national brand and the state he actually governs.

A 2025 UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll found 54% of registered California voters believed Newsom was “doing things that will benefit him as a possible candidate for president.” Only 26% thought he was “governing the state and helping to solve its problems.” 

An Inside California Politics/Emerson College poll that same year found nearly 60% of California voters said he should not run for president at all. Those numbers arrived while Newsom was already running a national operation: out-of-state campaign swings, a high-profile podcast, redistricting fights framed as a rebuke to President Donald Trump, and a multi-state endorsement tour.

Last week, Xavier Becerra, Newsom’s heir apparent in the 2026 governor’s race, finally agreed to a CNN debate with Republican Steve Hilton. Hilton has spent the cycle arguing that Becerra is selling “more of the same Newsom-era California.” 

Dana Bash and Jake Tapper will moderate on Sept. 30. Tapper now has Newsom in waders and Newsom’s preferred successor in a studio two weeks later. 

Not screwing up anything anymore?

Homelessness remains the governor’s most expensive screwup. 

California has spent more than $37 billion on it since 2019 under Newsom—roughly $200,000 per homeless person—and still accounts for a quarter to a third of the nation’s homeless population.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is stepping off the LAHSA commission she appointed herself to as federal investigators examine the spending. Leaving a board does not close the books or clear the encampments. 

High-speed rail still has no train. Noncitizens are still taken care of with taxpayer dollars. And the budget Newsom brags about still runs an $18 billion hole. 

That is the California he would ask the country to scale, unless the former Border Czar and Vice President decides to run from her Malibu mansion. 

Harris is a twice-failed national candidate. Newsom is a term-limited governor whose own voters said he was focused on the White House, not the Governor’s mansion. A primary between them would not be a clash of visions. It would be a custody fight over the same consultants and the same voters—a rerun of the Bay Area machine that left their home turf awash in homelessness, crime, and fraud.

He told Tapper he wants to “make the difference,” not “make a point.” The difference, so far, is that Newsom will step aside if Harris runs, and keep running everywhere else if she does not.

Harris has not said what she will do. Newsom has now said what he will not do. At least he still has a press corps happy to stand in cold water and call it access.

The trout didn’t take the bait, but the progressive base will fall hook, line and sinker.