California’s potential to steer a nationwide Democratic comeback was on full show as social gathering leaders from throughout the nation lately gathered in downtown Los Angeles.
However is the social gathering able to guess on the Golden State?
Appearances on the Democratic Nationwide Committee assembly by the state’s most distinguished Democrats, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom, crystallized the peril and promise of California’s enchantment. Harris did not beat a politically wounded Donald Trump within the 2024 presidential race and Newsom, now amongst President Trump’s most celebrated critics, is taken into account a prime Democratic contender to switch the Republican president within the White Home in 2028.
California insurance policies on divisive points comparable to offering expanded entry to government-sponsored healthcare, aiding undocumented immigrants and supporting LGBTQ+ rights regularly function a Rorschach check for the nation’s polarized voters, offering consolation to progressives and ammunition for Republican assault adverts.
“California is like your cool cousin that comes for the vacations who’s intriguing and glamorous, however who may not slot in with the household year-round,” mentioned Elizabeth Ashford, a veteran Democratic strategist who labored for former Govs. Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Harris when she was the state’s legal professional basic.
Newsom, particularly, is fast to boast about California being residence to the world’s fourth-largest economic system, a billion-dollar agricultural trade and financial and cultural powerhouses in Hollywood and the Silicon Valley. Critics, Trump chief amongst them, paint the state as a dystopian hellhole — suffering from homeless encampments and lawlessness, and affected by excessive taxes and a good increased value of residing.
Solely two Californians have been elected president, Republicans Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. However that was generations in the past, and Harris and Newsom are contemplating bids to finish the decades-long drought in 2028. Each seized the second by courting social gathering leaders and activists in the course of the three-day winter assembly of the Democratic Nationwide Committee that ended Saturday.
Harris, chatting with committee members and company Friday, mentioned the social gathering’s victories in state elections throughout the nation in November mirror voters’ agitation concerning the impacts of Trump’s insurance policies, notably affordability and healthcare prices. However she argued that “each events have failed to carry the general public’s belief.”
“In order we plan for what comes after this administration, we can not afford to be nostalgic for what was, in reality, a flawed established order, and a system that failed so lots of you,” mentioned Harris, who was criticized after her presidential marketing campaign for not focusing sufficient on kitchen desk points, together with the rising monetary strains confronted by People.
Whereas Harris, who dominated out working for governor earlier this yr, didn’t tackle whether or not she would make one other bid for the White Home in 2028, she argued that the social gathering wanted to be introspective about its future.
“We have to reply the query, what comes subsequent for our social gathering and our democracy, and in so doing, we should be sincere that for thus many, the American dream has turn into extra of a fantasy than a actuality,” she mentioned.
Most of the social gathering leaders who spoke on the gathering centered on California’s attainable function in figuring out management of Congress after voters in November accredited Proposition 50, a uncommon mid-decade redrawing of congressional districts in an effort to spice up the variety of Democrats within the state’s congressional delegation within the 2026 election.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass rallied the group by reminding them that Democrats took again the U.S. Home of Representatives throughout Trump’s first time period and predicted the state can be important in subsequent yr’s midterm elections.
Mayor Karen Bass speaks on the Democratic Nationwide Committee Winter Assembly on the InterContinental Lodge in downtown Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Occasions)
Newsom, who championed Proposition 50, basked in that victory when he strode by the resort’s corridors on the DNC assembly the day earlier than, stopping each few ft to speak to committee members, shake their palms and take selfies.
“There’s only a sense of optimism right here,” Newsom mentioned.
Democratic candidates in New Jersey and Virginia additionally received races by a major margin final month which, social gathering leaders say, had been all telltale indicators of rising voter dissatisfaction with Trump and Washington’s Republican management.
“The social gathering, extra broadly, bought their sea legs again, they usually’re profitable,” Newsom mentioned. “And profitable solves plenty of issues.”
Louisiana committee member Katie Darling teared up as she watched fellow Democrats flock to Newsom.
