As President Biden tries to retain the Democratic nomination in the aftermath of his disastrous debate defeat, prominent California figures, particularly Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Gavin Newsom, are trying to bolster the embattled president in the race.
Newsom campaigned for the president on Monday in New Hampshire, which will hold the nation’s first presidential primary and has been a reliably Democratic state in recent decades but could win in 2024. Harris plans to rally Asian American voters in Nevada, another key early voting state, on Tuesday.
“Instead of just giving in and giving up, I decided to stand up and put up a fight. That’s why I went to Michigan and Pennsylvania. That’s why I’m here,” Newsom told reporters after greeting Biden supporters and munching on an apple cider doughnut at a toll road rest stop near Manchester. “I had the day off. It wasn’t easy to leave my kids and I said there are more important things — freedom, a future, reproductive health care, rights. … All of those things play a big part in the vote. The light and the dark.”
Before arriving in the “Liberty or Death” state on Sunday night, Newsom rallied Democrats in Michigan and Pennsylvania. On Monday, in addition to meeting with local reporters and an event at a rest stop where a disgruntled passerby told him to “go back to California,” Newsom hosted an event with Biden campaign interns, met with state party officials and raised money for legislative candidates.
The campaign’s decision to send Newsom to New Hampshire was notable: the state was once purple but last voted for a Republican presidential candidate in 2000. Biden won the 2020 election with 52.7% of the vote.
The state has only four electoral votes, but it ranks first in the nation in the nominating race and is always in the spotlight. Biden placed fifth in the 2020 primary behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. Biden won 8.4% of the primary vote.
Tristan Mitzen, a 23-year-old Dartmouth College student who was eating chimichangas and sipping Modelo beers at Tacos y Tequila in Hanover, was one of the young voters who supported Sanders in the 2020 primary. He dropped his Democratic voter registration the next day and sat out that year’s general election. Mitzen said Monday that he doesn’t think Biden understands the hardships many Americans face and that he might do the same thing this year.
“My generation has it harder than anyone else,” the history major said.
Biden has consistently led former President Trump in New Hampshire in general election polls so far, and a post-debate poll by St. Anselm College in Goffstown showed Trump leading by 2 percentage points, within the margin of error but a stark difference from a June poll that gave Biden a 9-point lead.
Asked why he was spending time in states that have favored Democrats in recent years, Newsom said he went wherever the Biden campaign sent him. (Newsom is one of the incumbent Biden campaign leaders and has held more than 20 events supporting the president this year.)
“They don’t take it for granted,” he said in an interview, sitting on a curb behind a Hanover rest stop where temperatures were in the low 80s Fahrenheit.
Biden, who is in his 80s, has been a source of concern among Democrats, particularly in the aftermath of last month’s debate, where Newsom argued the president’s energy and skills are best displayed during speeches rather than on television, calling it Biden’s “superpower.”
“I’ve seen it time and time again, he thrives with people, he doesn’t thrive on stage alone in a cold studio,” Newsom added. “You can feel it, you can see it, and he loves people. I mean, he just loves it. Even his biggest critics have to admit he loves people.”
Still, he acknowledged that growing public uneasiness about the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee won’t help the party achieve its objectives.
“It’s clearly not working,” Newsom told reporters at a doughnut and coffee shop, adding that only a “very small handful” of people are opposed.
Newsom, who has frequently been mentioned as a potential future White House contender, repeatedly declined to answer questions in interviews and during his public remarks in Hanover about whether he would seek president in 2028.
He had been scheduled for weeks to headline a fundraiser for state legislative candidates in Hanover on Monday afternoon — a typical event for White House candidates to garner support from local elected officials before the election — but an employee at a Mexican restaurant in Hanover said the event was canceled Monday morning.
He said he plans to serve as governor for the next two and a half years.
“Come on. We’ve got two more budgets and three more Congresses,” Newsom said in the interview, before again remaining mum about his future political ambitions. “I hope that in the future we’ll be a country that has free and fair elections.”
Messrs. Newsom and Harris are from a generation that built their careers on the trying grounds of San Francisco politics and have been public and vocal supporters of Biden, but with a growing number of Democrats calling for Biden to step down, they are the two names most often mentioned as potential successors if the president decides not to seek reelection.
On Sunday, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank became the latest Democrat to voice concerns about Mr. Biden’s candidacy.
“I think his performance on the debate stage has rightly raised questions among the American people about whether the president has what it takes to beat Donald Trump, and this is an existential election,” Senate candidate Schiff said on “Meet the Press.” “It can’t be close. The only reason it’s close is because of the president’s age.”
Biden reiterated on Monday that he has no plans to withdraw from the race and wrote a letter to Democrats urging them to unite behind his candidacy and to defeat Trump.
“The question of how to move forward has been debated for well over a week already, and it’s time to end it,” Biden wrote. “We have one job: to defeat Donald Trump. … Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the agenda ahead will only help Trump and hurt us. Now is the time to come together, to move forward as a party, and to defeat Donald Trump.”
Given growing calls among Democrats for Biden to step down, Harris is seen as the clear frontrunner to replace him if he does step down, but Newsom’s name has also been floated, although neither has given any public indication that they want to succeed Biden.
“I think Newsom is smart enough to realize that if it’s not Biden, it’s Harris who wins,” said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. “If Harris fails, Newsom will continue to play the long game he’s playing. If Harris is nominated and it doesn’t work out, it opens the door for a candidate in 2028.”
