Gavin Newsom is getting in Republicans’ heads

Gavin Newsom is not just in Republicans’ ears. He’s getting in their heads.

Three episodes into the California governor’s new podcast, Alex Conant, the Republican strategist who served as communications director on Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, called Newsom a “skilled communicator” and a “very, very talented politician.”

David Kochel, the longtime Iowa Republican strategist, said “the operative class is definitely watching him because he’s doing something very different.” When asked if Newsom could give Republicans problems, Steve Bannon, the MAGA flamethrower who appeared recently on Newsom’s show, said simply, “Hell, yes.”

Added Fergus Cullen, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party: “A very talented politician.”

Newsom, a likely presidential contender, infuriated progressives by hosting conservatives on his podcast in recent weeks and breaking with his party on trans athletes in women’s sports. But while the left casts him as a shape-shifter, national Republicans see a candidate honing his skill.

Their concern came to a head this week when the conservative commentator Megyn Kelly warned GOP-ers to stop joining the California governor’s show.

“I don’t like to see it, because my own feeling is this guy’s in training for 2028,” Kelly said on her own podcast with the influential Trump ally and Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk. “The better he will get, the better he’ll do, the more he’ll understand how to appeal to people who are more right-wing or independently minded but on the right.”

It may be an overreaction. In California, Republicans who know Newsom best met his forays into red terrain with eyerolls about a politician they saw desperately in search of a rebranding.

“The more people get to know Gavin the less they seem to like him, so I think this is all for the good,” said Matt Fleming, a former California Republican Party communications director. “I don’t think that buddying up and flattering Charlie Kirk or Steve Bannon is going to make him the moderate that he wants to pretend to be.”

Or as Lanhee Chen, a Republican who ran for state controller and has advised multiple Republican presidential campaigns, put it in a text message: “Frankly I don’t know that any Republicans really take Newsom seriously anyway.”

But if Newsom’s podcast isn’t suddenly winning over the MAGA base, even some of his GOP critics are warning of his tactical skill.

After Kirk appeared on Newsom’s show, he wrote in an op-ed for Fox News that Newsom is “charming and friendly in-person,” “savvy with politics” and “wants to be president more than any living person (and possibly every dead person, too).”

The headline on the piece advised Republicans to “beware.”

Newsom’s amicable interviews with Trump allies have been widely reviled on the left. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear rebuked him as legislators in Sacramento cycled through shock and anger. Former Rep. Katie Porter, who is now running for California governor, said welcoming Bannon on the show was a mistake.

But judging by the amount of attention he’s drawing from Republicans nationally, Newsom has succeeded in inserting himself deeper into the conservative world’s consciousness.

This is not the first time California’s governor has sought to forge inroads in redder parts of the country. He purchased ads in Texas and Florida excoriating the states’ Republican governors on abortion rights in 2022 and followed up by channeling millions of dollars into a PAC intended to play in GOP-controlled states. He debated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a potential 2028 preview.

But the podcast takes a less confrontational approach. Newsom, who regularly consumes conservative media, has framed it as an attempt to understand the still-dominant MAGA movement after Democrats absorbed losses across the ballot in 2024, modernize the party’s methods of communicating with voters, and reach more young people. Democrats have struggled to break through in a podcast landscape dominated by conservative personalities like Joe Rogan, while Trump and other Republicans have aggressively courted those audiences.

“He understands that Democrats are way behind in the new media communications wars,” Newsom spokesperson Anthony York said. “We can’t just talk to ourselves in these media bubbles.”

That has been widely interpreted as Newsom laying the groundwork for a presidential run, expanding his national visibility and seeking to plant a flag as demoralized Democrats reassess their message and strategy (the governor, whose final term ends in 2026, has for years swatted down questions about his interest in the White House).

One downside is that the gambit could bolster a frequent criticism that he is more focused on his national brand than on addressing California’s myriad problems. That is certainly how Republicans will portray it.

“He’s going to be judged by voters based on the job he does as governor, not his ability to ham it up with people with whom he disagrees,” Jon Fleischman, a conservative activist and former California Republican Party official, said in a text message. “It’s almost like he’s anxious for his time as governor to be over.”

Jessica Millan Patterson, who just concluded her tenure as California Republican Party chair, said, “I don’t know who is giving him advice, but this is such a bad look.” She added, “I love it. He should continue.”

Newsom has run circles around Republicans in heavily Democratic California, crushing a recall attempt in 2021 and winning reelection a year later by nearly 20 percentage points. His approval rating has ticked up after sagging, now floating above water in the latest Public Policy Institute of California survey. And while that’s almost entirely because Democrats like what he’s doing, 43 percent of independents in the poll rated him favorably, too, a slight uptick from October.

Speaking to reporters in Washington on Thursday, David McIntosh, president of the conservative group Club for Growth, said that while he sees “most Democrats not getting the key takeaways” from the last election, “I was sort of impressed that Newsom did and started shifting his positions on things.”

Newsom’s position on trans athletes was the “key one,” he said. “But I think he’s also dealing with the aftermath of the fires and some of the things they’re very much wanting to engage the private sector on in California. And that’s good, that’s a good development.”

As for the podcast, a leading Republican contender to succeed Newsom said it contained a cautionary tale for conservatives. Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, said he thought Kirk had Newsom “on the ropes” at times in their episode, but that Kirk underestimated the governor’s ability to control a conversation.

“In law enforcement, we call it verbal judo,” he said. “They taught us that in the academy, on how you maintain control of the conversation with a suspect when or a witness that doesn’t want to tell you the truth.”

Nicole Norman and Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.