Gavin Newsom says he won’t run for president if Kamala Harris runs again

Gavin Newsom will pass on a presidential bid if Kamala Harris runs again, he told CNN in an interview posted Monday, effectively giving the former vice president the right of first refusal in the 2028 race. “I don’t know if she runs but we’ll see,” Newsom told Jake Tapper in an interview taped in Montana as the pair fly-fished. “But I wouldn’t run if she ran.” After Tapper repeated that statement back with some incredulity, Newsom doubled down. “Of course not. Why would I?,” the California governor said. “I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time. Who needs that?” Newsom’s apparent deference to his fellow Californian — which he cast as an acknowledgement of political reality instead of sentimentality — is the latest development in a potential career collision between the two ambitious politicians. It also raises practical questions about their timelines for deciding on a White House bid — and whether Newsom would enter the race if Harris remained undecided. Newsom has been laying groundwork for a national campaign for well over a year, using his redistricting campaign as a de facto launch pad. Harris publicly acknowledged she was thinking about running again four months ago. With her near-universal name identification, she can afford to wait longer than other contenders to hop into the race. Speaking to Tapper, Newsom framed his stance in politically strategic terms, suggesting it would benefit every other primary candidate if they did compete. “First of all, electorally, it’s a gift from God for everybody else. They can enjoy the hell out of it. Mutually assured destruction. It services no greater good,” Newsom said. Tapper then laid out a counterargument: “She had a shot and you’ve never run and she’s run twice.” “Yeah, that’d be the approach to the campaign certainly,” Newsom said. “That’d be the case you’d make. A pretty good one actually. That’s objectively true.” But he said their shared political base, dating from their days as San Francisco politicians, would hamstring them both. “I know her base of supporters. I know her friends,” Newsom said.” The Venn diagram is just pure crossover. I wouldn’t do that to people.” His remarks are far more definitive than his previous comments about the prospect of both he and Harris running. Appearing on CNN in February, he said “fate will determine” if the two San Franciscans would run against each other. “I’ve never gotten in the way of her ambition ever. I haven’t,” Newsom said. “And I don’t imagine I would in the future.”