The Democratic National Convention was a pageant of California love.
There were glimpses of its abundant natural beauty. Tupac Shakur and Kendrick Lamar contributed to the soundtrack. Onstage, there were more Californians than you’d see at a farmers market on a Saturday morning in Pasadena.
Over four days and nights, one speaker after another sang the virtues of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Oakland-born, Berkeley-raised former state attorney general and U.S. senator who now tops the party’s presidential ticket.
One glaring omission from the happy parade: Gavin Newsom.
The Democratic governor had a brief cameo role delivering the state’s delegates to the vice president, in a ceremonial vote that ratified Harris as the party’s presidential nominee. (The balloting that mattered took place two weeks prior, in a five-day round of online voting conducted soon after President Biden dropped out of the race.)
That was it for Newsom.
Convention planners wanted him to kick off Monday night’s prime time programming, but the governor begged off. Couldn’t make it on time, he said. Children starting a new school year, he explained — though it’s not hard to imagine attending orientation and still making it to the United Center, which is less than a dozen miles from Chicago’s Midway Airport.
Also notably absent was California’s U.S. senator-in-waiting, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, who, alongside Newsom, is one of the most politically prominent Californians not named Harris or Nancy Pelosi. Schiff was also offered a speaking slot, but had a longstanding family commitment that kept him away from the convention.
One difference, of course, is that Schiff never had the fraught relationship with Harris that Newsom does.
It’s hardly a secret the governor very much wished he was in Harris’ shoes. Throughout the week he wore the tight smile of a disappointed runner-up; the kind you see at the Oscars when they flash on the Best Actor nominees just before pulling away to show the winner take the stage.
Newsom ran a kinda-sorta-but-not-really campaign for president, traveling the country to pitch his political vision and get in the face of red-state politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Newsom debated on Fox News. He ran TV ads and put up billboards promoting himself as a champion of abortion rights. He vigorously defended Biden, when few others could or would after the president’s ghastly debate performance.
All for naught, save a lot of speculation about what Newsom was really up to.
The governor and vice president, both products of San Francisco’s elbows-out political culture, have been running side-by-side for more than two decades. They shared many of the same donors and the same geographic base. For a time, they had the same team of campaign strategists.
Newsom told The Times’ Taryn Luna that talk of a sibling rivalry between the two highly competitive, highly ambitious political climbers was “a stupid construct.”
But it’s true.
Like siblings, the two have a history of happy times, hard feelings, jealously and mutual aid.
People who know both of them well said Newsom was not distressed to watch Harris stumble through the early stages of her vice presidency. And they said Harris was not terribly displeased to see Newsom forced to fight an attempted recall, though she did come to California for a homestretch rally on his behalf.
Each is a political pro.
Newsom made the rounds of media interviews in Chicago, saying all the right things.
“You’ll see me plenty out on the campaign trail” stumping for Harris, the governor told Fox News.
“In 2028, I look forward to reelecting Kamala Harris,” he said on NBC, forswearing any interest whatsoever in a future run for president. “In 2032, I hope to be walking without a cane.”
It was curious, then, to hear an interview released a day after Democrats closed up shop in Chicago, wherein Newsom sarcastically referred to the “30-minute” convention that yielded Harris as the Democratic nominee.
“We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process,” he joked on the “Pod Save America” podcast. “It was bottom-up, I don’t know if you know that. That’s what I’ve been told to say!”
Did Newsom let slip what he really thought about Harris’ insta-elevation to lead the Democratic ticket? Or was the governor just playing loosy-goosy as he hung with the podcast bros?
The Newsom-Harris competition is over — for now anyway — and it’s clear who won.
If Harris is elected president in November, the checkmated governor’s political ambitions will almost certainly be placed on hold for at least the next four years. If she loses, it’s not hard to imagine Newsom running as one of many candidates in a crowded field taking on President Trump and pledging to rebuild and revivify a devastated Democratic Party.
In the meantime, he’s a got a day job: Running the most populous, diversified and unwieldy state in the union.