Gavin Newsom wants Fox News viewers to listen to him

Gavin Newsom has had little trouble with intense debates in the twenty years that he was governor and lieutenant governor of California and mayor of San Francisco.

But he is nonetheless unusually prepared for his nationally televised showdown Thursday with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: In recent months, Mr. Newsom has been through a kind of debate boot camp about how to respond to attacks on California. President Biden, the Democratic Party and his own mistakes over the years.

It came in the form of two lively interviews with Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News host who will moderate Thursday’s debate. From the moment they sat down, he pressed Mr. Newsom on the differences between them on issues as diverse as immigration and law enforcement.

“I want border security,” Mr. Newsom said, challenging the premise of Mr. Hannity’s question in the opening minutes of their first meeting. “Democrats want border security.”

“You don’t want walls,” Mr. Hannity responded, referring to the wall that former President Donald J. Trump wanted to build along the Mexican border. Mr. Newsom kept talking.

“I want comprehensive immigration reform,” Mr. Newsom said. “I really want to address the issue more comprehensively – just like Ronald Reagan did in 1989.” He added: “I don’t need to be educated on the issue of the border or issues of immigration policy.”

On Thursday, Mr. Newsom will spar on Fox News, not with Mr. Hannity but with Mr. DeSantis, for 90 minutes in a studio in Alpharetta, Georgia, without an audience. The stakes will be high for both Mr. DeSantis, 45, whose candidacy for Republican presidential nominee appeared to be fading in recent weeks, and Mr. Newsom, 56, who has positioned himself for a possible run for the White House in 2028.

The debate between these two relatively youthful national leaders, one from a Republican state and the other from a Democratic state, will offer sharply contrasting visions of America’s future in polarized times. Not coincidentally, it offers a glimpse of what could potentially be two leading candidates in the next presidential election.

“These are two of the most dominant governors in the country,” Hannity said in an interview Monday. ‘Two very smart, well-educated, very opinionated, philosophically different governors. They are diametrically opposed to each other.”

For Mr. DeSantis, this will be his fourth debate since entering the presidential race. In on-stage encounters with Republican opponents like Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, he has tried to keep a lid on conservative policy priorities, only occasionally clashing with his rivals, and on the edges.

Now he will debate an opposing leader ready to create sharp disagreements over US aid to help Ukraine fight Russia, turmoil in the Middle East, immigration – and over Mr Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination.

Mr. DeSantis has dismissed the idea that Mr. Newsom has fortified himself for this debate through his sessions with Mr. Hannity. Florida’s governor told reporters in New Hampshire last week that his California counterpart was operating in a “left-wing cocoon” and had little understanding of the concerns of voters and the country’s politics beyond the West Coast.

“I think he’s targeting a very far-left part of the electorate,” Mr. DeSantis said. “I think that will be seen when we have the debate.”

Still, that meeting between Newsom and Hannity in June, as well as an encore after the Republican presidential candidates debated at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in September, offer a primer on how Mr. Newsom might approach this moment: assertive, committed, armed with statistics and compelling sentences, plowing ahead to talk over an opponent or discredit a question he finds misleading, and which does not easily fall into error.

“He came into that interview very prepared,” Mr. Hannity told a New York Times reporter in September. “I have interviewed people who come in completely unprepared.”

“This is complimentary in every way: He is not in central casting,” Mr. Hannity said, shortly after finishing his appearance with Mr. Newsom. “He has a nice family. He’s young. Compare his energy level to that of Joe Biden.”

He will defend California against attacks from Republicans, including Mr. DeSantis, as a place in moral, economic or political decline: “I’ve been hearing this nonsense for half a century — literally half a century.”

He will be contrite when asked about homelessness (“Disgraceful. We own this.”) or about his unmasked dinner with lobbyists at the French Laundry, an upscale restaurant in Yountville, at the height of the Covid crisis. (“It was stupid.”)

And he might even agree with some attacks on Democratic policies in his state, such as the new “mansion tax” on real estate sales over $5 million. recently imposed in Los Angeles. “I opposed it when I was mayor of San Francisco, so I don’t disagree,” Mr. Newsom said when Mr. Hannity questioned the wisdom of such a tax.

Mr. DeSantis is not Mr. Hannity, with whom Mr. Newsom has what both men have described as a friendship of sorts, albeit a pushing one. (They text each other at night.) Mr. DeSantis has proven over the course of the Republican debates to be disciplined, sometimes almost to a script, and to offer flashes of anger rather than humor.

Mr. Newsom has had its ups and downs with California votersand it is far from clear how a politician who looks like a Hollywood actor and often seems to walk the line between sharp and smooth – or confident and arrogant – will come across to a national audience.

But he has proven an elusive target for his state’s beleaguered Republican Party. He easily survived a recall in 2021, with the support of 62 percent of voters, and was re-elected for a second term in 2022 with 59 percent of the vote.

“I think Gavin Newsom will be the smooth used-car salesman that he always is,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, chairman of the Republican Party of California, suggesting what Mr. DeSantis might expect. “Unfortunately, many people still fall for that.”

“The facts are on DeSantis’ side,” she said. “What helps Newsom is his charm and his fondness for unquoting quotes. It doesn’t work for me, but it does for many people.”

Mr. DeSantis’s permission to debate someone who won’t appear on the Iowa ballot in January has stunned Democrats and Republicans alike. “We were all surprised, honestly, that he took him up on the offer,” said Sean Clegg, Mr. Newsom’s political adviser.

That said, the debate gives Mr. DeSantis a chance to draw attention to his candidacy at a time when Mr. Trump has overshadowed him and Ms. Haley threatens to overshadow him.

And the debate could give viewers a taste of 2028’s key players.

“It will be one of the more interesting events of 2023,” Mr Clegg said. “It’s a debate between two of the most important governors in the country. Exhibition matches can be very satisfying in their own way.”

Max Scheinblum contributed to the reporting.