“He actually is making an attempt to deliver folks collectively throughout a really tough time,” mentioned Darling, who grew up in Sacramento in a Republican family. “He will get plenty of pushback for speaking to and dealing with Republicans, however when he does that, I see him speaking to my mother and pa who I really like, who I vehemently disagree with politically. … I do assume that we have to discuss to one another to maneuver the nation ahead.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his spouse Jennifer Siebel Newsom seems on throughout an election night time gathering on the California Democratic Social gathering headquarters on November 04, 2025 in Sacramento.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Photos)
Darling mentioned she listens to Newsom’s podcast, the place his selection of company, together with the late Charlie Kirk, and his feedback on the present that transgender athletes participating in girls’s sports activities is “deeply unfair” have drawn outrage from some on the left.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, one other potential 2028 presidential candidate whose household has traditionally supported Newsom, was additionally reportedly on website Thursday, holding closed-door conferences. And former Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, additionally a attainable White Home contender, was in Los Angeles on Thursday, showing on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night present and holding conferences.
Corrin Rankin, chair of the California Republican Social gathering, solid the DNC conferences in L.A. as “anti-Trump classes” and pointed to the homeless encampments on Skid Row, simply blocks from the place committee members gathered.
“We’d like accountability and options that truly get folks off the streets, make communities safer and life extra reasonably priced,” Rankin mentioned.
Elected officers from throughout the nation are drawn to California due to its wellspring of rich political donors. The state was the biggest supply of contributions to the marketing campaign committees of Trump and Harris in the course of the 2024 presidential contest, contributing almost 1 / 4 of a billion {dollars}, in accordance with the nonpartisan, nonprofit group Open Secrets and techniques, which tracks electoral funds.
Whereas the DNC gathering centered totally on mundane inside enterprise, the gathering of social gathering leaders attracted liberal teams looking for to boost cash and draw consideration to their causes.
Actor Jane Fonda and comic Nikki Glaser headlined an occasion aimed toward rising the minimal wage on the Three Golf equipment cocktail bar in Hollywood. California already has among the many highest minimal wages within the nation; one of many organizers of the occasion is campaigning to extend the speed to $30 per hour in some California counties.
“The affordability disaster is pushing hundreds of thousands of People to the sting, and no democracy can survive when individuals who work full time can not afford fundamental requirements,” Fonda mentioned previous to the occasion. “Elevating wages is among the strongest methods to offer households stability and hope.”
However California’s liberal insurance policies have been seen as a legal responsibility for Democrats elsewhere, the place points comparable to transgender rights and offering healthcare for undocumented immigrants haven’t been warmly obtained by some blue-collar employees who as soon as shaped the social gathering’s base.
Trump capitalized on that disconnect within the closing months of the 2024 presidential contest, when his marketing campaign aired adverts that highlighted Harris’ help of transgender rights, together with taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgical procedure for inmates.
“Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” the business said. The advert aired greater than 30,000 instances in swing states within the fall, notably throughout soccer video games and NASCAR races.
“Kamala had 99 issues. California wasn’t one in all them,” mentioned John Podesta, a veteran Democratic strategist who served a senior advisor to former President Biden, counselor to former President Obama and White Home chief of employees for former President Clinton.
He disputed the argument that California, whether or not by its insurance policies or candidates, will influence Democrats’ possibilities, arguing there’s a broader disconnect between the social gathering and its voters.
“This sense that Democrats misplaced contact with the center class and the poor in favor of the cultural elite is an actual drawback,” mentioned Podesta. “My shorthand is, we was once the social gathering of the manufacturing facility ground, and now we’re the social gathering of the school lounge. That’s not a California drawback. It’s an elitist drawback.”
Whereas Podesta isn’t backing anybody but within the 2028 presidential contest, he praised Newsom for his efforts to not solely buck Trump however the “leftist extremists” within the Democratic social gathering.
The narrative of Californians being out of contact with many People has been exacerbated this yr in the course of the state’s battles with the Trump administration over immigration, local weather change, water and synthetic intelligence coverage. However Newsom and committee members argued that the state has been on the vanguard of the place the nation will finally head.
“I’m very pleased with California. It’s a state that’s not nearly progress, it’s about inclusion,” the governor mentioned, earlier than ticking off an inventory of California initiatives, together with low-priced insulin and better minimal wages. “A lot of the coverage that’s popping out of the state of California promotes not simply promise, however coverage course that I feel is admittedly necessary for the social gathering.”
