As President Donald Trump jokes about potentially canceling the 2028 presidential election amid slipping approval ratings, a Democratic politician is apparently winning hearts by taking on our head of state.
“California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has figured out the best way to get under President Trump’s skin,” said The Hill this Wednesday. “Act like him.”
Last month, Echelon polling results showed Newsom in third place amidst a large pool of potential Democratic contenders in the next election, behind former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg in second place and former Vice President Kamala Harris in first. While some expected Harris to run for Newsom’s current position as governor of California, she announced last month that she wasn’t joining that race.
Harris also evaded telling talk show host Stephen Colbert whether she planned to run for president again. After replacing former President Joe Biden last year at the top of the presidential ticket, Harris ran the shortest presidential campaign in modern history, ultimately losing the election to Trump.
Echelon’s latest polling, released Monday, showed that Newsom had climbed up to second place behind Harris. Her support remained unchanged from July at 26% and Buttigieg’s remained the same at 11% while Newsom’s increased from 10% to 13%.
That’s not the only survey that found Newsom gaining ground in August. A public opinion study released this week by POLITICO showed that voters in California would prefer Newsom to be the candidate over Harris. He was at 25%, compared to Harris’ 19%. According to that study, policy influences favored Buttigieg over both Harris and Newsom. Buttigieg’s support among this group was at a 19% plurality, followed by Newsom at 14% and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at 10%. Harris had just 2% support among this group.
This year, California political insider Phil Matier has helped Audacy follow Newsom’s steps towards what could potentially be a run for the White House in 2028. In the spring, he discussed Newsom’s controversial comments about transgender athletes that appeared to appeal to Republicans rather than Democrats.
“The only way he’s going to move out of California and possibly in the White House is down the middle lane, and any time you can call out your own on the left, you’re probably going to score points, not necessarily within that structure, but across the country in general,” Matier said at the time.
However, Newsom found himself up against the president more and more as the summer progressed. In May, Trump threatened withholding FEMA funds intended for wildfire relief over transgender athletes. The following month, Newsom threatened to boycott federal taxes over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in California. By early July, a poll administered by the UCI University of California, Irvine School of Social Ecology found that Trump’s approval ratings among California residents were “tanking” while Newsom’s favorability improved.
Last week, Newsom announced “statewide” actions to fight against “Trump’s attempts to rig Texas’ elections next year,” ahead of anti-redistricting rallies held across the country over the weekend. He went even harder on the redistricting issue this week, and “applauded California legislative leaders for introducing a legislative package that – if passed – gives Californians an opportunity to push back against President Trump’s power grab in Texas and other Republican-led states, but only if Republicans ultimately bend to Trump’s will.”
Matier joined KCBS Radio in the Bay Area to explain this week.
“The governor and the Democrats are saying, ‘We’re going to change the [California] Constitution. We’re going ask the voters to do it,” he said, referring to plans to redistrict California to eke out more Democratic seats in retaliation to Texas’ efforts to gain seats for the GOP. “So, the legislature isn’t going to redraw the maps. They’re taking it to the voters and saying, ‘You change the Constitution in this one time for the next couple of years and these are the new maps and you approve them as well on the same ballot.’ In other words, we change the Constitution and redo the maps. Asking the voters to do it rather than the legislature… that I think is the strongest legal thing that Democrats have and the Republicans are going to be tough stopping that.”
Matier added: “It’s fight fire with fire time,” for the Democrats. Now, whether it works is up to public opinion.
Newsweek noted this week that’s Newsom’s press office also seems to have a fire lit under it, and has “turned its social media feed into a stream of all-caps posts, pop culture parodies and AI-edited meme content, aimed squarely at mocking Trump in style while countering Republican initiatives.”
For example, Newsom said in a Wednesday X post: “Watch out, @realDonaldTrump. Your dictatorship is showing.”
“Democrats are looking for a fighter,” said Mike Madrid, a political consultant and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump political action committee, per Newsweek. “It’s not about ideology anymore. You can be centrist or progressive – what matters is that you stand up and hit back. The more aggressive Newsom gets, the more support he builds.”
Audacy reported last week on polling that showed Trump’s support among Republicans was slipping amid tariff wars and other economic concerns, as well as continuing wars overseas, ICE raids, numerous headlines about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and more. Reuters reported this week that its latest Reuters/Ipsos poll found Trump’s approval rating at the lowest level of his current term at 40%, with weak ratings from Hispanic voters.
More dismal news for Trump came with the latest Economist/YouGov poll released this Tuesday, which showed a new disapproval high of 56% for the president. It also showed Democrats leading congressional intention, little support for Israeli control of Gaza, growing support for military aid to Ukraine, and scant support for federal government control of universities. According to the Economist’s approval rating tracker, Trump’s net approval fell 1% last week.
While Trump joked during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House this week that the U.S. could cancel elections in a time of war, he does hit term limits with the next presidential election. Echelon’s latest polling shows that Vice President JD Vance is at the head of the pack of potential GOP candidates at 43%, followed distantly by current Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who was formerly a Democrat and ran for president last year as an independent before dropping out and backing Trump) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, both at 9%.
Wednesday afternoon Polymarket betting trends showed Vance in the lead for the 2028 race at 28%, followed by Newsom at 18%, Ocasio-Cortez at 9% and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at 6%.