California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will return to the South next week for a four-day swing through Alabama, South Carolina, and North Carolina, continuing his increasingly active role in Democratic politics outside California.
The trip to South Carolina, the first presidential primary state on the Democratic nominating calendar, comes just a few days after California lawmakers conclude their final legislative session under Newsom. He will travel through more than 10 counties, including six in South Carolina that President Donald Trump carried in 2024, meeting voters and local leaders and campaigning for Democrats in competitive state House races.
It will be Newsom’s seventh trip to the South in three years and the latest in a broader effort to strengthen Democratic infrastructure and support candidates down the ballot.
The four-day tour will begin Wednesday in Montgomery, Alabama, where Newsom will focus on civil and voting rights. He will walk the city’s civil rights trail with local leaders, hold a town hall, and meet with students at Alabama State University.
Newsom’s team is framing the trip as a response to what it calls the erosion of voting and civil rights under Trump. They cited the president’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting, redraw congressional maps, and roll back civil rights protections.
From Alabama, Newsom will spend two days traveling through South Carolina, concentrating on rural and traditionally Republican communities. He will visit Jasper, Beaufort, and Dorchester counties on Thursday, then Aiken, Lexington, and Lancaster counties on Friday — all of which Trump carried in 2024 — to meet voters and campaign for Democrats in competitive state House districts.
He will also meet students at HBCU Allen University alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jermaine Johnson.
Newsom will then cross the border to North Carolina for an event with the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party in Charlotte. He is expected to spend Saturday organizing and fundraising in the area before heading to neighboring Union County, a Trump-carried Republican stronghold, for a Labor Day weekend rally.
The trip builds on Newsom’s Campaign for Democracy, launched in 2023, which uses his national fundraising operation to support Democratic candidates, state parties, and organizing efforts.
His small-donor email list has raised $15.2 million for Democratic candidates, state parties, and organizing efforts nationwide. More than $2.2 million has gone to Democratic candidates and party infrastructure across the South, including $390,000 to the South Carolina Democratic Party, $168,000 to the North Carolina Democratic Party, and $113,000 to the Alabama Democratic Party.
Newsom has increasingly used the operation to support candidates in states where national Democrats have invested less heavily.
The governor’s growing national profile, however, has also given California groups a new way to pressure him.
Activists and interest groups fighting Newsom over labor, artificial intelligence, transportation funding, and business regulation started taking their campaigns beyond Sacramento, targeting the states he may need if he seeks the White House in 2028.
Rather than lobbying Newsom solely in California, some groups are now making their case in states where Democratic presidential voters could shape his future.
That has created an unusual dynamic as Newsom finishes his final legislative session. Constituencies he could eventually need to court nationally are using the prospect of a presidential campaign as leverage over policies still before him in California. The legislative session is scheduled to end Sunday.
Transit advocates, for example, have taken their fight over Newsom-backed changes to California’s climate program to South Carolina and Nevada, placing newspaper advertisements aimed directly at voters in both states. Labor leaders have similarly warned Newsom they will confront him on the campaign trail if he does not deliver on legislation governing AI and workplace protections.
California political strategist Matt Klink said those unresolved fights could follow Newsom well beyond Sacramento.
“Every unresolved fight in Sacramento carries a national price tag,” Klink told the Washington Examiner, pointing to Streets For All’s decision to buy newspaper ads in South Carolina and Nevada over changes to California’s cap-and-trade program.
The group targeted the states, Klink said, because Newsom may need them in a 2028 presidential campaign.
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“California’s progressive policies, particularly on the environment, taxation and labor regulations, will be front-and-center in highly competitive Democratic primaries,” Klink said.
The emerging dynamic amounts to a political boomerang: Newsom is leaving California to build a national profile while some of his California opponents are following him there.