FILE - California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks in Sacramento, Calif., Jan. 10, 2023. On the same day that former President Donald Trump was indicted, Newsom announced a new national political action committee and an upcoming tour of red states.
José Luis Villegas/APCalifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife will be touring red states over the weekend and into next week, an announcement he made Thursday alongside the launch of a new political action committee aimed at boosting the profile of Democratic candidates in GOP-controlled areas.
The announcement of the tour and PAC came about an hour before news broke that a grand jury in New York had voted to indict former President Donald Trump on charges related to payments made by Trump's former lawyer to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign. Newsom sent out texts asking for donations to the new PAC, called Campaign for Democracy, shortly after news of Trump's indictment began to spread.
"We're going on the road to take the fight to the states where freedom is most under attack," Newsom said in a video announcing the PAC on Thursday. "Where Republican leaders ban books, criminalize doctors, fire teachers, intimidate librarians, kidnap migrants, target trans kids, stoke racism, condone antisemitism, force the victims of rape and incest to carry their attackers' baby, where they ignore the will of the people."
Newsom jump-started the Campaign for Democracy PAC with an infusion of $10 million left over from last year's reelection campaign, in which he trounced his Republican opponent in a race that was called just two minutes after polls closed. Just two hours after launch, Newsom said on Twitter that the PAC had already raised $100,000 from donations made across every state in the country.
As for his travels, Newsom is scheduled to stop at a fundraiser in Florida on Saturday before heading to Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi early next week, his spokesperson Nathan Click told multiple outlets.
While it's true that Trump's indictment has been expected for a couple weeks now, the timing of Newsom's moves is hard to ignore. He has long been rumored to have presidential ambitions. While the governor likely believes his new PAC will have the intended effect of electing more Democrats in deep-red areas, he also surely knows it will do a great deal to raise his national profile, too. That he rolled out his plan right as the legal troubles crested for the presumed leading Republican candidate feels notable.
Still, let's be clear: Newsom will almost certainly not run for the White House in 2024 if President Joe Biden is still in the picture. (Biden has yet to formally announce his intentions to run for a second term, but he's expected to soon.) Although Democratic voters have signaled they want someone else to run in 2024, they've also said they intend to stand behind Biden if he runs again, and attempting to dethrone Biden in a primary contest would almost certainly amount to political suicide for Newsom. The governor has repeatedly said he won't run in 2024, and he even joined the president's so-called "national advisory board" earlier this month. That group, composed of several high-profile Democrats, is expected to stump for liberal candidates up for reelection in 2024 and then shift focus to supporting Biden following his eventual announcement.
Newsom has also said he doesn't intend to run in 2028, citing wishes that his friend and fellow California politician, Vice President Kamala Harris, eventually becomes president. Attempting to forecast what a presidential field could look like more than five years away from the actual contest is futile in the fluid world of politics, but Newsom's decision to launch a national PAC and tour red states at the same time that the most visible Republican politician in the country is being indicted — whether coincidence or not — will not curb the presidential rumors surrounding him anytime soon.