Tim Walz and Wes Moore came to South Carolina earlier. This week it is Gavin Newsom. Andy Beshear is on the schedule, too.
The sitting governors are in the mix as candidates for the 2028 presidential election, and this state – politically red as it may be – was lifted in importance by former President Joe Biden. First he resurrected his primary chances ahead of the 2020 election, then he sought to make it the first stop in the calendar saying it was more representative of the nation’s voters.
“What we’re experiencing is America in reverse,” Newsom told the Kershaw County Democratic Party crowd. “They’re trying to bring us back to a pre-1960s world on voting rights. You know it well. Civil rights. LGBTQ rights. Women’s rights. And now just access to abortion but also access to simple reproductive care contraceptives.”
Newsom’s meet and greets have been a contrast to the Minnesota governor’s visit to the state party’s convention May 31. Walz told his audience, speaking of second-term Republican President Donald Trump, they should “bully the s— out of him back.”
His speech was laced with profanities in a state where Republicans are in both U.S. Senate seats, seven of eight U.S. House seats, seven of the eight state executive office seats including governor, and hold General Assembly majorities of 34-12 in the Senate and 88-35 with a vacancy in the House.
“Maybe it’s time for us to be a little meaner, a little bit more fierce,” said Walz, the vice-presidential half of the Kamala Harris ticket scrambled together following Biden’s July exit from the race.
Newsom was quizzed as he traveled about Harris, and if he would support her should she choose to run for president a second time. He was noncommittal.
And, for the record, the official purpose of his trip was to support local Democrats and disaster-torn communities.
Still, Walz and Maryland’s Moore were definitely in front of audition audiences at the party state convention. Kentucky’s Beshear next Wednesday visits the University of South Carolina in Columbia, an AFL-CIO event in Greenville, a dinner with the Georgetown County Democratic Party, and Charleston.
Expect the same narrative as those before him.
Newsom targeted Trump at every turn, told his audiences the “legislative agenda is effectively over” because of voter power in the midterms, and called California “the most un-Trump state.”
It’s still two years before the Democratic National Committee confirms whether South Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada goes first in the primary schedule. That said, it’s never too early to prime the pump.
Next week is Beshear’s turn.
